M05b
Gnostic Christians
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First page of the Apocryphon of John, one of the gnostic writings found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The Coptic Museum, Cairo. 2nd century CE.
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This was not a unified group. Gnostic Christianity is more of a general collective category. Gnostics did not always agree among themselves. Some argued that Jesus was not human, but completely divine. Yet his divine nature was not equated with the God of the Old Testament who created the (evil, material) world. Others believed that Jesus was both human and divine, as two separate beings in one. They believed that the divine being (called “the Christ”) came upon the human Jesus at his baptism, empowering him during his ministry, and then left him before his death. Concepts of divinity for Gnostics came out of polytheism. For example, some thought that Jesus was one of 30 gods; whereas others thought he was one of 365 gods. Despite the differences, Gnostics agreed that a special knowledge (Greek gnosis) was required for an individual to be saved from the entrapment of a physical body and a material world. Jesus was believed to be the emissary who brought the saving knowledge. All who believed him and recognized their imprisonment by the evil deity of this world were saved. Some of their writings included the Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Truth.
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Marcionite Christians
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Manuscript illumination of the Apostle John and Marcion of Sinope (according to R. Eisler, The Enigma of the Fourth Apostle [Methuen & Co., 1938, p. 158, plate XIII]). J. Pierpoint Morgan Library MS 748, folio 150 verso. 11th century.
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This group was dedicated to the teaching of a second century Christian scholar and evangelist, named Marcion of Sinope (c. 85 – c. 160), who advocated that the truth of Christianity resides only in the writings of Paul. For Marcion, Paul was the true apostle because the resurrected Christ appeared to him and imparted the true revelation. Marcion argued that Paul draws a sharp divide between the gospel of Christ and the Law of the Jews. As a result, the legal system of the Jewish scriptures (advocated by the Jews and Jewish Christians) played no role in the salvation plan of God. Marcion extended this divide further. He preached that the God of the Jewish scriptures is a vengeful, harsh, just, and even tyrannical demiurge; whereas the God of Jesus is merciful and loving. For example, Marcion could not reconcile the Old Testament commands of God to slaughter Israel’s enemies and the command of Jesus’ to love one’s enemies. For Marcion these were two unrelated and incompatible gods. The only correlation was that Jesus came to save people from the God of the Jews. Since Jesus opposed the God of the Jews who was the creator of this world, Jesus was not of this world. He did not even have a physical body. His appearance was only an illusion, but his spirit was real. He was neither born, nor did he die. Marcion’s movement spread across Asia Minor.
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Marcion supposedly wrote the Antitheses, which contrasts the Jewish God and the God of Jesus (http://www.gnosis.org/library/marcion/antithes.htm), and the Gospel of the Lord, which consist of selections from Luke’s Gospel. Almost everything we know about him comes from his adversaries, most notably Tertullian’s work called Against Marcion.
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While some of Marcion’s ideas appear to line up with the Gnostics, the differences place him outside of that categorization. Unlike the Gnostics, Marcion did not believe that a “spark of divinity” is present in every human being. Consequently, he denied that salvation is rooted in the recognizing of one’s own divine quality. He also did not see the emancipation from the physical body and a material world as the ultimate human struggle. Having said that, debate about Marcion’s connection with Gnosticism continues.
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Adoptionist Christians
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Rembrandt’s “The Evangelist Matthew Inspired by an Angel.” Louvre-Lens, Lens, France. 1661. According to the Adoptionists, Matthew was the most Jewish of the New Testament writers.
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This group consisted of Jews, living in the eastern parts of Palestine, who believed that Jesus was the messiah, adopted by God at his baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon him as a dove. As a result, Jesus was considered to be the most righteous of human beings and the wisest of teachers. His death was viewed as an atoning sacrifice for the sinful condition of humanity. God raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him to his right hand in heaven. Unlike the Gnostics and the Marcionites, who believed that Jesus was not human, but divine, the Adoptionist Christians believed the opposite: Jesus was thoroughly human and not divine. Thus, this group denied that Jesus existed prior to his birth and that he was born of a virgin. For the Adoptionists, there was only one God. Being consistent with traditional Jewish reasoning, they argued that if Jesus is God and the Father is God, there would have to be two Gods, which was repugnant to Jews. In contrast to the Marciontes, the Adoptionist Christians thought that Paul should be rejected as a blasphemer because he taught that the Law (especially the Jewish identity markers like circumcision, Sabbath, and dietary laws) is no longer relevant. Instead, this group appropriated a book similar to that of Matthew, but written in Hebrew.
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Scripture in Early Christianity
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Caravaggio’s “Sacrifice of Isaac,” Uffizi Museum, Florence. 1603. The binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), known as the Aqedah, was interpreted in a variety of ways in early and rabbinic Judaism. For example, some rabbis argued that God was simply testing Abraham. Others argued that God simply wanted a symbolic sacrifice, like a spiritual surrender. One rabbi in the medieval period even argued that Abraham’s imagination led him astray since God would never command such an act. In the Targum to Genesis, Isaac wants to be sacrificed to prove his devotion. The early Christians applied the whole scene to the sacrifice of Jesus (e.g. Heb 11:17-19).
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Scripture, or what Christians today call the Old Testament, was the most influential source in the development of early Christian identity and thought. Earliest Christians developed their theological thinking through interpretive methods that were very different from current historical approaches to the Bible. Since most of the earliest Christians were Jewish, common interpretive methods circulating in the Judaisms of the first century transitioned seamlessly into nascent Christianity. Early Jewish interpretation is most well known for its midrashic approaches. The word “midrash” in Hebrew means “commentary” and is related to the verb darash, which means, “to search.” Midrash has become synonymous with biblical interpretation in early and Rabbinic Judaism. The aim of midrash was essentially to contemporize the scriptures so that they might address current needs, be they legal, political, cultural, or religious. The underlying assumption was that scripture, which comes from God, conveys a fluidity of meaning for all generations and for all circumstances of life. Some midrashic interpretations appear to have established themselves as favored community readings and became inseparable from their scriptural sources. Midrash was practiced in three general ways called halakhah, aggadah, and pesher.
Halakhah
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Halakhah (“way of going”), or halakhic midrash, refers to interpretations of scripture that are oriented toward meeting legal or ethical concerns. These often take the form of minor explanations or adjustments of biblical law. For example, the Septuagint (LXX), which is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that was used more than any other version by the New Testament writers, contains numerous legal changes that presumably reflect the social conditions among the Jewish populace in Alexandria between the third and first centuries BCE. Assuming that the Septuagint translators used a Hebrew source that reflects the Masoretic Text (MT), the source for the modern Jewish Bible and the Christian Old Testament, consider the following comparisons that reflected social shifts in legal thinking.
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In the first example, the slight shift from God finishing his work on the seventh day to the sixth day may well reflect a more established practice of the Sabbath in Alexandrian Judaism.
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MT Gen 2:2
And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.
LXX Gen 2:2
And God finished the works that he had done on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day.
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The second example expresses shifts in ritual legal practice enforced by the religio-political establishment. Lev 24:7 concerns weekly bread offering, whereas Deut 26:12 advocates a tithing that can be compared to our taxation system:
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MT Lev 24:7
and you shall put pure frankincense with each row
LXX Lev 24:7
and you will add to the offering pure frankincense and salt
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MT Deut 26:12
When you have finished paying all the tithe of your increase in the third year, the year of tithing, then you shall give it to the Levite, to the stranger, to the orphan and to the widow, that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.
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LXX Lev 24:7
and you will add to the offering pure frankincense and salt
Guido Reni, “Moses with the Tables of the Law.” Galleria Borghese, Rome. 1624.
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There are numerous examples like this spread throughout the legal texts in early Judaism. Early Christian Jews like Mark, Matthew and Paul express even greater shifts in legal and ethical thinking. In Mark 7, for instance, Jesus is portrayed quite radically when he challenges prevailing biblical dietary laws by pronouncing that all food is clean. In Matthew, one need not look any further than the sermon on the mount (chapter 5-7) to see legal and moral shifts, though they are not to the same degree as in Mark. In Paul’s rethinking about Judaism in Galatians, he radically calls for an abandonment of circumcision for Gentile converts to Christianity, which he regards as the fulfillment of Judaism and the culmination of Israel’s history.
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This shift is particularly radical because it takes aim at Jewish identity as it is rooted in the establishment of a perennial covenant between God and Abraham, Israel’s founding patriarch. Genesis 17:14 uses the words of God to clearly establish the boundary that divides God’s people from the rest when it stipulates, “But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
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Aggadah
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“Joseph and Aseneth” by an unknown artist. Staatliche Museen, Berlin, c. 1500. The apocryphal story of Joseph and Aseneth, found today in the OT Pseudepigrapha, is an aggadic midrash on Gen 41:45.
Aggadah (“narrative”)—sometimes called haggadah or aggidic midrash—likewise aims to make scripture relevant in new social contexts, but instead of addressing legal and moral issues it contemporizes scriptural narratives through legendary enlargements or even the rewriting of scripture itself in a kind of expanded paraphrase. In a sense, it engages in the retelling of biblical stories, events, or persons with a theological, ethical, or political aim. For example, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (2nd - 1st century BCE) is regarded as a midrash on Genesis that intends to make the case for Levi as the ruling tribe during the reign of John Hyrcanus. Likewise, Jubilees (2nd century BCE) rewrites Genesis and Exodus as a protest against the Hasmonean princes. Joseph and Aseneth (1st century BCE – 2nd century CE) on the other hand, is a lengthy expansion on a single verse, explaining how it came to be that a righteous Israelite like Joseph could have ever married Aseneth, the daughter of Potiphera who was a pagan priest (Gen 41:45).
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Gioachino Assereto, “Isaac Blessing Jacob.” Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, c. 1643.
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Examples also abound on a smaller scale where specific texts are newly explained. For instance, in contrast to Genesis, the writing called Wisdom (1st cent. BCE) represents Jacob as an innocent character when he fled after deceiving his brother over obtaining the blessing from Isaac. Wisdom 10:10 reads, “Wisdom rescued from troubles those who served her. When a righteous man fled from his brother’s wrath, she guided him on straight paths; she showed him the kingdom of God, and gave him knowledge of angels; she prospered him in his labors, and increased the fruit of his toil.” One of the tendencies in aggadic midrash is to cast characters from the distant biblical past in the role of saints. Especially helpful examples of aggadah are found in a version of the scriptures called the Targums (lit. “translations”), which were Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew scriptures written down as early as the second century CE. One such targumic expansion is Gen 22:10 which concerns the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. The italicized portion is the midrashic enlargement.
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MT Gen 22:10
Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
Targum Neofiti Gen 22:10
Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son Isaac. Isaac answered and said to his father Abraham: “Father, tie me well lest I kick you and your offering be rendered unfit and we be thrust down into the pit of destruction in the world to come.” The eyes of Abraham were on the eyes of Isaac and the eyes of Isaac were scanning the angels on high. Abraham did not see them. In that hour a Bath Qol [voice from heaven] came forth from the heavens and said: “Come, see two singular persons who are in my world; one slaughters and the other is being slaughtered. The one who slaughters does not hesitate and he who is being slaughtered stretches out his neck.” (Translation is from Martin McNamara, Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis.The Aramaic Bible 1A; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992).
Many scholars have observed that some of the Gospel accounts are best explained as aggadic midrash as well. If we assume the common view that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark along with Q, then some of the changes in Matthew and Luke can potentially be midrashic. For instance, only Matthew and Luke contain the infancy accounts of Jesus. Though they differ in numerous places, they both extensively use scripture to theologically explain the meaning of Jesus’ humble birth for the good of humanity. At the other end of the story, the passion accounts in Matthew and Luke are much more extensive than that of Mark, again containing numerous scriptural citations and allusions that are used to explain the significance of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection.
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Leonardo da Vinci, “The Annunciation” Uffizi, Florence. c. 1472.
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When Matthew and Luke contain expansions (beyond Mark and Q) that include scriptural quotations or allusions, scholars debate the compositional sequence. Which came first in the composing of the Gospels, the quotation from scripture or the Gospel narrative that contains it? In other words, were some of the sections in the Gospels, like the infancy accounts and portions of the passion accounts, composed as enlargements of scripture or were the scripture texts embedded after the accounts were written? Some of the texts point more clearly in one direction instead of the other.
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For instance, John’s passion account probably reflects the former. Unlike the Synoptic tradition wherein Jesus dies on Passover, John has Jesus die on the day of preparation for Passover at the same time that the sacrificial animals were beginning to be slaughtered (18:28; 19:14). In addition, John connects Jesus’ death to the preparatory rules in Exodus. Commentators usually explain that the summary of Jesus’ execution in John 19:36 (“For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, ‘no bone of his shall be broken’”) is taken from Exod 12:46 (“You shall not break any of its bones”) which is part of a list of regulations for the preparation of the paschal victim for the feast. For John, since Jesus was the Passover sacrifice, it is no surprise that in the narrative he should die at the same time as the sacrificial animals. John’s interpretation is not unique to early Christian thought. The same idea is found in Paul’s interpretation of Jesus’ death when he writes in 1 Cor 5:7 that “Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.”
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Mosaic of the Lamb of God. Apse in the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Rome. 7th century. The twelve Apostles are also depicted as sheep facing Jesus the Lamb.
Pesher
A third common form of interpretation was called pesher (“meaning”). Unlike the seamless expansions and alterations of scripture in aggadah and halakhah, pesher distinguishes itself as an explicit commentary on scripture. This form of interpretation is commonly associated with the Essenes and their apocalyptic belief in the imminent coming of God and the accompanying final battle between the righteous and the wicked—or as they sometimes put it, the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness.” The primary aim of pesher was to show how scripture points prophetically to the end of the age—which coincidentally was the same period of history in which the Essenes believed themselves to be living.
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Ruins of an Essene settlement at Qumran, which was most likely destroyed by the Romans in 66-70 CE.
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Pesher commentary operated from the perspective of two principles: (1) prophetic scripture refers to the end times, and (2) the present era is the end times. Thus, persons and events in the scriptures were connected, sometimes in an allegorical fashion, with persons and events contemporaneous with the Qumran community. Since Moses and David, for example, were prophetic figures for the Essenes, all of their teachings were ultimately directed at the Qumran community. The following example is typical. In a pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab), the original lament and outrage by the prophet at the destruction caused by the Chaldeans is interpreted several centuries later by the Essene commentator as a lament and outrage directed at the Temple establishment. The reference to the Chaldeans becomes a code word for the Kittim—which many scholars understand as the Romans—who are viewed as the instruments of God’s judgment against the corrupt Temple leadership in Jerusalem. The square brackets below represent missing portions of the text in the manuscripts.
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MT Hab. 1:4, 6
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgment comes forth perverted…
For I am rousing the Chaldeans,
that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth
to seize dwellings not their own.
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1QpHab 1:10-13
“Therefore Law declines, [and true judgment never comes forth” (Hab 1:4a). This means] that they rejected God’s Law [… “For the wicked man hems in] the righteous man” (Hab 1:4b). [The “wicked man” refers to the Wicked Priest, and “the righteous man”] is the Teacher of Righteousness.
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1QpHab 2:10-15
“For I am now about to raise up the Chaldeans, that br[utal and reckle]ss people” (Hab 1:6a). This refers to the Kittim, w[ho are] swift and mighty in war, annihilating [many people, and …] in the authority of the Kittim and [the wicked…] and have no faith in the laws of [God.
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The New Testament writers were no strangers to pesher interpretation, but it is not used nearly as often as aggadah and halakhah. When it does occur, it tends more towards allegory. Unlike at Qumran where the fulfillment is found in the community itself, in early Christianity it is found in the person of Jesus, on the basis of whom the early Christian communities were formed. Paul’s interpretation of Deut 30:12-14 in Rom 10:6-8 is a case in point.
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Deut 30:11-14
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe (NRSV).
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Rom 10:5-9
Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (NRSV).
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Today, pesher is alive and well. There is no shortage of doomsday prophets who read the Bible in light of the latest political headlines. Like their ancient counterparts, they believe that we are living in the last days and that the Bible contains numerous prophecies about our time. Those who have read Hal Lindsay’s bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth or watched the television evangelist Jack van Impe should find pesher sounding very familiar.
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Hal Lindsey’s book, published in 1970, sold millions, beginning a modern kind of pesher reading of the Bible.
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Midrashic interpretation in early Judaism and Christianity should not be thought of as simple exaggeration or misleading fabrication. While some of the expansions of scripture, especially in aggadic midrash, may well have been recognized as “stretches” of past stories especially among dissenting groups, they were by and large believed to be factual and meaningful. The use of the term “ancient fiction” also does not capture the midrashic aim, for fictional narratives in the ancient world were not versions of prior events or factual persons. The aim of midrash was simply to make scripture relevant to ever changing circumstances and culture. Since scripture was believed to be God’s word, it was able to address every new situation and was not tied to historical or literary contexts.
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Christological Interpretation
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Fresco of Moses (or Peter) striking the rock in the wilderness, Catacombs of St Calixtus, Rome. 2nd-3rd century.
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The most distinctive feature of early Christian interpretation of scripture was its Christological (i.e. Christ centered) focus. The basic early Christian assumption was that the Jewish scriptures pointed to, foretold, or in some sense illumined Jesus’ messianic identity, teachings, and actions. “Typology” is a term that is often used to capture the comparison between Jesus and prominent biblical characters and events. The general idea is that the biblical characters and events, which are said to be “types,” pre-figure or foreshadow the revelation of God in Christ, who is said to be the “archetype.” In their Old Testament context, the characters certainly are believed to reveal God, but the revelation comes to its fullness centuries later in Jesus. So, what God did in the past through figures like Moses, Israel, David, and the exodus, he does in the life of Jesus, though in a completed sense. Theological thinking at this point was not grounded in historical or literalist readings of scripture, but out of a concern for what those scriptures meant in light of the coming of Christ. The New Testament writings were written from the perspective of faith that was grounded in Christ, by people of faith, to people of faith, about faith.
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Ceiling fresco of scenes from the Jewish bible. Catacombs of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. c. 300. For example, on the far left Jonah is being cast into the sea, and on the far right he is vomited out by the fish. The story of Jonah was often compared to Christ’s death and resurrection (as in Matt 16:4). Just under one hundred figures of Jonah have been found in early Christian catacombs and on sarcophagi dating prior to Constantine’s reign in the early part of the fourth century.
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In addition to the numerous quotations and allusions from the scriptures in the New Testament, we are fortunate to have a few explicit references to their method, which has come to be called “Christological hermeneutics.” For example, in John’s Gospel, during an exchange with antagonistic Jewish religious leaders (called “the Jews”) Jesus validates his superior authority by claiming that the scriptures point to him. In 5:39 he tells the leaders, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about me.” Further in 5:46, Jesus reiterates, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” These statements provide clear insight into how the Johannine Christians, who claimed to be guided by the Holy Spirit (John 14-16), appropriated scripture in the formation of their theological thinking.
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Duccio di Buoninsegna, “Road to Emmaus,” Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo, Siena. 1308-11.
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Another window into early Christian interpretation is found in Luke’s story of the travelers on the Emmaus road and their encounter with the risen Christ. When Jesus is eventually recognized by the two travelers, the narrator summarizes, “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27).
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A third example is found in 1 Cor 15:3-4, which has often been regarded as part of a very early creedal statement. Here Paul connects the gospel of salvation from sin with the scriptures, which he understands to foreshadow or foretell the means through which the good news is accomplished, namely the death and resurrection of Jesus. He writes, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.” It is not at all clear to which text Paul is referring or whether he has in mind the entire biblical story, but it is unquestionably clear that the ultimate purpose of the scriptures is to convey that Jesus is the Christ.
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Hans Speckaert, Conversion of St. Paul, Musée du Louvre, Paris. 1577. Paul’s vision of Christ is told three times in the book of Acts (9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18), but it does not explicitly appear in his own letters. Some scholars, however, point to 1 Cor 15:3-8 and Gal 1:11-16.
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It is important to notice that the earliest Christians were not concerned with literal interpretations or historical reconstructions of their scriptures, but with the way in which the scriptures provided meaning to a newly experienced spiritual reality. Scripture texts were frequently taken out of their original literary and historical contexts and read within a faith context that comprised of a history that had as its goal the salvation of humanity. At the centre of this understanding of history (often called “salvation history”) was the coming of Christ whose death and resurrection was believed to have restored the world. How the Christological hermeneutic came to be formed is a matter of anthropological and sociological debate, but phenomenologically—that is, via the testimony of experiences—early Christianity was founded on the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead. Claims of Christic visions and experiential encounters with the risen Christ in the post-biblical period abound, especially in the context of commemorative meals.
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A deliberate separation between faith and historical fact, salvation history and history, theology and history, or faith and reason—as we have come to know these in the post-Enlightenment age—appear to have been nonexistent. If anything, theology and what we call history appear to have been unified in a way that the former gave direction to the latter. That which occurred in the past was divinely orchestrated to give shape and meaning to the present because it was believed that the purpose and goal of history has been revealed.
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Bibliography
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Translations of early Christian extracanonical texts:
Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Hennecke, Edgar and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, eds, New Testament Apocrypha. 2 Vols. Translation by R. McL. Wilson. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, revised edition 1991-2.
Robinson, James M. ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
Secondary Sources
Argall, Randall A., Beverly Bow and Rodney A. Werline, eds. For a Later Generation: The Transformation of Tradition in Israel, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity. Harrisburg PA; Trinity Press International, 2000.
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Baur, Ferdinand Christian. The Church History of the First Three Centuries. Translated by Allan Menzies. London: Williams and Norgate, 1878, 3rd ed. Original German publication in 1853.
Bauer, Walter. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Edited by R. A. Kraft and G. Krodel. Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.
Brown, Raymond E. The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.
Crossan. John Dominic. The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.
Depalma Digeser, Elizabeth. The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Drake, Harold A. Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance. Ancient Society and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Dunn, James D. G. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity. 2nd Edition. London: SCM Press, 1990.
Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Evans, Craig A. Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005.
Juel, Donald. Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.
Koester, Helmut. “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels.” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980) 105-30.
Lapham, Fred. An Introduction to the New Testament Apocrypha. London: T. & T. Clark, 2003.
Longenecker, Richard N. Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
Luz, Ulrich. Studies in Matthew. Translation by Rosemary Selle Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.
Kraemer, Ross and Mary Rose D’Angelo, eds. Women and Christian Origins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Marjanen, Antii and Petri Luomanen, eds, A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics.” Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 76. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
Nickelsburg, George W. E. Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins: Diversity, Continuity, and Transformation. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003.
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–––––. The Gnostic Gospels. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983.
Stegemann, Ekkehard and Wolfgang. The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century. Translation by O. C. Dean, Jr.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.
Torjesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
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