Review of Bart Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: the Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, Oxford: OUP, 2013.

Bart Ehrman’s recent book presents an important thesis challenging the assertion that pseudonymity (falsely named works) in antiquity was a common practice that was widely accepted. His argument, on polemical pseudonymity, discusses the concept of pseudonymity and the reasons it was done both in theory (in the first section) and in practice (by covering a wide range of pseudonymous writings in the first several centuries of Christianity). Ehrman’s argument convinces that pseudonymity was done to be in dialogue with the other works by the same author in order to clarify (or perhaps argue a new point) but struggles to convince when Ehrman tries to do much and overstates his case about authorship and deceit.

First, it is necessary to clarify the nature of this book. Most have become familiar with  Bart Ehrman for his overly popularized works that hit the New York Times bestseller list which he regularly publicizes by getting into faux debates with popular media personalities such as Stephen Colbert. These works, such as Misquoting Jesus, Forged, Jesus Interrupted, Behind the Da Vinci Code, Why the Bible Doesn’t Solve the Problem of Evil, The Lost Gospel of Judas, and Peter Paul and Mary Magdalene, are rightly criticized as being fantastical and frankly not very precise on scholarly grounds. His popular success has brought with it scholarly skepticism and dismissal.[1] This book is not one that fits into that category. This volume is a scholarly piece made for scholars (but readable enough for the larger audience) and is over 500 pages of an academic argument. This volume is far closer in tone to his Orthodox Corruption of Scripture early in his career. Therefore, while most of his works are not written to stand up to scholarly scrutiny, this one is and therefore ought to be analyzed in that context.

Brief Summary of the Argument

Ehrman directly acknowledges that this work is in continuity with Wolfgang Speyer’s now famous comprehensive work on the topic.[2]  However, Ehrman’s goals are far narrower than Speyer’s. Ehrman only discusses pseudonymity that has polemical aims.[3] He does this, most probably, because this includes all of the works called pseudonymous in the New Testament (though Ehrman includes many texts that are not part of the New Testament in his analysis).

Ehrman argues that pseudonymity should best be considered forgery. He argues throughout the volume that our modern concept of forgery is not unlike the ancient one and therefore the term should be employed. He argues that the idea of pseudonymity (or perhaps pseudepigraphy) is neutral and that it is better considered with the connotation that forgery holds. While I am not sure I completely agree with Ehrman on this point, I will use his term “forgery” throughout the summary of his work for ease of explanation.

Ehrman acknowledges that it is a common view that our concept of forgery is a modern one that did not exist in antiquity. He addresses the issue and argues that there is very little evidence to suggest that this was not seen as a “problem” in antiquity. He argues that it is quite true that forgery was common among Christian and non-Christian works.[4] Ehrman argues that the weight evidence of the practice (when it is discussed at all) lies upon the side of its inappropriate nature rather than its value. For instance, he quotes Martial objecting to someone writing in his name:

My page has not wounded even those it justly hates, and fame won with another’s blush is not dear to me! What does this avail me when certain folk would pass off as mine darts wet with the blood of Lycambes, and under my name a man vomits his viperous venom who owns he cannot bear the light of day?[5]

And then further:

If some malignant fellow claim as mine poems that are steeped in black venom, do you lend me a patron’s voice, and with all your strength and without stopping shout, ‘My Martial did not write that?”[6]

Martial here clearly is not fond of some of the work that is presented in his name challenging the idea that it was “standard practice.”

Erhman points out that in addition to the practice being objected to, there is some evidence that there was even some serious punishment that could be meted out upon a forger. For instance, he cites Josephus who tells a story where forgery led to capital punishment: “Diophantes, a secretary of the king, an audacious fellow, who had the clever knack of imitating any handwriting; and who, after numerous forgeries, was eventually put to death for a crime of that nature.”[7] The only problem with Ehrman’s source here is that the nature of what this certain Diophanes was said to have been forging was, after all, treason (the assassination of Herod). Therefore, it is unclear which act caused the capital punishment.  However, it is fair to say that there were consequences in some cases (though admittedly rare).

Ehrman further argues that all pseudepigraphy is deceit (and therefore forgery). Ehrman argues that a forgery has as its goal convincing the readers that someone wrote the piece that did not. This therefore should be considered forgery. Here is Ehrman’s real presentation of how all forgery should be seen together.[8] Ehrman challenges the common assertion that these forgeries were done with goodA intentions to honor the original author. He suggests that this idea comes from Tertullian’s famous quip that the author of the Acts of Paul wrote the treatise “for the love and honor of Paul.”[9] Ehrman argues that this was different in that it was not a forgery – just a false story (it is an anonymous document). However, the fine point of Erhman’s argument is that even if the author was doing it for the best intentions, it is still deceitful (the author was arguing that he/she wrote something he/she did not).[10]

Given this framework for deceit, the only way anything would not be deceptive, according to Ehrman, is if the “lie” was transparent. He dialogues with some scholars who hold this theory and argues that it does not convince. His main evidence for that is how quickly it was read as if it were written by the authors. He uses the example of the Pastoral Epistles. While it is true that the vast majority of scholars now understand these as forgeries does not mean that the same was true in antiquity.[11] Due to Ehrman’s very narrow definition of what makes something honorable – essentially only if it was not truly a pseudonym at all (i.e. if everyone knew who the real author was), he essentially creates his own data. If all motivation is “the same” as either being deceptive or not, then all forgeries can easily be gathered together.

Following this theoretical interest in the concept of forgery, Ehrman follows with 400 pages which deal with particular texts that he considers forged. In that, he shows that not only was there many forgeries, but that they were polemical. This is his completion of his previous argument – forgery was not primarily done to honor the author, the forgeries were done to prove a polemical point. It is from this platform that he develops the idea of both forgery and counterforgery. He argues that the main use of forgery was polemics with other texts and therefore demanded that they have equal texts written by the author himself. He considers evidence such as 2 Thessalonians 2:2 which argues against letters “as though by us” – seeming to suggest that there is a previous letter claiming to be written by Paul that now needs to be challenged (which is done by another forgery to challenge that previous one).  

To support his theory, Ehrman focuses on dialogue between New Testament texts. It is long known that many texts in the New Testament seem to refer to other texts which need to be clarified. This is probably most famously done between James 2 and Galatians/Romans. For communities that did not know what Torah was (and therefore what Paul could mean when he discusses the “works of the Torah”), it was necessary to clarify that position with the common definitions of the terms for a completely Gentile audience. The best way to make sure one compared one text with another was to simply use the same name as the author. This had the double benefit of causing one to compare the works as well as give it the needed authority to take the alternate opinion seriously.

Erhman’s work is wide ranging in that he covers a variety of different topics that are developed to clarify issues via counterforgery (from eschatology to the use of the body). It is further wide ranging in its contents – it covers all of the texts in the New Testament that are usually considered forgeries in addition to several dozen other early Christian works that are considered forgeries and are polemical. The specific topics he discusses for each of these texts will not be presented in this review because the conversations are not surprising. Ehrman has a very good compendium of thoughts on these issues but for the most part, his work does not present anything that is not well known – he simply puts them all in one place.

Response to Ehrman

The relatively lengthy summary above indicated Ehrman’s main thesis – that Christians used literary deceit to prove a polemical point. Ehrman’s best argument is that texts were made to be in dialogue with other texts. This is precisely the point of having any conversation about authorship. Once one moves beyond the relatively elementary discussions of scriptural authority - after all, we do not know of a single author of the Old Testament (with the possible exception of Ezekiel) but do not consider them as less authoritative than other texts for that reason - then it is possible to see the practical value of the authorship question. The practical value is if we expect one text to be able to be interpreted by another from the same author (and therefore, one needs to know whether those two authors are truly the same).

Ehrman’s argument shows that the actual authors of pseudonymous works knew that these would be compared with other works by the same author and welcomed it. They wanted their texts to clarify how some were reading others. For instance, Ehrman argues that Colossians and Ephesians were written to counter an eschatological reading of Paul which he sees found in 2 Thessalonians (which in itself in 2:2 suggests is trying to counter a pseudonymous letter of Paul).[12]

Ehrman’s struggle here is that he tries to do too much. If he had left the conversation at the level of texts and communities, his above argument would have been more convincing. However, he instead pushes the conversation into the philosophical question of authorship. Authorship is a very difficult concept that includes many different aspects. An “author” is something that often is presented as the originator of the idea – but does that always mean the same person who wrote the treatise? Further, when is a work complete? What edition of the work is the “true work?” Can someone use a second editor and still maintain the work as his or her own? If a text is edited over time (as ancient manuscripts were), can it still be claimed as belonging to the original writer of the work? If Ehrman had simply argued on the level of a community, he would not have had this problem.

Ehrman was probably loath to work on the level of community because it challenges one of his major points. He wanted to argue that any author claiming to be Paul (but who was not) was therefore practicing deceit. However, if a Pauline community put together a communal document, the challenge that one person was claiming to be someone he was not is not as strong. Instead, the community could be putting the name of the entire community upon its founder – a far less scandalous claim. According to Ehrman’s very narrow definition of what is “deceit” and not, this still would qualify, but in a far more understandable light.

The second consequence of focus on authorship and dialogue is that he does not frame this in the far more standard position of all texts in the New Testament (forged or not) dialoguing with one another. One work which he does not consider forged (and neither do I) is the Apocalypse of John. Because it is not forged, it is not part of his discussion. However, he does discuss 1 Peter and Pauline letters. It is hard to imagine the Apocalypse without 1 Peter and a serious claim can be made that one of them knows the other. Further, Elaine Pagels (building upon the work of Paul Duff) has argued that the Apocalypse was partly directed toward Pauline Christianity which allowed the eating of food sacrificed to idols.[13] Whether one accepts this interpretation or not, it clearly shows that there is some type of dialogue between the texts. It simply is not part of Ehrman’s discussion because there is no particular issue of authorship with Paul’s letters and the Apocalypse. The problem this causes is not so much that he needs to discuss all aspect of dialogue, but that he does not even attempt to suggest that this type of dialogue between texts using authorship is part of a much wider phenomenon within the New Testament itself. Indeed much of the reason the canon of the New Testament includes 27 books rather than one is that it dialogues with itself.

Another serious challenge to his discussion of forgery is his inclusion of several texts that are not necessarily forged. He argues that the Book of James, Hebrews, and the Acts of the Apostles are forged. His argument of James seems unnecessary. If one were to stubbornly insist that the leader of the Jerusalem church, Jesus’ brother was the purported author, a reasonable challenge could be leveled that the work was forged. Ehrman takes this assertion as necessarily the case because there is no modifier for the author (it does not say James of any town or lineage) which would apparently mean he was “that James” (Jesus’ brother) who was so famous he did not need to identify himself any longer.[14] The problem with this thesis is that it is an argument from silence. Further, if this was Jesus’ brother, it is very surprising that he would not use that anywhere in the text. Further, this argument would present Jesus’ brother who writes a text that does not mention Jesus except for two times in passing. This is all dependent upon the idea that an unidentified James must be Jesus’ brother.

Even more question can be raised about his discussion of Acts and Hebrews. Neither of these texts states an author (and he himself calls them “non-pseudepigraphic forgery”) suggesting that they each imply an author without stating one. He points to the last chapter of Hebrews which indicates connection with Pauline authority and the four “we” sections in Acts (Acts 16,20,21,27) which have an “embedded forgery” within it as we are to conclude that the traveling companion with Paul is the author.[15] The argument of the book of Hebrews smacks of a similar tone to that of his argument concerning James. We apparently are to demand he must be “that Sylvanus.” Further, when the author is anonymous, it is hard to rule out many people. His argument about Acts would be stronger if he was able to show how the Gospel of Luke shows this same interest. As it is, he does not even mention the Gospel of Luke much less explain how that fits in the larger narrative.

It seems likely that his dependence upon authorship to discuss polemics has blurred his vision once again. If the three texts are not “forged,” then they would not be discussed in his book. He wants to discuss them so that he can show their polemical nature (something that can be reasonably asserted). This would have been solved had he simply argued his case on the concept of dialogue more than forgery. While it is not completely fair to criticize someone for not including “everything,” it is far better to avoid drawing things into the full of an argument when the evidence is so stretched. It seems far better had he simply put these as footnotes that support his main thesis if the argument of pseudonymity would hold. It does not seem to have enough weight to hold its own and unfortunately can cause a reader to dismiss larger portions of his work that are on far firmer ground.

A further clarification that would have been helpful is if he had followed Speyer’s original project. To focus solely on literary forgeries that have polemical purposes, but yet include so many in such a compendious way can mislead. There are many different causes of forgery which he would still call “deceit” even though the purposes were completely different. For instance, Pelagius’s commentary on 2 Corinthians was preserved under the name of Jerome – not so that readers would compare it and use it to interpret Jerome’s work, but only so that Pelagius’s commentary would survive rather than being destroyed as the work of a “heretic” (not considering that the content of his commentary on 2 Corinthians is really not all that divergent from standard views).[16] This type of pseudepigrapha does not directly address the issue he considers (polemics), but it does call into question one of his fundamental assertions – that authorship caused one to interpret one text by another. It certainly still holds true, but perhaps it is more complicated than the simple putting of one’s name down and the eventual consequence that others would compare and interpret that work with the other works by the same author.

In all, Ehrman’s volume is worth the read and deserves serious consideration. The final quibble I have is not so much with the work as with him. In his mass market popular book surge, I simply thought him a bit of a sloppy scholar. This book shows that he is not – he simply can choose to work harder or not on a text and to be precise or not. That to me is the worst offense at all – he has much he can offer to scholarship and the academy but usually spends his time working in hyperbole. I do think there is a very good place for scholarly work to a popular audience, but not at the cost of that scholarly work. Given this type of sophistication in his thought, Ehrman ought to look to the examples of Elaine Pagels and Robert Louis Wilken for a model to work forward to keeping scholarly integrity while appealing to a much larger audience.  

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[1] I should point out that I do not  think there is a necessary correlation between popular success and poor scholarship. Elaine Pagels, for instance, has had tremendous popular success while at the same time maintaining academic integrity and rigor in her work.

[2] Wolfgang Speyer, Die Literarische Falschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum: Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (Munchen: Beck, 1971) and “Religiose Pseudepigraphie und literarische Falschung im Altertum” JAC 8/9 (1965-6: 88-125.

[3] Erhman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 5-6.

[4] Ibid., 11--92.

[5] Epigrams 7.12

[6] Epigrams 7.72 both quoted in Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 81.

[7] Josephus, Jewish War 1.26.3 quoted in Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 85.

[8] Erhman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 93-132.

[9] Tertullian, De Baptismo, 17.

[10] Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 132-137.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 156-190.

[13] See Paul B. Duff, Who Rides the Beast?: Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse (Oxord: OUP, 2001) and Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation (New York : Viking Penguin, 2012).

[14] Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 282-2Pe90.

[15] Ibid., 264-265.

[16] I am thankful for Wilbert Stelzer for this insight which was developed from his unpublished dissertation, The Biblical Text of Pelagius in His Commentary on 2 Corinthians: A New Reconstruction out of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

Review of Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, New York: Random House, 2013 ISBN 97814000069224

First, as a disclaimer, I am somewhat uncomfortable doing a true scholarly analysis of a book such as Reza Aslan’s. The reason is that Aslan wrote this unapologetically for popular rather than scholarly consumption. As such, a true scholarly critique would, of course, poke holes in the analysis of a book which was written to be a best seller. However, as several people have requested I analyze it, I feel obligated to do so. I should note, however, that despite the viral Fox News interview, none of this analysis will have anything to do with the fact that Aslan is a Muslim. This review is entirely about the content of the book rather than psychoanalysis of its author.

Reza Aslan’s book on the historical Jesus uses the facts about Jesus which can be proven and uses that to create a sketch of a Jesus that he feels is most likely. Second, he has a short unit which is not about the historical Jesus at all, but his discussion of why his historical Jesus was not preserved and the traditional understanding of Jesus as found in the New Testament was developed. His book is very provocatively written and is very accessible. This review will first look at his picture of the historical Jesus which is relatively standard and then his discussion of the first several centuries of Christianity which is unfortunately very poorly constructed.  

Reza Aslan’s book is a historical sketch about what can be proved about the life of Jesus. Aslan’s approach is completely historical at the beginning – he looks at the biography of Jesus and discusses what are verifiable facts about the figure who roamed Roman Palestine two thousand years ago. As it is a construction of the verifiable, provable facts (rather than things that may have happened but cannot be proven), the number of verifiable things are necessarily less than the picture presented in the New Testament.

Aslan begins his book by constructing the world of first century Roman Palestine. He focuses primarily on economic issues regarding the class divisions in Palestine. He sees the class divisions between the Romans living in Palestine in addition (and mostly) to the aristocratic priestly class who use the temple and its rituals to increase their position. Further, he constructs a positive fiscal relationship between the priestly class and Rome in order to show the division between the priestly class and the lower class of peasants who are defined by abject poverty and a complete disdain for Rome (as well as the corrupt priestly system).

From this picture, he considers several verifiable facts about Jesus’ life to be verifiable. He creates a narrative which includes Jesus being born and raised in Nazareth, having several brothers who were followers of Jesus, baptized by the prophet John the Baptist, having 12 disciples, proclaiming himself Son of Man as in the book of Daniel, being a miracle worker and exorcist, proclaiming the coming kingdom of God on earth, which he wanted kept secret but charged absolutely nothing for, driving people out of the temple, and crucified by Rome as a bandit (lestai).  

These verifiable facts about Jesus’ life are not unique to Aslan. Many historical Jesus scholars, as he quotes, trumpet these points. Some scholars would have included some other details (for instance, he says nothing about Jesus’ use of parables), but these are mostly universal. Aslan, to his discredit, does not entirely explain why it is that scholars are confident on these matters or what criteria that he uses. The standard criteria for the historical Jesus are the following: 1). The number, date, and general accuracy of the sources for the life of Jesus (with the idea that something in many different sources is more likely historical than something that is not), 2). An event in a narrative that is contrary to the theme of the narrative (with the idea that an author does not usually invent an episode in a narrative that is contrary to one’s point), and 3). Something that makes little sense to have been invented given the cultural context of the users of the texts (with the idea that the early church had common forms it usually used and those unlike those forms are more likely historical e.g. parables of Jesus). These principles are hardly foolproof and there is nearly no event in the gospels that satisfies all three criteria.

While some events are historically verifiable, this does not necessarily mean that other events did not occur – just that they cannot be historically verified. A historical analysis is attempting to describe what probably happened. It does not mean other things could not have happened – it is just a matter of likelihood. Aslan points this out for the events of the miracles of Jesus and the resurrection.[1] He sees them as completely outside of the realm of discussion (just as they cannot be proven, nor can they be disproven). He even shows that while it might be easy for an outsider to simply dismiss the resurrection out of hand, the evidence of so many people independently citing the resurrection as a fact shows its historical ambiguity.[2]

Aslan, like all historical Jesus scholars, is not satisfied with simply listing the verifiable facts about Jesus. He uses these facts to reconstruct a full historical character. To do so, he attempts to square what we can verify about Jesus with his construction of Roman Palestine (as seen above). Further, he places Jesus in the wide range of Messianic figures in the Galilee in the centuries surrounding Jesus. The idea behind this is that the most likely figure who would arise is someone who meets the needs of his day. Again, this does not necessarily prove anything (as Jesus could well have been something people did not expect), but the study of the historical Jesus attempts to present something plausible.

Given discussion about the priestly system in Roman Palestine, it is not surprising that Aslan sees Jesus’ activity in the temple as challenging this system to be the main focus of Jesus’ ministry. He argues that Jesus is responding to the classed situation of Roman Palestine and challenging it by overturning the tables of vendors, money-changes, and buyers. He then drives out those who want to offer sacrifices and attacks the temple cult for being totally corrupt.  Aslan finds support for this idea by noting that there were several Jewish groups who expressed such zeal for the law (hence the title of the book) that they acted in similar ways (such as the Qumran community).[3]  

Aslan sees this temple scene as so significant, that he builds his character of the historical Jesus on this one aspect. Aslan explains his hermeneutic in the following quotation:

But look closely at Jesus’s words and actions in the Temple in Jerusalem – the episode that undoubtedly precipitated his arrest and execution – and this one fact becomes difficult to deny: Jesus was crucified by Rome because his messianic aspirations threatened the occupation of Palestine, and his zealotry endangered the Temple authorities. That singular fact should color everything we read in the gospels about the messiah known as Jesus of Nazareth – from the details of his death on a cross in Golgotha to the launch of his public ministry on the banks of the Jordan River.[4]

Aslan, then makes his view quite clear – Jesus was primarily a social reformer who challenged the priestly class as he fit in the temple. All other facts about Jesus known through the text will then be interpreted in this light.

While Aslan does have support in the scholarly world for some of his views, he even pushes this agenda too far by citing Jesus was arguing for an armed rebellion against Rome. Throughout the text, Aslan depends greatly upon the ideas of John Dominic Crossan and John Meier.[5] Crossan has become a pseudo-celebrity for his view of the historical Jesus as, primarily, an ethical reformer and sees Jesus’ activity in the temple as a ritual destruction of the temple and its function. Further, Crossan would agree with Aslan that Jesus’s message, while being fully religious, is also fully political. However, Aslan stands alone when he suggests that Jesus looked forward to the use of force in his ethical reformation of Israelite society.[6] This statement is particularly surprising given that he admits just two pages earlier that there is no evidence that Jesus truly supported the use of force.[7]

The second major position which Aslan holds in isolation for the historical Jesus is the way in which he argues that Jesus considered himself “son of man.” Aslan, along with plenty of historical Jesus scholars, argues that Jesus used the term son of man as his primary designation in his own life. He even agrees with many scholars that this term is built, in this context, from the eschatological book of Daniel being the heavenly being who was to come in the future to restore the kingdom of God on earth.[8] However, he argues that for Daniel this figure is a human figure that is appointed by God. He is willing to admit that the Similitudes (found in I Enoch) and 4 Ezra consider a being designated from the beginning of time who is very close to, if not actually divine, he argues that these texts are of no significance because they were written 60 years after the fact.[9] This type of simple dependence is something that surprising at best and poor scholarship at worst. He seems to think that we have most all of the texts that were available during the time period, so if we do not have a text that is from the exact same time as Jesus, then the ideas were not present. Such a view might be very reasonable for children’s video games wherein the game presents the player with all the information one needs, but not a reasonable statement for a historian who is trying to reconstruct a world which we can only see through shards.

The real support for this violent uprising is based upon another of his most important categories – how other messianic figures functioned in Palestine. Aslan wants to see Jesus as likely as possible and in so doing has to reconstruct the world of Roman Palestine. He does this by discussing other figures who claimed to be messiah and attempted some of the same reforms that he sees Jesus accomplishing.[10] This type of “one size fits all” logic leads to some of these wild conclusions hitherto unknown in the world of historical scholarship.

Aslan develops these ideas through a relatively uncritical reading of the historian Josephus. He sees all of the messiahs rising up to deal with one central issue – the spiritually amalgamated rule of either King Herod or the union of the high priest Caiaphas with Pontius Pilate. He argues that the jurisdiction of both brought about the improper temple priesthood (as it was compromised by association with Rome) and the increase of class divisions – creating a new class of Jewish aristocracy (centered around the priesthood). To do this, he depends heavily on nearly the only source for this time period – the works of Flavius Josephus. However, he does not appear to consider Josephus’s history very critically. Josephus, it has long been known, has a consistent theme throughout his text – the power and influence of Rome. Therefore, to say that Caiaphas was in the pocket of Pilate, could emphasize an inappropriate relationship between the high priest and the governor, but more likely is the explanation by Josephus as to why Caiaphas – a rather important political and social figure in Judaea while not being Roman – was able to remain in power for nearly two decades. Josephus’s solution is that he was actually in collaboration with Rome the entire time. The problem with Aslan’s book is not this one episode, but that he argues so aggressively for the critical reading of one of the sources about the historical Jesus – the gospels, but does not do the same for his other main source – Josephus.

Finally, Aslan develops many of these ideas based upon a psychoanalysis of Jesus being a disenfranchised tekton (manual laborer) who saw the class disparity first hand while working as a laborer in the rebuilding of the city of Sepphoris as a young man. He goes into some depth about the archaeological remains at Sepphoris, the rebellion that caused its destruction and rebuilding at the time of Jesus’ youth, and the higher class who paid for it.[11] However, he fails to mention that Sepphors is not mentioned once in any of the sources about the life of Jesus. This is not to say that Jesus could not have worked there before his ministry, but for someone who is attempting to reveal the facts from the sources, this psychoanalysis is highly speculative and is seemingly only accepted because it suggests Jesus getting involved with this class struggle he sees as so central.

Reconstruction of the decades after Jesus’ death

While Aslan’s discussion of the historical Jesus has some weaknesses (see above), for the most part, his discussion is a relatively common presentation which has been stated for over twenty years. However, his discussion about the generations after Jesus’ death in which he attempts to explain why the picture of the historical Jesus he reconstructs were lost is rife with inaccuracy and lack of understanding.

First, Aslan shows he does not understand many of the issues in the book of Acts and Paul’s letters by making many rather amateur mistakes. First, he falls into the common trap of thinking that Paul had a radical conversion and at that time changed his name from Saul to Paul.[12] This is completely unsubstantiated in the text and a casual reader of the book of Acts will notice that his name is not changed when Jesus appears to him on the road, but rather begins to be used when he leaves the general area of Palestine and enters into other areas of the Roman empire. Second, he seems to fail to understand the use of scriptural citation used in the New Testament. He touts that no scriptural passage supports the messiah dying and rising again as the Gospel of Luke suggests.[13] While this is technically true, the way he presents it makes it sound as if every other citation in the gospel included footnotes and direct citation. Most of the references in the Gospels to the Hebrew Bible are more typologies and cloaked references rather than clear citations (something he himself admits in his discussion about the prophesies about Jesus in the first half of the book). Third, he argues that Paul considered himself an apostle but the Jerusalem church considered, but denied him this title.[14] He says this despite the fact that neither Acts nor Paul suggest any type of discussion about this. Further, he does not mention that Acts has a very specific restriction on who is qualified to be an apostle – one who followed Jesus during his whole lifetime (see Acts 1-2). Paul automatically is disqualified. Further, Paul uses the term much more loosely as anyone who “has been sent” by Christ directly. He even is willing to use the term for a woman, Junia, in Romans 16. Therefore, to suggest that Paul wanted the title but that the Jerusalem church denied him is simply a lack of understanding.

Another glaring error in the book is his discussion about the way in which the gospels attempted to solve the problem of Jesus’ failed messianic dream. He argues that the gospels, in an attempt to avoid the embarrassment that the kingdom of God did not come when Jesus lived and died, created the concept that the kingdom of God was in the celestial, rather than earthly sphere.[15] While this might be somewhat true of the Gospel of John – which famously avoids the language of “kingdom of God” altogether (though serious question can be asked whether the discussion of “sphere” is even relevant for the Gospel of John – it is certainly not true of any of the synoptic gospels. The synoptic gospels all discuss a future coming of the kingdom of God on earth (though the Gospel of Luke does amend it saying that a portion of it is already here among the community). However, the concept of the celestial sphere for the kingdom of God is simply not present.

Another glaring mistake in order to prove his point is found in his argument for the lack of continuity between the Jerusalem church and Paul. He argues that they never agreed on the nature of Christ which came out in their relation to Judaism. Aslan argues that the Jerusalem church preserved the true historical Jesus while Paul created the heavenly Christ. He cites, as evidence, the Jerusalem council found in Acts 15 and Galatians 2. He suggests that Acts has whitewashed the conflict to make it sound like the two came to agreement whereas Paul shows us that they never agreed and were two separate entities.[16] While I do not disagree that the Book of Acts probably has whitewashed the event, Aslan fails to quote Paul in stating that after a seeming problem at first, “They gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”[17] While it is true that this continued to be a struggle throughout the career of Paul, it hardly suggests that Paul was so different that they could not even converse.

Finally, Aslan’s depiction of Paul’s attitude toward the Torah is outdated and leads to a radical separation from Judaism that is not necessary in Paul’s work. He bases his argument that there was a major disagreement between James and Paul that can be seen in the works ascribed to Paul and the work ascribed to James (not mentioning that there is serious question whether the brother of Jesus was the author of the book of James).[18] He argues that Paul argues for the radical abandonment of the Torah covenant and all things related to Judaism thereby stripping Jesus of his messianic revolutionary spirit. He further argues that James writes as a corrective to Paul arguing that Torah was important and that the main issue that needed to be dealt with were class divisions (considering the rich and poor in James).[19]

The problem with Aslan’s declaration is that it does not show careful understanding of Paul or James. The New Perspective on Paul (however one thinks of their conclusions about Judaism) has shown that Paul did not argue for the radical abandonment of the Torah and all things legal.[20] Rather, Paul is merely making the argument that it is not necessary for Gentiles to become full proselyte Jews in order to join the Jesus movement. Rather than abandoning the privilege and value of Israel, instead, he goes to great lengths to prove that through adoption, the gentiles are now part of Israel and the promised people.[21]

Second, Aslan does not understand the book of James very well either. He bases much of his argument on the fact that James is interested in rich and poor (which the book certainly is) but also on the fact that it values “the law of liberty” which he uncritically reads as the Torah. However, he does not mention that recent scholarship have shown that while the term “law of liberty” was not found to be a description of the Torah in any known Jewish work prior to the book of James, it was a relatively common trope about the logos (which one will find directly before this discussion in James) in Stoic philosophy.[22] Further research considering James finds more and more stoic philosophy rather than Jewish understandings of Torah in the text (it should be noted that there still is plenty of room for Jewish understanding of Torah in the text – just through a stoic lens. However, for the purposes of this argument, neither would be arguing for a literal dependence upon the ideas of strictly following the Torah in a legalistic sense which Aslan seems to be suggesting the book of James is arguing to oppose Paul).

What is most troubling about this second half of the book is that the pitfalls that Aslan falls into are not so much disagreements with scholars as much as popular opinions one who does not truly study the field might find. The first half of his book could be disagreed with in a scholarly discussion while the second half is simply poor characterization of the decades following Jesus’ death given relatively uncritical readings of the texts at hand.

---

[1] Aslan, Zealot, 104 and 174.

[2] Ibid., 175.

[3] Ibid., 73-79.

[4] Ibid., 79.

[5] See John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: Harper Collins, 1992) and John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991-2009).

[6] Aslan, Zealot, 122.

[7] Ibid., 120.

[8] Ibid., 139.

[9] Ibid., 140.

[10] For his reconstruction of the background of Jesus’ life see pages 3-70.

[11] Ibid., 38-39.

[12] Ibid., 170.

[13] Ibid., 172.

[14] Ibid., 188.

[15] Ibid., 178.

[16] Ibid., 188.

[17] Galatians 2:9b.

[18] Aslan, Zealot, 193.

[19] Ibid., 197-212.

[20] See E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

[21] See Catherine Hodge, If Sons then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: OUP, 2007).

[22] See Matt Jackson-McCabe, Logos and Law in the Letter of James: The Law of Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Freedom (Leiden: Brill, 2000).

Why scholarship struggles to change people’s minds: an analysis and reflection on the history of the term “Gnostics” and “Gnosticism” in the Encyclopedia Britannica

Proviso and acknowledgments: Before beginning this paper, I would like to explain why I have delved on this topic and my indebtedness to other people on this project. I have had an interest for some time in how the popular perception of religion continues to affect scholarly discussion. My large working hypothesis is that while scholarship is separate from the general populace, when scholarship tries to “meet the public” they do so to their own demise. Further, not only do they challenge their own field, they do it needlessly. Scholars being overly affected by ideas of isolationism and irrelevance (probably from reading too many books such as Victor Davis Hanson’s Who Killed Homer?), then try to “meet the people half way.” These types of discussions are insulting to a mass audience who does not believe that they are incapable of understanding complex ideas. Further, it forces scholars to present poor scholarship (as it is only “halfway”). Scholars cannot expect real paradigm shifting in thinking to occur if they do not give the popular understanding the information for the shift. As long as the long held stereotypes are allowed to continue, no scholar should be surprised that their work in an academic setting that challenges those stereotypes are not followed. Secondly, I argue that scholars are not as detached from the popular view of things as they wish they were. Getting back to the “meeting half way” analogy implies that very thing – scholars are accepting many popular perceptions (some good and some bad) that affects their work. Therefore, scholarship finds itself still holding on to those same clichés and categories that they only begrudgingly allowed for the “mass audience” to be the sounding board for everything they are doing. The relationship between the two is dynamic and important for the history of ideas. As a sidebar, when I use the term “popular” here, I am not necessarily speaking of masses versus intellectuals. I merely mean when publishing books and articles that are geared toward a general audience rather than works where it is expected that the audience are specialists. All of that stated is a working hypothesis. I am not certain that the above is true or provable. However, the relationship between the “popular” and the “scholarly” is something that needs to be evaluated. I am working on a much larger project than this one on the way church history is presented in surveys of church history for university students (with the idea that this is where the two meet). This project is working on how the term Gnosticism has been written by scholars and understood by people in the popular encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica. I consider this particular example because it is a well known authority written for the mass audience that has a decent history. I also consider it because Concordia librarian Judy Anderson was able to obtain photocopies of the term over the various editions of Britannica from its first edition in 1768 to the last one in 2012. Finally, as to the discussion below, I must thank my good friend Alex Kocar, Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) at Princeton University for continued discussion about the category “Gnosticism” and its persistent problems in the current milieu of scholarship of religion.

 For the past two decades (since the 1996 publication of Michael Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism:” An Argument for Dismantling a Problematic Category) scholars have challenged many of the old clichés attached to the term Gnosticism. Williams argued for the abandonment of the term altogether. Karen King, following Williams’s idea wrote to question most all of the traditional tenets of the category in her 2003 book What Is Gnosticism?. Many other scholars have not written such aggressive “calls to action” for the academy as a whole, but have quietly agreed that the category “Gnosticism” is not very helpful and instead studied texts from Nag Hammadi without its constraint.[1] Most scholars are happy to admit that any category that tried to encompass The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, as well as the works of Marcion is sloppy at best. If there is any commonality among the three, it is not very obvious when looking at the actual texts. However, the category has persisted. Some, like David Brakke in his recent work The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity, have continued using the term while at the same time trying to be more careful with it. Others, like Ismo Dunderberg in Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus, have maintained the category without realizing it. While they have put the quotation marks around Gnosticism, they have not done anything differently. For instance, Dunderberg compares Valentinian tradition with other Valentinian texts. He does not consider the relation to those which are not in the category and thereby allows himself to remain in the category without realizing it. The discussion has led to an interesting problem – it seems not to matter whether one supports or refutes the term Gnosticism, as long as it is studied as a type of phenomenon of its own little changes. This article argues that the reason for the persistence of this category (either in ideology or in action) is based upon the stubborn popular category of Gnosticism which is framed in a Linnaean monothetic taxonomy. So long as that popular category remains in the state that it does, scholars will never be able to move beyond it. This argument is exemplified through an analysis of one avenue of popular knowledge, The Encyclopedia Britannica, over the course of the last several centuries.

Popular categories cause scholarly categories to persist. To understand how popular terms and categories persist, take as a case study Tomoko Masuzawa’s interesting argument about the development of the term “world religions.”[2] The term is confusing and Masuzawa shows that the term was originally coined to contrast with “national religions” which were not “universal” in the way that Christianity was universal. Rather, they were localized to specific cultures and therefore were not important enough to compare with Christianity. This lead to originally four world religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Paganism. The idea was that all other religions were housed in Paganism for the sole reason that they were polytheistic and therefore could not truly be compared with Christianity. Throughout Masuzawa’s argument, she shows that the term has now come to encompass most all religions making the term effectively pointless. If “world religions” means simply the “religions that are in the world,” the word “world” is redundant – I would hope that we are not investigating religions from other planets. However, the term is something that is a necessity in the English language and thus it persists. Most adherents do not know what the term exactly means, but this is less important than the built in category in their thinking. Scholars might try to slightly shift the term to “World’s Religions” to make themselves feel better, but it only is acceptable because the layman will skip over the possessive and read “world religions.” I should make clear here that I am not speaking of some mob of angry townspeople ready to burn a scholar who challenges the term; rather, people demand it in the way that they demand that people use complete sentences in the newspaper. They have a term in their mind that they are expecting and it is very difficult to switch to something else without convincing them rationally that something needs to be done.

The term “Gnosticism” is suffering from the same fate as that of “world religions.” It is a prevalent term that culture rhetorically uses. The category might change – both in how it is characterized and what exactly it is called, but the term will stubbornly persist. This is best displayed in the 2012 Britannica where Michael Williams, the very scholar whose work Rethinking “Gnosticism” began the process to abandon the category, is forced to use the category simply to argue that it is not very helpful.

Karen King’s work, mapping the intellectual history of the term, fails to change anything except to make the academy aware of its roots. King shows that the term, first being used by Henry More (1614-1687), developed in a variety of formats with differing discussions, but a single motivation – to distinguish the movement from Christianity. However, her conclusion challenges scholars to look more carefully at the phenomena and challenge many of the ideas of Gnosticism. However, as long as the category persists and the scholar’s position is relegated to the “questioning elements of it,” the popular perception of the term will persist as it always has.

Popular history of the term

In order to show what the popular term is, here follows a description how the term has been treated in the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the first edition of Britannica in 1771, there was an entry on “Gnostics” which was written the following passage:

Gnostics, in church history, Christian heretics so called, it being a name which almost all the ancient heretics affected to take, to express that new knowledge and extraordinary light to which they made pretensions; the word Gnostic signifying a learned or enlightened state.[3]

The entry has at its core, the name “Gnostic” being the key description for a people. It is argued that the people chose the name in order to understand themselves as distinct from Christians. This very brief entry does not provide many other elements to it except that it provides a type of “extraordinary light” which could frankly mean quite a lot of things. The importance of this first entry is simply that it was defined to be other than Christianity. This is the sole distinction that King argues is the basis for the term. At this point, it seems as if her view is correct.

If one moves to the second edition, the entry was developed and expanded slightly in 1780. This second entry first has the paragraph from the first edition, but then adds a second paragraph where its source is cited – Epiphanius. It then has a brief description of the people. It describes a very brief description of some type of higher heaven and then moves to what matters for its own consideration:

All the Gnostics distinguished the creator of the universe from God who made himself known to men by his son, whom they acknowledged to be the Christ. The denied that Word was made flesh; and asserted that Jesus Christ was not born of the Virgin Mary; that he had a body only in appearance, and that he did not suffer in reality.[4]

The description of the pleroma (the term itself not being used) is rather brief. Instead of discussing this, it spends its time discussing the role of Christ and how it is different from Christianity. The interest, then, is similar to that of the first edition – to show how it is distinct from Christianity while being a distinct sect which was organized around the name Gnostic.

The third edition in 1797 expanded the entry significantly to try to give a far more full description of the group. First, it is seen still as a clear group:

The name is formed of the Latin gnosticus, and that of the Greek ginosko “I know” and was adopted by those of this sect, as if they were the only persons who had the true knowledge of Christianity. Accordingly, they looked on all other Christians as simple, ignorant, barbarous persons who explained and interpreted the sacred writings in a too low, literal, and unedifying figuration.[5]

Here, the description of the group, has changed though. The group is first and foremost assigned to making mistakes based on bad exegesis of texts. This is continued later on in the article: “…but [Valentinus] shows the general principles whereon all their mistaken opinions were founded, and the method they followed in explaining Scripture.”[6] This new emphasis on scripture is explained by a description of their borrowing so heavily from the Platonic world.

The entry in the third edition has a more complex view of them as heretics – they are considered far more closely to the fold of Christianity; however, bringing them in closer (discussion about scripture, the nature of Christ, the view of creator, and ethical standards) actually makes them farther away than some group who had a name that was alien to Christianity. It in fact seems that nearly every heresy possible was pushed on to this group. We have already seen the description of their interpretation of scripture. The next point to be discussed is the denial of the resurrection of the body: “Their persuasion that evil resided in matter, as its centre and source, made them treat the body with contempt, discourage marriage, and reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and its re-union with the immortal spirit.”[7] What is noteworthy in this passage is not that it depicts the group has thinking of the material world as evil – this was a relatively common trope until twenty years ago. What is striking is why this discussion is developed – so it could push them into a heresy that was well known from the fourth to the sixth century in the Origenist crisis – the issue of the resurrection of the body.

To further paint the group as one of arch-heretics, the entry argues that the group believed in both subordinationism and docetism. Consider the following passage:

The Gnostics considered Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and consequently inferior to the Father, who came into the world for the rescue and happiness of miserable mortals, oppressed by matter and evil beings; but they rejected our Lord’s humanity, on the principle that every thing corporeal is essentially and intrinsically evil; and therefore the greatest part of them denied the reality of his sufferings.

Here the entry shows its own bias most profoundly. Usually “docetism” is explained by trying to protect the divine from suffering. However, subordination is also trying to protect the same thing. It is therefore likely that the author provides both in order to simply paint the figures with as much negative imagery as possible. Following this discussion is a discussion of their ethics which are opposed to the norm (using the patristic author’s slander of libertine behavior along with ascetic denial). This entry, then is not as interested in them as a group as much as it is interested in them as every type of heresy that can be conceived in the first several centuries of the church.

This entry went unchanged until 1856 in the eighth edition. It is also the first time that the entry is under “Gnosticism” rather than simply “Gnostics.” It further is the first time that an author is listed – John Tulloch. Tulloch’s argument here is less that they are the arch heretics of the third edition. Rather, Tulloch argues that the group is above all syncretistic:

Gnosticism, in its different heretical forms, sprung out of the mixture of Oriental and Hellenic elements of culture with Christianity towards the close of the first, and throughout the second century. In one and all of these forms it may be said to represent the systematic attempts made by the prevailing religious philosophies to understand Christianity, and adapt themselves to it. Refusing to accept it in its simple historical character, in its simple majesty of divine truth, and having in it these respects no affinity, these philosophies could not yet help recognizing in Christianity a sublime spiritual power of which they must give an account. They sought, therefore, to find, from their own point of view, a theosophic meaning in it, and to bring it into alliance with their own wild and fantastic schemes of cosmogony.[8]

This entry is the first one to try and create a religious world – it discusses the key questions that were trying to be solved – the origin of life and the origin of evil. It considers the doctrines of matter, the Immortal father, the pleroma, Demiurge, Archons, Sophia, as well as considering key figures commonly housed in the movement  such as Basilides, Marcion, Valentinus, Saturninus, Tatian, and Bardaisan. There is even an aside about Mani and his similarity. However, the real development is the development of two “schools of thought” in Gnosticism – the Alexandrian and the Syrian. The idea of this is that given that the category (and at this point it is a category with a variety of groups in it) is syncretistic, the Syrian is the one which combined Christian and “oriental” philosophy whereas the Alexandrian combined Christianity with Greek philosophy.

In describing each of these doctrines as well as each one of these figures, Tulloch goes through painstakingly to prove how they have combined elements of the truth with those of foreign philosophy. This is the first time King’s essential hypothesis is challenged. Here it does not seem that the figures are primarily seen as other to the church as heretics in one way or another, they are instead characterized more as what might be considered the heterodox – those who understand the power of Christianity, just fail to understand it as unique.  The reader should note how this shift occurred and that the popular notion of the category shifted dramatically (in fact, question can arise whether it is precisely the same category as what was described above), but the category still persisted without question.

Tulloch edited his entry for the 9^th edition in 1875 and what is important to recognize is how he shifted it – he revised his thesis as well as providing examples of how the syncretism fully developed. First, Tulloch argues, “Gnosticism [is] a general name applied to various forms of speculation in the early history of the church.”[9] The concept of speculative theology as that which is introduced through the syncretistic means is his primary argument.

One dramatic change however, is how Tulloch considered the movement’s syncretism as not heretical. He argues,

The more advanced writers of the preset day refuse to recognize Gnosticism as a heresy, or to speak of the Gnostics as deserters from the Christian Church. And they are right so far. The Gnostic schools were always so far outside the church. They were not heretical, therefore, in the ordinary sense.[10]

However, to make this argument, he does have to show whence any of the ideas came as it was parallel at least with the church. To do so, he says that this was because second temple Judaism had brought this along on its own. Judaism was syncretistic and, in his mind, fully Gnostic. He uses the evidence of Kabala to show how Hellenistic philosophy and Zoroastrian religion made its way into Judaism and this led to the creation of the category Gnosticism with its wild speculations. He then goes through the same doctrines and figures as before and attempts to argue why they are merely a syncretism with the speculation of a pantheism and Hellenistic philosophy.

This 9^th edition of Britannica shows that the category has once again changed radically – so much so that it is worth questioning whether it would even be describing the same phenomenon. It has shifted from being a Christian heresy, to Christian heterodoxy, to now a Jewish/Zoroastrian/Hellenistic amalgam with Christianity being only the poor victim of bad circumstance. This is something that should have outraged the public, but likely this was not the case as the concept of speculation persists for the next 100 years of consideration.

In 1910 Wilhelm Bousset rewrote the entry to echo the argument of Tulloch that it is a syncretistic movement as mystical in nature. However, Bousset argues that it is ultimately a mystical religion which forced the church to create a hierarchy and organization. When one reads carefully through Bousset’s article, it is clear that his primary argument (behind some of the very good description he has – in many ways descriptions far closer to modern ones than we have seen thus far) is anti-Roman Catholic polemics.

To begin the entry Bousset puts it in perspective next to the Catholic church, “Gnosticism [is] the name generally applied that spiritual movement existing side by side with genuine Christianity, as it gradually crystallized into the old Catholic Church, which may roughly be defines as a distinct religious syncretism bearing the strong impress of Christian influences.”[11] The primary reason for this was his second key characteristic – that of mysticism and secret knowledge. As he felt Gnosticism emphasized revelation more than speculation, the movement led to secret knowledge:

These little Gnostic sects and groups all lived in the conviction that hey possessed a secret and mysterious knowledge, in no way accessible to those outside, which was not to be proved or propagated, but believed in by the initiated, and anxiously guarded as a secret…In short, Gnosticism, in all its various sections, its form and its character, falls under the great category of mystic religions, which were so characteristic of the religious life of decadent antiquity.”[12]

This is the first time the concept of mysticism has been included in the discussion of Gnosticism. It is in this sense that Bousset argues it is syncretistic. He argues that Zoroastrian, Persian, Hellenic, Oriental, Babylonian, and monistic tendencies are found in Gnosticism as they are all mystical.

What is striking is that this is the first time sacraments are mentioned as being an element of Gnosticism. This description is not a flattering one for Bousset as he sees sacraments as simply another type of mysticism that is to be avoided preserved in the Catholic Church:

The Gnostic religion also anticipated other tendencies. As we have seen, it is above all things a religion of sacraments and mysteries. Through its syncretistic origin Gnosticism introduced for the first time into Christianity a whole mass of sacramental, mystical ideas, which had hitherto existed only in its earliest phases. But in the long run even genuine Christianity has been unable to free itself from the magic of sacraments.[13]

As one can see, Bousset opposes anything mystical in the church and blames Gnosticism for developing it. He further criticizes the church by suggesting that it was only this Gnosticism which corrupted the church into an organization:

Finally, it was Gnosticism which gave the most decided impulse to the consolidation of the Christian Church as a church. Gnosticism itself is a free, naturally-growing religion, the religion of isolated minds, of separate little circles and minute sects…This freely growing Gnostic religiosity aroused in the Church an increasingly strong movement towards unity and a firm and inelastic organization, toward authority and tradition.[14]

The thesis of this entry then is that Gnosticism is primarily a mystical religion which forced the church into some corners it should not have entered. One should once again note the striking contrast with everything that was considered up to this point.

In 1963, Gilles Quispel rewrote the entry in order to reverse the thinking of Gnosticism. He argues that it is its own religion, developed from a type of Judaism, which then adopted some aspects of Christianity into it rather than the other way around. Quispel argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls show some affinity with the idea of Gnosticism. However, he argues that the key determining difference to Gnosticism is not syncretism or speculation but rather: “Though it is not always easy to distinguish Gnosticism from Greek philosophy and the Christian religion, it has certain characteristics of it s own which are alien to Greek or Christian tradition, such as the deprecation of the cosmos and the rejection of atonement.”[15]

Quispel argues that the key determining factors of Gnosticism is personal revelation based upon a pre-Christian Jewish matrix rather than syncretism from other places: “These conceptions are expressed in various myths, which have used material from many oriental and Greek religions, but serve to express a basic experience which is new, the discovery of the unconscious self or spirit in man which sleeps in him until awakened by the Savior.”[16] He then follows with the argument that the category is one that has three fundamental tenets: 1. No atonement is necessary in the system, 2. They denied the reality of the creation as God’s creation, 3. Annulled the unity of the human race by dividing it into classes.[17] This is a striking difference from what has come before in the discussion of the category.

Robert Grant, in 1974 presented a type of maximalized entry for the next edition of Britannica. He followed Bousset in arguing that it was the primary cause for the development of the church as organization (while editing out Bousset’s value judgements about this) combined with the syncretistic idea of the previous century while at the same time trying to uphold the mystical side of Gnosticism based on the “divine spark” within humanity. He even went as far back as the early ideas that these worked in the fold of Christianity, but did so based on allegorical exegesis that led to their expulsion. To see the confusion Grant is forced into, he has a brief conclusion that “concludes” very little:

The basic question, as Jonas pointed out, is “what is Gnosticism?” But it must be answered in modern times by asking “what was Gnosticism?” The subject under discussion, whether or not alive today, is a phenomenon of the past, and therefore the problems of origins, sources, and possible development need to be considered as well as the problem of definition. With Jung, Jonas, and others, one finds the goal in an understanding of what gnosis and Gnosticism were as differentiated from their sources and even their influences. It is not enough to call Gnosticism “the acute Hellinization of Christianity” (Adolf von Harnack) or to trace its ingredients to Greek or Oriental ideas without explaining how and why men found it meaningful. It arose in age of syncretism, but it was not merely syncretistic. It was not precisely Greek, Jewish, or Christian, though elements of all existed in it. To a greater degree it was an anti-Greek, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian movement; in the 2^nd century, and in Manchaean form still later, it captured for a time the imaginations of such theologians as Basilides, Valentinus, and Augustine.[18] 

Unlike the previous entries where they simply changed the category aggressively, Grant does not change the category as much as he is unwilling to do much with it at all. He essentially is fixed as saying “it is nothing easy, but don’t ask me what it is.” It should be noteworthy that this strange, in some ways non-entry was accepted as reasonable.

Finally, Michael Williams’s current article on Gnosticism shows how a category can persist and be used in ways no one thought possible. Williams’s article is an argument against the category itself, yet it has to use the category to do so. In interest of full disclosure, Mike Williams was my graduate advisor for my Master of Arts program at the University of Washington and I find myself agreeing with most all his views on these sorts of ideas (I’d love to pretend that I came to these conclusions independently from his having the authority to pass me or fail me, but as we are molded by the people we surround ourselves with, a more honest approach is to simply admit the influence).

Williams begins by giving a very brief description of what might be considered a definition of “Gnosticism.” He then moves forward to describe a general type of myth based upon the Apocryphon of John that might be considered “Sethian” and a general type of myth that might be considered “Valentinian.” Williams is careful to point out that these myths have differences among them and the myths do not fall into the old clichés as might have been expected. He further argues that many of the texts often ascribed to the category have nothing at all to do with the myth and do not fit (the classic example of this is the Gospel of Thomas which is merely a sayings collection of Jesus and has no narrative at all – much less advanced mythology).[19]

Aside from the argument whether Williams is correct or not, the more important element is how the category is used. Throughout the history of Britannica’s entries, the category went from a sect of people using a common name, to a syncretistic Christian heresy, to a speculative philosophy, to a mystic religion, to a pre-Christian Jewish religion, to eventually not being a category at all. What is striking is not only how aggressively this changed, but that a publication such as Britannica was fine with the change. Britannica bases itself on sales and therefore, if they are find changing the status of the term to this extent, then the readership must also be fine with it. A further striking element that the silence supports is the complete lack of recognizing earlier views. Williams’s article is an exception in that he has no choice but to recognize what came before in order to challenge it. All of the rest of the entries change things aggressively and say nothing to anyone that this is something very new and out of line with the previously held thought. It seems that nearly anything is permissible for the description of Gnosticism so long as there is one.

Consequences and argument for why this discussion is helpful

To understand why these changes have taken place (and eventually why the scholarly world struggles to make any type of significant change for a sloppy category such as this), it is necessary to understand categories. Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that the Linnaean system of categorization has put the field of religion in a crisis that cannot be satisfied if we continue to use the taxonomy that a monothetic Linnaean taxonomy creates.

Linnaean taxonomy is the common logic developed by Carl Linnaeus to classify biological organization. It is an inverse pyramid that works from the most general down to the most specific. There are domains, kingdoms, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Each species is unique. It is considered monothetic in the sense that when it finally gets down to the level of species, there is only one single difference between different species in the same genus. For instance, one species of insect might be the same as another species with the only difference being the number of hairs on its legs. It becomes so specific that each biological entity must have every one of the characteristics of the category, or else it simply does not comply.[20]

Most people in the world have not studied Linnaeus or biological taxonomy. However, people tend to think in this matter (the same way people tend to think in terms of Baconian philosophy without realizing it). People can easily assume that a category is a definition – that all things in a category are “the same.” While most people are willing to accept that there is variation, the persistence of the category seems to suggest something about this Linnaean idea. While not everything has to be the “same,” the understanding is one the side that they are similar with differences rather than different with similarities.

The Encyclopedia Britannica is the paradigmatic example of the persistence of a category. Without categories, the encyclopedia cannot be organized. People are not encyclopedias, but they think in the same way – they need the general category. While it is easy enough to see how people can think in this way while being ignorant, it is more shocking to see how scholars have perceived the conclusion of Mike Williams’s book. They nearly always quote the one passage from the conclusion where he allows for comparison. In order to create comparison, he suggests there could be a very broad category that is not definitive of “biblical demiurgical myths.” Most, like Karen King have read that as suggesting that Williams does not want to do anything differently, he only wants to change the name of the category.[21] It seems that most people have missed Williams’s point and are still stuck in the idea of categories as Linnaean objects – which Williams has been historically opposed to saying.

The second problem with categories in a Linnaean taxonomy is that differences are emphasized among close partners. For instance, if there are two species that are very close to one another in proximity (supposing only one difference – therefore in the same genus), then what will be emphasized if one is only studying one of the species is that difference. However, I do not think many people would start by discussing an insect with the number of hairs it has. Instead, they would discuss the much more common elements. The same can be said of Gnosticism. If the category is based upon its relation to Christianity, all of the things it has in common with Christianity are likely going to be silenced in order to look at the differences.

Karen King’s argument that Gnosticism has been a category of the “other” in scholarship does not take seriously enough the place that popular understandings of the same has affected it. Looking at her analysis of the development of the term, history of religions school, the different styles of understanding the term after Nag Hammadi, and her conclusion suggesting future studies shows a type of surprising continuity rather than fluctuation in characterization. She rightly points out that the premises of the study have changed (for instance some are most interested in relation to church history, others in early sources, others in typology) but when it comes to actual characterization, they are relatively consistent in seeing Gnosticism as an “other.” This other then is a category in itself, insofar as all the diversity in the world, as long as they are considered from the angle of inside/outside will not be appreciated. This leads her to unfortunate conclusion that no matter what we call the thing, we will go about our business as usual doing things in a relatively similar manner. King’s argument, actually makes much more sense in the context of the popular view of taxonomy than in her intellectual history of the idea in the academy.

If there is one theme in the popular perception of Gnosticism is that it needs to be “the other.” The sketch that King presents of scholars on the same topic is not nearly as clear on that particular front (at least not as clear as she would seem to like it outside of the philosophy of hierarchy presented by Foucault). But in the popular Encyclopedia, until the year 2012, this is precisely what happened. It did not seem to matter as much what they called Gnosticism as long as they defined as different from something (in some cases Christianity, other cases Judaism, and in the one wild example of Bousset “true Christianity” in contrast to Catholicism). This is always what scholars present as “the very basics for the public” but in so doing, then make their entire field as suggesting “well, it’s not really like this” rather than educating the populace correctly in the first place. 

This leads to the final question for the scholarly world – is it really just for the sake of the popular conception that a category is maintained? There is an entire field of study that is Nag Hammadi and related texts. These scholars have their own meetings at national gatherings of religion rather than simply meeting in a 2^nd century Christianity group. The argument is that the challenge of these texts make it so that specialists want to work together. However, has not been the trend to challenge many of these ideas? Perhaps the best audience for a paper on the Apocalypse of Adam would be one which was quite familiar with The Shepherd of Hermas. So long as there is an isolation in the study, the category will continue – even though many scholars will belie its existence. The intense specialization might not be so difficult to get beyond and the absurdity of having to use a category to say it does not exist can finally be abandoned.

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[1] For a recent example, see Lance Jenott, The Gospel of Judas: Coptic Text, Translation, and Historical Interpretation of the ‘Betrayer’s Gospel’ (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

[2] Tomoka Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

[3] “Gnostics” Encyclopedia Britannica; Or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Compiled Upon a New Plan in which the different sciences and Arts are digested into distinct treatises or systems, vol. II (Edinburgh: Society of Gentlemen in Scotland, 1771), 724.

[4] “Gnostics” Encyclopedia Britannica 2^nd Edition vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1780), 3336.

[5] “Gnostics” Encyclopedia Britannica 3^rd edition, vol. 7 (Edinburgh: A. Bell and C. MacFarquahr, 1797), 798.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] John Tulloch, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica 8^th Edition, vol. X (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1856), 686.

[9] John Tulloch, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica 9^th Edition, vol. X (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1875), 700.

[10] Ibid., 701.

[11] William Bousset, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11^th Ed., vol. XII (Cambridge: Unversity Press, 1910), 152. 

[12] Ibid., 153.

[13] Ibid., 157.

[14] Ibid., 158.

[15] Gilles Quispel, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica 14^th Edition, vol. 10 (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: William Benton, 1963), 453.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., 454.

[18] Robert Grant, “Gnosticism” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15^th Edition, vol. 8 (Chicago: William Benton, 1973), 219

[19] Michael Williams, “Gnosticism,” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236343/Gnosticism> .

[20] Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), introduction.

[21] King, What is Gnosticism?, 168 and 214.