Illuminating the History of the Bible

Canon

What Are the Apocryphal Gospels?

These diverse ancient works expand upon the four canonical Gospels in creative and sometimes subversive ways.

The so-called “apocryphal” gospels are a subject of fascination among many today. How do they relate to the four canonical gospels? What are they and why did people read and write them? To start with a definition, the apocryphal gospels are a diverse collection of texts that expand and elaborate on the teachings and narratives of Jesus’ birth and life, ministry, death, and post-resurrection appearances as found in the canonical gospels. These noncanonical writings were produced from the second century onward and provide insights into the diverse and creative ways early Christians interpreted the traditions about Jesus.

The major types of noncanonical gospels can be divided into several categories, each with its own focus, including infancy gospels, ministry gospels, passion gospels, and post-resurrection dialogue gospels. These works not only reveal the vibrancy of early Christian imagination but also their theological, pastoral, and often esoteric concerns. We begin with a survey of the various types before returning to the question of why they were produced (and reproduced).

Infancy gospels

A depiction of Jesus bringing clay birds to life in St. Martin’s church, Switzerland. Encyclopædia Britannica

The infancy gospels address a gap in the canonical gospels by focusing on the early life of Jesus. The most famous of these is the Protevangelium of James, which situates Jesus’ birth within a larger narrative about Mary, his mother. This gospel includes popular traditions, such as the names of Mary’s parents (Joachim and Anna), and embellishes the biblical accounts with additional details like Mary riding a donkey to Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus occurring in a cave. The text was well-received in early Christianity and continued to influence Christian piety in later centuries.

In contrast, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas presents a more episodic portrayal of Jesus’ childhood, often characterized by playful and even mischievous behavior. The gospel contains stories such as Jesus creating birds out of clay and bringing them to life, as well as his disputes with teachers over the meaning of letters. Unlike the Protevangelium, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas seems to have been more focused on entertainment than religious edification.

Both texts, though different in tone and content, reflect an early Christian desire to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ early life, which the canonical gospels leave largely unaddressed.

Ministry gospels

Several apocryphal gospels focus on Jesus’ ministry, often combining sayings and episodes from the canonical gospels with new material. For example, the Egerton Gospel (Papyrus Egerton 2 + P.Köln VI 255) presents fragments of a narrative that includes a dialogue about Jesus’ authority in comparison to Moses, a miraculous healing of a leper, and a dialogue about the emperor’s rule. These fragments suggest that the Egerton Gospel drew upon both Synoptic and Johannine traditions, creating a composite portrait of Jesus’ ministry.

A fragment of the ‘Egerton Gospel’ (P.Köln VI 255). Image source

Other fragmentary texts, such as Oxyrhynchus Papyri 840 and 1224, also provide tantalizing glimpses of second-century ministry gospels. These texts include dialogues and debates, sometimes featuring Pharisees or other Jewish authorities. For example, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 840 contains a debate between Jesus and a Pharisee named Levi, focusing on purity laws. These gospels demonstrate the ongoing interest in Jesus’ teachings and actions, particularly as they related to Jewish religious practices.

In addition to these ministry gospels, certain texts categorized as “Jewish Christian Gospels” also emerged. The Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites are two such examples. These texts appear to have drawn heavily from the Gospel of Matthew, and their content includes familiar episodes such as Jesus’ baptism, the Last Supper, and his resurrection. However, they also contain unique material, leading some scholars to consider them distinct gospels, while others view them as recensions or revisions of Matthew.

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Passion gospels

The apocryphal passion gospels focus on the events surrounding Jesus’ death, often with theological or narrative innovations that distinguish them from the canonical accounts. The Gospel of Peter, for instance, presents a distinctive version of the passion narrative, emphasizing the guilt of the Jewish leaders and downplaying the role of Pontius Pilate. This gospel also features a dramatic and theologically rich resurrection account, in which Jesus emerges from the tomb accompanied by two angels, towering over the earth.

Other passion gospels, such as the Fayyum Fragment (Papyrus Vindobonensis G. 2325), offer only small portions of the passion narrative, such as Jesus predicting Peter’s denial. Although these texts do not provide a full passion account, they highlight the continued interest in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

One of the most notorious of the passion gospels is the Gospel of Judas, which presents a radically different interpretation of Judas’s role in Jesus’ betrayal. Far from being a simple traitor, Judas is portrayed as Jesus’ most trusted disciple, the one who understood his true nature and mission. This gospel, linked to Gnostic theology, presents a subversive reinterpretation of the passion story, challenging mainstream early Christian understandings of Jesus’ death and its salvific significance.

Post-resurrection dialogue gospels

The post-resurrection dialogues fill another gap in the canonical narratives, where the risen Jesus speaks little compared to his pre-resurrection ministry. These gospels often present a timeless Jesus in extended conversations with his disciples, revealing esoteric teachings or hidden wisdom. The Gospel of Thomas is perhaps the best-known of these texts. It consists of 114 secret sayings of the “living Jesus,” many of which parallel the Synoptic gospels, but others reflect a Gnosticizing interpretation of Jesus’ message.

The Gospel of the Lots of Mary (6th c.) is a miniature codex with 37 oracles attributed to Jesus’ mother. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Other post-resurrection dialogue gospels, such as the Gospel of Mary and the Apocryphon of James, emphasize Jesus’ communication with specific disciples, often Mary Magdalene or James, to whom he reveals special, secret knowledge. The Gospel of Mary portrays Mary as a key figure in understanding Jesus’ teachings, especially regarding the soul’s journey after death. The text suggests a spiritual hierarchy in which Mary has access to wisdom that even Peter and the other apostles do not.

In contrast, the Epistula Apostolorum (“Epistle of the Apostles”) offers a more orthodox portrayal of the post-resurrection period, emphasizing the collective witness of the apostles to the risen Christ. This text serves as a defense of the apostolic tradition, countering the more esoteric and individualistic post-resurrection dialogues found in other apocryphal gospels.

Gospel harmonies and Marcion’s ‘Euangelion’

In addition to composing original gospels, second-century Christians also engaged in the harmonization of existing gospels. The most famous example is Tatian’s Diatessaron, a gospel harmony that combined material from all four canonical gospels into a single continuous narrative. This project reflected a desire to synthesize the Jesus tradition, creating a unified account from the diverse and sometimes divergent canonical sources.

A little earlier in the second century, Marcion’s Euangelion (“Gospel”) represents a very different approach. Marcion accepted only Luke’s gospel and heavily redacted it, excising any references to Jewish prophecy or the Old Testament. His gospel reflects his theological agenda of separating the Creator God of the Old Testament from the Redeemer God revealed in Jesus. Marcion’s approach stands in stark contrast to the harmonizing tendencies of other early Christians, who sought to preserve the fullness of the Jesus tradition and its connection to the Old Testament.

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Why the Apocryphal gospels were written and read

When many Christians today learn about these Apocryphal Gospels, their first question is often Why? Why did people write these gospels and why did others read them? The proliferation of apocryphal gospels in the second century can be attributed to several factors.

First, these gospels allowed early Christians to fill in gaps left by the canonical gospels, especially regarding Jesus’ early life and his post-resurrection appearances. The Infancy Gospels and post-resurrection dialogues are prime examples of this. They have sometimes been characterized as an ancient form of fan fiction.

Second, the apocryphal gospels were read for entertainment and moral instruction. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, with its playful stories of the boy Jesus, likely entertained its readers while also offering lessons about Jesus’ divinity and humanity.

 These gospels often reflect theological and pastoral concerns specific to particular Christian communities.

Third, these gospels often reflect theological and pastoral concerns specific to particular Christian communities. For example, the Gnostic gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas, express a worldview that emphasized secret knowledge (gnosis) and rejected the material world in favor of spiritual enlightenment. These texts catered to the spiritual needs of communities that valued esoteric wisdom and saw themselves as possessing deeper insights into Jesus’ teachings. On the other hand, texts like the Epistula Apostolorum arguably were written by proto-orthodox authors in the service of canonical gospels, validating their apostolic authority and promoting their use as Scripture alongside the Old Testament.

Finally, the apocryphal gospels reveal the diversity of early Christian beliefs and practices. While the four canonical gospels became increasingly authoritative, other gospel compositions demonstrate awareness of them to various degrees and were often read alongside them. Diverse groups continued to produce and read augmented narratives or alternative sayings that aligned with their theological perspectives. In this sense, some apocryphal gospels served as a way for marginalized or heterodox groups to preserve their traditions and interpretations of Jesus.

That said, the historical evidence suggests that apocryphal gospels did not generate or sustain an independently viable alternative tradition either of Jesus’s life or of a rival collection to the fourfold gospel. Rather, they typically presupposed a widespread acceptance of the canonical gospels as the authoritative center of gravity for the Jesus tradition.

Apocryphal gospels did not generate or sustain an independently viable alternative tradition.

Conclusion

The apocryphal gospels represent a rich and diverse body of literature that expands upon the canonical gospels in creative and sometimes subversive ways. Whether filling in gaps, offering new theological insights, or harmonizing existing traditions, these texts reflect the vibrant and complex world of early Christian thought. Their composition and reception reveal not only the diversity of early Christian beliefs about Jesus but also the enduring, unparalleled influence of the four canonical gospels, which provided the foundation upon which much of this creative gospel writing was built.

Paul and the Septuagint Canon

What do the apostle’s quotations of the Septuagint tell us about his view of the Old Testament canon?

The apostle Paul quoted Scripture more than a hundred times in his thirteen canonical letters, but he never identified the version of Scripture that he used. Why bother?—you may think—everyone knows he used the Septuagint (LXX). He was obviously not quoting Scripture in the original language, because he was writing in Greek, not Hebrew, so he had to quote a translation. The LXX was the obvious choice.

There are problems with the simple statement that Paul quoted the LXX, however, and this essay focuses on one: did Paul know he was quoting the LXX?

The expanding definition of ‘Septuagint’

Whether Paul knew that he was quoting the Septuagint depends on what we mean by that term, Septuagint. Certainly, Paul knew that he was quoting Scripture in Greek and, if that’s all we mean by the term Septuagint, then Paul certainly did know. But “Septuagint” is also an ancient term associated with a particular origin story, and so we might ask whether Paul was familiar with the story and what he thought about it.

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Here is the story: King Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the early third century BC commissioned seventy—or, actually, seventy-two—Jewish scholars (six from each of the twelve tribes) to translate Jewish Scripture into Greek. The translation came to be called “the translation of the Seventy,” or “the translation of the Hebdomēkonta” (in Greek, ἑβδομήκοντα), or, in Latin, “the translation of the Septuaginta.” That explains the common abbreviation LXX, a Roman numeral.

Ancient sources for the term

We can be more specific: our ancient Jewish sources for the story all specify that the portion of Jewish Scripture translated for Ptolemy was the Pentateuch. These Jewish sources include:

  1. The Letter of Aristeas second century BC
  2. Aristobulus (frg. 3, preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 13.12), second century BC
  3. Philo (Life of Moses 2.25–44), first century AD
  4. Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 12.11–118)
  5. Talmud, specifically b. Megillah 9a §11. The traditions of the Talmud are hard to date, but this type of tradition called a baraita has been dated as early as the first century AD.

Not all of these sources mention the number of translators; Philo does not. But each of them mentions Ptolemy and that the translation project involved the Torah alone. Modern scholars rightly discount this entire story as a later propagandistic fabrication designed to magnify the authority of the early Greek translation of the Torah, but that is not our concern here; we are interested in how ancient people thought about the LXX.

‘Septuagint’ before Christianity

Other portions of Jewish Scripture were also translated into Greek, but they were not incorporated into the story of the translation for Ptolemy. We do not have, for instance, a story about the translation of Isaiah or Samuel or Proverbs or the Psalter, but we do know that these works were translated into Greek at some point in the third through first centuries BC because we have the Greek texts and many of the books of Jewish Scripture were quoted by Greek authors.

The New Testament quotes most of these books, so the translations must have been largely complete by the lifetime of Jesus. Most scholars would say that many of the books were translated already in the second century BC, in part because the translator of the apocryphal book of Sirach in the late second century BC mentions in a general way the Greek forms of the law, the prophets, and other books. (This is in the prologue to Greek Sirach.)

These other works (Greek Isaiah, Greek Proverbs, etc.) were not considered a part of the LXX—at least, not by the ancient Jewish sources that mention the LXX. For instance, Philo did not consider Greek Isaiah to be a part of the translation for Ptolemy. He knew about the existence of the Greek translation of Isaiah, and he even quoted it on occasion. One example is at On Dreams 2.172, where he introduced a quotation of Isaiah 5:7 with the words, “I have the witness of one of the ancient prophets who under inspiration said…” But when Philo told the story of the translation for Ptolemy, he left Isaiah out of the account and made the story all about the books of Moses. Notice that the title of the work in which Philo told the story is Life of Moses.

What was true for Philo was true for Josephus, who also used the Greek translation of most books of Jewish Scripture but considered the LXX to be the Greek Pentateuch and nothing else. To repeat: all of our ancient Jewish sources limited the scope of the LXX to the Torah.

‘Septuagint’ in early Christianity

So, how did the “Septuagint” or LXX come to refer to more than just the Torah in Greek? It was Christians who expanded the scope of the translation to include all of Jewish Scripture in Greek. According to the first Christian to mention the translation—Justin Martyr in the mid-second century AD—the translators assembled by Ptolemy produced a Greek version of all of Jewish prophecies, not just the Torah. Justin told the story of translation in his First Apology (ch. 31).

Dr. Gallagher’s book explores the Septuagint’s reception in greater detail.

This expansion of the scope of translation aided Justin’s apologetics by allowing him to argue against the validity of Greek renderings that he found problematic. For instance, with regard to the “virgin birth” (Isaiah 7:14), Justin was aware of some Greek translations that failed to render the verse with the crucial word “virgin” (parthenos, παρθένος) but instead had “young woman” (neanis, νεᾶνις), against the testimony of “the translation of the Seventy” (Dialogue with Trypho 70–73). Justin argued that the newer version must be wrong because it departed from the authoritative translation produced by the Seventy sages for King Ptolemy.

Once the step had been taken, later Christians rarely found it problematic to attribute the translation of all the books of Jewish Scripture to Ptolemy’s court. Again, this aspect of Christian thought about the LXX served as a foundational element in defenses of the text of the traditional Greek Bible as opposed to newer Greek versions associated with the Jewish translators named Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.

How could a Christian believer know that the traditional translation of Jeremiah (or whatever book) was preferable to the version of Jeremiah in one of these later translations? Because the Seventy sages at Ptolemy’s court produced the traditional translation. And why do we trust the Seventy sages? Already Irenaeus of Lyon in the late second century developed several arguments favoring the authority of the Seventy (see Against Heresies 3.21.1–3), of which one of the most important was that the Seventy were inspired by God.

The Inspiration of the Septuagint

Irenaeus did not completely invent the idea that the Seventy translators were inspired, but he did contribute to the evolving story. More than a century earlier, Philo had already insisted that the translators for Ptolemy did the impossible: they produced a perfect translation that matched the Hebrew both word-for-word and thought-for-thought. They were able to achieve such an amazing translation because God inspired them (Life of Moses 2.38). According to Philo, one who read the Greek Pentateuch alongside the Hebrew Torah (something Philo could not do) would see that they were identical (2.40). Before Philo, the Letter of Aristeas (§307) merely hinted at the involvement of God in the process of translation.

Irenaeus inherited from Philo the notion that the translators were inspired, and he attested a story that provided more color to this claim. According to Irenaeus, King Ptolemy decided to test the integrity of the translators by separating them into separate rooms, ordering each of the 72 translators to produce a Greek rendering of Scripture. When the 72 separate translations of Jewish Scripture were compared, it was discovered that all 72 translators had chosen the exact same wording all the way through—a sure sign of not only their accuracy but of their inspiration. This embellished origin story (of which there is a hint in Philo, Life of Moses 2.37) became the standard account of the translation among Christians, who were confident both that the translators were inspired and that they produced the traditional Greek version of all of Jewish Scripture.

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Not everyone was convinced. Jerome, for one, at the turn of the fifth century, challenged the traditional story of LXX origins. While he was producing his own Latin translations of the books of the Hebrew Bible that would become the core of the Latin Vulgate, he pointed out flaws in Christian thinking about the LXX. The Jewish sources—Jerome named The Letter of Aristeas and Josephus—limited the translation to the Pentateuch (Commentary on Ezekiel 5:12) and said nothing about the translators working in separate rooms (Preface to the Pentateuch). But Jerome was fighting a losing battle; the translation, in the minds of most Christians, continued to include all of Jewish Scripture. This leads us back to the Apostle Paul.

Paul’s Septuagint

The fact that Paul used the Septuagint is well-known, not only among New Testament scholars, but also among more educated general Bible readers (the type who read articles from the Text & Canon Institute). But this well-known fact about Paul raises several questions in terms of the identity of the Septuagint, questions of both text and canon. To briefly gesture toward the problem of text: not all of the apostle’s quotations align well with the traditional text of the LXX. Paul apparently sometimes used Greek revisions (something like the Theodotion text), sometimes quoted from memory, and sometimes paraphrased, sometimes adjusted the quotation to fit the point he wanted to make. The simple statement that “Paul quoted the LXX” disguises the complexity of his Scriptural texts.

Painting of St. Paul, ca. 1627–1729 by Jan Lievens. Image source

Even when he was quoting the LXX, did he know that he was quoting the LXX? Paul never mentioned the translation, nor the story of the translation, so we cannot really know if the apostle had ever heard about the translators gathered by Ptolemy. Maybe Paul simply used the Greek text available to him without knowing or caring about its precise origins.

If Paul did know about the translation for Ptolemy, what would he have thought about it? What books were included? As we have seen, all of our Jewish sources limit the scope of the translation for Ptolemy to the Pentateuch, even though some of these same sources also knew and used Greek translations of other books of Jewish Scripture. For Philo and Josephus, the Greek Isaiah did not count as LXX. Did it count as LXX for Paul?

As far as we know, the first person who treated a book outside the Torah as the LXX was Justin Martyr—a century after Paul. It is possible that the expansion of the scope of the LXX beyond the Torah as attested first by Justin had already happened in the days of Paul, but I cannot think of any evidence to suggest that it had. If Paul learned about the story of the translation—say, at the “feet of Gamaliel” (cf. Acts 22:3)—it would probably have been a story about the Pentateuch, not about other books of Scripture, books that were available in Greek but considered a part of a different translation project not made for Ptolemy.

The first person who treated a book outside the Torah as the LXX was Justin Martyr.

Paul and the Septuagint’s inspiration

Philo thought that the translators at Ptolemy’s court were inspired, that the translation itself was inspired in Greek. Later Christians, starting with Irenaeus, express the same belief. Did Paul share this conviction? If the apostle did consider the LXX inspired, presumably that belief would have applied only to the Greek Pentateuch—as it did for Philo. We should remember that Philo said that perfect translation is impossible without divine inspiration, and that such a thing had happened for the Greek Pentateuch. Philo said nothing about God’s involvement with the translation of Isaiah or Proverbs or Samuel (etc.), so evidently he would not have considered the translations of these books to be perfect.

We cannot say whether Paul shared Philo’s ideas on the inspiration of the LXX, but at least we can say that someone contemporary with Paul did express those ideas. The notion that all of Jewish Scripture was inspired in Greek, expressed first by Irenaeus, long post-dates Paul’s death, so there is less reason to think that Paul may have held it. But Philo’s views were not the only views on the LXX “in the air” in the first century; Josephus said nothing about the inspiration of the translators of the Greek Pentateuch.

Paul and the Septuagint canon

If this is what Paul might have thought about the LXX as a translation, what about the hitherto unmentioned “elephants in the room,” namely, the apocrypha, or the deuterocanonical books? It is often claimed by scholars that these books came to be accepted as Scripture among Christians because the LXX included them. Is it possible that the LXX already included these books in the first century? Since Paul quoted the LXX, did he also regard the apocrypha as not only a part of the LXX but a part of his Bible?

The biblical scholar R. Timothy McLay pursues this line of argument.

The fact that the OG/LXX text was cited in the NT, in contrast to the Hebrew Scriptures, demonstrates that the Greek Jewish Scriptures as witnessed to by the LXX were deemed to be Scripture for the Early Church…. The external evidence of our Greek codices, which contain the apocryphal/deutero-canonical writings, is a simple testimony to the authority of the Greek Scriptures exercised in the life of the Early Church.1R. Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 144.

I think McLay’s argument boils down to this: if the New Testament authors quoted the LXX, then they accepted as Scripture the collection of books in the LXX manuscripts of the fourth century. Do the quotations of the LXX in Paul’s letters mean that the apostle accepted the canonicity of the apocrypha?

The short answer is “no”—or, with a little more nuance, the available evidence suggests otherwise. The apocryphal books (e.g., Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, etc.) were available in Greek by the first century, and Paul had probably read some of these books. But what evidence suggests that anyone in the first century considered these books a part of the LXX, the translation made for Ptolemy? I know I am repeating myself, but … all of our sources before Justin Martyr considered the LXX to be the Greek Pentateuch.

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The apocrypha are included within the LXX today—whether we are talking about the Greek Orthodox biblical canon (which is not definitively settled) or the standard hand-edition of the Septuaginta that sits on the shelves of most biblical scholars. But what is true today was not necessarily true in the first century. It was Justin who first labeled as LXX a book outside the Pentateuch. Did Justin think that the Seventy translators also produced the Greek versions of the apocryphal books? He did not say. It was Epiphanius in the fourth century who first said something about the Seventy translators working on books outside the Jewish Bible (On Weights and Measures 5).

Yes, the full biblical manuscripts from the fourth century include some of the apocryphal books, but is the reason for this inclusion that the creators of these manuscripts thought that these books were translated by the Seventy? As far as I can tell, these early full-Bible manuscripts mention the Seventy only once, in the colophon to Genesis in Codex Vaticanus (Γένεσις κατὰ τοὺς ἑβδομήκοντα = “Genesis according to the Seventy”). Even if all of the books in the Old Testament portion of Vaticanus were considered LXX (which I doubt), we lack the evidence to back-date such a view three centuries. The use of the LXX by the New Testament authors has no bearing on what the apostles thought of the apocrypha.

The use of the LXX by the New Testament authors has no bearing on what the apostles thought of the apocrypha.

Conclusion

Did Paul know he was quoting the LXX? It’s impossible to say. He may have realized that (some of) his quotations of the Pentateuch would have been considered by some of his contemporaries (e.g., Philo, but not Josephus) as quotations of an inspired translation made for King Ptolemy. There is hardly any reason to think that Paul would have associated this view with the Greek Isaiah, and even less for the Greek Tobit. To the extent that the LXX was a concrete object in the first-century world of Paul, it was the Greek Pentateuch. The other books, including the apocrypha, were incorporated into the LXX only a century or more after the apostle’s death.

Notes

  • 1
    R. Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 144.

How the Two Testaments Became One Bible

When production of two-testament Bibles began in the fourth century, the notion already had centuries of precedent.

I love asking long-established couples how they first met. From Ruth and Boaz on, such stories often reveal the kindness and sovereignty of God in sweet and sometimes unpredictable ways, especially if the union appeared on paper unlikely, but has gone on to be happy and fruitful.

There is one couple, whose union at first seemed extremely unlikely, but which has gone on to be happy and fruitful for two thousand years: the union of the two testaments in the Christian Bible. But how did our two testaments come together? How did those books, which first-century Christians were writing about Jesus, come to be included with the Jewish Scriptures in what we call the Bible?

Uniting the Bible’s two testaments

It’s an important question, because the unity of our Bibles matters more than many Christians today realize and effects many controversial questions. The unity of Scripture means that one of the most important contexts for interpreting any biblical passage is the rest of the Bible. By approaching the Bible as one united collection of books, the early Christians were saying that the context of a biblical book within the Bible is as or more important than its original historical context in ancient Judaism or Greco-Roman culture.

The unity of the Bible is also the basis for connecting themes and symbols across the Bible. This assumes that the Bible has a grand, overarching story, rather than being an assorted collection of anecdotes, moral teachings, and theological ideas. This assumption is basic to Christian preaching, theology, and ethical interpretation of the Bible, but it only makes sense if the two testaments actually do belong together.

This was far from obvious in the first century AD. Imagine how you would feel if someone suggested that some new books, from our own time, deserved to be bound into your Bible. That’s what the early Christians started to do to the Jewish Scriptures, from very soon after the death of Jesus. From as far back in the history of the church as we can trace, it seems to have been uncontroversial among Christians that these new books, about Jesus, had the same authority as the Jewish Scriptures, which Jews had been reading, revering, and seeking to obey for centuries.

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Reading the two testaments as one book

We see beginnings of the story in the New Testament. First Timothy 5:18 appears to quote Deuteronomy and then something very similar to Matthew’s Gospel, and calls them both “Scripture.” Second Peter 3:16 unambiguously calls Paul’s letters “Scripture.” The Greek word translated “Scripture” (graphē), means anything written. But in religious contexts, it almost always meant authoritative Scriptures. When New Testament authors call other New Testament books “Scripture,” they are saying that these early Christian books have the same status as the Old Testament Scripture.

Similarly, the early-second-century Christian writer Polycarp quotes Ephesians and calls it “Scripture” (Polycarp, Philippians 12.) Justin Martyr, also in the second century, records what a worship service looked like in his church (Justin, First Apology 67). It included readings both from the Old Testament Scriptures and the “memoirs of the apostles,” which probably means the Gospels or related texts.

In contrast, the second-century heretic Marcion believed that Christians should not read the Old Testament. Marcion is interesting, because by the time he was active, only about a century after the death of Jesus, it was uncontroversial that books like the Gospels and the letters of Paul were at least as authoritative and at least as deserving of Scriptural status as the Old Testament.

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Marcion controversially tried to cut the Old Testament (and many parts of the New Testament which quote it or appear to agree with it) out of the Bible—but this means that by his time, the basic shape of a Bible with two testaments must have been well-established. In the mid-first century, Jesus’ followers were controversially writing new books and adding them to the Jewish Scriptures. In the mid-second century, Marcion was taking the old books out of the Christian Scriptures, which was only possible because no-one doubted the scriptural status of the new books.

Also in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyon was constructing a theology that assumed the unity of both testaments. His book Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching summarizes the gospel by presenting the story of the whole Bible. His very approach assumes the unity of the Bible.

This evidence shows that from very early, Christians were treating the Bible as a single book.

Fitting the two testaments in one codex

But if the Bible was already being read as a single book, was it being physically produced as a single book? The technical name for a book containing the whole Bible is a “pandect.”

Pandects were rare in the ancient world, not least because books this size would have been difficult and expensive to produce.

Pandects were rare in the ancient world, not least because books this size would have been difficult and expensive to produce. We know of very few large books from the ancient world. There is Origen’s Hexapla, a copy of the Old Testament containing six different columns in multiple Greek translations. We also know of a manuscript containing all of the ancient Greek epic poem, the Odyssey (which runs to about four hundred pages in modern English editions).

When it comes to biblical manuscripts, there are four from prior to 600 AD that were probably originally pandects. They are Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Ephraemi rescriptus. In the first three, substantial portions of both testaments still survive, so it is very likely they originally contained all of both testaments. In Codex Ephraemi, we have only the New Testament and large parts of the Old Testament wisdom literature. However, the New Testament and the wisdom literature seems such an unusual combination (of which we have no other evidence) that it is likely this manuscript originally contained all the books of both testaments.

The view of Ephraemi rescriptus from the bottom. Photo credit

These manuscripts all contain the Old Testament in Greek translation (often called the Septuagint), since few early Christians could read Hebrew. They also contain the Old Testament Apocrypha and some contain a few early Christian texts in addition to the New Testament books (but these are placed after Revelation, which may suggest the scribes thought they were in a lesser category).

Further hints from our manuscript evidence

Of course, many of our early biblical manuscripts are small fragments and so it is impossible to know for certain what else they contained. One of our earliest manuscripts, known to biblical scholars as P52, is a tiny scrap of John’s Gospel. It is impossible to know what was in the original, complete version—all of John, all of the Gospels, all of the New Testament, all of the Christian Bible or some more unusual combination of texts?

However, some of these early, small fragments include page numbers and these generally suggest that they contained only a single biblical book. It is likely therefore that manuscripts of the whole Bible were rare and the four we know of are not only important but unusual.

Book technology at the time means that, even with these manuscripts, it’s unlikely all the books of the Bible were physically bound into a single volume. However the presentation, arrangement of words on the page and column layout is the same in each of these manuscripts all through the Bible, so it is very likely that they were intended to be used as single books, rather like a modern book produced in multiple volumes, but always sold together and with such similar font and layout that they are obviously intended to be read as one (such as N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God or some editions of The Lord of the Rings).

The origins of the pandects

What led to the production of these pandects? As we have seen, the theological belief in the unity of the testaments existed from the late first century, so it is natural that scribes should start creating manuscripts with both testaments, but it is possible there was a specific reason to produce pandects in the early fourth century.

The early Christian writer, Eusebius, records a letter he received from the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, requesting “fifty copies of the clearly sacred Scriptures” (Life of Constantine 4.36). Similarly, another early Christian writer, Athanasius, records that he made “copies of the divine Scriptures” for the Roman Emperor Constans (Defense before Constantius 4).

Are these ancient requests for pandects? Scholars disagree at this point. It is possible that “fifty copies of the clearly sacred Scriptures” means fifty copies of the Gospels, or even a combination like ten sets each containing five manuscripts, one of the Gospels, one of the Pentateuch, one of the Psalms, one the Prophets and one of the letters.

However, there is no indication in the context that this is what Constantine or Constans intended and the natural reading of the definite article in Eusebius’s account is that “the clearly sacred Scriptures” includes everything in the category of clearly sacred Scriptures (just as if one spouse says to another “I’ll collect the children from school” without further clarification, this means all their children and only their children). Fifty pandects would certainly be an exorbitant request, but Roman Emperors were hardly known for their modest tastes or restrained demands.

Were any of our four surviving pandects produced in response to these demands? It is impossible to be sure.

Were any of our four surviving pandects produced in response to these demands? It is impossible to be sure, but Sinaiticus and Vaticanus both probably come from about the right time and Sinaiticus, in particular, probably comes from about the right place. What is even more important than identifying individual manuscripts with Constantine’s or Constans’s order, is the simple fact that these Emperors were likely commissioning pandects at all. It seems that Constantine believed that a well-ordered and united Bible would help build a well-ordered and united church, which might even help create a well-ordered and united society.

Conclusion

The production of physically united Bibles began in the fourth century, quite possibly because this was the first time there were Christian emperors who could support the production of such large books. But even more important is the fact that, when these emperors requested such Bibles, the idea made sense—because Christians had been trusting and treasuring a unified Bible for centuries.

The Fall and Rise of Revelation

Revelation was used widely in the early church, then doubted in the East in the fourth century, but eventually accepted again.

The book of Revelation describes many falls from grace, and its own is just as dramatic. In the late first century AD, John of Patmos received a cosmic vision while in exile for Christ. His account of this vision, our book of Revelation, was then quickly embraced by Christians all around the Mediterranean. So popular was Revelation that the number of early Christian writers who mention it rivals that of any other New Testament text.

This begins with Papias (c. 115 AD) and Justin Martyr (c. 155 AD) who made use of Revelation in what is today Turkey. They are followed by authors like Theophilus of Antioch in Syria (c. 175 AD); Irenaeus in France (c. 185 AD); Clement of Alexandria in Egypt (c. 195 AD); Tertullian in Tunisia (c. 200 AD); Hippolytus in Rome (c. 200–235 AD), and many other writers besides. By the middle of the third century, it is difficult to find Christians who do not quote from Revelation.

So popular was Revelation that the number of early Christian writers who mention it rivals that of any other New Testament text.

A reversal of fortune

But then, during the fourth century, a great reversal occurred. Several writers in the areas where Revelation had once been so beloved began voicing doubts over its legitimacy. These suspicions soon proceeded to foment and boil over in the succeeding centuries causing Revelation to be omitted from the New Testaments of many churches east of the city of Rome. There, in these Eastern locales, Revelation underwent a kind of New Testament exile from which it was only recalled after many centuries. This resulted in a great irony: Revelation, though possessing one of the strongest scriptural pedigrees, came to be known as the most disputed book in the New Testament.

And all this naturally brings up several questions which this article will address: In what churches was Revelation held in suspicion? What caused such suspicions? How were they resolved? And when were they resolved?

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” one of Albrecht Dürer’s 15 engravings of Revelation. Source

Doubt spreads

Where

Revelation was consistently held in high esteem from the very beginnings of Christianity in Western Europe, Northwest Africa, Egypt (both Greek and Coptic speaking areas), and it seems also to have been always embraced in Nubia and Ethiopia, though the evidence for these latter two areas is limited.

The story is different for other regions. While Revelation was viewed highly in the Greek-speaking portions of Europe and Asia in the second and third centuries, this changed in the fourth. At that point, a precipitous decline becomes evident, so much so that many later Greek writers never quote from Revelation and even omit it from their New Testament lists. Greek manuscripts of Revelation also become rarer during this time, and those that do exist often place Revelation alongside non-New Testament texts.

For more on the history of Revelation, see the author’s book.

The situation in Armenian, Syriac, Georgian, and Slavonic contexts was graver still. Evidence suggests that Revelation was excluded when the first Armenian translation of the New Testament was commissioned in the 440s AD. An ancient Armenian translation of the book was eventually carried out, but it was little used. Likewise, the first Syriac translations of the New Testament (3rd–5th centuries) also appear to have omitted Revelation and it was not until the sixth and seventh centuries that Revelation was translated into Syriac. But even then, it was ignored by most Syriac writers and omitted from almost all Syriac biblical manuscripts.

In Georgia, Revelation was yet again omitted when the Georgian New Testament was first translated (fifth century), and no translation of Revelation was ever made into Georgian before the tenth century. Lastly, though the first Slavonic translation of the New Testament appears to have included Revelation (ninth century), this translation was lost. Revelation was translated into Slavonic again several hundred years later, but then unhappily lost once more.

Why

There were multiple reasons for Revelation’s declining fortunes in the East. First and most simply is that Revelation is a difficult book to understand. While some found this difficulty to be divinely and profoundly mysterious, others found it obscure and nonsensical. Hence, these critics of Revelation voiced concerns over its alleged narrative incoherency, its supposed internal contradictions, and its seemingly ridiculous creatures and scenery.

Compounding all of these issues were instances where Revelation was felt to be doctrinally suspect, as when Revelation—again allegedly—mentions seven different holy spirits (Rev. 1:4, 3:1, 4:5, 5:6), portrays the spiritual heavens in a physical or even grotesque manner (Rev. 21), describes a final thousand-year earthly reign of Jesus (Rev. 20), calls Jesus a mere creature by stating that he is the “beginning of creation” (Rev. 3:14), and other such passages.

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Another sharp thorn goading suspicion was that Revelation’s authorship was questionable. Many doubted that John the apostle and evangelist wrote Revelation because its style differed from the other writings of John and because some earlier Christians postulated that there were actually two disciples of Jesus named John.

A further, though ancillary, reason contributing to the above concerns was that Revelation viciously critiqued Rome (Rev. 17 and 18). This was well and good when Christians were being persecuted by pagan Rome, but such critiques were harder to swallow when Christians came to rule Rome in the fourth century.

Answering the doubts

These suspicions were in large part answered by Revelation commentators. Beginning in the sixth century, writers began composing full-length, often verse-by-verse, commentaries defending Revelation from criticism. They pointed out that Revelation is a cyclical work that repeats material from different vantages and perspectives and, in this view, should not be seen as narratively incoherent.

Regarding alleged internal contradictions and absurd creatures, commentators again and again highlighted that Revelation proclaims itself as an allegorical work (Rev. 1:1, 1:20, 11:8, 12:1, 17:5, 17:7), and so its imagery should not be taken literally, but instead ought to be probed for deeper, profounder meaning. This too is why one should not assume that Revelation’s earthly depictions of heaven or its thousand-year reign of Jesus pertain to physical reality; rather such things symbolically and mystically outline exalted spiritual realities that would not otherwise be comprehensible to lowly humans.

Related

Areas where Revelation was doctrinally suspect were also defended. When Revelation mentions seven spirits, it only uses “seven” as a figurative number representing the perfection of the one Holy Spirit; or if not, then the seven spirits refer to seven high ranking spiritual beings such as the archangels Michael and Gabriel. In like manner, Revelation does not call Jesus the “beginning (archē) of creation” (Rev. 3:14) but rather calls him the “origin” or “ruler” of creation, which indeed are other valid interpretations of the Greek word archē.

As for Revelation’s authorship, commentators argued that stylistic differences should not trouble the reader because John may have changed his style intentionally to suit an alternative audience. One or two commentators also seem to have believed that if another John wrote Revelation, then he was still nonetheless a disciple of Jesus and therefore an apostolic man, much like Luke, Mark, James, Jude, and Paul who also wrote documents in the New Testament, yet were not numbered among the original twelve apostles.

A final resolution

It is impossible to be absolutely precise with dates, but, in the Greek church, Revelation begins its recovery around about the tenth century, though the commentary by Andrew of Caesarea seems to have started propelling it into popularity starting in the seventh century.

In the Greek church, Revelation begins its recovery around about the tenth century.

In Syriac areas, several famous scholars attempted to promote Revelation, commencing with Philoxenus around 500 AD, who translated it as part of his Syriac New Testament. Revelation was translated again for the New Testament of Thomas of Harkel (c. 615 AD), and an extract of it was later translated by Jacob of Edessa (c. 708 AD). An anonymous Syriac commentary was also written on it probably in the early seventh century, but none of these attempts seem to have been effective—Revelation was still largely omitted from Syriac New Testament lists and manuscripts. However, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it began gaining prestige in West Syriac circles, though East Syriac communities seem to have taken longer to come round, and certain of their communities did not accept Revelation until the early and mid-1800s, soon after the British Foreign Bible Society distributed the first accessible printed edition of the Syriac New Testament.

An 11th c. Syriac manuscript that may have once contained the whole NT, including Revelation, but today breaks off at Hebrews (New College MS 333). Photo by Peter Gurry.

In Armenia, Revelation was rehabilitated largely by Nerses of Lambron (c. 1179 AD), who re-translated it and then wrote a commentary (adapted from Andrew of Caesarea’s Greek commentary) defending it. His efforts seem to have been greatly successful. In neighboring Georgia, Euthymius the Athonite (c. 978 AD) made the first known Georgian translation of Revelation while also writing a commentary on the text (once again adapted from Andrew). Yet, it is unclear when Revelation became accepted in the Georgian church, and it may have been passed over until the printing of the Georgian New Testament in the early 1700s.1T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: The Bible House, 1903), vol. 2.1 p. 478–479. For the placement of New Testament texts within Georgian manuscripts, see D. M. Lang, “Recent Work on the Georgian New Testament,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 19, no. 1 (1957): 87. In Slavonic circles, an anonymous commentary on Revelation was written in the tenth century (once more adapted from Andrew) and became quite popular. In 1499, the Archbishop of Novgorod included Revelation in his edition of the New Testament.

However, as Revelation was regaining (or gaining, as the case may be) its standing in the East, it underwent its first real trial in the West when some of the Protestant reformers questioned its authority. Martin Luther, for example, claimed that Revelation was neither apostolic nor prophetic in his first edition of the German Bible, though in a subsequent edition he mostly reversed course, but still held doubts.2Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann, eds., Luther’s Works, American edition (St. Louis & Philadelphia: Concordia & Muhlenberg, 1955-1986), vol. 35 pp. 398–399 (first preface), 399–411 (second preface).

Conclusion

Such as that may be, I quite agree with the arguments of Revelation’s ancient and medieval commentators. There are sound, reliable reasons for considering John of Patmos to have been a disciple of Jesus, whether John the apostle or another John.

The text of Revelation, albeit challenging and at times bewildering, is full of mystery and profound insight. If you read with a mind awake to Revelation’s cyclical narrative; if you train a patient eye towards Revelation’s own instruction to understand it “spiritually,” then the stumbling blocks fall away. And in due time, you too will be able to exclaim along with Jerome (c. 420 AD) that

The Apocalypse of John has as many mysteries as words. In saying this I have said less than the book deserves. All praise of it is inadequate; manifold meanings lie hidden in its every word.3Letter 53.9; translation modified.

Notes

  • 1
    T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: The Bible House, 1903), vol. 2.1 p. 478–479. For the placement of New Testament texts within Georgian manuscripts, see D. M. Lang, “Recent Work on the Georgian New Testament,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 19, no. 1 (1957): 87.
  • 2
    Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann, eds., Luther’s Works, American edition (St. Louis & Philadelphia: Concordia & Muhlenberg, 1955-1986), vol. 35 pp. 398–399 (first preface), 399–411 (second preface).
  • 3
    Letter 53.9; translation modified.

Putting the New Papyrus of Jesus’ Sayings in Context

While exciting and important, much about a recently published, headline-grabbing fragment is not unique.

Late last year, the Egyptian Exploration Society grabbed headlines when it announced the publication of a new cache of ancient papyri from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. The 87th volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri contained several pieces of interest to scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity.

Among the newly published fragments were a vaguely “gnostic” speech attributed to Jesus (P.Oxy. 5576), part of an apocryphal dialogue between Jesus and Mary Magdalene (P.Oxy. 5577), and the remains of several otherwise unknown ancient biographies. The only item to generate headlines, however, was a small papyrus containing a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This fragment was no mere copy of Matthew’s Gospel. The papyrus now known to scholars as P.Oxy. 5575 is a combination of traditions about Jesus otherwise found in Matthew, Luke, and the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas.

The fragment’s significance

It’s this combination of diverse gospel materials that caught the attention of the wider-public. Upon the publication of P.Oxy. 5575, Michael Holmes, one of the fragment’s editors, explained its significance in this way:

What makes this a big deal? This is the first known occurrence of the weaving together of material similar to Luke and Matthew, on the one hand, and material similar to—and otherwise known only from—the Gospel of Thomas, on the other. In this significant respect, 5575 is unique among all known papyri.

“With a sharp enough scalpel,” it’s been said, “everything is unique.” And, certainly, no other fragment is exactly like P.Oxy. 5575. In a technical sense, Holmes is correct: There are no other papyri with precisely this combination of gospel parallels. But, in almost every other respect, this fragment is not unique at all. It seems to me that Holmes’s answer might leave readers with a misleading impression about the state of the evidence for other works that, like P.Oxy. 5575, combine traditions about Jesus without respect for canonical/non-canonical boundaries.

There are no other papyri with precisely this combination of gospel parallels. But, in almost every other respect, this fragment is not unique at all.

My goal here is neither to minimize the importance of this new piece of early Christian literature nor to exaggerate the evidence for similar works but, rather, to help the reader understand P.Oxy. 5575 by setting it into a larger comparative context. This new fragment of Jesus’ preaching is one of many early Christian compositions to bring together material about Jesus found in multiple gospels, including gospels beyond the canonical four.

Works that combine canonical material

The first set of helpful analogies are early fragments that combine some or all the canonical Gospels. Perhaps the best-known example is the Dura Fragment (P. Dura 10), a third century parchment from Dura Europos on the border of Roman Syria. The Dura Fragment contains only fifteen legible lines, written on one side of a parchment roll. These lines describe the women at Jesus’ crucifixion and introduce Joseph of Arimathea.

But the Dura Fragment doesn’t correspond to any known gospel. Rather, it carefully interweaves wording from the four canonical Gospels to produce a unique version of the story. For instance, one line reads “…there came a person (Matt. 27:57), being a councilor (Luke 23:50), from Erinmathea (sic), a city of Judea (Luke 23:51), his name was Joseph (Matt. 27:57), good and righteous (Luke 23:50), being a disciple of Jesus in secret because of his fear of the Jews (John 19:38) and he was expecting the kingdom of God (Luke 23:51).”

Almost every word of the Dura Fragment can be traced back to one of the canonical Gospels, but the result is an intricately interwoven tapestry of the four.

Similarly, the so-called “Fayyum Fragment” (P. Vienna G. 2325) combines elements from Matthew and Mark to produce a unique version of Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial. The Matthean phrasing, “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered” (Matt. 26:31) is followed by the distinctively Markan phrasing, “Before a cock twice crows…” (Mark 14:27). Like P.Oxy. 5575, the wording of the Fayyum Fragment does not match any of the canonical Gospels exactly, but the parallels with multiple gospels are undeniable.

As the Dura Fragment and the Fayyum Fragment make clear, P.Oxy. 5575 is one of many early Christian works that re-combined and re-arranged traditions about Jesus.

Works that combine canonical and non-canonical material

These two examples are combinations of gospels now-considered canonical, whereas P.Oxy. 5575 combines the synoptics with material found in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. In this respect, the Greek fragments of Thomas found at Oxyrhynchus provide a better analogy for the newly discovered gospel fragment. The only complete manuscript of Thomas contains 114 sayings of Jesus in Coptic. About two-thirds of these sayings appear to be drawn from the canonical Gospels.

For dozens of additional sayings, however, there are no canonical parallels. Probably, the compiler of Thomas composed some of these non-canonical sayings from scratch, but parallels between Thomas’s non-canonical sayings and other early Christian sources suggest that the compiler drew on additional non-canonical gospels in composing the Gospel of Thomas. P.Oxy. 654, for instance, contains a saying of Jesus (GThom 2) that Clement of Alexandria says belonged to the non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews (Stromateis 2.9.45; 5.14.96).

Gospel of the HebrewsThomas 2 (Greek; P.Oxy. 654)Thomas 2 (Coptic)
The one who seeks will not stop until he finds. And when he finds, he will be amazed. And when he is amazed, he will reign. And when he reigns, he will rest.Let the one who seeks not stop [seeking until] he finds. And when he finds, [he will be amazed. And] when he is amazed he will reign. And [when he reigns over everything] he will rest.Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. And when he finds, he will be troubled. And when he is troubled, he will be amazed and will become king over everything.

Probably the compiler of Thomas drew this saying of Jesus from the non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews. And in P.Oxy. 654, this saying sits alongside Thomas 3, a version of the saying found at Luke 17:20–25. Side-by-side, this fragment preserves a combination of canonical and non-canonical gospel material. In this respect, P.Oxy. 654 is a close parallel to what we find in P.Oxy. 5575. 

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Other good analogies include P.Oxy. 4009 and the Egerton Gospel (BL Egerton Papyrus 2). The former is a fragmentary papyrus containing parallels to Matthew 10:16, Luke 7:36–50, and a non-canonical conversation between Jesus and Peter cited by the preacher of Second Clement. The Egerton Gospel, likewise, weaves together sayings of Jesus found in John 5 and 10, several synoptic stories, and a story about Jesus sowing seeds on the banks of the Jordan that has no canonical parallel. We do not know what ancient readers called these gospels, but fragmentary remains provide additional evidence of early Christians combining canonical and non-canonical materials about Jesus.

Further examples

If we look beyond the papyri, there is more evidence for the combination of canonical and non-canonical Jesus traditions. The Epistle of the Apostles, for instance, is an early second century, theologically-orthodox composition. It contains a summary of Jesus’ nativity, life, death, and resurrection. Most of this gospel-summary corresponds to one or more of the canonical lives of Jesus. However, the author also includes a scene of Jesus as a school boy, found only in the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The result is a gospel-like narrative that, again, weaves together strands from both canonical and non-canonical books.

In the second half of the second century, a Christian teacher named Tatian composed his own gospel by interweaving stories from earlier gospels. Later Christians called Tatian’s composition “The Diatessaron,” which translates to “the [gospel] through the four [gospels].” Although Tatian himself seems to have revised the content and wording of his sources, almost every line of the Diatessaron can be attributed to one of the four now-canonical gospels. There are, however, a few important exceptions, most notably a passage attributed to Tatian’s Diatessaron as found in the fourth-century Commentary on the Gospel by Ephrem.

Ephrem, Comm. 14.24Thomas 30 (Greek; P.Oxy 1)Thomas 30 (Coptic)
…when he said, Where there is one, I [am there], lest all those who are solitary be sad. Where there is one, I [am there].1Translation from Carmel McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron : An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Jesus says, Where there are three, they are godless And where there is one-alone, I say I am with him.Jesus says, Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him.

This saying of Jesus, not found in any manuscript of any canonical gospel, appears in the Gospel of Thomas. Like P.Oxy. 5575, therefore, either Tatian or one of Tatian’s sources must have combined canonical Jesus traditions with a saying otherwise known to us only from a non-canonical gospel. 

There are, additionally, a few pieces of non-canonical material found in more-or-less complete manuscripts of the canonical Gospels. The copy of Matthew in Codex Sinaiticus, for instance, contains a version of Jesus’ “consider the lily” speech in Matthew 6:28 that says the lilies neither “card nor spin nor work,” precise phrasing otherwise only known from the Gospel of Thomas.

Related

Likewise, the famous story of the “Woman Caught in Adultery,” according to Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman’s study, was known from the non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews. At some point in the second or third centuries, readers inserted this story into manuscripts of the canonical John. Of course, P.Oxy. 5575 seems to reflect a more thoroughly interwoven combination of diverse gospel traditions than what is found in anything preserved in the complete manuscripts from the fourth century. But these traces of gospel combinations show that some early readers were happy to bring together the words of Jesus as found in canonical and non-canonical gospels.

Conclusion

P.Oxy. 5575 is one of several pieces of early Christian literature that shows how some ancient readers collected and combined Jesus material otherwise found in canonical and non-canonical gospels.

All the analogies to P.Oxy. 5575 that we’ve considered above make up only a tiny fraction of our documentary evidence for early Christian gospel literature. The vast majority of Christian literary papyri are either readily identifiable with specific works (e.g., P.Oxy. 4) or clearly distinct from any known work (e.g., P.Oxy. 840). And the practice of harmonizing the text of the canonical Gospels is surprisingly uncommon in the papyri.

Still, P.Oxy. 5575 is one of several pieces of early Christian literature that shows how some ancient readers collected and combined Jesus material otherwise found in canonical and non-canonical gospels. In particular, this fragment is intriguing new evidence that some early Christians continued to re-write and re-arrange stories about Jesus in the same way that the authors of Matthew and Luke used earlier gospels. As I hope to have shown, P.Oxy. 5575 is not the only evidence for this practice. But it is important new evidence for this aspect of early Christian book culture.

Notes

  • 1
    Translation from Carmel McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron : An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Revelation’s Place in the Greek Bible

The history of the Apocalypse in the Greek manuscripts reveals that its place at the end is not uniform.

Hardly any book of the New Testament has puzzled Christian readers more than the book of Revelation. It begins as an epistle to seven churches, then shifts to depicting a series of visions of heavenly judgment cast upon the earth, and ends with the glorious restoration of the created order. The reader finds himself lost in a world of falling stars, biblical plagues, monstrous horses, dragons, war, and heavenly cities with startling physical features.

Is what the book portrays real or figurative? Is it a prophecy that is to come or something that has already happened? For some Christians, its contents are read as their window into the future, while others would prefer never to read the book at all. It might surprise you to know that the modern confusion around the book of Revelation is not entirely new. This text has challenged Christian readers almost from its inception, and this is most evident in its Greek manuscript tradition.

Revelation has challenged Christian readers almost from its inception, and this is most evident in its Greek manuscript tradition.

As a book, Revelation (also called the Apocalypse) sometimes rested uneasily alongside the rest of the New Testament, often as an insertion centuries after the copying of the larger canonical corpus. Many of these manuscripts surface after the twelfth century, some containing Revelation from a fourteenth century addition, suggesting a later desire to “close” the collection of books.

Additionally, Revelation stands out among other Greek New Testament texts by its inclusion in groupings of non-biblical material. Its insertion alongside a variety of hagiographic texts, patristic writings, and homilies, without additional New Testament content, also suggests a liminal status within the Greek-speaking church—particularly after the fourth century. This is reinforced by the absence of Revelation in the Greek liturgical tradition, which means it was not read regularly within the gathering of believers. The canonical impact of the material reality surrounding a still-contentious text like Revelation raises questions for modern Bible readers, and, for this reason, deserves our attention.

The Material Data

The latest survey of the manuscript evidence records a total of 314 manuscripts containing all or part of the text of Revelation.1Garrick Allen divides the manuscripts of the Apocalypse into two strands: the canonical and the eclectic. The canonical strand consists of those manuscripts that combine the Apocalypse with other “canonical” books of the New Testament, whereas the eclectic strand is made up of manuscripts which combine the Apocalypse with other, non-canonical material. Allen also acknowledges that these categories cannot account for every manuscript, especially those that are fragmentary, but his classification is immensely helpful for the present and future discussions. See Garrick Allen, Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation: New Philology, Paratexts, Reception (Oxford: Oxford University, 2020), 156–92. This is comprised of seven papyri, twelve majuscules (written on parchment or animal skin in capital letters), and 295 minuscules (written in a form of “lowercase” letters). Some of these manuscripts contain commentary text, others insert the book into collections of New Testament books. Some manuscripts contain only Revelation, while others include it among collections of nonbiblical material. Because the papyri are fragmentary, the earliest, complete witnesses to the book are the large, complete New Testament manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi Rescriptus, which date to the fourth and fifth centuries.2While Codex Vaticanus contains the text of Revelation on ff. 1523–1536, it is a fifteenth century supplement and therefore of nominal value for early attestation of the book’s canonical reception.

Perhaps the most glaring feature of the data is the number of New Testament manuscripts that lack the book of Revelation. Textual scholar Josef Schmid felt that the book’s absence in the commentaries of the great Greek exegetes and its exclusion from the liturgy, as seen in the manuscript tradition, reflected the peculiar fate of Revelation. He observed that “the number of manuscripts that preserve Revelation lags behind that of the rest of the New Testament significantly.”3Josef Schmid, Studies in the History of the Greek Text of the Apocalypse: The Ancient Stems, Juan Hernández Jr., Garrick V. Allen, and Darius Müller, eds. and trans. (Atlanta: SBL, 2018), 32.

Six ancient majuscules between the fourth and fifth centuries contain Revelation alongside the early papyri. Among these are, MS 9351 (GA 0163), a fifth-century fragment containing only twelve lines of text from Rev. 16:17–20, P.Oxy 180 (GA 0169), a fourth-century fragment containing thirty lines of text—with many holes—from Rev. 3:19–4:3, and PSI 1166 (GA 0207), a fourth-century page containing Rev. 9:2–15 on twenty-nine lines in two columns covering both sides. The Greek manuscript tradition is silent from the seventh century until the ninth century. By the ninth century, we have a full copy of Revelation in GA 1424, which is the first, complete New Testament in minuscule handwriting.

From the tenth century, three majuscules and thirteen minuscules remain extant, containing larger portions—and in some cases the whole—of Revelation. By the eleventh century the use of majuscule script fades into memory with the wholesale implementation of the minuscule, and the manuscript count increases to thirty-eight minuscules containing most, or all, of the text. In the twelfth century, thirty-six minuscules are extant—most containing the entire book. The manuscripts increase from thirty-eight minuscules in the thirteenth century to sixty-nine in the fourteenth, sixty in the fifteenth, and forty-three in the sixteenth. The number of Revelation manuscripts increases exponentially after the eleventh century. Even then, the number of manuscripts containing either the New Testament or part of it without Revelation is still greater leading up to the sixteenth century.

Dissecting the Data

In both Codex Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, Revelation is combined with the remaining twenty-six books of the New Testament. But there are no extant, complete Greek manuscripts from the following four centuries. When Revelation does reappear, joined with New Testament works, it is found in less than one-third of complete, New Testament collections and less than one-fifth of collections containing Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and the Catholic Epistles (known as Apostolos manuscripts)—or other New Testament texts. Of those manuscripts that contain only the Gospels alongside Revelation, several appear to have had the book of Revelation inserted at a later date. Other combinations include Acts plus Revelation; the Gospels and Catholic Epistles plus Revelation; or Hebrews plus Revelation.

When Revelation appears alone it is often accompanied by the commentary of either Oecumenius, Andrew of Caesarea, or Arethas of Caesarea. While it is not unusual to find New Testament texts accompanied by commentary, the frequency with which Revelation is found with commentary raises the question of how it was being read within these contexts. Some scholars think this format shows that the book was read more often as a kind of study book than a devotional or canonical text. However, what is perhaps the most intriguing of all appearances of Revelation within the extant, textual material is its presence alongside other, nonbiblical texts.

The last peculiarity related to the transmission of Revelation is its textual character. Its increase in circulation during the late-medieval era might lead us to think that the book would, like other contemporaneous New Testament manuscripts, conform to the Byzantine textual family that was dominant in this later period. But this is not the case. Later Revelation manuscripts tend to split into two, well-attested text forms, which then further divide into four major stems.

A scene from the Silos Apocalypse (11th c.). Add MS 11695

Consequently, in those manuscripts containing Revelation alongside the combination of Acts and the Catholic Epistles, the book of Revelation does not fit neatly into the same textual family as the rest of the manuscript. The sister manuscripts in the text of Revelation are rarely ever sisters in the Apostolos, and the sister manuscripts in the Apostolos are almost never immediate sisters in Revelation. This indicates that, when copied, these manuscripts copied the text of Revelation from a different manuscript than what was used for the other books.

From Text to Canon

The peculiarities in the Greek manuscript tradition of Revelation’s reception in the Eastern Church naturally raise questions about the book’s canonical status. To that question, we can make several observations.

First, though the transmission of the text of Revelation is more sporadic and far different than others in the New Testament canon, its use is widely attested in the Latin-speaking, Western Church without the inconsistency in the manuscript tradition seen in the Greek Church.4The earliest Latin commentary on the Apocalypse comes from Victorinus of Pettau in AD 260, with commentaries continuing for subsequent centuries into the medieval era.

Second, while Revelation faced challenges to its level of authority in the East after the fourth century, prior to this time, it was generally received as canonical by the most vocal in the Church.

Related

Third, it must be remembered that the Church Fathers did not only think of Christian texts in strict binary terms of “canonical” and “non-canonical.” They also thought of them in levels of value. The clearest example of this is found in the writings of the fourth-century historian Eusebius, who identified four categories of books circulating in the Church: “received,” “disputed,” “rejected,” or “heretical.” A good example of how these categories were applied can be seen in the case of 2 Peter. Many outlying New Testament books that are considered canonical today, were challenged in ways similar to Revelation, and this can actually be encouraging to modern Christians because it testifies to the sobriety with which these sacred texts were debated.

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Revelation’s lack of use in the worship of the Eastern Church is also not so dissimilar to modern times. The current lectionary cycle for the Western Church reveals that only ten passages of Revelation have been read in the church over a period of ten years, and even these avoid any sections portraying the bowl and vial judgments, the heavenly visions, or other passages that seem “strange” to most modern readers (e.g., Rev. 12:1–4 where a woman gives birth in Heaven and a dragon waits to eat the child).

Conclusion

What modern Christians should take away from the material data of Revelation is an awareness that it must be handled with care. We should be cautious about minimizing its unique content and should probably avoid sweeping theological inferences related to its placement as the final book of the Bible. After all, the reason it is so often found at the end of Greek manuscripts is actually because it was added later, and the end of a manuscript is the easiest place to add more text.

In conclusion, we might well approach the text of Revelation with the temperance of one of its earliest commentators who wrote,

Having been asked many times by many people—who out of love have a greater opinion of my abilities—to elucidate the Apocalypse of John the Theologian and to adapt the prophecies to the time after this vision, I was putting off this undertaking, knowing that to explain the things which are secretly and mysteriously seen by the saints which will happen in the future times befits a great mind and one enlightened by the Divine Spirit.

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on Revelation

Notes

  • 1
    Garrick Allen divides the manuscripts of the Apocalypse into two strands: the canonical and the eclectic. The canonical strand consists of those manuscripts that combine the Apocalypse with other “canonical” books of the New Testament, whereas the eclectic strand is made up of manuscripts which combine the Apocalypse with other, non-canonical material. Allen also acknowledges that these categories cannot account for every manuscript, especially those that are fragmentary, but his classification is immensely helpful for the present and future discussions. See Garrick Allen, Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation: New Philology, Paratexts, Reception (Oxford: Oxford University, 2020), 156–92.
  • 2
    While Codex Vaticanus contains the text of Revelation on ff. 1523–1536, it is a fifteenth century supplement and therefore of nominal value for early attestation of the book’s canonical reception.
  • 3
    Josef Schmid, Studies in the History of the Greek Text of the Apocalypse: The Ancient Stems, Juan Hernández Jr., Garrick V. Allen, and Darius Müller, eds. and trans. (Atlanta: SBL, 2018), 32.
  • 4
    The earliest Latin commentary on the Apocalypse comes from Victorinus of Pettau in AD 260, with commentaries continuing for subsequent centuries into the medieval era.

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