For the past 200 years or so
the Bible has come to play an increasingly central part in the daily life of
ordinary Christians. It wasn’t always the case. Go further back and few
ordinary Christians could either read or could afford their own copy. Go
further back again and the Bible did not exist in their language. Even further
and the Latin version was quite rare. Take another step to the third century
and there wasn’t even a common agreement on which books should be included in the
Bible. And if we go back to the first generation after Jesus – say the 60s C.E.
– and most of the New Testament wasn’t even written down and some of it didn’t
even exist. How did the church cope!
Secret gospels
Recently I bought a new
translation of the Gospels. I expected a slim book with a fresh reading of the
four Gospels we’re so familiar with. What I got was a hefty volume that included
a total of 21 documents on the life and sayings of Jesus. Our familiar Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John were present but so were the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret
Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Mary.
Pagan philosophy
All of these documents were
available to the church by the third and fourth centuries but most were
rejected as Scripture. The main reason for this exclusion was because of their
tendency to downplay the human side of Jesus. That is, they were gnostic
gospels heavily influenced by the main pagan philosophy of the time. This gives
us a glimpse into how the early church viewed Scripture. They read the documents
in the main not as history books to be mined for literal truth but as theology
and it was based on their theology that some were included and some excluded.
So when we read the Gospels
today it may be helpful to know that it is because of their theological
viewpoint that we have them in the Bible.
