Dan Wallace: Why Pseudepigrapha Books Were Not Included In New Testament Scripture

https://youtu.be/xgjEMeSS77Y
How did the ancient church view forgeries? If they discovered that a book wasn’t written by the
person who claimed to write it, they would always throw it. It was to be rejected. It doesn’t
matter if it was squeaky clean, orthodox, etc. It didn’t matter. The fact is that book was not part
of Scripture. There was a letter discovered from the second century called Paul’s letter to the
Laodiceans. It was a pastiche from four different letters that Paul wrote. It is completely
orthodox. They are quotations from four of Paul’s letters. But it isn’t written by Paul. It was
written in the second century. It didn’t go into the Canon.
There is 3 Corinthians. This book is also orthodox. It was written by a man who did it
because he loved the apostle Paul and he put Paul’s name on it. When it was discovered that this
was a forgery that he wrote, he was kicked out of the church. 3 Corinthians wasn’t considered as
Scripture.
The Epistle of Barnabas. It is considered one of the Apostolic Fathers documents. It
is largely orthodox in its views. Its basic perspective is evangelical. But no one thought it was
written by Barnabas. In fact, people said that it was a good book and it was important to read.
In the Muratorian Canon, it is said that the epistle of Barnabas is good and that it should be
read. But it’s not Scripture because it was written in the second century.
This is a major criterion. If someone wants to say to you, “Why doesn’t this book go into
the Canon?” Some will say that there are “lost books of the Bible” that never made it in and that
the early church suppressed them. But, in fact, the early church didn’t suppress them. We’re
talking about first-century documents. The first-century documents are those that are written by
apostles or the associates. And those are in the Scriptures.
There were a couple of other books that were apparently orthodox but didn’t make it in.
We don’t even have those any more. The epistle to the Hebrews, an apparent orthodox book.
We only read about it but don’t have it.
The early church didn’t view these forgeries as benign forgeries. They were guilty of
pseudepigrapha or of lying. Dr. E. Earle Ellis (was at Southwestern Bapt. Sem.) writes, “In the
patristic church, apostolic pseudepigrapha (books that were allegedly written by the apostles but
really were not), when discovered, were excluded from the church’s canon. This applied whether
or not the pseudepigrapha were orthodox or heretical.” Ellis also says, “The hypothesis of
innocent apostolic pseudepigrapha* appears to be designed to defend the canonicity of certain
New Testament writings that are, at the same time, regarded as pseudepigrapha.** It is a
modern invention that has no evident basis in the attitude or writings of the apostolic and
patristic church...”*** This is from E. Earle Ellis, The Making of New Testament Documents.
*Dan Wallace calls them “benign forgeries.”
**There are scholars who say Peter didn’t write 2 Peter but we still keep it in the
Scripture. Or that Paul didn’t write Ephesians or the Pastoral epistles but we still keep it in the
Scripture. Ellis is saying that isn’t a valid approach.
***This is also a position with which Bart Ehrman agrees. The ancient church never
accepted these forgeries once they discovered they were forgeries. Where Ehrman disagrees with
Ellis is that believes that most of the NT books were forgeries. Ellis would not agree with that.
Second question: How did the ancient forgers view Christ? You’ve heard about these
books but they can gnaw at you or scare you if you’ve never read them. Here are some excerpts
from these ancient forgeries. Wallace encourages us to read this literature. We shouldn’t be
afraid of it, esp. in pursuit of the truth.
The Infancy of the Gospel of Thomas (this is different from the Gospel of Thomas):
“When a boy accidentally ran into the boy Jesus, Jesus declared, ‘You shall not go further on your
way.’ And the child immediately fell down and died.” That’s the kind of Jesus I wanted to play
with as a kid! (Haha) Some of the villagers complained of Joseph, asking him to take his family
and leave. “Since you have such a child, you cannot dwell with us the village. Or else, teach him
to bless and not to curse, for he has slain our children.” Did you ever know that Jesus was like
that as a kid? I don’t think I want this book in my canon.
When you begin to read the Apocryphal works, you get the sense of the spirit of God
who shows you what the ring of truth is. These books don’t have it. These books, the
twenty-seven that belong in the NT do.
In the Arabic Infancy Gospel, which was written in the fifth or sixth century (there is
some evidence that the Koran is acquainted with this particular document; Mohammed really
had an awareness of these apocryphal gospels far more than he did of the NT; his reflections on
the NT are skewed through the data of these apocryphal gospels), we read of the mischievous
child Jesus. One day he goes into a dyer’s workshop and puts all the cloths into a cauldron full of
indigo. It ruins the cloths. When dyer finds out, he tells Jesus, “What have you done to me, son
of Mary? You have ruined my reputation in the eyes of all the people of the city. For everyone
orders a suitable color for himself, but you have come and spoiled everything.” The child Jesus
responds, “I will change the color of any cloth which you wish to be changed.” When Jesus
performs this miracle, the villagers are amazed and they praise God. Unlike any miracle in the
canonical Gospels, this is one Jesus did to make up for the trouble he had caused. So it’s not the
same Jesus we read about in the Gospels.
Another time he had playmates in this gospel that he turns (them) into goats. He then he
plays a tune on some instrument. They begin dancing around him in a circle. He then turns
them back into children and they’re happy again. It’s better than the internet!
The Gospel of Thomas you probably have heard about. It was discovered in 1945 at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Along with a number of other books, this is an extremely important
work. It does claim to be written by Thomas Didimus (the twin). There was an early tradition
(second century) that Thomas was Jesus’ twin. In the Syriac church and the Coptic church, to
some degree, there was a hint that was the case. This book isn’t technically gnostic (that salvation
comes by way of knowledge and that the material world is evil and the spirit world is good). The
gospel of Judas is thoroughly gnostic. In it, it says that Judas is told by Jesus that “You need to
betray me. You will be a hero in doing so because you will set my Spirit free (or “me” free) from
this shell in which I am stuck.” In other words, “You will set me free from my material realm.”
Judas, here, is viewed as a hero by Jesus because spirit is good and material is evil. It is
thoroughly in tune with gnostic ideas. The Jesus Seminar, when they discussed what the words of
Jesus’ words were, voted on whether Jesus said something (legitimately) or not. They voted by
beads. They decided to publish the Gospel of Thomas along with Matt, Mark, Luke, John. It
was translated for publication (The Gospel of Jesus: According to the Jesus Seminar?). It has the colors
like the colors of the beads: red, pink, grey, black. The Gospel of Thomas has more red in it
(voted as actual words) than the Gospel of John! It had more red (considered and voted as more
words of Jesus that are authentic) than the Gospel of Mark! Even more than Matthew. Luke is
the only one that has more than the Gospel of Thomas as far as the Jesus Seminar is concerned.
What you find here is that there isn’t a narrative: there is no city, place, even the resurrection. No
miracles. What you see is a “talking head” gospel. At the end there is a discussion between Peter
and Mary Magdalene. Then Jesus interrupts the discussion. Simon Peter said to the rest of the
apostles, “Let Mary leave us because women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “Look, I shall
lead her so that I will make her male in order that she also may become a living spirit resembling
you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Do
you really want that in your NT? It is Saying 114. Ladies, do you want that in your NT? This is
so politically incorrect that any time I talk about some one who actually says that we think the
gospel of Thomas should go into the NT and replace the gospel of John, I say that Saying 114 is
a bit of a problem for me. I’ll quote this to them and they’ll say, “That’s not authentic. It’s really
not a part of the original gospel of Thomas.” We only have one copy of the gospel of Thomas!
And that saying is in there. How do you say that it’s not part of it? (Laughter in the audience.)
There are some problems with these apocryphal gospels. They were late, sometimes
centuries later than the NT. The key is that they were late. They were second century documents
or later—even as late as the eighth century. Secondly, although they were popular with the
masses, church leaders rightfully condemned them as silly and sometimes as heretical. Thirdly,
they usually contained Docetic or Gnostic ideas of Jesus, which is essentially a separation of the
material world from the spiritual world, one is good and the other is evil. Docetic ideas had to do
with Jesus only appearing as human but he really is divine. One of the struggles of the
second-century church wasn’t with the deity of Christ. What they weren’t so sure about was the
humanity of Christ. Let’s look in some of the other apocryphal works.
In the Acts of John, John says, “Sometimes when I meant to touch him [speaking about
Jesus], I met with him a material and solid body. But at other times when I felt him, his substance
was immaterial and incorporeal, as if it did not exist at all [this was before the resurrection]. ...
And I often wished, as I walk with him, to see his footprint, whether it appeared on the ground
(for I saw him as it were raised up from the earth), and I never saw it.” This is not the historical
Jesus. This is not the incarnate God who becomes man to dwell among people. This is similar to
the Gospel of Peter which has Jesus coming out of the tomb at his resurrection and he has his
head above the clouds, accompanied with him two angels walking next to him, standing
hundreds of feet tall.
The Acts of Paul, Paul is facing down the gaping jaw of a large lion in the Ephesian
amphitheater (theater, not amphitheater), which seats 24,000 people and is still standing there
today. Unshaken, Paul approaches the beast and simply reminds the creature that he had
baptized it (after the lion uttered his confession of faith, of course) some time before. The lion
then helps Paul to escape. Paul jumps on the lion and the run away from the theater.
Conclusion: You get a sense that these books are looney, bizarre, and embellishing. When
you read this literature and then go back and the read the NT, you’ll see that the NT is really
subdued. When they talk about the miracles of Jesus, they give you great details but they don’t
have embellishments that goes all over the map and says we have a Jesus that is hundreds of feet
tall when he comes out of the grave.
The canonical Gospels, and most of the rest of the NT books, were accepted from the
earliest period. Twenty of the twenty-seven books were accepted in the second century by all
people throughout the church. The other seven it took some time before acceptance. Everything
was accepted by the fourth century. They were not given to bizarre embellishments as we saw
these other books have. They proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth as both man and more than a man.