Most scholars use the term “Gnosticism” to refer to a variety of religious movements, both Christian and non-Christian, that flourished in the Greco-Roman world from the second to the fifth century. Other scholars use the term in a more restricted sense to refer to one of these movements, a specific group of Christians who called themselves “Gnostics.” Still others argue that the term “Gnosticism” is so vague that it should not be used at all. While the term eludes precise definition, I have found no way to avoid it. Here I will use the term in the first sense and focus on what I will call “Gnostic Christianity.” By this I mean a variety of religious groups that fused Christian elements with a Greek (primarily Platonic) world-view.

SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE

Our knowledge of Gnosticism comes from two sources: the writings of early Christian opponents of the Gnostics and texts written by the Gnostics themselves.

Writings of opponents

Until the middle of the twentieth century our knowledge of Gnostic Christianity came primarily from its opponents, various Proto-Orthodox Christian writers such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius. These authors regarded Gnostics as “heretics” and summarized their views in order to refute them. From the amount of attention that these writers gave to the matter, it is clear that Gnostic Christianity was widespread in the early Christian centuries. Some scholars have argued that the Gnostic Christians outnumbered the Proto-Orthodox Christians in some areas.

These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus uttered and that Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down.

1 And he said, “Who ever discovers the meaning of these sayings will not taste death.”

2 Jesus said, “One who seeks should not stop seeking until he finds. And when he finds, he will be troubled. And if he is troubled, he will be amazed, and he will rule over the All.”

3 Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you; if they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Instead the kingdom is inside of you and outside of you [Luke 17:20–21; cf. 113]. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the sons of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you will be in poverty, and you are the poverty.”

The Protestant reformer Martin Luther had a definite dislike for the letter of James. He called it “an epistle of straw” and tried to kick it out of the canon. He thought that James contradicted Paul's teaching on justification by faith and preached the Law rather than Christ. Luther was right that James has a different perspective than Paul, but before we remove it from the canon, we should understand why it differs. Unlike Paul, this letter represents the tradition of Judaic Christianity, a perspective found among Jewish Christians who continued to keep the Law. It consists primarily of instruction and encouragement to live a good life, emphasizing the need to “do” or to keep the ethical aspects of the Law. Like other literature of Judaic Christianity, it places little emphasis on faith in Jesus or his death, but regards Jesus primarily as the future Messiah.

JAMES WHO?

The author of the letter identifies himself simply as “James, a servant of God and Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). Tradition identifies him as James the brother of Jesus, the leader of the early church in Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus and the second-century church historian Hegesippus mention this James. According to these accounts, he was called “James the Just” because of his reputation for righteousness. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem put him to death shortly before the Romans destroyed the city.

While the letter probably claims this James as its author, we cannot automatically assume that James actually wrote it.

For an introduction to the Didache, see Chapter 28, pp. 396–403.

THE TWO PATHS

1:1 There are two paths, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two paths.

The path of life

2 The path of life is this: First you shall love the God who made you; second, your neighbor as yourself. And do not do to another anything that you do not want to happen to you.

3 The teaching of these words is this:

Bless those who curse you and pray for your enemies. Fast for those who persecute you. For what credit is it if you love those who love you? Don't the Gentiles do the same? For your part, however, love those who hate you and you will never have an enemy.

4 Abstain from fleshly and bodily desires.

If anyone gives you a blow on the right cheek, turn the other one to him as well, and you will be perfect. If anyone drafts you to go a mile, go with him two. If anyone takes your cloak, give him your tunic too. If anyone takes your property from you, don't ask to get it back, for you can't anyway.

5 Give to everyone who asks you and don't ask for it back. For the Father wishes us to give to all from the gifts that he himself has given.

The Gospels portray Jesus from the perspective of various authors and communities in the early church. They tell us what the early church believed about Jesus. But to what extent do these portrayals tell us about Jesus as he actually was? Clearly not everything in the Gospels can be taken as historical fact, since the Gospels themselves do not always agree. How can we distinguish between what is historically accurate and what is not? How can we distinguish between the Christ presented by the Gospels and the actual Jesus of history? These are questions that modern scholars have sought to answer as they have engaged in a quest for “the historical Jesus.”

EVALUATING THE SOURCES

Any inquiry into the past is limited by the extent and quality of the historical sources available. The quest for the historical Jesus must therefore begin by considering what sources give us information about Jesus and how reliable these sources are.

The relevant sources

Non-Christian sources While Roman literature contains a few references to Jesus, these tell us little more than that he existed (Tacitus, Annals 15.44; Suetonius, Claudius 25.4). Jesus also gets mentioned in the work of Josephus (Antiquities 18.63–64), but since this passage describes Jesus in glowing terms as the Messiah, something that Josephus the Jew would not have done, it was apparently inserted, or at least revised, by one of the Christian scribes who made copies of the manuscript.

The type of Christianity that ultimately became predominant was neither Judaic nor Gnostic. It developed out of Pauline, Johannine, and related forms of Christianity and consisted primarily of Gentiles. Christians of this type regarded their own perspective as orthodoxy (correct belief), while rejecting other perspectives as heresy (false doctrine). They also called their church “catholic,” meaning “universal.” Scholars call this type of early Christianity “Proto-Orthodoxy” or “early Catholicism,” because it was the forerunner of the types of Christianity that developed later, known as Orthodoxy and Catholicism. The Proto-Orthodox considered both Judaic Christianity and Gnostic Christianity as heresy and ultimately prevailed against both.

As I use the term, Proto-Orthodoxy developed after Paul and extended down to the first church council at Nicaea in 325, when the state church began to officially define orthodoxy and heresy. Here we will be concerned only with the emergence of Proto-Orthodoxy in the first part of this period, the end of the first and beginning of the second century.

RELIGION OF PROTO-ORTHODOXY

In the period we are studying, Proto-Orthodox Christianity had not yet developed a formal creed or statement of beliefs. Yet certain authors already equated Christian faith with a body of beliefs that had been handed down. Jude speaks of “the faith once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The Pastoral Epistles also frequently speak of “the faith” as if it were a body of doctrine (e.g. 1 Tim 1:19; 2 Tim 3:8; Titus 1:13).

Reading the book of Revelation for the first time can be a mind-boggling experience. Visions of strange beasts with multiple heads and eyes alternate with scenes of fearful destruction and vengeful glee. Here a woman in celestial apparel bears a child that is snatched from the jaws of a great, red dragon. There a beast with two horns makes everyone worship another beast with seven heads and ten horns. There is war in heaven and war on earth, punctuated with terrible plagues and judgments. Angels come on stage periodically, sealing foreheads, blowing trumpets, wielding sickles, and throwing bowls of wrath onto the earth. These scenes may attract or repulse us, fill us with confusion or fear. We may share what the narrator himself felt after describing one particularly strange vision: “I was amazed with great amazement” (17:6).

This book with its exotic imagery has had a perennial appeal for certain groups throughout Christian history. That appeal lies in the fact that it purports to describe the events leading up to the return of Jesus. At the end of the story, Jesus returns from heaven on a white horse to establish a kingdom on earth for a thousand years (a “millennium”), after which comes the final judgment. Prior to his return, a Satanic beast whose number is 666 heads up a ten-nation confederacy and mounts a persecution against Christians. Though the term “Antichrist” never appears in Revelation, interpreters have traditionally applied that term to this figure or some other in the book.

Christianity arose at the juncture of two primary cultures: Jewish and Hellenistic. We have seen how Judaism provided the soil out of which Christianity grew. Now we must consider how Hellenistic ideas shaped that growth.

TRADITIONAL GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGION

Orthodox Jews worshipped only one God. By contrast, the traditional religions of Greece and Rome involved the worship of many gods, a practice known as polytheism. They associated various deities (gods and goddesses) with the home, particular locations, and the world of nature.

Gods of the home

The Greek home centered around the hearth (hestia), an area of floor in front of the fireplace. A goddess of the same name (Hestia, Latin Vestia) presided over it. Before meals, the family would place food on the hearth as an offering to Hestia, and pour wine on the floor as an offering to the guardian of the house. In Roman religion too, household gods were thought to protect the family. The male head of the household functioned as family priest in performing the appropriate rituals to the gods.

Local and national gods

Other deities were associated with a particular location, city, or nation. The gods dwelt in temples and sacred groves, often represented by statues or other symbols, such as a unique rock. Worshippers brought them gifts and offered animal sacrifices burnt on altars. Later the practice of sacrifice declined, and worship consisted of prayer, hymns, burning of incense, and offering of lamps.

The apotheosis of Heracles

Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History 4.38.3–39.2

38.3 The god replied that they should take Heracles with his war gear to Oite and prepare a huge pyre near him. The rest, he said, would be up to Zeus.

4 When the men with Iolaus had done what had been commanded and were watching from a distance to see what would happen, Heracles, despairing of his situation, got on the pyre and began to urge each one who approached to light it. When no one dared, Philoctetes alone was persuaded to comply. Accepting the gift of Heracles' bow and arrows for his service, he lit the pyre. Immediately lightning bolts also fell from the air and the whole pyre was consumed. 5. After this, when the men with Iolaus came to collect the bones and found no bone at all, they assumed that Heracles, in accordance with the oracles, had passed over from men to gods.

39.1 Therefore they made offerings to the dead as to a hero and threw up burial mounds, after which they departed to Trachis … The Athenians were the first to honor Heracles with sacrifices as a god.

Like Hebrews, the Epistle of Barnabas illustrates the Proto-Orthodox concern for defining the relation between Christianity and Judaism. It argues that Christianity has superseded or replaced Judaism.

AUTHOR AND DATE

In the manuscripts of this letter, the designation “Epistle of Barnabas” appears at the end. Thus someone attributed the letter to Barnabas, the colleague and traveling companion of Paul. Most scholars, however, doubt that this postscript gives accurate information about the author. In the text of the letter, the author never identifies himself. While the author therefore remains anonymous, it is convenient to refer to him as “Barnabas.”

The precise date of the letter cannot be determined with certainty. One passage in it shows that it was written after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 ce:

Some scholars believe that this mention of rebuilding the Temple refers to Hadrian's building of a Roman shrine on the site of the Jewish Temple after the second Jewish war, and thus date the letter to 132 ce. The passage, however, refers explicitly only to the first Jewish war, when the Temple was destroyed.

In a second passage, the author interprets the vision of Daniel 7 as a reference to his own time.

When [people] have established altars and prescriptions and implements for sprinkling holy water, they bring the sacrifices: the farmer an ox from the plough, the shepherd a lamb, the goatherd a goat, someone else frankincense or a cake. The poor man, though, appeases the god merely by kissing his own right hand. The sacrificers, however, for I return to them, after decking the animal with garlands and finding out long before whether it is unblemished, lest they slaughter something of no use, bring it to the altar and kill it in the sight of the god, as the animal lows something mournful – probably avoiding inauspicious language and already piping a halftone for the sacrifice. Who would not suppose that the gods enjoy seeing all this? And though the placard says that anyone without pure hands should not enter the area sprinkled with holy water, there stands the priest himself stained with blood and, just like the Cyclops, cutting it up and removing the entrails and extracting the heart and pouring the blood around the altar – for what is not pious when sacrificing? On top of all this, after kindling a fire, he places on it the goat, carrying it in the skin itself, and the sheep, carrying it in the wool itself.

Peter and Paul

1 Clement 5

5:1 But to cease from the examples of ancient men, let us come to those who became contenders more recently. Let us take the noble examples of our generation. 2 Because of jealousy and envy, the greatest and most righteous pillars were persecuted and contended unto death. 3 Let us set before our eyes the good apostles: 4 Peter, who because of unjust jealousy bore not one or two but many struggles and, having thus testified, went to the deserved place of glory. 5 Because of jealousy and strife, Paul showed the prize of endurance. 6 Seven times in bonds, exiled, stoned, having been a herald in both the East and the West, he gained the noble fame of his faith. 7 After teaching the whole world righteousness and coming to the limit of the West and testifying before the rulers, he was then released from the world and taken up into the holy place, becoming an exceedingly great model of endurance.

Social code

1 Clement 21:6–8

21:6 Let us reverence the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood was given for us. Let us respect those who rule us; let us honor the elders; let us train the young with training in the fear of God.

The Messiah in Psalm of Solomon 17

Psalms of Solomon 17:21–45

21 Behold, Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, in the time which you have chosen, to reign over Israel your servant. 22 And undergird him with strength to crush unjust rulers, to cleanse Jerusalem from Gentiles who trample it down with destruction, 23 and with the wisdom of righteousness to expel sinners from any inheritance, to smash the sinner's arrogance like clay pots…

26 He will gather a holy people, which he will lead with righteousness, and he will judge the tribes of a people sanctified by the Lord its God. 27 He will not allow injustice any longer to be lodged in their midst, and no person who knows evil will dwell with them. For he will know that all of them are sons of God, 28 and he will distribute them by their tribes upon the land…

30 He will have nations of peoples serve him under his yoke, and he will glorify the Lord with a banner over all the earth…

32 He himself will be king, righteous, taught by God, over them.

The next several chapters illustrate what seems to be the most common concern of Proto-Orthodox literature: conflict between different groups within the church. Conflicts generally arose over questions of doctrine and leadership: what should be taught and who had the right to decide. Generally the conflict in the church involved two groups, one with a Proto-Orthodox perspective and one with a different perspective. The literature that we are examining gives the Proto-Orthodox point of view, attacking the other perspective. It does not always clearly explain the other point of view. The divergent perspective may not have been the same in every case, but when we do get information about it, it often looks like some early form of Gnostic Christianity. For example, the Johannine Epistles and the letters of Ignatius combat a type of docetism. The Pastoral Epistles and the letters of Jude and 2 Peter also combat some perspective within the church that may have been Gnostic in character. 1 Clement, examined in the present chapter, gives no clue concerning the type of perspective being opposed.

HISTORICAL SETTING OF 1 CLEMENT

The letter entitled 1 Clement belongs to the collection of writings known as the Apostolic Fathers. The opening words tell us that it was written from “the church of God that sojourns at Rome to the church of God that sojourns at Corinth.” The author writes from Rome to protest against a conflict that has divided the church at Corinth.

The Gospel of Matthew presents the story of Jesus from the perspective of Jewish Christianity. The author combines traditions from several different Jewish-Christian communities to present a portrait of Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes. Here Jesus is not only the Davidic Messiah, but also a lawgiver like Moses, confirming the Jewish Law but going beyond it.

AUTHOR OF THE GOSPEL

Early in the history of the church, the view arose that the first Gospel in the canon was written by Matthew, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and an eyewitness of his ministry. Most scholars doubt this tradition, primarily because the author relies on a number of earlier sources. This is true whether one accepts the two-document hypothesis or a more complex theory. It seems unlikely that an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry, such as the apostle Matthew, would need to rely on others for information about it.

Another tradition also refers to Matthew as an author, but does not seem to be speaking about the Gospel of Matthew as we have it. About 140 ce, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, wrote,

Here Papias describes a work written in Hebrew (or Aramaic), while Matthew is written in Greek and does not appear to be a translation of a Semitic Gospel.