Claims About 2 ‘Unofficial’ Gospels Stir Controversy

For the better part of 2,000 years, Christians have had four official sources on the life and words of Jesus: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament.

But now, as Christianity approaches its third millennium, some scholars say the faithful should add two to the list: the gospel of Thomas and the so-called gospel of “Q.”

Both documents, whose texts date to Christianity’s early days, contain many of Jesus’ well-known sayings, but not much action, lacking mention of a virgin birth, Crucifixion or resurrection.

Evidence suggests “another kind of early Christianity back there,” that eventually lost out to what became the mainstream faith, said Stephen J. Patterson, professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis.

The only full copy of Thomas ever found was discovered 50 years ago in an Egyptian village; it begins by saying it contains Jesus’ “secret sayings.” No Q manuscript has ever been found (although some swear there must be a copy buried somewhere). Instead, Q is a reconstructed text, pieced together by scholars analyzing passages in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that appear highly similar.

Some scholars say Q and, to a degree, Thomas help portray Jesus as a kind of wandering sage, telling parables about God’s kingdom, concerned mainly about the present day and not much interested in a Last Judgment--all in sharp contrast to the Christ who preaches of a coming apocalypse in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

“What’s at stake here is nothing less than the preaching of Jesus himself,” Patterson said.

Such opinions are not widely shared among scholars and clergy. The resulting controversy is ironic, given that Thomas and Q have long been very obscure texts.

But these days, editions of Thomas and Q are for sale in bookstores, while some scholars turn up on radio talk shows, saying the ancient texts hold a key to Christianity’s origins.

Most recently, the documents have been published in a book titled “The Lost Gospel,” by New Testament scholar Burton Mack, which details a theory about Q, and another book, “The Five Gospels,” which places Thomas alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, written by a group of scholars called the Jesus Seminar. (The latter book has a provocative format: a color-coded analysis of Jesus’ words, which appear in red if the seminar thinks Jesus actually made the statement; black if they think it was the work of early Christian editors; pink or gray if somewhere in between.)

In some academic circles, the response has been critical, particularly among scholars who say that Mack and the seminar want mainly to popularize flashy theories about early Christianity outside scholarship’s mainstream.

“The success of this work is the success of marketing. It’s not the success of peer review,” said Luke Timothy Johnson, professor of New Testament at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. “It’s like a pharmaceutical company working up a medication and selling directly at the drug store and not going through testing.”

Others raise another warning, saying that what Jesus preached was settled over time long ago by church authorities, who decided what would go into the canon, the official books of the Bible.

“It seems to me the canon is the property of the church,” not something scholars can challenge by asking equal time for other texts, said Cecil M. Robeck, associate professor of church history at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

The Rev. Michael W. Duggan, a Gaithersburg, Md., priest who has taught adult Bible classes for the past 17 years, said Thomas and Q were not considered official gospels for good reason. “The reason I would say they are not in the canon is they do not focus on the central event of the New Testament, the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

Indeed, Thomas’ gospel contains no narrative, just 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Some are familiar. Jesus recites part of the Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor . . . “) and warns against tossing pearls before swine, as he does in the New Testament Gospels.

But in Thomas, Jesus also tells his disciples to say they “come from the light” and are “its children.” Odder still, he talks about teaching a female follower to be male in spirit: “For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.” (In “The Five Gospels,” the Jesus Seminar color codes these passages black, meaning it thinks Jesus did not actually say them.)

Thomas’ gospel reflects the influence of Gnostics, a heretical sect within early Christianity, who turned orthodox teaching on its head. Gnostics believed they lived in a corrupt world created by an evil god; some regarded the serpent in the Adam and Eve story as sent by a good god to bring enlightenment to the world.

Scholars long knew of Thomas only through references in other Christian writings. But in 1945, a 1,600-year-old manuscript was found in Egypt. Jesus Seminar members say it may be based on an older version of the text, dating to the mid-1st Century, making it one of the earliest Christian documents.

The discovery has encouraged scholars who study Q.

The process by which Q came to be known goes back 150 years when scholars began comparing similar passages in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels. Some, they decided, came from Mark’s Gospel, usually considered the oldest of the New Testament Gospels, first written around 70 A.D.

But researchers also found shared passages in Matthew and Luke that did not appear in Mark. This material they named Quelle, German for “source,” later shortened to Q. Some scholars (but by no means all) believe the Q material was a separate document that Matthew and Luke drew upon.

When it is presented as such--as the “Gospel of Q”--it is a quick read, familiar to anyone who knows Matthew and Luke. Jesus praises the poor, teaches love for one’s enemies and speaks in parables about God’s kingdom. But much is missing--no mention of 12 apostles, for example.