OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN GOSPEL TEXTS General Editors Christopher Tuckett Andrew Gregory This page intentionally left blank The Gospel of Mary CHRISTOPHER TUCKETT 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services Ltd., Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–921213–2 13579108642 Series Preface Recent years have seen a signiWcant increase of interest in non- canonical gospel texts as part of the study of early Christianity. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library has greatly enhanced our Wrst-hand knowledge of the diversity of early Christian literature, including the production of ‘gospel’ texts, the most famous of which may be the Gospel of Thomas. Other ‘gospel’ texts beside those found at Nag Hammadi are extant elsewhere. In recent years, more and more attention has been focused on texts such as these, with powerful claims being made in some quarters about the positive potential value of such texts for the study of Jesus himself and/or the earliest stages of Christianity. The nature and extent of these so-called ‘gospel’ texts vary considerably. Further, the very word ‘gospel’ is itself problematic in relation to its usage to refer to a literary work. By convention, the Wrst four books of the New Testament (attributed to authors known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) have been called ‘gospels’ for a very long time. But at the start of the Christian era, the word ‘gospel’ did not refer to written texts at all; it was the word used by Christians such as Paul to refer to the saving message of the new Christian movement, as often as not focusing on claims about the saving signiWcance of the death of Jesus (cf. 1 Cor. 15.1–4). Fairly soon, however, the word shifted its meaning and was used to refer to literary works: and in the case of the books that later became part of the New Testament, these were works which gave fairly extended accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus, as well as relatively detailed accounts of his trial and cruciWxion and (in three cases out of four) accounts of resurrection appearances after his death. The issue of the genre of these four canonical books, and the question of whether they should be regarded as generically similar, have been debated extensively over the years. The question ‘What is a gospel?’ is thus a perennial one when thinking about the four canonical gospels. There is perhaps some consensus now that these vi Series Preface texts ought to be seen as broadly ‘biographical’ in nature, though also bearing in mind that ancient ideas of what constituted a ‘biography’ are not necessarily identical with modern ideas. The same question becomes inWnitely more complex when extended to consider the range of other texts of the early Christian movement which either claimed for themselves the title ‘gospel’ or which were claimed by others to be a ‘gospel’. Further, how (if at all) these ‘other’ ‘gospels’ should be divided and categorized is not at all obvious. In terms of what might constitute a (‘genuine’/‘real’) gospel, any claim based on a Wrm idea of the ‘essence’ of a (‘true’) gospel (i.e. an ‘essentialist’ approach) is one that is fraught with diYculties and would probably fall into the trap of excluding far too much too quickly. Certainly, if, as some have argued, a work can be called a (‘genuine’) ‘gospel’ only if it focuses on the saving work of Jesus’ death and resurrection, then almost all of the non-canonical (so-called) ‘gospel’ texts would be excluded (along perhaps with even one or two of the canonical ones!). Others have worked with a much looser ‘deWnition’, seeing a ‘gospel’ as a text which purports to give information about the life and teaching of Jesus. This in turn might then exclude some texts, especially if ‘life’ in this context is taken to mean Jesus’ life prior to his passion: for many of the so-called ‘gospel’ texts claim to provide primarily teaching given by Jesus after his resurrection. An alternative approach might be to accept as a ‘gospel’ anything which claims the name ‘gospel’ for itself, and/or perhaps is claimed by others to have such a name (a so-called nominalist approach). This would certainly provide a more extensive list than some ‘essentialist’ approaches; it would, however, come up against potential problems in cases where the text concerned is not extant in full and/or no third party refers to it: hence we do not have any claims, one way or the other, about what title the text claimed for itself or how others regarded it. For the purpose of this series, a relatively pragmatic approach has been adopted about which texts to regard as ‘gospels’ (and to see as, at least potentially, possible candidates for inclusion in the present series). As an overarching criterion, we have tended to accept the distinction that many might instinctively make, separating ‘gospels’ from other early Christian works (e.g. letters of apostles, or accounts of the history of the early church) on the basis that ‘gospels’ make at least some claim Series Preface vii to give direct reports of the life and/or teaching of Jesus, but taking ‘life and teaching’ broadly enough to include accounts purporting to give teaching given by Jesus after his resurrection. Further, we have mostly accepted the claims—of either manuscripts themselves (e.g. in colophons) or of ancient authors talking about such texts—to identify some works as ‘gospels’. The overarching criterion does then serve to exclude some texts, even those which either claimed to be ‘gospels’ or were perhaps claimed by others to be ‘gospels’: for example, the so-called Gospel of Truth from Nag Hammadi (although the work itself makes no claim to such a title, it is thought by some to be possibly the work of this name mentioned by Irenaeus) and the Gospel of the Egyptians from Nag Hammadi (whose colophon does claim the title ‘gospel’ for itself) are both excluded from consideration here on the grounds that neither makes any explicit claim to be giving accounts of the life and/ or teaching of Jesus. On the other hand, a text such as Papyrus Egerton 2 (which is so fragmentary that no claim to a ‘title’ survives, and the work is not referred to by any third party as far as is known) is included here on the basis that it purports to be giving information about Jesus; equally, too, the Epistula Apostolorum, although not explicitly claiming to be a ‘gospel’, is included here on the same grounds. So too the fragments known as the ‘Jewish Christian gos- pels’, which survive only in quotations from the Church Fathers, are included here on the basis that the Fathers themselves clearly refer to the texts they quote as ‘gospels’ (the Gospel of the Hebrews, Ebionites, etc.). In terms of any possible classiWcation, or taxonomy, of the various ‘gospels’, various approaches are possible. Again one can take a very pragmatic, ‘concrete’ approach and categorize the diVerent texts on the basis of the diVerent ways, and extents, to which the texts have been preserved and survive today. Thus some texts survive, mostly in full, in a wide range of manuscripts and in diVerent languages. Examples in this category might include the Epistula Apostolorum and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas: in each case there is a range of manuscripts which contain the text. A second category might include those where a substantial amount—possibly even all—of the text survives, but where we are reliant on eVectively one manuscript for all (or most) viii Series Preface of the text concerned. In this category, we can think of the Gospel of Thomas,theGospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Peter: in all three cases, there are (arguably) a very few other fragments extant, but for the bulk of the text we are reliant on a single manuscript. (In the case of Thomas and Mary, the manuscript in question is in Coptic, which almost certainly represents a translation of the text from a Greek original; Thomas is also to be distinguished from Mary and Peter in this context by virtue of the fact that the Coptic text of Thomas has the complete text of the gospel, whereas the major manuscripts containing the texts of Mary and Peter provide only parts of the full text of those gospels.) A third category of text might be ones which are not fully extant but which survive in at most a fragment of a single manuscript.