Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. Philip Jenkins (original) (raw)
2003, The Journal of Religion
Hidden gospels. How the search for Jesus lost its way. By Philip Jenkins. Pp. viij. New York-Oxford : Oxford University Press, . $. JEH () ; DOI : .\S Attempts to write ' objective ' lives of Christ or to embark on yet another quest for the historical Jesus have had a long tradition especially among radical theologians. In recent years outrageous views have seemed to be in the ascendancy ; the more heretical the conclusion the more likely it is to be publicised. From Allegro and his sacred mushroom of through Elaine Pagels on the Gnostic Gospels to the publicity-seeking work of John Dominic Crossan, Robert Eisenmann and Barbara Thiering the general reader is likely to know their unorthodox rewritings of early Christianity. It is this phenomenon that Jenkins, an historian at Pennsylvania State University, investigates in this timely and well-researched book. One recurring theme is that most of their ' heresies ' are not new ; he cites precedents for them from writings of a century or more ago. But the popularity of similar views nowadays is attributed to the growth of academic religious studies departments, the rise in feminist studies (sic) and the willingness of publishers and the media to pander to sensationalist opinions. Radical historians of religion are fascinated by Christian origins but the origins they wish to see are made to conform to the requirements of modern (secular) society's agenda, where an anti-authoritarian stance and liberal values are buttressed by a revisionist history of Jesus, which is made compatible with such opinions by an uncritical use of certain ancient noncanonical texts. Contemporary practitioners have a large number of esoteric or hitherto lost texts to hand. Hidden documents whose origins are obscure and whose discovery involves subterfuge grab the headlines. The Nag Hammadi codices, especially the Gospel of Thomas and the Dead Sea Scrolls, figure prominently in these rewritings. Valuable though all these texts are, their insights are to do with sectarian movements and should not be used indiscriminately as foundational documents for earliest Christianity. Similarly many of the New Testament Apocrypha give valuable insights into popular piety from the second century onwards but are of little historical value for knowledge of the New Testament era, whose dramatis personae they write about. By misusing such writings a genuinely academic quest for the historical Jesus has been hijacked-hence this book's subtitle. In successive chapters Jenkins shows how many studies of ' Q ', Thomas, the elusive Secret Gospel of Mark and other texts are biased, uncritical or just three prefaces Schweitzer wrote to his first, second and sixth editions. Although not an entirely new translation, but rather a major overhaul of the earlier one, this edition is a timely resource for English-language theology. Making Schweitzer's final text available to English readers for the first time is invaluable not only for those still engaged in a quest for the historical Jesus but also for all theologians engaged in Christology. This book lies behind all the Christological projects of the twentieth century and its impact is not exhausted yet. S J' C, J C O The Gospel and Ignatius of Antioch. By Charles Thomas Brown. (Studies in Biblical Literature, .) Pp. xiiij. New York : Peter Lang, . £. JEH () ; DOI : .\Sx Based on a dissertation for Loyola University, this is a study of Ignatius' use and application of the term ευ0 αγγε! λιον (Gospel). The first part of the book analyses the contexts and associated vocabulary and concepts in Ignatius, and in other early Christian literature. Here Brown builds on earlier scholarship in denying that Ignatius uses the term of, or is dependent on (a) written Gospel(s) ; while acknowledging Ignatius' use of pre-formed traditions, he emphasises the oral, preached nature of ' Gospel ' in the letters, and its particular focus on the passion and resurrection of Jesus (as in Paul). The second part develops his argument that in Ignatius, as in other early Christian literature, the term regularly defines the limits of acceptable belief and practice : in contemporary jargon, it is to do with identity and boundaries, binding insiders together and excluding outsiders. In effect, this results in an exegetically based study of Ignatius' thought, particularly his Christology, with rather less of an ecclesiological focus than in many analyses. There is little here that is startling, and the approach is expository and sympathetic, inclined to affirm Ignatius' view of the unity of the Church and of heresy. As such it does serve as an accessible introduction to Ignatius ' thought, if not to recent more critical analyses of his rhetoric. It is well-produced, if somewhat expensive for its length. K' C, J L L Pneuma. Funktionen des theologischen Begriffs in fruW hchristlicher Literatur.