DCHindley

Andrew,

But there is a distinct difference between the Letter of Peter to James and the Clementine Homilies when it comes to what exactly Moses delivered to the 70 elders.

In the letter, it is the books of the Law, along with instructions how to teach it.

LETTER OF PETER TO JAMES:

CHAP. I.--DOCTRINE OF RESERVE.

Knowing, my brother, your eager desire after that which is for the advantage of us all, I beg and beseech you not to communicate to any one of the Gentiles the books of my preachings which I sent to you, nor to any one of our own tribe before trial; but if any one has been proved and found worthy, then to commit them to him, after the manner in which Moses delivered his books to the Seventy who succeeded to his chair. Wherefore also the fruit of that caution appears even till now. For his countrymen keep the same rule of monarchy and polity everywhere, being unable in any way to think otherwise, or to be led out of the way of the much-indicating Scriptures. For, according to the rule delivered to them, they endeavour to correct the discordances of the Scriptures, if any one, haply not knowing the traditions, is confounded at the various utterances of the prophets. Wherefore they charge no one to teach, unless he has first learned how the Scriptures must be used. And thus they have amongst them one God, one law, one hope.

CHAP. II.--MISREPRESENTATION OF PETER'S DOCTRINE.

In order, therefore, that the like may also happen to those among us as to these Seventy, give the books of my preachings to our brethren, with the like mystery of initiation, that they may indoctrinate those who wish to take part in teaching; for if it be not so done, our word of truth will be rent into many opinions. …

CHAP. III.--INITIATION.

Therefore, that no such thing may happen, for this end I have prayed and besought you not to communicate the books of my preaching which I have sent you to any one, whether of our own nation or of another nation, before trial; but if any one, having been tested, has been found worthy, then to hand them over to him, according to the initiation of Moses, by which he delivered his books to the Seventy who succeeded to his chair; in order that thus they may keep the faith, and everywhere deliver the rule of truth, explaining all things after our tradition; lest being themselves dragged down by ignorance, being drawn into error by conjectures after their mind, they bring others into the like pit of destruction.

It even seems to me to reflect the tradition of the seventy (two) Jewish elders who translated the Law into Greek for Ptolemy Philadelphus, each one carefully comparing their different renderings to achieve an agreed upon text, as expressed in the Epistle of Aristeas 301–302:

"Three days later Demetrius took the [72] men and ... assembled them in a house, ... and invited them to carry out the work of translation, since everything that they needed for the purpose was placed at their disposal. So they set to work comparing their several results and making them agree, and whatever they agreed upon was suitably copied out under the direction of Demetrius."

An even more miraculous version of this is also found in the Talmud, Tractate Megillah 9a-9b:

"King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: 'Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher.' God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did."

In Homily II, using the same term "Seventy" to describe the "certain chosen men" who "might instruct such of the people as chose [to receive it]", a written law is clearly being assumed. It was only "after a little the written law had added to it certain falsehoods contrary to the *law of God* [or *the only God*]". In fact, the additions to the Law were created by men under the influence of the "wicked one," who subverted their good intentions.

HOMILY II CHAP. XXXVIII.--CORRUPTION OF THE LAW.

"For the Scriptures have had joined to them many falsehoods against God on this account. The prophet Moses having by the order of God delivered the law, with the explanations, to certain chosen men, some seventy in number, in order that they also might instruct such of the people as chose [to receive it], after a little the written law had added to it certain falsehoods contrary to the *law of God*,[or *the only God*] who made the heaven and the earth, and all things in them; the wicked one having dared to work this for some righteous purpose. And this took place in reason and judgment, that those might be convicted who should dare to listen to the things written against God, and those who, through love towards Him, should not only disbelieve the things spoken against Him, but should not even endure to hear them at all, even if they should happen to be true, judging it much safer to incur danger with respect to religious faith, than to live with an evil conscience on account of blasphemous words.

In the next chapter, Peter reveals the tactical side of his preaching: "We do not wish to say in public that these chapters are added to the Bible, since we should thereby perplex the unlearned multitudes ... Wherefore we are under a necessity of assenting to the false chapters, and putting questions in return ... concerning them, to draw [the disputant] into a strait, and to [then] give in private an explanation of the chapters that are spoken against God to the well-disposed after a trial of their faith." In other words, debate with those who call attention to the "blasphemies" by calling attention to contrary true statements, so that when a confused listener comes to him privately for answers he can reveal what is "true" to him.

HOMILY II CHAP. XXXIX.--TACTICS.

"Simon, therefore, as I learn, intends to come into public, and to speak of those chapters against God that are added to the Scriptures, for the sake of temptation, that he may seduce as many wretched ones as he can from the love of God. For we do not wish to say in public that these chapters are added to the Bible, since we should thereby perplex the unlearned multitudes, and so accomplish the purpose of this wicked Simon. For they not having yet the power of discerning, would flee from us as impious; or, as if not only the blasphemous chapters were false, they would even withdraw from the word. Wherefore we are under a necessity of assenting to the false chapters, and putting questions in return to him concerning them, to draw him into a strait, and to give in private an explanation of the chapters that are spoken against God to the well-disposed after a trial of their faith."

Yet in Homily III the Law was not delivered to the "seventy wise men" in written form, but oral. ""The law of God was given by Moses, without writing". "After ... Moses was taken up, [the Law] was written by some one, but not by Moses". The suggestion is made that this occurred "about 500 years" "after Moses," when it was "found lying in the temple [in the reign of Josiah, 2 Kings 22-23] which was built [by Solomon, as opposed to the Tabernacle]". In fact, "Moses ... did not write it; but those who wrote it ... were not prophets."

HOMILY III CHAP. XLVII.--FOREKNOWLEDGE OF MOSES.

Then said Peter: "The law of God was given by Moses, without writing, to seventy wise men, to be handed down, that the government might be carried on by succession. But after that Moses was taken up, it was written by some one, but not by Moses. For in the law itself it is written, 'And Moses died; and they buried him near the house of Phogor, and no one knows his sepulchre till this day.' But how could Moses write that Moses died? And whereas in the time after Moses, about 500 years or thereabouts, it is found lying in the temple which was built, and after about 500 years more it is carried away, and being burnt in the time of Nebuchadnezzar it is destroyed; and thus being written after Moses, and often lost, even this shows the foreknowledge of Moses, because he, foreseeing its disappearance, did not write it; but those who wrote it, being convicted of ignorance through their not foreseeing its disappearance, were not prophets."

I assume that this kind of constantly moving target is why you call the history of transmission of the Clementine literature "incredibly complex."

Of course, that doesn't change my suggestion that the Letter to Theodore shares characteristics with the Letter of Peter to James, such that both function as explanatory documents meant to excuse why an apocryphal work (the Secret Gospel and the Homilies respectively) was only revealed many years after the time the events it portrays were supposed to have occurred.

Whether the Theodore "cover letter" was composed in the 3rd or 4th century (when the works of Hippolytus would not be yet lost) or in recent times is still in dispute, but one has to wonder just how many of these apocryphal gospels and acts were out there in antiquity, and simply not preserved by sheer chance?

DCH

Roger Pearse

I suspect there were enormous numbers. The Decretum Gelasianum lists 60-odd, and also indicates the exasperation that the clergy felt towards those who wanted to read them in church as gospel.

It's probably best to see these sorts of apocrypha, largely originating in the 4th century and on, as a form of folk-tale, subject to ad hoc modification as seemed to make the story better or worse. They perhaps are best related to hagiography.

Apocrypha written for purposes of deception or for ideological reasons, such as the gospel of Mani, are a different genre of text, of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Scholarship has moved away from explaining "Leucius Charinus". This text makes a refence to this author of the earliest gnostic Acts as "all the books which Leucius the disciple of the devil made.". The exasperation of the clergy is expressedin the following terms:

....to be not merely rejected but eliminated
from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church
and with their authors and the followers of its authors
to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever.

Why were these works deemed heretical? I think they were "the unofficial stories". Someone fiction writer (or club) cashed in on Jesus and the Apostles at the time when these names became famous (ie: Nicaea). But the church - of that age - knew exactly what to do, as we see above.


By my count there are at least over one hundred such new testament apocryphal texts. I have created two separate tabulations:

(1) The Nag Hammadi Codices - as a subset of the class (This is more or less completed)

(2) The Gnostic Gospels and Acts etc - as the common title for all the manuscripts classified as "new testament apocrypha". (This at the moment is in draft phase only).


Momigliano puts forward Athanasius as the inventor of christian hagiography, and the authors of the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts, etc" were active well before Athanasius assembled his "Life of Anthony". Perhaps they might be seen as "unofficial hagiography"?


We do not yet know for sure what Mani wrote in the 3rd century. Certainly he was a religious leader with apostles who converted many people in the ROman empire to Manichaeanism, and established monasteries far and wide. His books and letters, that he wrote to his apostles, were gathered up after his crucifixion in the Persian captial city, and were preserved in the face of firstly Persian, then Roman (Diocletian) and then Christian (4th century) oppression. I would be reluctant to classify the Gospel of Mani as deceptive ideology, until I can see clearly through the known deceptive ideology of the orthodox heresiological "histories", and separate fact from fiction. And as a postnote, I am presently inclined to think that the Mani dealt with "deception" as "maya" in the same way as Buddha. This is in contrast to the gJohn that deals with "deception" as physical people actively deceiving people by not confessing that "Jesus" had "appeared in the flesh".

DCHindley

Just to show that I am willing to speculate about the possible "dark side" of Morton Smith, let me say that if those who don't like the smell of his discovery of the Letter to Theodore want to be taken as other than hyper vigilant knee jerk reactionaries who are akin to McCarthyites finding communists under every tree, then they should concentrate on evidence that does not involve Smith simply imitating the plot line of a pulp fiction trade novel that saw Nazi spies behind every blindly misled higher critic. Lets be frank, it says more about the ones who propose this than it does about Smith.

Anywhoo (a nod to the Banana Splits daytime kiddie show of the late 1960s), now to serious matters. What again is supposed to be Smith's motive? A desire to embarrass the smarty pants big brass scholars who denied him tenor at Brown University in 1955?

He had managed to secure other teaching positions after that, including Drew for 2 years and had just secured his position at Columbia the year he visited Mar Saba for the 2nd time in 1958 and "finding" the letter. Columbia, btw, did grant him tenure long before he published his book on Secret Mark in the 1970s. Why do this unless it was meant to embarrass a specific person or set of persons at Brown? I think that his work while at Brown and the work of his co-faculty at the time needs to be researched.

However, back to my "observation" in the OP. My observation is that if Smith were looking for a model for his discovery, it would be how Christian pseudepigraphic literature was introduced in antiquity. There was frequently a letter or preface to explain how it only recently came to light. These "excuse texts" range from "We found it hidden in a wall" to it was hitherto kept secret by little known sects under restriction of tremendous oaths of secrecy that the "present" readers don't care about. So it is in the Letter of Peter to James regarding Peter's preaching in the Clementine Homilies (as opposed to the Clementine Recognitions). However, these "excuse texts" tend to give themselves away through anachronisms or "aporia" (faulty editing that doesn't tie up sources well). In fact, the entire scholarly tome may have been the excuse text and the Letter to Theodore and the Secret Gospel are the pseudograph. If Smith was doing this as a mockery of biblical scholars either at Drew or in general, there should be clues, true, but not "stoopid" ones about his bald head or Morton Salt. C'mon! They should be clues that clearly point to the scholarly tome (or the Letter to Theodore) as an "excuse text" that he thought experts might overlook.

By the time he published the books on Secret Mark in the mid 1970s he had already been granted tenure at Columbia and things were going hunky dory. While I suppose he could have intended to eventually expose the hoax along with a published article or monograph on the state of biblical scholarship or scholarship at Drew, for whatever reason he decided against it. Perhaps the criticism was not going in the direction he had hoped (it tended to concentrate on him as a hoaxter), and he felt it best to let the issue die (he never made anything of "the discovery" in his own future research).

You don't embarrass biblical scholars by puns and "Blues Clues" level clues.

DCH

stephan huller

But let's face it - most of the people in the world today are too busy for anything other than 'Blues Clues.' The alternative is to have to rethink and challenge traditional assumptions about the way the gospels were developed. And what are those assumptions? I honestly don't even know what to say about that.

What people think Irenaeus says about the fourfaced gospel and what he actually says is very different. On some level there were supposed to be four (undoubtedly owing to some Platonic or Pythagorean argument that is lost now). The Letter to Theodore 'makes sense' insofar as it helps get us from Papias and Justin (where all the gospels are hypomnemata and related terms) to what emerges in the Eastern tradition - i.e. 'gospels of concord' or 'diatessarons.'

To be sure, the Irenaean concept is left in the dust (or unknown) to Clement. But like I said at the beginning, I have been studying this stuff for over twenty years now and I still don't know how we get from 'according to Mark' or Matthew and the rest of the hypomnemata (i.e. 'memory aids' or 'notes' of what Jesus said or did) to the bald statement of Irenaeus that the bundling of these incomplete and imperfect texts somehow transformed them into something resembled the 'fourfold pattern' of the universe.

Yet how do you transform a hypomnema into the divine word of God. Even if you have four of such 'notes' they still can't be holy writ. The hypomnemata were incompatible with the concept of 'Law' or 'heavenly Torah.' Whether it is four green tomatoes or one green tomato, there is still the same difficulty when trying to make tomato sauce.

The Letter to Theodore gets us from the portrait of the gospels as unfinished writings to something polished and ultimately Platonic or Pythagorean. It just makes sense where as Irenaeus's formulation - while second nature to most of us - is senseless and incomprehensible.

Comparing the four hayyot to something written on the back of a shopping list is simply ludicrous. It is so silly the fourfold gospel isn't even included in the Nicene Creed (otherwise Jacob of Edessa and his ilk would likely not have signed on).

The point is that when you really think about it the development towards a finished product like the Diatessaron or the Marcionite gospel or the Manichaean gospel is implicit in any description of the canonical texts as hypomnemata. I think I could explain this to NT scholars until the day I died and they wouldn't understand what I am getting at. They are already set in their ways.