Lost Gospels of the Hebrews

our topic this evening is lost gospels of the Hebrews there's a particular text that refer to as the gospel of the Hebrews but there are other texts that kind of have gone under that same name that are clearly different texts are involved and so that's why we're calling this lost gospels of the Hebrews so just by way of a backdrop the Christian story has been pulled kind of Simply as though there was a foundation of a church so the institution itself is founded by Jesus Christ and that institution grew under his Apostles and their successes the Bishops eventually leading to the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine and the establishment in the generation subsequently to that of a Roman State religion and so if we look at that traditional narrative you know Jesus of Nazareth is active in the 30s A.D in Galilee and in Judea he himself during his own Ministry claims to be the Messiah the Christ he founds that church by commissioning Apostles to spread good news about his ministry he in that in this telling of the traditional narrative he himself is predicting his own death and Resurrection he is then executed by the Romans returns from the grave appears to female disciples and then to male disciples and many many disciples uh those apostles then spread the gospel first to other Jews and afterwards they begin to accept and convert what the Jewish word here Gentiles the Nations the Greek speaking pagans and later uh pagans who were from uh places Beyond Greek speaking World Latin speaking and so forth all of these Apostles are martyred like Jesus according to again like I say tradition the traditional narrative so if we take all of that meanwhile that All Leads up to the fact that the apostles then have founded individual congregations or churches little churches as opposed to the church as a whole institution in different towns and cities and in doing that they appointed overseers or what can I say now Bishops of those churches and so in that telling Christianity spreads throughout the Roman Empire taking the form of a church that is made up of largely autonomous congregations based in cities and towns and led by Bishops until as I say it takes over the whole Roman Empire so this dare this is definitely the narrative as it's understood and promoted by the Bishops you can see how it um is a very satisfactory telling of Bishops it says Bishops should be in charge and it actually uh um gives them a source of authority and a legacy and history of authority so this is definitely understood has the story by the Bishops and it's promoted by the Bishops who then LED mainstream Christian churches by the time of the second and third centuries when we start getting Christian uh writers in the post kind of biblical period so this narrative explained why Bishops are in charge it Justified their Authority by creating a story of apostolic succession that goes all the way back to Jesus so if we were to diagram this then there is a church institution that goes back to Jesus is going in a main line of the Christian Church led by Bishops that leads to the one Catholic and Orthodox church the church that becomes the state religion of the Roman Empire and then from that perspective everyone else is portrayed as a breakoff and as a heretic so there are several many many different kinds of diversity within early Christianity but some of the famous and important ones are the evianites Christians the marcianites and the gnostics and again from the mainline perspective then they're all seen as break-offs from that one continuous Church founded by Jesus and led by the Bishops so this telling it turns out is anachronistic and retrospective so the Bishops when they are in charge in the second third and fourth especially fifth centuries they are looking back on this and they're telling the story it's the perspective of the group that won and as is essentially always the case in history the actual detailed history is far more complicated than this simpler narrative so in the second century the actual existence is that there were multiple christianities uh that existed side by side proto-orthodox churches I'm sorry proto-orthodox sources the uh the group that eventually emerged as the winners portray competitors as Heretics but before Constantine there actually was no single Christian Church structure or Central Authority so as early as our sources begin there are multiple competing christianities rather than one church with break-offs and so I'm listening here again those some just as examples the proto-orthodox the Marcy Knights the ebionites and the gnostics because these are significant groups not because and they're actually even diverse groups within these but not because this is an exhaustive list by any means I'm just showing a simplistic model here to explain this so emerging the proto-orthodox Christianity these are the guys like I say that are ultimately going to be the winners here this is the group um that rejected adherence to Jewish law so you're not going to keep kosher you do not have to have circumcision and so forth but it retains the importance of Jewish scripture so in other words even though um the Torah the law is not to be obeyed by Christians it is nevertheless continued to be important from the proto-orthodox perspective because it's understood to be prophecies that lead to and that speak to and speak about Jesus Christ and so forth so in other words it's retained even though it's not meant to be lived in that sense as law um this group developed very early a very complex christology so it understands Jesus to be both fully human and fully Divine it also has a very complex theology the father Jesus and the spirit are all one God but Jesus is not the father the father is not the spirit the spirit is not Jesus and so forth the Trinity it's a very complicated understanding that Christians have all more or less all fail to grasp without immediately if they start talking about it immediately fall into heresy as it were because it's too complicated but anyway they have that complex theology they are also monotheists so from this perspective in other words there is only one God despite the fact that God is three in one it understood this there's only one God so for example there is not a dual a cosmic dualism there is not a the one God of goodness the spirit virtual God that has created all of all of goodness and the Eternal things and then a counterbalancing evil God in a doula system the god that is the creator of the material uh and decayed and and terrible world or something like that in other words they reject that ultimately the understanding here is that evil is simply absence of good not uh not a thing in and of itself that's really not something that can stand up to the Creator the one God okay the second group that I want to come look at a group led by a guy named marcian of cenopay at the end of The First beginning of the second century especially rejected most of Christianity's Jewish inheritance and again promoted that idea of dualism and so marcian considered Paul to be the chief of the Apostles marcian rejected essentially all of scripture the whole Old Testament Canon it's not just a matter of uh of of not obeying Old Testament laws we know we won't want to have anything to do with the Old Testament anymore in the Marcia night understanding of Christianity and indeed even all of the other texts of the early Christians accept Paul's letters and Luke were not considered canonical by the marcianites and indeed by them even deciding what was the Canon they kind of create and inject into Christianity the idea that we have to make a Canon of what we consider to be scripture and what texts are not going to be considered scripture so they actually kind of by making the first Canon the proto-orthodox people say no wait a second no we have a different Canon than that that is a bigger Cannon than one you have uh marcian is a dualist and so the Marcy Knights believe in a cosmic battle between good and evil and they specifically viewed the Old Testament God as an evil Lesser God of which the New Testament uh God is actually the true spiritual God that so the gnostics developed philosophies rejecting physical Material World in favor of the spiritual sort of like the mercy Knights but they actually added to it a lot more there's not only one Gnostic group so there's different mustic understandings but they all kind of follow a similar path which is kind of taking a you know very elaborated middle platonism uh Plato's kind of uh spiritual uh understanding of the Eternal and adding on to it a highly elaborate mythology about the kind of procession of different um kinds of angelic divinities uh that are all essentially like platonic forms that are emerging in the course of a a cosmic story of how the universe got to be the way it is so this is what became um understood to be the actual gnosis or knowledge of the true God which is a secret and is meant to be kept secret which the gnostics did keep secret and shared among themselves so there might have been Gnostic Believers or people who were agnostics within mixed in with regular Christians and just not telling a lot of the other Christians about it because um they they know better and it's a secret that they're keeping among themselves within their little group the gnostics reject the idea that Jesus was human at all and in fact they believe that physical bodies are evil and even sex and procreation all of those kinds of things are evil finally there are Judaism Christians and so one of the more famous of these effects are the ebionites so they're at the very opposite end of the spectrum from the marcianites and the gnostics the ebionites continue to maintain Jewish law they are largely concentrated in kind of Syria Palestine area and they continue to practice the written law of Moses but they reject the oral law that is being contemporaneously developed by the rabbis and is becoming the source for rabbinic Judaism the Judaism that emerges after the second temple period so the ebionites consider Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah but they did not consider him to be God in other words he's an important man but not God and so therefore it is what we call a low christology as opposed to a very high at christology okay so what are these which one of these comes first if I was saying you know um in that traditional narrative Jesus founds a church well we've done a lectures on the historical Jesus where I've suggested to you that what Jesus is doing is actually not founding he doesn't actually found a church he is he is creating a group of disciples that are are gathered around him that are committed to uh to living out the what he considers a spiritual Kingdom in a particular way but it is only after Jesus's death is there a problem okay it's only after Jesus's death that congregations start to get planted and that these organized together to event eventually form an Institutional Church so we can trace the origin of martianism because we know about that the founder of this idea Marcy and I could talk about a guy from sinope and Anatolia but the priority between the other groups is arguable and and that's going to be especially true I mean there's some sense that gnosticism actually goes all the way back and that there's actually Gnostic Jews that are contemporaneous to this and there's some very early Gnostic or protonastic sources but it does seemed like it it's something that develops after or later within Christianity but the priority or the witch's earliest between the proto-orthodox understandings and judaizing Christians is a lot more difficult so when we say judaizing this is actually again a um an anachronistic a retrospective term this is from the perspective of proto-orthodox people who have already rejected the law they see Christians who are kind of going back and wanting to be more Jewish as as being a backward turn but actually because the historical Jesus and his disciples were Jews who would continue to live as Jews they were not actually alienated from second temple Judaism so the idea that there are Jewish Christians that certainly does go all the way back to Jesus so in other words those groups at least and they might even you know have the priority in other words being the more uh the claim to being the earlier group so and that is especially true because a lot of poor Orthodoxy can be traced to uh Paul who we talk about all the time so Paul the very uh earliest author Christian author whose Works survive is so important to Christianity that he's often considered Christianity's second founder and indeed all of Paul's activities and his insights and what he's kind of preaching and proclaiming in some ways are more responsible for the emergence of Christianity as a religion than any then really what Jesus did in a historical sense so the jump from being a Jewish sect to becoming an independent Universal religion can be traced in part to Paul so Paul never met the historical Jesus he nevertheless became Christianity's most influential Apostle who argued very decisively against the need for non-jewish Christian converts to adhere to Mosaic law so in other words you don't have to keep kosher get circumcised all those things and Paul's writings therefore are very Central to the development of the proto-orthodox Christianity while there are conflict while the conflicts between Paul and other Christians at the time are retrospectively minimized when the book of Acts is written later when we go back to earlier writing so acts is written much later than Paul's own writings so in his own writings Paul kind of frankly admits that many Christians strongly disagree with him about his ideas about Jewish law um specifically Paul talks about conflicts that he's had with the historical Jesus but Jesus disciple Peter and also with Jesus's brother James and even though Paul is disputing with them about the importance of you know this idea that he has that Christians don't have to uh conform to Jewish law Paul is nonetheless acknowledging that that Peter and James are the acknowledged pillars of the church in other words he has really never met he never met Jesus he was not one of the historical Jesus's disciples in his own lifetime he has become an apostle in his own testimony by having a vision of Christ that gives him and his opinion Authority but that doesn't mean that everybody else agrees with that they certainly have to deal with the fact that he is such an effective missionary who is so able to plant congregations and also influence them them with your ideas but that doesn't mean that they necessarily think who wait who is this guy again they might be asking it as to themselves what we were running around with Jesus and we hardly have met this guy and he is saying things that we don't agree with essentially so there are still Footprints or traces of that division in the Bible so certainly in the letters of Paul Paul very strongly makes his case against um uh having to adhere to Jewish law and so one of his statements in his letter to the Romans is man is justified by faith and not by works so it's not by doing things adherence to law or indeed anything that you're doing whereas a text that's attributed to James the Epistle of James not really written by James but written from someone who is writing in James's Authority and essentially remembering that alternate kind of anti-paul perspective says man is justified by man is justified by works and not by faith alone so it's the opposite position so although the biblical Canon excluded texts Agnes sorry antagonistic to proto-orthodox positions some of those Footprints can still be observed um as Paul planted Christian churches in Syria in Asian Minor in Greece the Jacobs Church James's Church the Jacobite church I'm calling it here um uh James Ian Church may have sent Apostles including Peter to each of those groups to teach James's view of the law so as it's recorded in James 2 10 if a man breaks just one commandment and keeps all the others he is guilty of breaking them all so he's very um uh James the brother Jesus is called James the just where just here means very strict in following the law is a very fervent in the law um Paul's opponents he says had credentials that they intended to use to prove that they were the legitimate Disciples of Jesus which actually forced Paul to argue that he is an apostle sent by Christ sent by uh by faith and not an apostle who's been sent by men so in other words he doesn't have one of these certificates presumably from the church in Jerusalem from presumably from James that he is a legitimate disciple instead he has to say my my um my uh credentials are that I converted all of you people you know in other words I have I have this um this Vision that has come directly from uh the Risen Christ and it does not relate to and is not subordinate to any Earthly Authority even if they were Jesus's apostles or his uh brother he doesn't say that last part but that's potentially what he's meaning so in another place in this letter to the Corinthians second letter of the Corinthians Paul sarcastically calls his opponent's super apostles but over time because of their success uh people writing Paul's name Paul list paulist uh sympathizers lament that every province of Asia everyone in the province of Asia deserted Paul and so in other words these other apostles were able to win over all of his uh followers in the Greek East at least from Paul's perspective at the end of his life and indeed one of the reasons why he was writing to the Romans was he more or less said I can't do anything more here I'm going to go go west and start evangelizing on a mission and convert everybody in Spain I'm going to start all over again so that I won't have to put up with all of these people that have a that don't consider me legitimate and who are not agreeing with me about my position about the adherence to law he didn't ever make it to that he actually gets arrested beforehand and is killed and so he does not actually do that but at the end of his life he may have been looking at it and saying boy I wasn't I didn't end up winning this fight that I had in other words this Vision that I had that doesn't end up being the case in history but it may have looked like that especially after he was arrested and awaiting execution so if we just look at the Historical James the just also we call Jacob James is just the English for this Jesus's brother is confirmed by both the Jewish historian Josephus and also as I mentioned by Paul as a leader of a group in Jerusalem it's known as the poor and it's their group of people who are voluntarily poor there is there mendicants like Buddhist monks or something or like franciscans they share all things in common they estew property and instead are are asking for their daily bread from people who are their supporters so he's known as the just as I say because of his Devotion to the law the author of The Epistle of James has him teach many of the same sayings that are attributed to Jesus in the gospels without attributing to Jesus so he's not saying ask and it shall be open to you and say Jesus said that rather he's James is saying that in this and so there's reason to believe that um in James's group even though Jesus is very important it's also understood that maybe John the Baptist and also James are also very important figures in other words we don't have this high christology that is developing over in the proto-orthodox tradition because of Paul and people who think like him so so a possible alternative to that narrative that I started with the simple traditional Narrative of this foundation and spread of Christianity given Christianity's origin and Paul's admission like I say that Jesus's brother led a group that continued to maintain the law it may well be that the offshoot here really is that the original disciples of Jesus and the James Ian church are essentially the continuity of The Originals and that may have continued with Jewish Christians possibly the ebionites and the Paul in church that became the proto-orthodoxy that became Nicene Christianity that that in effect may be technically the break-off uh from that original group or the jumping point that went from there because of Paul's uh contribution so in terms of insisting on adherence to Mosaic law the Bible continued to include voices from the first century Christianity that were promote proponents of the adherence to Jewish law so in other words they're not all immediately all first century Christians don't all become immediately persuaded by Paul and all go that way the author of Matthew's gospel for example does have a lot of sympathy for and does seem to be interested in maintaining the practice of Jewish law so he has Jesus say in Matthew 5 17-19 do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them for I truly truly I tell you until Heaven and Earth disappear not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen let me say that in King James not one jot or one Tittle will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accompl list therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven and whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven so in other words as far as the author of Matthew and his community of Christians Christians have to keep adhering to Mosaic law until the end so from a height of influence at the end of Paul's life which is simultaneously right around the same time that James is also killed the James Ian the Jacobus Church quickly declines so as I say it has been based in Jerusalem but when Jerusalem is destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D all of the Christians that were there had to flee or they were expelled either one or killed and among the rapidly growing Christian convert communities it's Paul's view of the law that it wins out and over time in all of those churches as these letters are spread those are begun to be seen as authoritative those have begun to be seen as scripture and they have much more influence even than they were having when in Paul's own life so there may be continuity uh between the poor of Jerusalem and the ebionites so according to eusebius and epiphanius the Christians of Jerusalem fled to Pella where their influence declined increasingly adherence to Mosaic law became viewed as a heresy by proto-orthodox Bishops epiphanis identifies the region around Pella as a center of the heresies of both the nazarians and the ebionites in other words two distinct sects of Jewish Christians although you know and although they have diff differences they don't believe the same things as one another they nevertheless both look back to James as an authority and also emphasize the need to continue to to adhere to Mosaic law all right so that is a little bit of a backdrop and now I want to look at lost Jewish Christian scripture as I've just kind of made the case if if there is kind of an interesting continuity with um uh this group that goes all the way back let's say to the historic Jesus and at least his brother and so forth you it might imagine that there's an opportunity when we get a look at their texts that maybe we're going to have a better window or a different window um into the actual historical Jesus or the earliest part of the movement um unfortunately it doesn't that isn't going to end up being the case there's problems with all that specifically because these texts none of the texts that we have or they had um predate the uh text that we have in the Canon so it does seem instead that the earliest folks that are speaking Aramaic and so forth if they had Aramaic texts they were not they were not preserved yeah they may not have had them they may have just simply been teaching by word of mouth and not not focused on the writing and it becomes a part of the Greek church that people get the idea of doing kind of writing a new testament essentially but in any event the uh the Jewish Christian scriptures seem to be a reaction to um the other scriptures that are being written and the written first in Greek so although each ones of these texts are sometimes called the gospel of Hebrews modern Scholars have kind of looked at the fragments that we have from them and and reason that we have to be talking about probably at least three distinct lost gospels and so the one um has generally called The Gospel of the Hebrews but Scholars have assigned for the other two texts the names Gospel of the ebionites and gospel of the nazarenes for particular reasons that we'll we'll look at as we get to them so let's start with the Lost Gospel of the Hebrews as with many lost texts the gospel of Hebrews is known pretty much only by quotation from uh essentially their enemies the proto-orthodox writers and in this case the early church fathers Clement origin didn't miss the Blind and Jerome although Jerome probably is just quoting origin all of Origins quotes origin was so prolific um these are the people that are quoting and have left us citations from the gospel of Hebrews and 9th century Source says that the text with some 2200 lines long and that's a few hundred lines shorter than Matthew so it's a long or big gospel only about seven fragments survive which give us just a slight glimpse into it and we'll read through a lot of those so here's the first of these fragments um cereal Jerusalem says that it is written in the gospel of Hebrews that quote this is now reading from the gospel of Hebrews when Christ wished to come to Earth come upon the Earth to men the good father summoned a mighty power in heaven which was called Michael and entrusted Christ to the care thereof and that power came into the world and was called Mary and Christ was in her womb seven months she gave birth to him and he grew up and chose the apostles who preached him everywhere so that's different from the Chris Christmas stories that we have in in the other gospels I mean there is a little bit of a a cosmic beginning like that at the beginning of the Gospel of John but what seems to be saying here is a pretty unique uh theology where the Archangel Michael is actually first incarnated uh into as like a spiritual power is incarnated as the Virgin Mary and so Michael then is Mary Angels do not have uh gender traditionally and so it would be possible for an angel to be obviously female or male when they're born and uh anyway and so that's an interesting and different understanding that these Christians had in terms of Christ's origin and also Mary's origin this idea that Christ is only in the womb seven months there are many gods and heroes especially in Greco-Roman mythology where you only they only are in the womb seven months so they're preemies and that that is like a sign I guess of greatness so Apollo and dionysius are said to have been born in that amount of months um grow you know again Greco-Roman era uh stories about Moses and other biblical figures say that he's only in the womb seven months Julius Caesar is said to have been that way so whether or not any of that I mean obviously these others are mythological figures but whether that's true of Caesar a lot of things are are made when when the um when you're retrospectively writing a biography of a guy who becomes a God Like Caesar then you include details like this in the story okay second fragment actually second and third fragment here's the second fragment and it came to pass when the Lord was come up out of the water so during the baptism of Jesus the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended upon him and rested upon him and said to him my son in all the prophets I was waiting for you that you should come and I might rest in you for you are my rest you are my first begotten son that reigns forever and we also have that in the next fragment Jesus says just now my mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of my hairs and brought me to the great Mountain Tabor so the implication here is that as opposed to the canonical baptism story where there's a voice from Heaven and the voice is the father and the father is talking to Jesus as the son in this case and then there's the holy spirit is present in the form of a dove that is descending and so forth in that traditional canonical version of the story in this case it's the Holy Spirit that's descending and resting upon him and is calling Jesus my son and again Jesus is Calling the Holy Spirit his mother and so this seems to be an equation then uh of the Holy Spirit as a heavenly mother um and which is to say the divine feminine and so the divine feminine in the biblical tradition is often connecting the spirit with holy wisdom and so because spirit and wisdom especially as our um female feminine words in Hebrew and also in Greek hajia Sophia in the Greek they are a way to view God through the Divine famine and again so God even though we often use the um analogy to talk about God as the father God is also transcends genders right and so God can be understood through the prism of being the Divine father Divine mother the Divine parent in this case though the holy spirit is specifically being uh single out as an expression of the divine feminine and is seen as the parent the mother of Jesus in that scene that is that is lost in other words Jesus is plucked by his mothers by one of his hairs and taken to um Mount Tabor a similar thing happens when the spirit does that to Ezekiel in the Book of Ezekiel it may be an alternate to the story that we have in Matthew and Luke that happens right after the baptism where the devil takes Jesus three places and tempts him any event we don't know but that is an interesting alternative understanding again that we get in this fragment from the gospel of Hebrews these two fragments fourth fragment here um he said he that seeks as a teaching of Jesus in The Gospel of Hebrews he that seeks will not rest till he finds and he that has found shall Marvel and he that has marveled shall reign and he that has reigned shall rest so um this is in a way there's a bunch of different ask and you will find knock and you'll it'll be open kinds of teachings in the early Jesus tradition this kind of a one where you are seeking and not resting till you find and marveling and then reigning this kind of teaching has parallels in the Jewish wisdom tradition so if we look at the book wisdom of Solomon chapter 6 verse 20 it says the desire for wisdom leads to ruling and so the teachings that we have in the gospel of Hebrews therefore seem to be rooted in this wisdom tradition it's viewing Jesus as a son of the Holy Spirit which is holy wisdom and Advising people to seek after wisdom interestingly there is a an alternative uh in the Gospel of Thomas to this statement that is a little bit more let's say uh proto-nostic than rather than wisdom tradition although it could have had the same kind of roots so let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds when he finds he will become troubled when he becomes troubled he will become astonished and he will rule over all so the same kind of idea okay here's the uh another segment seventh fragment from the gospel of Hebrews I skipped a couple there but anyway this one is about a story that happens after the resurrection according to Jerome probably quoting origin uh quoting the gospel the gospel says and when the Lord had given the linen cloth that he was wrapped in when he had died to the servant of the priest he went to James and he appeared to him for James Jesus's brother had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he should see him risen from among that sleep so he's been fasting ever since I guess ever since the last supper we don't have that part of its lost this is in in the thing we only have this section and shortly thereafter the Lord said bring a table and bread and he took bread and blessed it and he break it and he gave it to James the just and he said to him my brother eat thy bread for the son of man is risen from Among the Sleep so in the canonical gospels the Risen Christ appears initially to Jesus's female disciples in the Gospel of John it's to Mary Magdalene first and uh the other is it's a group of the women but here Christ appears first to his brother James and so this text very much emphasizes James's Authority James has an even more exalted role in the saying preserved in the Gospel of Thomas saying 12 the disciples said to Jesus we know that you will depart from us who is to be our leader Jesus said to them whoever you are you are to go to James the righteous James the just for whose sake Heaven and Earth came into being so a very exalted understanding then of James in some of these early traditions of which again the gospel of Hebrews along with this saying preserved in Thomas are two examples so in summary this First Gospel of the Hebrews the text of this gospel does appear to be an independent tradition in other words it's not simply literally dependent on some other known gospel text somebody hasn't just taken let's say the Gospel of Luke and started making additions to it or something like that rather they have started over and written their own text that made some Scholars think it may have been an independent witness that goes back to the oral tradition Jerome claimed to have translated the gospel of Hebrews from Hebrew but Scholars really discount his claim because again he may have just been quoting origin the entire time and so just not even having a copy of the Gospel of Hebrews but simply reading from origin and what origin says about it because whenever he translates it he gets the exact same way that origen translates it and so in fact as a result of that even though Jerome thought that it was originally written in Hebrew Scholars essentially agree that there's no reason to imagine that this text was composed in any other language than Greek so the gospel has a theology as we've seen that's kind of rooted in the Jewish wisdom tradition it has a seemingly a fairly high christology but um uh but it has some interesting ideas for example about Jesus's relationship to the Holy Spirit and also really the identity of Mary in this case so we'll go to the next one the Lost Gospel of the nazarenes as Scholars call it so another lost Gospel of the Hebrews has been identified as distinct due to allentro contradictions in the stories that it tells like for example that baptism story there's a completely different baptism story that can't be uh can't have had both of them in the same text so in other words even though these proto-orthodox writers are more or less calling all of these are saying in the gospel of Hebrews it says these are clearly they have different books that they're calling that same name so this second uh one of these texts which Scholars call the gospel of the nazarenes is closely related to the gospel of Matthew actually most Scholars agree that the text is simply an edited version of Matthew however there have been as there always are there have been a few people who have the essentially polar opposite view and say that the gospel of nazarenes is actually the original one and the gospel of Matthew is an edited version of that anyway that's an alternate this kind of most people think that's unlikely but I guess it's some there's so few of the um of the passages that it can't necessarily be said for certain so this term Nazarene um we want to make this as a distinction here from the word Nazarite so there is a um we have both in the Bible both the term nazirite and Nazarene and the most famous nazirite is Samson and so this is an Old Testament um kind of way to be a take a religious vow you take a naziri vow which is making you consecrate yourself in other words you've become kind of a gift to God by abstaining from certain things and specifically one of the things that the naziris do not do is cut their hair and so Samson is famously not supposed to cut his hair and uh and that's what's giving him his great great superpowers and so forth until uh Delilah cuts his hair off from him and so forth so anyway that's a naziri uh Nazarene is different in the canonical New Testament Jesus of Nazareth a place that's a town is referred using referred to using the Greek epithet uh you know Nazar Oreos which is to say Nazarene 14 times and in the book of Acts the word Nazarene sect is used as a name for the emerging Christian religion so nazarenes so Jesus is called the Nazarene and nazarenes is a just a synonym in the New Testament for Christians by the 4th century proto-orthodox Christians however were using the term to describe Jewish Christians again those Christians that fled from Jerusalem to Pella Jewish Christians that were continuing to adhere to Mosaic law this is just by way of you know a summary of this we've had several lectures on the synoptic problem the sources for Matthew the text of Matthew and so forth just by way of a little bit of a backdrop here since we're going to talk about the Nazareth Gospel of the nazarenes as an edited version of Matthew we want to look a little bit the background of Matthew so although early Christians all of these Church fathers that we're talking about they ascribed the text of both the canonical Matthew and also the gospel of the nazarenes to the Apostle Matthew whom they also misidentify with the Apostle Levi in the Book of Luke so Lou as we saw in the in the lecture on the apostles Luke and Matthew have different lists and so because Matthew is missing in Luke's version and Levi is missing in Matthews they the the writers who are trying to imagine that this was that these are historical figures um combine them too and they assume that Matthew is another name for Levi and so forth that being that it said neither of them if they are historic figures have anything to do with the writing of the Gospel of Matthew although some early Christians like another church father named papias believed that the original language of both of Matthew was Hebrew Scholars today agree that the original language of the Gospel of Matthew is Greek and specifically that the text is dependent on the gospel of Mark and also probably a lost other source which Scholars call Q and that the text is therefore not the work of Matthew or indeed any other eyewitness but is a later first century Christian who was combining sources in order to create the account so so if we look at the gospel of the nazarenes as an edit of the Gospel of Matthew a lot of these edits seem to be fairly minor so here's just a smattering of what some of those changes are so instead of saying give us this day our daily bread as it exists in Matthew 5 22 the gospel of the nazarenes has give us today our bread for tomorrow there's a story about a man with a withered hand who wants to be healed by Jesus in Matthew 12 and that is described to get a further detailed added in the gospel of the nazarenes he is described then as being a Mason who is seeking livelihood with his hands so it's not only the fact that his hand is withered as a problem but actually because he has this job according to this edit that means that uh he obviously his livelihood is depending on it and that's him the reason why he needs his healing it's not not a frivolous healing it is necessary in Matthew 16 17 Peter's name and is given in Aramaic Simon barjona where is the gospel of the nazarenes Alters that to the Hebrew version which is shamon Ben johannen so instead of Simon barjona it's it's Simon son of John that's how we would render that in English Matthew 27 51 says that at the time of uh Jesus's crucifixion the temple in Jerusalem the veil in the temple was rent the gospel of the Nazarene says it is the Temple's lintel stone that collapsed so you know again these are not um massive edits but these are changes that separate this text from the gospel of Matthew in general we probably we don't have the whole thing but we more or less would mostly be just like the gospel of Matthew probably with little changes like this there are a handful of longer additions to the text that these Church fathers have preserved by quoting them so Matthew 19 has a story of a rich man who approaches Jesus asking how may I achieve eternal life the gospel of the nazarenes says actually there were two Rich guys and so the second rich guy also uh has a follow-up question he says Rabbi what can I do that I may live and Jesus said to him man fulfill the law and the prophets and the rich man says I have done so and Jesus said go sell all that you have distribute to the poor come follow me but the rich man began to fidget for it did not please him and the Lord said how can you say I have fulfilled the law and the prophets when it is written in the law you shall love your neighbor as yourself and many of your brothers sons of Abraham are covered with filth dying of hunger and your house is full of many Goods none of which goes out to them and Jesus then turned and said to Simon his disciple who was sitting by him Simon son of John Simon Ben Shimon Ben johannen as opposed to Simon berjona it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven so you know it's a similar story but we have in it this kind of longer diatribe about loving your neighbor as yourself as giving to uh people in the community that are in need in other words doing charitable work there are people dying of hunger and so forth and you have a bunch of stuff and so you can imagine just that is an additional emphasis of this mendicant community that has a very um stresses importance on having all things in common and and begging for daily needs and living on promoting and having a life of spiritual charity like that so to sum up the gospel of the nazarenes the gospel of Matthew is already the most Jewish of the canonical gospels um sometimes a lot of is being kind of written to Jewish Christians in a sense of trying to convert them or to be for them the Gospel of Luke is maybe the least of the Jewish gospels in the Canon written by a um probably a gentile disciple again not a in all of the authors are unknown and Anonymous and so it was already the gospel of Matthew is the most affirming of Christians who argue in favor of adherence to Mosaic law I mean I read you that not one jot and Tittle will pass away of the law right that you have to all of that has to be continued to be lived the fact that a Christian group who saw Matthew's text as authoritative nevertheless felt at Liberty to kind of freely edit the text that should give us insight into the development of actually the canonical gospels which are also the result of editorial Evolution there are a lot of people a bunch of Christians who imagined that essentially um the gospels are written by the people who they're attributed to they think that Luke is the person who wrote the Gospel of Luke and that is a physician and so forth all these uh traditional things that have no historical basis for them and that Luke is just sitting there um as a stenographer or not that Luke is a bad example that Matthew is the Apostle is writing and he's actually just writing things down as is being said actually what's happened is is that there are texts that have gone through multiple series of edits and revisions uh that have gotten us to the place where they are now in other words these are a product of um texts that have been altered and editorially created to get to where they are in the at when they when we have them in their earliest manuscripts in the first and second third centuries okay finally let's have the Lost Gospel of the evianites so Scholars have identified a third distinct Gospel of the Hebrews known from this in this case entirely from quotations from a single uh Nicene writer in the fourth Century a guy named epiphanius of Salamis and so this one is simply he calls it again the god it says according to the gospel of Hebrews but he's definitely talking about a different book than or he seems to be anyway talking about a different book than the two we've already looked at so the text is given the conjectural title name Gospel of the ebionites because the quotations are found in this part area of aphenius's text where he's arguing against the beliefs and practices of the ebonites whom he again regards as a heretical sect of Jewish Christians and lots of things that exist in this text also go along with what epiphonius says are the general beliefs of this ebionite Christian group so according to origin the ebionites took their name from the Hebrew word ibionim meaning the poor because they regarded voluntary poverty as a blessing and so that name the fact that they're actually calling themselves the poor is one of the real possible connections that the group has with that group the poor of Jerusalem who we know were led by the historical James the just the leader of this group of mendicant disciples after Jesus's death so unfortunately however the surviving sources don't allow us to confirm that there is indeed let's say continuity with that group it's I think quite possible but there's always possible that um a new group is a Revival that is using the name and honoring the earlier tradition too so we just can't say that with any certainty so here are some of the surviving quotations from the ebionite gospel from the gospel of the Hebrews that is called the anyway the gospel of the ebonites by Scholars it came to pass in the days of Herod King of Judea under the high priest Caiaphas that John came and baptized with the baptism of repentance in the River Jordan he is said to be from the tribe of Aaron and the son of Zacharias the priest and of Elizabeth and all went out to them and it came to pass when John baptized that the Pharisees came to him and were baptized in all Jerusalem also he had a garment of camel's hair and a leather girdle about his loins and his meat was Wild Honey which tastes like Manna formed like cakes of oil um there's some interesting things already in this quotation we have here that uh John the Baptist is a levite a tribe of Aaron and that he is a son of Zacharias the priest and of Elizabeth and so that is a detail that uh is created in the in the Gospel of Luke and so probably here the um sort of is indicating already that this gospel the EB ninth is at least familiar with Luke since that detail and those characters don't exist outside of the Luke narrative otherwise but another thing that happens here is in the regular canonical gospels in Matthew John the Baptist is said to eat his Locus and honey and the ebonites however according to the beliefs that we have for them one of their practices is that they are vegetarians and so they don't want one of their leaders in this text to have been eating Locus animals insects rather so rather they're saying that he ate Honey Cakes and so the work in Greek for locusts and the word for cakes are very similar and so um this is apparently what inspired that change the baptism of Jesus in this gospel when people were baptized Jesus came also and got baptized by John and as he came up out of the water the skies opened and he saw the holy spirit in the form of a dove coming down and entering him so that part is as is different from the canonical gospels where it says it rests upon him but anyway in this case the Holy Spirit enters him and there is a voice from the sky that said you are my favorite son I fully approve of you and again today I have become your father and so this version of the baptism story supports what's called an adoptionist christology a non-trinitarian christology an idea here where Jesus is a fully human Prophet who is adopted by the father here at the moment of his baptism in this this uh out spiritual experience I you have become my son this day that is this thing I've become your father today okay there are other heresies that are noted by epiphanis about this uh gospel he says they the ebionites say that he Jesus was not begotten of the father but is created as one of the archangels and that he rules over the angels and all the creatures of the almighty and that he came and declared as their gospel which is called according to the Hebrews as we're saying it as though we're saying it's a different Gospel of the Hebrews in other words the ebionite gospel reports quote I Jesus and come to abolish the sacrifices if ye cease not from sacrificing the Wrath will not cease from you so in other words the ebionites here have an exalted role for Jesus he's one of the archangels and indeed ruling over all the Lord's creation but nevertheless is a creation like in Angels or Creations as opposed to Christ in a trinitarian sense who was understood to be Eternal and uncreated and so this is a a very big distinction in terms of Theology and christology um this last thing this abolishing of sacrifices so one of the major tenets of Mosaic law is the ongoing need to have animal sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem once the temple was destroyed that made sacrifices not possible and so in the ebionite gospel here we have Jesus abolishing that component of the law but potentially here by implication of having in other words he's not fulfilling all the law or saying the law isn't to be followed anymore rather all of the other components of Mosaic law probably here are meant to be maintained in effect it's just the sacrifices that are being abolished so just in summary the gospel of the ebionites it seems to be aware of the synoptic gospels and perhaps it is written as a response to them by a Jewish Christian group in the second century the text gives authority to beliefs and practices of the Ebonite Christians including their adoptionist christology in other words a fully human Jesus who is not born of a virgin according to other writers who talked about what is in this or is not and also omitting the genealogy that connects Jesus to the davidic line so in other words he's just a prophet who had been an archangel and so forth but he's simply chosen by God during his baptism in other words that he's not Eternal the Eternal god well and one with God so those three together I think illustrate that there's actually a very significant diversity among the beliefs and also even the practices of different early Christian Jewish communities A diversity in reflected in the text that they held as scripture so the christologies and all these other things in each one of these are pretty substantially different the way they each remembering and telling the stories they all have different competing uh for example baptism of Jesus stories because of that um while Christians who continue to maintain an adherence to Mosaic law they shared that at least in common their other beliefs and practices varied they definitely looked back to commonly look back to and appealed to the authority of James the just the brother of Jesus but for example unlike the ebonites the nazarenes believed that Jesus was born to a virgin the Virgin Mary and as the Son of God they believed that he was resurrected so they have different views on that still other Jewish Christians held Gnostic beliefs we don't have a Gnostic Gospel of the Hebrews but there are all kinds of overlap between and there are other Jewish groups that were identified as sharing Gnostic beliefs and indeed it's possible we're going to talk next week about John the Baptist when we look at the religion of the mandaeans that reveres John the Baptist as one of their Founders they are a existing Gnostic religion that has continued to exist it may be that some of these Jewish Christian or sects have had that some survival in the form of the men dance um there is also a Jewish Christian Legacy in Islam so although adherence to Jewish law was dubbed to heresy by the Nicene church and It ultimately died out or is stamped out within the bounds of the Roman Empire by the fifth and certainly by the sixth centuries Jewish Christians fled the Empire they went East into lands that are not controlled by the Nicene Christian Roman emperors and specifically they survived in the hijaz in Arabia much longer all the way down probably there there's recordings of them to the 10th century and it was this version of Christianity that the young Prophet Muhammad encountered that his relatives were a part of and so this is the version that he became familiar with and indeed where he was taught biblical stories and stories about Christ and and so on and so as a result although the ebians died out EB nights died out their christology actually became embedded in Islam uh including the Islamic view of Christ as a prophet but obviously not as as God and so I hope you all have found uh that survey interesting those are the texts that we have of the Lost gospels of the Hebrews only little fragments survive but they are definitely speaking to us of a very interesting diversity within early Christianity so I'll have a glass of water here and oh okay we're going to now talk about your questions about the Lost gospels of the Hebrews okay good um so Ron Wagner says are there any ebionite gnostics or other groups still in existence so all um essentially all of the these early groups have all died out there are Far Eastern they're the Oriental the Far Eastern Orthodox Churches not the Eastern Orthodox they are um they're from the later uh systems so they're not Nicene trinitarians but they have a much more much closer christology to Nicene tradition than these earliest groups that are not is still in existence so um so no the evianites didn't don't continue they've died out gnostics largely don't either the one possible exception to that is the like I say the mandanes and we'll look at that next week when we'll do kind of a history of them as we're doing the who was John the Baptist uh keg and asks were the EBA nights absorbed into Roman Catholicism as one of the religious orders maybe the franciscans um so so yeah when we when these uh when you're there's all kinds of different ways um that the church once it became a State religion persecuted Heretics and got Heretics to conform uh to things so a lot of the a lot of the Tendencies the things that would have caused you to go have a community like the ebionites a lot of that tendency got absorbed into the the Roman Church which is both inclusive of the Eastern Orthodox and the western church Tradition now a lot of that uh fervor became channeled into what was called essentially the desert fathers the um the people the monasticism of people going off and living in the wilderness uh again kind of following that kind of Jesus going in the wilderness or John the Baptist going in the wilderness and mortifying the flesh living on uh very little food and so forth doing all the kinds of fasting and so initially um uh that is where the kind of people who would have been let's say converts to going and becoming let's say an Ebonite they would have done that kind of a thing and so then in terms of the franciscans then many many centuries later um uh in the in the Middle Ages in the Latin West as monasticism um as monasticism as became connected with um monasteries that became incredibly wealthy um people were seeing the need for that same kind of um mendicant Poverty of working in the in the cities of helping the poor and the widows and so forth and so Francis of Assisi uh it founds a new order that is based on that kind of same idea not about the not not being aware of the ebionites but again based on the model of uh what Jesus and his disciples are doing in the gospels itself uh Cobalt George from Cincinnati says is there any evidence for uh Pagan Roman persecution of the ebonites Jewish Christians or did the Orthodox Christians wipe them out so um the Pagan Romans are at certain times are conver I'm sorry are persecuting all the Christians they might have they might though have not persecuted the ebionites as much because they weren't usually person you know when they weren't at war with Jews which they were during the different revolts in general Jewish Judaism was a tolerated religion and so to the extent that ebionites couldn't be just told Romans couldn't tell the difference between them and Jews they may not have had as much persecution from that so no I would say that it's um they essentially get wiped out because of when uh Orthodox Christianity Nicene Christianity becomes a state religion it doesn't tolerate heresy anymore what it considers heresy uh Stephanie ceresi says some scholars believe that law Noman is a word that is anachronistic straw man as it comes out from rabbinical Judaism which is younger than Christianity so um uh what do I think so um so yes so rabbinical Judaism like you say is younger than Christianity and so one of the things that we kind of tend to do I think you're right is go back to the time of Jesus and imagine that Jesus and all his followers would have already been practicing Jewish law in the way that the rabbis later say you should be practicing it let's say two or three centuries later so that is not um not happening probably at Jesus's time there has only been there has been some observance that has been developing this is one of the reasons why Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees in the gospels are all debating about this in other words for the for a couple centuries only um probably in second temple Judaism adherence to certain things in Jewish law have started to happen so some of the festivals like going to Jerusalem for the Passover those kind of things those are all quite new you I think observances that hadn't been a part of the Jewish tradition even in probably even in some cases in the Persian period but especially come in the hasmonian the Maccabee period and the um the Roman period And so and so yes we shouldn't um like you say Stephanie we shouldn't retroject our idea of Jesus and the disciples kind of being like living like the way the rabbis would have understood it two centuries later but rather that it's a time of transition that they are around during um Wednesday Jones High Wednesday it was so nice to have you uh on the service on Sunday you write Paul um was an apostle sent forth by spirit is that a like a Sydney Rigdon type of authority claim that's interesting um um so Paul let's see so first off I'll say about Paul so Paul um doesn't feel that there is a need he doesn't isn't asserting uh you know some kind of apostolic continuity so one of the um one of the ideas of apostolic continuity more or less is that a bishop who's around today was appointed a bishop by a previous bishop and that goes all the way back until you get to an apostle Who was appointed directly by Jesus in other words that there is a continuity of apostolic succession and that underpins Orthodox and Catholic and even Anglican I think understanding of how Authority is transferred Paul however is really actually arguing that that doesn't mean anything in other words that Authority comes from God from the spirit directly and it's not housed in like let's say magic in terms of the uh something that's existing in in the individual people that can be produced like by a chain like that in terms of Sydney Rigdon who is one of the really important leaders in the restoration tradition the restoration movement um his he makes a claim so he's one of the potential successors at the in the succession crisis after the Mormon founder Joseph Smith is killed Sydney Rigdon is the leading successor uh potential uh one of the two well anyway one of initially the leading successor and he does make a claim uh that he is uh is essentially has a revelation and so he um claims that he has received a revelation and a direct Revelation and that he is to be made the guardian of the church and so in that sense he is declaiming um a kind of a direct uh Connection by the spirit but he also he also can claim a very very direct institutional claim which is that he is ordained by Joseph Smith as probably being part of the church's first presidency and in fact he is the only member of the first presidency that is still left alive and so though so I think he has a little bit of a different claim in the sense that Paul indeed did not know the historical Jesus was not one of the Apostles at all during Jesus's lifetime so it would be a little different uh Daryl Scott thank you so much for your support um you write what reasoning did the proto-orthodox writers use to condemn the passages they quoted was it just based on contradictions with their own Canon so um so in some cases it's kind of interesting in some cases they are not particularly antagonistic to some of the things that they are quoting so uh for example most all of those quotes of that middle gospel that we're talking about the gospel of the nazarenes they're they're just quoting that as they more or less think that the Apostle Matthew wrote that book too and so they are actually kind of quoting that as a just to give further information so they kind of like the idea that the guy with a Wither hand was a stone Mason and so they said so the more or less will say we don't have that as I'm talking about that story we have this other detail from the gospel of the Hebrews the gospel of the nazarians and so it's actually not even being condemned in that case it's just additional information that they're hungry to get that said there are other parts that they definitely are condemning so for example the adoptionist part right this idea that Jesus is not the god that the spirit enters him that God says you're my son you know I'm your father as of today kind of thing that is um they condemn that as as saying that this is a something that Heretics are writing in order to promote a false conception of God from their perspective and so they're they're what reasoning they use they understand God in the form of Trinity and so since this text is antagonistic to that they assume that Heretics have created it with the purpose of of um of saying false things about God they also there are similar things that they're opposed to um origen who quotes about the idea that archangel I think the Archangel Michael becomes Mary he has he has just arguments about why he doesn't think that makes any sense about pre-existing archangels becoming people and this kind of thing so there are um so there they have they have their own theological perspectives that they're also using it's not just that they contradict their own Canon uh Edward preter thank you so much for your support Edward Predator writes is there relationships between the ebionites and the gnostics so so gnosticism is um is kind of the most diffused of all of the um of all of these early kind of groups and in fact there are people who are gnostics probably that are found in all the different groups so you could have like I say a pretty normal um proto-orthodox congregation somewhere and some of the people in your congregation unbeknownst to you maybe secretly gnostics and the just being gnostics in their own little group and they have all the knowledge and they're not sharing it with everybody but that's just what they like to do that same thing can be happening among the ebionites right and so there could be gnostics people who have that Gnostic knowledge and they're just existing inside and ebionite Community but there's also a diversity of um Jewish Christian communities so not just the ebionites but there might be other Jewish Christians that are Gnostic it's a weirder uh you know Square to Circle here or whatever as you um is essentially you're having to do all these things in terms of the law whereas you were you're kind of theology or cosmology is is this kind of more wild hellenized platonism and things like that but people do all kinds of interesting combos so yeah there were uh Michelangelo asks why are the ebionites um vegetarian and and I'm not sh I guess I haven't read that and so I'm wondering I'm presuming that they are having a um I'm presuming that they're having a an ethical or moral basis for vegetarianism um but it also is probably like um it's also probably a little like that uh naziri thing that we were talking about about not cutting hair so when you're already giving up property and so forth they are also giving up other things and so they're abstaining from certain things in order to set themselves apart and be an intentional community and so one of the things that they're giving up is eating meat um Wednesday Jones says do um I think that some of the Schism in early Christianity has affected modern anti-semitism well certainly uh certainly so yes unfortunately so the the specifically the Schism that took place between um early Christians and other early Jewish Christians and other Jewish people and so that actually that actually is described fairly vividly in the johanning community the community that produces the Gospel of John so even though that is um gospel is presented again as if it was being written at the time of Jesus it's being written you know 60 years later and it talks about retrospectively this time period some whatever it is 30 or 30 years or more after Jesus's death when the people in that johanning Community are kicked out of the synagogues the uh the proto-rabbinic Judaism the um the synagogues are Christian the Jewish people are saying you guys who think that Jesus is a messiah you don't stop talking about that we are not letting you come in here anymore if you're going to talk about that you have to leave and so now when that text then of the Gospel of John is composed it's composed by a community that has been kicked out from the rest of Judaism and it is now seeing itself as completely different in retrospect so by the time that gospel gets written Jesus is talking about you the Jews are saying this as if he wasn't Jewish the community is seeing itself as being separate from Jews and unfortunately some of the some of these early Christian Division and bad feelings that they have from their sibling religion the other Jews is getting unfortunately worked into scripture and so there's a bunch of anti-Semitic stuff that is written all through the Gospel of John there's a pretty horrible um again fiction that's written into the gospel of Matthew where the Jewish crowd you know says that let his blood be upon us and our children for all generations whatever this kind of a thing this is an anti-semitic part of the text that unfortunately is in the text and so it's becoming from that Schism like I say between early Christians and the other Jews Alexander Santos Anderson says would the destruction of Jerusalem have sped up the decline of Jacobite Christianity since it adhered to Torah law observance allowing Pauline and other forums who moved on from ritual Jewish ritualism to thrive absolutely so I think you have it exactly so on the one hand the Pauline and other forms that had gotten rid of adherence to law those were able to much more rapidly convert people so it became a much more significant and easy threshold to convert you just baptize the person they don't have to circumcise them you don't have to go through all of the other things in order to adhere to Jewish law so they are converting converting much more rapidly meanwhile like you say simultaneously this amazing setback of the whole destruction of Jerusalem and the second Jewish War as well where uh that where Pella is undestroyed so there are a bunch of setbacks for that Jacobite Christianity as a result of that uh Keegan asks will or do you have a lecture on the Gospel of John um I I have one for sure there's one that's called the signs gospel and so the science gospel is a theoretical um uh Source uh hypothetical text that is thought to be potentially the oldest component of the Gospel of John and so the very Earth first text around which the next writer the main writer of John composed the larger more thoughtful text and then and then on top of that writer um there is a third writer of the Gospel of John who edits it clumsily who changes things he doesn't like some of the spiritual and Theological ideas of the the second more brilliant writer uh and so kind of gives it the text to us in its present format so you can hear most about almost all of that in that lecture we have on the science gospel but we'll probably do um another one on kind of the Gospel of John and other topics in it so yeah oh well that was wonderful folks I appreciate it lots of great questions and I appreciate all of your support uh we will see you next week when we're talking about um John the Baptist

Channel: Centre Place

Views: 97,356

Keywords: community of christ, jesus myth, bible studies, christianity lecture, judaism lecture, christian education, biblicar scholar, Platonism, Greek Philosophy, Hellenistic Judaism, Plotinus, Jewish christianity, Christian Judaism, lost books, epistle to the hebrews, jews for jesus, messianic christian

Id: wkmTAX0Y0xI

Length: 86min 7sec (5167 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2022