Mellon Seminar Reflection 11: Rites of Passage

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I spent last week reading older materials published in the early 1900s and then in the 1960s about rites of passage (life crisis, induction, and calendrical rites). I found the material exhilarating. I went back to Arnold van Gennep who wrote a book in French in 1908,

The Rites of Passage

. I found the work to be very complex and thought-provoking which I wasn't expecting. The experience makes me even more determined to study materials written before 1960 (or some might even say 1980). Just because we have learned some things since then, doesn't mean that the older studies have no value or that their methodological approaches are empty.

I also learned that we need to reread these materials because their reception history in secondary literature has misread or devalued the original material in such a way that the secondary discourse no longer is faithful to the old author. For instance, in van Gennep's work, I found very complex and nuanced thinking, far more than contemporary references to him grant him. His biggest 'receiver' was Victor Turner who famously studied the 'limen' or state of marginality that novices-intitiates find themselves in when going through rites of passage. Turner refers again and again to van Gennep in one brilliant essay after another, crediting van Gennep with the idea that rites of passage are characterized by three stages: a stage of separation from normalcy; a stage of liminality or marginality; and a stage of aggregation into normalcy restructured.

Van Gennep does say this, but not quite as directly as we are led to believe. He, in fact, nuances it substantially. First he analyzes these three, not as stages or phases, but as three kinds of rites of passage, thereby subdividing rites of passage into rites of separation, transition, and incorporation. He explains that these types of rites of passage are not developed to the same extent by all people in every ceremonial pattern. Rites of separation are prominent in funeral ceremonies, rites of incorporation in marriages, transition rites in pregnancy, betrothal and initiation. He says, "Although a complete scheme of rites of passage

theoretically

includes preliminal rites (rites of separation), liminal rites (rites of transition), and postliminal rites (rites of incorporation), in specific instances these three types are not always equally important or equally elaborated" (11).

He also understands that rites of passage may include other forms of rites. Marriage ceremonies might also include fertility rites; birth ceremonies might also include protection and divination rites; etc.

At any rate, these examples serve my point today. Secondary discussions of authors, particularly older authors who wrote before 1960, work to homogenize the author and simplify his or her contribution. Then they can more easily be attacked for what they didn't do (even if they in fact did!). When I read van Gennep, I found his work to be very aware of the problems of classification and the acknowledgment of historical complexity and specificity. We can learn much from him still.

Mellon Seminar Reflection 10: Medussa is Laughing

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We opened the seminar this semester with Derrida and Deconstruction. I won't even try to summarize Derrida because it is "impossible" (smile!). What I got out of the readings and our discussion if that Derrida showed us how much we are trapped in language and our constructions of meaning. Deconstruction appears to me to be a mental process or approach that seeks to discover inherent contradictions in all of our cultural productions, which reveals to us that there is no essential meaning to words or other forms of expression. The complete meaning of anything is postponed or delayed; it is in flux and ever-changing. This makes it impossible to fully grasp.

I think that Deconstruction puts us into a liminal space, where

either-or

makes no sense anymore.

Both-and

reigns. An example of this for me is some of Derrida's work on ethics. What is ethical to one party in the relationship usually harms the other. If we choose to spend more time with our families (an ethical choice for our families), this means that we don't spend as much time at work (an unethical choice for our workplace).

The big question for us in the seminar (and maybe you have an answer to this and can share it) is to what extent does Deconstruction exploit the contradictions to the sacrifice of the commonalities of language? We do in fact use language to communicate meaning and most of the time our minds meet on the subject and we know what is being expressed. We don't live most of our lives not knowing what is being said. We don't live in language-meaning chaos. Of course there are moments when we are misunderstood or misread. Those of us who are authors certainly have experienced times when our works have been read in ways we never intended. But even given all these contradictions, there still seems to me to be something stable about language and meaning in a given context or community. Something agreed upon that makes language useful to communicate between us.

What really got me excited actually wasn't Derrida, but

Helene Cixous

who developed an experimental form of writing influenced by Deconstruction. The piece we read is her very famous "The Laugh of Medusa" trans. and published in

Signs

1.4 (1976) 875-893

. Not only couldn't I put it down, but I sat in shock afterward. Two thoughts were going through my head. First, when I die I want this read aloud at my service. Second, how could a French woman in 1976 express what I have been feeling for years as an American woman in 2011? It is like she was inside my head and my feelings.

I really don't know what else to say, my reaction was so visceral. Her piece is a call to women (yes it is written to women which makes me wonder how different my writing might be if I imagined an all-female audience) to take our bodies back, to reject the phallocentric perspective that has dominated and determined and confiscated us, and to WRITE. Write we must because it is in the act of writing that woman seizes the occasion to speak, it mobilizes her to enter history no longer as the suppressed. It allows her to become "

at will

the taker and initiator, for her own right, in every symbolic system, in every political process" (880). Women must break out of the silence that has imprisoned us and "shouldn't be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or the harem" (881). Famously she writes about men who have riveted us between the two horrific myths of Medusa and the abyss: "Too bad for them if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren't men, or that the mother doesn't have one. But isn't this fear convenient for them? Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing" (885).

Did I mention that I finished my manuscript

Sex and the Serpent: Why the Sexual and Gender Conflicts of the Early Church Still Matter

?

Mellon Seminar Distinguished Scholars

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One of the biggest highlights of the Mellon Seminar is its inclusion of a number of distinguished scholars who will be visiting Rice and lecturing. The subject of my seminar is

Mapping Death: Religious Preparations for the Afterlife Journey

. Here is the schedule of special events.

The luncheon lectures are by reservation only, so please contact me if you are considering attending

. The Year's End Symposium is open to the public and needs no reservation.

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Alan F. SegalProfessor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies

Barnard College, Columbia University

January 19th, 9-11:30 am, private Seminar

Rituals of Immortality: The Bible and the Rise of Immortality among Jews and Christians

Greg ShawProfessor of Religious Studies

Stone Hill College

Feb. 16th, 9 -11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

Iamblichean Theurgy: Reflections on the Practice of Later Platonists

Mark TurnerInstitute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science

Case Western Reserve University

March 9th, 9-11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

How to have an afterlife

Dale MartinWoolsey Professor of Religious Studies

Director of Graduate Studies

Yale University

March 23rd 9-11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

Confusions of Death: On the Lack of Unanimity on Death in Earliest Christianity

Roger BeckProfessor Emeritus, Department of History and Classics

University of Toronto

April 13th9-11 am, private Seminar

11:30 am -1 pm, RSVP Cohen House Luncheon and Public Lecture

Ecstatic Religion in the Roman Cult of Mithras

Year’s End Symposium

April 23, 9 am-5 pm, Kyle Morrow Room, Fondren Library

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Keynote Presenter

April D. DeConick, Mellon Faculty Leader Presenter

Grant Adamson, Matthew J. Dillon, Rebecca Gimbel, Franklin Trammell, Adriana Umana: Graduate Student Presenters

Book Note: Voices of Gnosticism (Miguel Connor)

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The end of the semester has been so busy. The good news is that I finally finished a draft of my book

Sex and the Serpent: Why the Sex and Gender Conflicts of the Early Church Still Matter

. This was such a relief for me since I have been working on it off and on for two years. I am happy with the result, and look forward to moving it into print with Continuum.

In the midst of all this Miguel Connor's book,

Voices of Gnosticism

, has been released. It contains a wonderful collection of interviews Miguel conducted over the years for his radio show. It is so much fun to read these interviews side-by-side. Who's inside? Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Bruce Chilton, Stevan Davies, Birger Pearson, John Turner, Einar Thomassen, Jason BeDuhn, Karen King, Marvin Meyer, Jane Schaberg, and me.

Congratulations Miguel on a remarkable collection of interviews!

You can purchase the book from Amazon for 19.95

HERE

.

Book Note: Die Gnosis (Johanna Brankaer)

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Johanna Brankaer has recently published a compact book in German that introduces readers to ancient Gnosis.

The title:

Die Gnosis: Texte und Kommentar

(Wiesbaden: Marix, 2010)

. She wrestles with the questions: Was there a Gnostic religion? What was the role of women in ancient Gnosis? What was the relationship of Gnosis, Christianity, and philosophy?

The book is divided into sections that cover ancient Gnostic mythology, Gnostic thinkers, Sethianism as classic Gnosis, A Gnostic church?, Gnosis as a Christian experiment, Women in Gnostic traditions, and then a small commentary section which covers some of the basic primary literature: Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, Rheginus, Ap John, Hypostasis of Archons, Trimorphic Protennoia, Letter of Petter to Philip, Gos Mary, Exegesis on the Soul, Gos of Thom, Gos Egy, Three Steles, Allogenes (NHC), Apoc Peter, Gos Jud (CT3).

It is not meant to be an exhaustive overview of the field with a thousand footnotes (for which I am thankful!). Rather it is a valuable pocket book, presenting Brankaer's own perspective on the literature and the questions of ancient Gnosis. A fine contribution to the field. As an addendum, it contains her German translation of the Gospel of Judas.

Petition to help the Mandaeans: A letter from Dr. Wisam Breegi

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Dear Friends,

We are pressing the United States government to take the Mandaean plight seriously and bare the historic, moral and legal responsibility to save the Mandaeans from total annihilation by scattering them around the world. We are seeking your support to write your local congressman and your organizations to resettle the 5000+ Mandaeans from Syria, Jordan and Iraq in the United States of America.

Please sign and circulate the online petition HERE. For more information, please contact Wisam Breegi (781) 258-5297 or at breegi@gmail.com

Thank you, Dr. Wisam Breegi, Mandaean Association of Massachusetts

For full article about the current plight of the Mandaeans, see the AP release HERE.

Mellon Seminar Reflection 9: Whose reality is real?

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This week we took an excursion into the development of American metaphysical religions. I am particularly interested in the ways in which scholars have tried to tell the story of the creation of the modern New Age. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend a couple of books that provide very good historical overviews. The first is

The Western Esoteric Traditions

by Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke

. Not only is the picture on its cover one of my very favorite woodcuts from the Renaissance, but the book carries the reader through all the esoteric streams in an historical journey. The other book, which I found stunningly well-researched and written is by

Catherine Albanese (pictured here),

A Republic of Mind and Spirit

. So I have chosen to share some of the insights I brought away from her work.

What Albanese does methodologically is fascinating. What she appears to me to be doing is creating a sweeping picture of each century by laying out the vast networks of ideas and information and practices happening simultaneously. She suggests that the traditions she is investigating are interacting

within

each other rather than with each other, so that she comes to understand the modern New Age as expansive and combinative, a religious phenomenon that is an amalgamation of any number of esoteric trajectories, including Hermeticism, Transcendentalism, Spiritualism, Mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, New Thought, Theosophy, Asian religions, Native American religion, and Quantum physics. She characterizes the New Age as a vast cultural sponge that absorbed whatever spiritual moisture was available. So it represents a grand ecumenicity. The New Age represents a fluid form of community available through networks and networking. This results in different levels of affiliation and commitment from fully-engaged service providers and strong followers who show up a workshops and other events to serious part-timers and causal part-timers or nightstand followers who read occasional books, and attend infrequent lectures. Members have often crossovered from traditional religions, seeking experiences considered by them to be more spiritually engaged.

She describes the themes of the New Age, and other metaphysical traditions, as emphasizing the power of the mind, a worldview of correspondence and connection between the spiritual world (the real world) and the physical (a transitory world), a preoccupation with summoning energy from on high to 'save' the human situation, and healing what was humanly amiss. These are the core beliefs and practices.

After reading her book, I am convinced that American metaphysical religion is one of three forces in American religion from the beginning, along with the mainstream traditions and evangelicalism. I am also convinced that the ancient Gnostics I study weren't so different from modern New Agers, with the exception that they did not get good press behind them like the New Age movement did. Remember Shirley MacClaine, her movie and books?

The New Age movement, with the hungry media behind them, was able to make exoteric what had previously been esoteric. And it has had a lasting impact on American culture. Yoga has become mainstream, along with beliefs in reincarnation and discussions of karma. ESP and UFO are abbreviations we all share, whatever our convictions about them might be. Psychics are consulted to assist police investigations, astrology made it into the Whitehouse, alternative medicine is practiced alongside traditional western medicine, all without too much discomfort. Ecology and healthfood is now mainstream. How many of us have yogurt in our lunchboxes?

Mellon Seminar Reflection 8: Whose history?

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The seminar examined New Historicism for the past two weeks. Contrary to its title, New Historicism is not a method created by historians writing histories. It emerged from literary criticism among professors of Renaissance literature who were trying to illuminate literature with reference to historical sources and intertextuality investigating what Greenblatt (the originator of the approach and pictured here) calls Cultural Poetics. This approach developed in critic of New Criticism, not old-school German Historicism and Positivism. New Criticism is the common approach to literature with reads it ahistorically, focusing on single texts as enclosed units of narrative and imagery.

New Historicism or Cultural Poetics tries to examine the text in its context, while also asking how the text enforces the cultural practices that it depends on for its own production and dissemination. In this way, these critics draw attention to the processes being employed by contemporary power structures, like the chuch, state, and academy, to disseminate knowledge. They explore a text's historical context

and

its political implications, and then through a close textual analysis they note the dominant hegemonic position. New Historicism or Cultural Poetics is a politicized form of literary criticism with an eye toward historical contextuality. It is grounded in the critical theory of Foucault, the work of the Cultural Materialists, and anthropology of the variety espoused by Clifford Geertz who advocated writing "thick descriptions" of culture that explains human behavior within particular contexts rather than merely as part of symbolic systems.

After reading deeply into this scholarship, I really feel that New Historicism has a political mission. These critics are all about critiquing capitalism and market relations, and in my mind, retrofitting that critique back onto historical sources. So what they write often appears anachronistic, that is, bringing our contemporary values to play in the past. To their credit, they are aware of this, and so are willing to admit it in their analyses.

To do this, they read all literature and artifacts side-by-side with no distinction, mining what they call the cracks, slippages, fault lines and absences in the traditional historical narratives. While their willingness to eliminate canonical boundaries is to be applauded, I am less thrilled that they do not generally evaluate the differences in the media they examine. Various forms of materials were created with difference purposes and different intent, and what any of it can tell us about anything must be weighed carefully. A letter fragment and a gospel, for instance, are not the same thing. A masterpiece painting and a magical drawing in a recipe book are interesting, but they are not giving us similar information. What either might tell us needs discussion.

While I found much of their work stimulating, I was left a bit puzzled. How "new" is any of this? Historians have been dealing with cultural context, artifacts, and multiple texts for, well, forever. In religious studies, we have been dealing with breaking down canonical boundaries for over fifty years, and we have been discussing power relations and political agendas for at least as long. The differences are that historians are interested in getting at the meanings of the literature they are examining, and we want to investigate the politics of the time of the texts. New Historians are interested in exploring the various discourses that inform the literature they read, and are more motivated by contemporary politics which they think is somehow reflected in these discourses (in ways similar to the ideas of queer theorists or feminist theologians).

Gospel of Judas Update: Published news about the OHIO fragments

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I just received offprints of an article published in the first volume of Mohr Siebeck's new journal

Early Christianity

(link

HERE

). The article is a preliminary report written by Herbert Krosney, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst about the status of the OHIO fragments of the Gospel of Judas. In the first part of the article, Krosney explains the court battle over the OHIO fragments and their photographs which were analyzed by Gregor Wurst who recognized that they contained the balance of the Gospel of Judas, allowing us to read 90-95% of it.

According to Krosney's account, the fragments have made their way to Egypt in April 2010 and are under the care of Dr. Zahi Hawass who did not want the fragments to go to Switzerland for conservation first. The rest of the Tchacos Codex remains in Switzerland in the hands of the Maecenas Foundation who is now in a financial battle with Mrs. Frieda Nussberger.

The rest of the article is a sketch of the contents of the fragments and a preliminary transcription and translation based on photographs of the fragments possessed by Nussberger. There has been no distribution of the photographs to scholars other than Meyer and Wurst as far as I know. There is mention that Wurst and Meyer are consulting with the administration in Egypt in order to discover how to proceed in the critical publication of the fragments.

British Museum Exhibition on Book of the Dead

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A rare treat. The British Museum is putting on an exhibition of the Book of the Dead. I want to go! How perfect does this exhibit coincide with my Mellon Seminar: Mapping Death?!

Here is the LINK to the exhibition page which I found via Deirdre Good's blog. The minute video is a teaser. But no REAL information posted. I wonder if their will be a book? I hope so.

In Memory of John Kevin Coyle

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From: Professor Pierluigi Piovanelli
Date: Ottawa, October 22, 2010

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I am extremely saddened to announce that Professor John Kevin Coyle, of St. Paul University, has suddenly passed away in the night of Wednesday, October 20.

Those who have known Kevin will remember him not only as a great scholar – he had just published in 2009 the volume Manichaeism and Its Legacy, a collection of his articles on Manichaeism in Brill’s prestigious series Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies – but also and especially as a warm and generous person, a true gentleman. This is a terrible loss for all of us.

I am sure that his soul is presently climbing the column of glory and is not too far from her final destination in the paradise of light, where she will enjoy the company of Augustine and Mani.

May peace be upon him!

Mellon Seminar Reflection 7: Is knowledge a commodity?

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Post-modernism and Post-colonialism were the subjects of the theory discussion this week. We characterized Post-modernism as "the collapse of the Grand Narrative" and Post-colonialism as "the writing of the 'Other'". One book that we reviewed was Lyotard (pictured),

The Post-Modern Condition

(1979) where the term was coined, 'post-modernism', to refer to the incredulity of the meta-narratives constructed by societies (how we can know everything through science; that we make progress in history; that there is absolute freedom; etc.). He points out how inadequate our big stories are, because they do not encompass us all. He is particularly critical of our commonly held narrative that knowledge must be efficient in order to be valuable. Thus if we can't prove that a certain type of knowledge is efficient or useful, it is pushed aside and we feel terror.

We highlighted the discourse of the Humanities in this light. The Humanities, because it does not offer efficient or useful knowledge, has lost its voice in the discourse of knowledge that pervades our society, particularly the scientific discourse. The discourse of knowledge that we are familiar with today is no longer a discussion of "is it true?" but "is it useful?" and "is it saleable?" Knowledge has become a commodity.

I keep thinking about our public education system and how much this discourse of knowledge has negatively impacted it. We now want teachers to give knowledge to the students like it is a commodity or good that can be exchanged, and

make

the student learn it. We judge whether or not this exchange has occurred by testing students and then tying teachers' jobs and salaries to their students' academic performance. The problem is that all knowledge is not a commodity, nor is all knowledge useable. And learning is not a contractual business exchange. While teachers have a responsibility to teach well, students and families have the responsibility to commit to learning even non-usable or non-applicable knowledge. Students' are responsible actors too. They are participants of power in their education.

Lyotard and other philosophers highlight two main discourses of knowledge: 1. the scientific discourse (efficient knowledge); 2. Narrative (non-efficient) knowledge. Lyotard also acknowledges the "sublime" which is knowledge at the edges of conceptualization, that can not be formulated via faith, imagination, or reason.

The post-modernists suggest that we set aside the metanarratives and focus on the fragmented stories or micro-narratives; that we live with a series of mini-narratives that are contemporary and relative. While truth doesn't disappear, it must be recognized as fragmentary. They call this fragmented truth "difference" so that knowledge becomes "difference". They do not want to understand difference as negative, as in "what it is not" (a cat is a cat because it is not a dog). What they want to say is that we are the ones who assign similitude to things; in reality there are just differences (a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog and they are different).

All of this raises a series of questions for me. While I am delighted to work on fragmented stories of the past, as a historian of 'heretics', I also must construct and operate from a larger narrative that makes sense of that past. I do not see unity as the enemy, nor do I see difference as the saint. We as human creatures are wired for narrative. Our brains work in such a way that we constantly construct unity from our own life's fragments, as we also construct differences. I would characterize humans as "comparativists" who understand unity and difference in relationship to each other. Narratives are necessary, even Grand ones, or life would be chaos for us all. So while the different must be embraced by the historian (and not judged negatively), the discussion of unity is still necessary. Any unity that is constructed must be reasonable and fair, one that accounts for the micro-narratives while also accounting for the practical course of history and the relationships between people and groups.

Gospel of Thomas

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I am fascinated with the Gospel of Thomas, not only as an ancient document, but also as a document interpreted by modern minds. I have spent the majority of my academic career studying this engimatic text and trying to come to terms with it. I have written extensively on this Gospel.

What are some of my main conclusions about the Gospel of Thomas?

  • It is a rolling corpus, a written gospel that developed over time within a rhetorical environment dominated by oral consciousness. This is a "living book" model, envisioning the literacy of the gospel in continuity with the oral world. The derivation of the gospel develops out of a dynamic oral-literate interplay. This is be distinguished from our previous models which understood orality to be the "background" for the written gospel or understood literacy to be everything, a post-Gutenberg cut-and-paste mentality.
  • It began as a smaller gospel of Jesus' sayings, organized as a speech handbook to aid the memory of preachers.
  • I call the earliest version of the Gospel of Thomas, the Kernel Thomas.
  • The Kernel Thomas originated from the mission of the Jerusalem Church between the years 30-50 CE.
  • It was taken to Edessa where it was used by the Syrian Christians as a storage site for words of Jesus.
  • Its main use in the Syrian Church was instructional.
  • The Kernel sayings were subjected to oral reperformances, which was the main way that the text was enhanced with additional sayings and interpretations. This does not mean that literary sources did not effect its growth, but that the process was not one of an author sitting down with a pen in hand and editing a couple of written sources together.
  • Later sayings accrued in the Kernel gradually as the gospel moved in and out of oral and written formats.
  • The Gospel of Thomas can be read as a document that reflects shifts in the consistuency of its caretakers (from Jew to Gentile) and its theology (from apocalyptic to mystical).
  • The Gospel came into its present form around the year 120 CE.
  • In its final form it is both encratic and mystical, the result of the interiorization of the apocalypse in face of its failure to materialize according to the earlier expectations of the Syrian Christians.
  • The encratism and mysticism in this text developed in tandem with Alexandrian Christianity, probably the result of exchange of ideas and texts that took place along the trade routes and roads from Edessa to Alexandria.
  • The adaptation of this Gospel from 50 to 120 CE did not occur as a conscious program to alter the sayings of Jesus, but was the result of shifts in communal memory as past recollections of the group were updated and renewed in and for the group's present.

My Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the Gospel of Thomas

Where did the Gospel of Thomas come from?
We have known about the existence of an early Christian gospel named the Gospel of Thomas since the early third century because it is mentioned by Hippolytus, who even quotes an elaborate recension of saying 4. In the late 1800s, Professors Grenfell and Hunt dug up a hoard of papyri in Oxyrhyncus, Egypt. Three of these Greek papyri fragments are pages of the Gospel of Thomas, although their identification as such was not made certain until the 1950s when a full Coptic version was noticed among another papyri find from 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. This latter find was a cache of leather bound books - we have twelve of the books and part of the thirteenth - and these are housed today in Old Cairo at the beautiful Coptic Museum. The three Oxyrhynchus fragments are housed today at Harvard, Oxford, and British Library.

How does the Gospel of Thomas compare to the New Testament gospels?
The Gospel of Thomas is quite different from the New Testament gospels in that it is a gospel of sayings of Jesus. Most sayings are introduced with the simple attribution "Jesus said," one listed after the other. Narrative is practically absent from the Gospel of Thomas, at least in terms of the type of narrative details and elaborate settings for the sayings that we find in the New Testament gospels. In this way, the Gospel of Thomas is closer in genre to the reconstructed Q, the synoptic sayings source that has been postulated as a major literary source for Matthew and Luke. The Gospel of Thomas is not Q, but it does represent the type of gospel that Q might have been.

There are a number of sayings of Jesus that we find in the synoptic gospels that have parallels (although in different recensions) in the Gospel of Thomas. There are several sayings in Thomas that have parallels in John, but on the level of thematic allusions rather than direct recensions. And there are a number of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas that are unique, unparalleled in the New Testament gospels.

What is Thomas' relationship to the New Testament Gospels?
Since the discovery and translation of the Gospel of Thomas in the 1950s, scholars have mainly been in two camps on this. Either they argue that Thomas is a gospel that was based on the New Testament gospels and "perverted" the sayings to meet some heretical theological agenda, or they argue that Thomas is a gospel that was independent from the New Testament gospels and preserved sayings of Jesus from an early Jewish Christian literary source or from early oral tradition. There are good (and bad) arguments for both cases, and essentially the field is at a stalemate on the question.

My own work is trying to get us past this, to think about it in different terms. If the Gospel of Thomas is a text that was very old and grew over time, then we probably have a complicated relationship to the New Testament gospels. On the one hand we would expect some of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas to represent early independent traditions, before the Synoptics were even written. But as the Gospel of Thomas was adapted over time, its sayings naturally would be adjusted to the knowledge of other texts and to the memory of other texts. Add to this the fact that scribes when copying and translating texts into new languages felt quite free to alter the wording to fit more precisely their knowledge and memory of other texts, and we have a very complex situation of secondary orality and scribal adaptation. By the way, we find all of these operational in the Gospel of Thomas I think.

So what this means is that arguments for dependence aren't going to cut it anymore. We have before us the difficult task of figuring out what type of dependence we are talking about, alongside the acknowledgment that dependence in our late document does not necessarily mean dependence of the original Gospel of Thomas on the Synoptics.

Is the Gospel of Thomas Gnostic?
The quick answer to this is "no." The esotericism in this gospel has been misunderstood and mislabeled from the very beginning of its interpretative history. The reason for this has to do with the fact that until the Nag Hammadi texts were found, we didn't know what Gnostic really was. Scholars tended to apply it very loosely to any text or tradition that they believed to be dualistic and anti-world or body, which expressed the opinion that within the human being was "light" redeemable through gnosis or knowledge. After studying the Nag Hammadi texts for fifty years, we now realize that this is a nonsense definition because it is so broad as to be useless. Gnostic mythology has a couple of distinctive features: the belief that this world was created by a lesser (ignorant or arrogant) being known as the Demiurge; and the belief that this world is the result of the fall of an Aeon from the Godhead, usually Sophia. Neither of these are found in the Gospel of Thomas.

Instead the esotericism in the Gospel of Thomas is a form of early Christian mysticism. It was a contemplative type of Christianity that grew in Syria as well as Alexandria. The idea was that each person had the choice to grow into God's Image or to remain stunted due to Adam's decision. If the person chose to grow, then the divinization process was gradual and included not only ritual activities like baptism and eucharist, but also instructional and contemplative activities. Part of the process then was living as Jesus lived - it was imitative. The other part was contemplating who and where Jesus was. This contemplative life led to heavenly (or interiorized) journeys and visions of God. Eventually the faithful would become like Jesus, replacing their fallen image with the image of God. This contemplative Christianity is not heretical, but an early form of eastern orthodoxy!

Why wasn't the Gospel of Thomas included in the New Testament?
The process of the canonization of the New Testament was long and involved. It took almost four hundred years. The date we traditionally give to its closure is 367 CE, when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria records the books in the NT as being those we have in it today. There are many reasons for Thomas' exclusion, not the least among them political - it was a text that in the third century was used by the Naassene Gnostics (who rewrote it for their own purposes) and the Manichaean Gnostics (who used it liberally in their liturgies). Once a text began to be used by a heretical group, it became suspicious, especially if this happened in the third or fourth centuries. Texts included had to have:

 

  • apostolic connections - something Thomas had
  • be used in liturgy across the Mediterranean world - which Thomas wasn't, since it was a distinctive Syrian text with some distribution in Egypt
  • predate 150 CE - which Thomas did
  • support the theology of the framers of the canon - which Thomas didn't, since it was anti-marriage and pro-mysticism or "revelatory"

Given its use by at least two heretical groups in the third century, its emphasis on seeking new revelation, its stance against marriage and procreation, and its limited distribution and use in liturgy, it didn't have a chance to become part of the New Testament.

What does the Gospel of Thomas tell us about Jesus?
This gospel understands Jesus to be a charismatic figure. By this I mean, Jesus continues to live in their community even after he has died. His spirit continues to speak to this community of faithful, and they continue to record his teachings. They do not appear to have made any distinction between the "historical" Jesus before death and the "spirit" Jesus after death, at least in terms of authority or historicity of his words. The Jesus that emerges in the Gospel of Thomas is not entirely foreign to the New Testament portrayals, particularly as we see him emerge in the Gospel of John - but also, as we see him in Mark, teaching publicly to the crowds and privately his mysteries to a few close followers. His message is either similar to the New Testament Jesus, or contiguous with him. He teaches against carnality and succumbing to bodily desire. He's an advocate for celibacy. He preaches that the Kingdom of God is here, that people must make a choice whether to enter it or not, that this choice requires an exclusive commitment to him and God, that the going is tough and few will be able to make it. He demands a lifestyle of righteous living, promises rewards including personal transformation and revelation.

My favorite posts on the Gospel of Thomas

 

Gospel of Judas

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"I didn't find a sublime Judas. I found a Judas more demonic than any Judas I know in any other piece of early Christian literature." -April DeConick

New York Times Op. Ed. on the Gospel of JudasApril DeConick writes that mistakes were made in the initial translation and interpretation of the Gospel of Judas
Gospel Truth published 12-1-07

Chronicle of Higher EducationAuthor Tom Bartlett follows the story of the Gospel of Judas and the Codex Judas CongressThe Betrayal of Judas: Did a "dream team" of scholars mislead millions?

Publication of The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (see sidebar)
  • In 2006, National Geographic released the first English translation of the Gospel of Judas, a second-century text discovered in Egypt in the 1970s. The translation caused a sensation because it seemed to overturn the popular image of Judas the betrayer and instead presented a benevolent Judas who was a friend of Jesus.
  • Writers and academics have been quick to seize the opportunity to "rehabilitate" Judas as to re-examine our assumptions about this archetypal figure.
  • In The Thirteenth Apostle April DeConick offers a new translation of the Gospel of Judas which seriously challenges the National Geographic interpretation of a good Judas.

  • DeConick contends that the Gospel of Judas is not about a "good" Judas, or even a "poor old" Judas. It is a gospel parody about a "demon" Judas written by a particular group of Gnostic Christians, the Sethians. Whilst many other leading scholars have toed the National Geographic line, Professor DeConick is the first leading scholar to challenge this "official" version. In doing so, she is sure to inspire the fresh debate around this most infamous of biblical figures.
An Interview with April DeConick about the Gospel of Judas

Can you tell me about the background of the Gospel of Judas? When does it date from, where was it found?
The manuscript was discovered in the 1970s in an ancient catacomb that was being looted by local peasants living near the cliffs of the Jebel Qarara. The Jebel Qarara hills are only a few minutes on foot from the Nile River not far from El Minya, Egypt. Although we know that the Gospel of Judas existed in the middle of the second century because Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons mentions it (ca. 180), the manuscript that we have is a fourth- or fifth-century Coptic translation. It was only one text in a book of Gnostic Christian writings.

It was buried along with three other books that had been copied in the fourth- or fifth centuries a book of Paul's letters in Coptic, the book of Exodus in Greek, and a mathematical treatise in Greek. All four books had been sealed in a white limestone box and buried in a family tomb. If nothing else, their burial in this tomb points to their favoritism in the life of an early Christian living in ancient Egypt, a Christian who seems to have had esoteric leanings, and no difficulty studying canonical favorites alongside the Gnostic Gospel of Judas. In fact, he appears to have wanted to take them with him in death.

Why did it take so long to make the first English translation?
The English translation wasn't what took so long. What took the time was recovering the text from the antiquities market, which finally was done in the early 2000s.It also took time to restore the manuscript so that it could be read. The book that contains the Gospel of Judas was in the worst possible shape due to terrible handling once it left the grave. It had been torn in parts to make quicker and more profitable sales. The pages had been reshuffled so that the original pagination was gone. It was brittle and crumbling thanks to a stay in someone's freezer. The ink was barely legible because of exposure to the elements. Members of the National Geographic team have told me that initially they photocopied every fragment and then used the photocopies to piece together the pages. They worked with tweezers to fit together the scraps of papyrus and also relied on state-of-the-art computer technology.

Once the restoration was complete, the manuscript could be read. It is written in an old Egyptian language called Coptic. The Coptic text had to be transcribed, which was no small job given the fragmented nature of the restored pages and the eroded ink. After the initial transcription was made, it was then translated into English.

What was it about the National Geographic translation that inspired you to make your own translation?
When National Geographic finally released the transcription and translation of the Gospel of Judas, I was enthusiastic because my area of expertise is ancient Gnostic religiosity and early Christian mysticism. Most of my career as a professor has been devoted to the study of the Nag Hammadi texts.

The Gospel of Judas came upon most of us out of a whirlwind. I had heard whispers about the Gospel of Judas for years, but nothing really concrete. Then there it was captured on film and on the web. I was repelled by the sensationalism of its release, but still attracted to the idea that here was a brand new Gnostic text that no one has read for how many centuries?! I guess I wanted to know what stories it had to tell us about the Christians who wrote it in the second century. And once I started to work out my own translation, I realized that I had an obligation to other scholars and to the public to set the record straight about what the Gospel of Judas actually says.

What makes your interpretation so different from the National Geographic version?
For a long time, scholars have thought that the Gospel of Judas featured a Judas hero because testimony from a couple of Church Fathers led us to believe that there were a group of Gnostics known as Cainites. The Cainites were said to believe that all the bad characters in the bible, including Judas, were actually heroes. I tend to be extremely skeptical of the testimony of the Church Fathers on these sorts of issues for the sheer fact that the Fathers saw the Gnostics as their opponents and they did everything they could to undermine them, including lying. So I didn't have an opinion on what the Gospel of Judas should say about Judas.

Once I started translating the Gospel of Judas and began to see the types of translation choices that the National Geographic team had made, I was startled and concerned. The text very clearly called Judas a demon. Why did the team feel it necessary to translate this "spirit"? The text very clearly says that Judas will be "separated from" the Gnostics. Why did the team feel it necessary to translate this "set apart for" the Gnostics? And so forth.

I didn't care if Judas was good, bad or ugly. I just wanted to hear what the Sethian Gnostics had to say about him, and make sense of the text as a whole.

Why do you think that the National Geographic interpretation doesn't work?
Not only is this interpretation based on a problematic English translation, rather than on what the Coptic actually says, but the opinion that Judas is a hero and a good guy is nonsense in terms of the bigger gospel narrative. For instance, this gospel berates sacrifice and understands it to be a horrifying practice dedicated to the god who wars against the supreme Father God. If this is the case, then Judas' sacrifice of Jesus simply cannot be a good thing. To say it is, is to rip apart the logic of what the text is saying as a whole.

Why do think so many scholars and writers have been inspired by the National Geographic version?
I have been truly amazed at the number of people who have jumped on this bandwagon. One of my colleagues upon hearing my concerns at a conference, stood up and said, "I just don't see why Judas can't be good. We need a good Judas." This really stopped me in my tracks and took this discourse to an entirely new level for me.

There is something bigger going on here, in our modern communal psyche. I haven't been able to put my finger on it exactly, but it appears to have something to do with our collective guilt about anti-Semitism and our need to reform the relationship between Jews and Christians following World War II.

Judas has been a terrifying figure in our history, since he became in the Middle Ages the archetypal Jew who was responsible for Jesus' death. His story was abused for centuries as a justification to commit atrocities against Jews. I wonder if one of the ways that our communal psyche has handled this in recent decades is to try to erase or explain the evil Judas, to remove from him the guilt of Jesus' death. There are many examples of this in pop fiction and film produced after World War II. It seems to be that the National Geographic interpretation has grown out of this collective need and has been well-received because of it.

Who do you think wrote the Gospel? Why do you think they wrote it?
The Gospel of Judas was written by Gnostic Christians called Sethians in the mid-second century. They wrote it to criticize Apostolic or mainstream Christianity, which they understood to be a form of Christianity that needed to reassess its faith. Particularly troubling for these Gnostic Christians was the Apostolic belief in the atonement, because this meant that God would have had to commit infanticide by sacrificing the Son. They wrote the Gospel of Judas to prove that this could not be the case. Why? Because Judas was a demon who worked for another demon who rules this world and whose name is Ialdabaoth. How did they know this? Because Jesus had revealed this to Judas before Judas betrayed him. That is the bottom line. That is what this gospel says.

What do you think this manuscript tells us about early Christianity? Why is the Gospel of Judas important?
This gospel's voice is different. It represents the opinions of Christians in the second century who came to be labeled as "heretical" by later bishops who wished to gain control of the religious landscape. Because this is a Gnostic Christian tradition that did not survive, the chance find of this gospel has let us tune into a second century discussion about theology. And the voice we are hearing is the voice of the guy who lost the debate.

Not only is the recovery and integration of this voice into our history important, but also its contribution to Christian theology, which is enormous. The challenge against atonement theology as it is presented in the Gospel of Judas is a challenge that rocked the Apostolic Churches, forcing them to refine and recreate their position. The end result is a doctrine of atonement that became very popular in the Christian Church, a doctrine that understood the sacrifice of Jesus as a ransom paid to the Devil. This doctrine exists as a response to the Gnostic criticisms of atonement that we find in the Gospel of Judas.

What do you think it is about the figure of Judas that seems to fascinate both scholars and the general reader?
Judas Iscariot is a frightening figure. For Christians, he is the one who had it all, and yet betrayed God to his death for a few dollars. He is the archetype of human evil, the worst human being ever to live. He is the antithesis of the true Christian. Because of this, his image works as a religious control - he is someone the Christian never wants to become. For Jews, he is terrifying, the man whom Christians associated with Jewish people, whose story was used against them for centuries as a religious justification for their abuse and slaughter. Even his name "Judas" has been linked to "Jew," due to their root similarities (Judas/Judea/Jews). I think that Judas is someone whose shadow haunts us.

Reading on the Gospel of Judas

Andrew Cockburn, May 2006. "The Judas Gospel." Pages 78-95 in National Geographic Magazine.
This is National Geographic's story of the year, perhaps of the century. Mr. Cockburn, a National Geographic author, writes an overview of the discovery and restoration of the Gospel of Judas in fine journalistic style. Beautiful photographs by Kenneth Garrett grace the pages. 17 pages.
Bart D. Ehrman, 2006. The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Professor Ehrman discusses his own involvement in National Geographic's project to analyze the Gospel of Judas along with the tale of the discovery of Judas. He describes the contents of the gospel, its relationship to the New Testament gospels, suggesting that it presents a unique view of Jesus, the twelve disciples, and Judas who is the only one who remains faithful to Jesus even to his death. 198 pages.
Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, with additional commentary by Bart D. Ehrman, 2006. The Gospel of Judas (Washington D.C.; National Geographic).
The original publication of the English translation of the Gospel of Judas made by Professors Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, in collaboration with François Gaudard. It includes chapters of commentary on the story of the Tchacos Codex (by Kasser), Judas as a typical Gnostic text and alternative vision of Judas (by Ehrman), early mentions of the Gospel of Judas by the Church Fathers (by Wurst), and Judas as a Sethian gospel (by Meyer). 185 pages.
Herbert Krosney, 2006. The Lost Gospel of Judas: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington D.C.: National Geographic).
Herbert Krosney is an investigative journalist who traces in his book what can be known about the discovery, recovery, and restoration of the Gospel of Judas. Includes a brief foreword by Bart Ehrman and an epilogue by Marvin Meyer. 309 pages.
Nicholas Perrin, 2006. The Judas Gospel (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press).
Nicholas Perrin provides us with a brief history of the discovery of the Gospel of Judas in this pamphlet. He makes an overview of the contents as a second century Gnostic gospel. He argues that the text has little historical value in terms of telling us anything about Jesus and Judas. Rather its value comes from what it reveals about gnostic alternatives to what Perrin understands as "authentic" Christianity. 32 pages.
James Robinson, 2006. The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and his Lost Gospel (San Francisco: Harper).
Professor James Robinson discusses what can be known about the historical Judas from the Bible and other ancient Christian texts. He recounts the story of the discovery of the Gospel of Judas and its sensationalistic release by National Geographic, criticizing the way in which the publication of the text has been handled. 192 pages.
N. T. Wright, 2006. Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books).
Bishop Wright argues that the Gospel of Judas tells us nothing about the historical Jesus or the historical Judas. Its rehabilitation of Judas in this second century text cannot be linked to the real Judas who betrayed Jesus. He thinks that the publication of this gospel is part of a scholarly agenda to find an alternative Jesus, which has another sensationalistic life in popular literature like The Da Vinci Code - financial profit. 155 pages.
Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King, 2007. Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (New York: Viking).
This book contains Karen King's own English translation of the Gospel of Judas, followed by a brief running commentary. The other chapters are written collaboratively by Professors Pagels and King. These chapters attempt to contextualize Judas within the milieu of early Christian persecution and martyrdom, suggesting that the Christians who wrote this gospel were condemning church leaders who were encouraging their flock to die as sacrifices to God. 198 pages.
Craig A. Evans, 2006. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press).
Included in the back of this book is a brief appendix, "What Should We Think About the Gospel of Judas?" He mentions his own involvement on the National Geographic team and the text's recovery. He outlines the contents of the Tchacos Codex yet to be published. This is followed by a short description of the contents of the gospel and its meaning, weighing in on the perspective of the Church Fathers - that the gospel honored Judas because it was written by a Gnostic who revered all the "evil" men in the scriptures. These villains like Judas were only "evil" in the eyes of Yahweh the lesser god because they worked for the God of light in his war against Yahweh. So in reality, the villains were the good guys. 6 pages.
Favorite Posts about the Gospel of Judas

Resources

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Media

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Rice Graduate Studies

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Preparing for Graduate Studies

I receive many inquiries regarding what preparations are needed for students who are considering applying for the PhD program in Bible and Beyond at Rice. Matthias Henze (Syriac specialist) and myself are the advisors in this program. If you want to work on Syriac materials and early Jewish pseudepigrapha, Professor Henze is the person to contact (mhenze@rice.edu). If you want to work with me in Coptic materials, this is how you should prepare yourself for the application.

1. Get a MA in a strong academic program in biblical studies, classics, near eastern studies, or early christian studies. Why? Because our PhD program is only a 5-year program. When you come to work in this program, this will be the point you specialize in the Coptic materials. There is not enough time for you to lay down all the foundational work that is necessary for you to have in biblical period, literature and languages, and then to also add the Coptic materials to your repertoire. The Coptic materials are not a substitute for the biblical corpus. They are simply more pieces to the puzzle of the early Christian period. They are important pieces indeed, and necessary for any historical understanding of the biblical period and the formative years of Christianity. But the biblical materials must be mastered first.

2. Second-year competency in Greek (preferably classical) and Hebrew (biblical).

3. Reading knowledge of French and German can be obtained in the first two years of our program, but it will behoove applicants to have at least one of these secondary research languages mastered before arriving on campus.

4. A plan to work on Coptic materials or Greek extra-canonical materials as a dissertation project, with the intent to try to understand what these materials tell us about Christian origins and early Christianity.

5. A commitment to the critical and academic study of religion.

6. Contact me, preferrably a year to six months before your application is submitted, so that we can begin discussing your interests and goals, and whether or not working at Rice is your best option.

The Bible and Beyond

One area of concentration in the Ph.D. program at Rice is the program in Biblical Studies. The major components of this program include the traditional study of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament within the historical context of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, while also acknowledging the rich and diverse literature beyond both canons. These include the Old Testament and New Testament Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi and Gnostic literature, and patristic literature from the Ante-Nicene period.

In recent years, biblical scholars increasingly have come to realize the importance of this literature “beyond the Bible,” not only because it helps shed light on the canonical writings, but also because this material is valuable in its own right. Importantly this literature reveals to us that the richness of Judaism and Christianity was far greater than that expressed in the canonical literature.

While the study of Jewish and Christian history and literature are disciplines in and of themselves, they are seen and studied together at Rice. A student may elect to emphasize either tradition, but the study of both is required.

The goal of the program is to train students to work independently on texts of their choice, to eventually become professors and scholars in the history, literature and interpretation of the Testaments and related literature. To do so, students will (1) become familiar with the history of the discipline, (2) learn the historical-critical method of interpretation supplemented by other methods used in the field, (3) gain linguistic proficiency in the relevant ancient languages, (4) study primary texts, and (5) become conversant in the history and material culture of antiquity.

Gnosticism, Esotericism, Mysticism
Traditional understandings of religion often focus on events, figures, and ideas that are more or less amenable to orthodox framings of what constitutes religious truth and practice. But what if we do not privilege these public “winning” voices, but look also at those heterodox or esoteric currents of the history of religions that have been actively repressed, censored, or simply forgotten by their respective cultures? What if, moreover, we privilege the psychology and phenomenology of religious experience over the authorial framing of these events by the faith traditions, even as we explore and analyze the profound ways the faith traditions shape these same “individual” experiences?

The comparative categories of mysticism, gnosticism, and esotericism are all modern constructs, each different in nuance but all designed to ask just these sorts of dialectical questions, to relate orthodoxy to heterodoxy, and vice-versa.

This area of concentration in the Ph.D. program at Rice provides students the opportunity to study the varieties and commonalities of mysticism, gnosticism, and esotericism as these phenomena are both shaped within and marshaled outside (or even against) discrete religious traditions. The Department’s approach to the study of mysticism, gnosticism, and esotericism is grounded in the rigorous study of single traditions, to the extent that it demands distinct philological and historical training in particular cultural areas. It is also explicitly comparative, to the extent that it draws on multiple traditions—from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to Hinduism, Buddhism, and the New Age—for its comprehensive materials and theorizing.

The goal of the program is to train students to work independently on traditions of their choice and, eventually, to become professors and scholars in the study of religion. To do so, students will (1) become familiar with the histories and nuances of the comparative categories of mysticism, gnosticism, and esotericism in the discipline; (2) gain linguistic proficiency in relevant languages; (3) study primary materials, including texts and practices; and (4) become conversant in the history and material culture of their chosen traditions. The result is a unique community of scholars and graduate colleagues actively engaged in the historical-critical, psychological, philosophical, aesthetic, ritual, somatic, contemplative, and phenomenological exploration of some of the most intense, unusual, and interesting religious phenomena known to scholars of religion.