1st and 2nd Century AD Chaos and Uncertainty in the Development of Christianity: Lundahl (2022m) Makes Unsubstantiated Accusations and Ignores the Preservation Bias Problem
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
Frankly, we know very little about the life of Jesus, the Apostles and the development of Christianity from the early 1st and at least well into the 2nd century. Almost all of the information comes from the New Testament and other proto-Orthodox sources that contain relatively little reliable history and probably a lot of lies and propaganda. Ehrman (2003) summarizes the great diversity of 2nd and 3rd century Christianity. The proto-Orthodox Church, which eventually became the Roman Catholic Church, was just one of many Christian churches. Each of these various Christian groups claimed to be the “true” followers of Jesus and only they had the “true teachings” of the Apostles and the right New Testament “scriptures.” Yet, these early Christians were far more diverse than groups calling themselves Christians today: namely, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Orthodox, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, etc. As Ehrman (2003, p. 2) states, some of these 2nd and 3rd century Christians believed in one god, others two, some thirty and others even 365 gods. Some accepted the Old Testament, others did not. Some used the Gospel of John, others used the Gospel According to Ebionites, still others had the Gospel of Thomas and yet others had one or several other various Gospels. Some, like the Marcionites, claimed that Paul was the only true Apostle (Ehrman 2012, p. 5). Others, such as the Ebionites, labelled Paul as a heretic (Ehrman 2003, p. 101). The Ebionites also believed that their teachings came directly from Peter and James the Brother of the Lord. They denied the Virgin Birth of Christ and insisted that Christians get circumcised, observe the Sabbath and keep Kosher diets (Ehrman 2003, p. 100).
In Henke (2022b), I summarized the situation:
“In a situation similar to Hypothesis #1, modern Church leaders frequently assert that their doctrines and the New Testament scriptures were passed down directly from the apostles to the Church Fathers. For example, they will state that John the Elder supposedly passed on his teachings to Polycarp, who taught Irenaeus (Molina 2016, p. 31). I should also point out that the Church Fathers did not have a monopoly on claiming that their doctrines came down directly from the apostles and Jesus. Like the Church Fathers, the leaders among the 2nd century AD Gnostics and other Christian heresies claimed apostolic pedigrees. The followers of the Gnostic Basilides stated that he obtained his teachings from Glaucias, who was a disciple of Peter (Molina 2016, p. 31). The Gnostic Valentinus was a student of Theudas, who was a disciple of Paul (Molina 2016, p. 31). Why should we accept any of these claims of apostolic pedigrees?”
Lundahl (2022m) then comments on this paragraph:
“First, Glaucias may have been a wayward student of St. Peter or Basilides a wayward student of Glaucias. Similarily with Valentinus and St. Paul and the purported intermediary Theudas.
Second, with the "Proto-Orthodox" we have multiple parallel claims, with Basilides and Valentinus we have one single line for each of them, with one intermediary on the line. If the claims about Glaucias and Theudas are true, the multiple claims to the Proto-Orthodox are likelier to reflect Apostolic teaching than the two deviant ones.
Third, as mentioned, a claim of having met someone in one single person is sometimes fraudulent, Glaucias and Theudas may have been fraudsters or even fraudulently invented persons - like Alberto Rivera was arguably a fraudster about his secret briefing by Cardinal Bea on Catholicism having invented Islam. There is a question of where the greater mass of the evidence leads. We do not find people prior to Cardinal Bea within the Catholic Church making this claim. Not even the Reformers who, before (purportedly) Rivera, were defectors from Catholicism were aware of any such knowledge high up in the Church they left.
Fourth, for someone stating that Christianity is true, which Henke is not, it is not an option to consider Basilides or Valentinus as true Christianity, since they did not fulfil the promise of Matthew 28, also parallelled by common sense : if God reveals something, He knows how to preserve His revelation. This does not automatically mean Kevin Henke gets to equate claims by Sts Polycarp or Irenaeus or Ignatius with Basilides or Valentinus - these being "odd man out" and therefore likely fraudsters.”
The reason that we have very little information on possible “multiple parallel claims” for Christian Gnosticism, Marcionism, and the countless other versions of early Christianity is that the hierarchy of the proto-Orthodox Church made sure to destroy their scriptures and their other writings (Ehrman 2003, pp. 2-3, 4, 279). The survival of information on the “heretical forms of Christianity” was also not helped when the proto-Orthodox branch of Christianity received the blessing and support of Constantine and other powerful proto-Orthodox Emperors (Ehrman 2003, pp. 250-251). Lundahl (2022m) fails to realize that we have a serious bias in the 1st to the 4th century AD history of the development of Christianity because of the manuscript Preservation Bias Problem. The preservation of the “scriptures” and texts of proto-Orthodox Christianity was strongly favored, even though many of these documents were probably forgeries and worthless propaganda (Ehrman 2013). From what we know, the “heresy” Marcionism was a prominent form of Christianity in the 2nd century and, in some cases, Marcionite Churches outnumbered their competitors (Ehrman 2012, p. 221). No wonder, Tertullian and other proto-Orthodox Church Fathers so vehemently attacked it. At that time, it may have been doing better than proto-Orthodox Christianity. Yet, today, we don’t even have a single copy of Marcion’s Apostolikon, Evangelion, or Antithesis. The only thing that we now know about Marcion comes from the biased writings of his enemies; namely, Tertullian and other Church Fathers. You can’t properly understand what anyone was really like by only having the testimonies of his enemies. Can anyone really understand what Pope Benedict XVI is like by only reading the literature of his atheist critics?
Now, as far as we know, Marcion was the first individual to assemble a collection of 10 of Paul’s letters, a shorter version of Luke and distribute them as a New Testament (BeDuhn 2013). He was among the “earliest known audience” for 10 of Paul’s letters and what Paul supposedly said in them. Certainly, Tertullian and other Church Fathers accused Marcion of distorting those books. But, without having Marcion’s or Paul’s original works, how do we know that Tertullian and other Church Fathers are telling the truth? As Price (2012, pp. 82-83) points out, it’s very possible that Marcion had better copies of Paul’s letters and Luke than the proto-Orthodox Church and that the proto-Orthodox Church was the one that distorted Paul’s works and expanded Luke to support their agenda. Price (2006, p. 639; 2017, pp. 202-203; 2018, p. 155) even thinks that Polycarp was primarily responsible for the proto-Orthodox distortions and fabrications. But, again, who knows? All we can say is that we really don’t know what Jesus and the Apostles actually believed. We certainly cannot trust the New Testament or what the proto-Orthodox Church Father propagandists said. The victors always get to write the “history”, and frequently their “history” is, at best, unsubstantiated assertions and often outright fabrications and distortions. Can we really expect Marcion’s enemies to provide an objective and reliable summary of what Marcion actually believed and did? Again, no. No more than we would expect the atheist publishers of Prometheus Books to give the public a fair and balanced view of the Roman Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, we also only have scraps and questionable quotations from Papias’ five-volume series on the life of Jesus and the Apostles: Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord. We get hints from Eusebius (Church History book 3, chapter 39) that Papias was not that intelligent, at least not about the coming of Jesus’ kingdom. If Eusebius’ claim is true, then Papias may have been quite gullible about what he heard about Jesus and the Apostles. Too bad we can’t check Eusebius’ claim by having a full copy of Papias’ work. Nevertheless, from the citations of Papias’ work, it appears to contain a number of unreliable false rumors and myths about Jesus and the Apostles, such as how Judas died. Having a full and reliable copy of Papias’ work might have given us some important insights on how the proto-Orthodox Church’s views of Jesus and the Apostles actually developed in the late 1st and into the 2nd century, and how questionable information got into the New Testament. Based on the best research, we certainly cannot trust what the Gospels, Acts, 2 Peter, and other New Testament books tell us about Jesus, the actual relationships between the Apostles and the development of the early Church (Ehrman 2013).
Lundahl (2022m) simply cites Matthew 28 as if it’s actually been demonstrated that it contains the words of Jesus. How does Lundahl (2022m) know that Jesus ever said anything that is recorded in Matthew 28? How does Mr. Lundahl know that the authentic teachings of Jesus are in the Gospel of Matthew rather than the Gospel of Thomas? Also, how does Lundahl (2022m) know that “if God reveals something, He knows how to preserve His revelation”? The Muslims say the exact same thing about the Koran and the Mormons say the exact same thing about the preservation of Moroni’s “God-inspired Golden Plates” that were supposedly safely stored in the subsurface of New York state for 1,400 years. How does Mr. Lundahl know that God disapproves of the Vatican II reforms and that the conservative Roman Catholics are right? From what we know about the chaos that started in Christianity in the 1st century and still continues today, there is a strong indication that influential human religious leaders and their powerful political allies, and not God, determined what got preserved and endorsed as the “truth” in Christianity. The same is true for Judaism and Islam.
So, Lundahl (2022m) has no justification for just assuming that Glaucias, Theudas, and other “heretics” were “wayward students”, “fraudsters” and liars just because they did not agree with his proto-Orthodox “saints.” Because of his religious biases, Mr. Lundahl believes that his saints, and only them, supposedly had the authentic teachings and scriptures from Jesus and the Apostles. Again, how does Mr. Lundahl know any of that? How does Lundahl (2022m) know that the proto-Orthodox branch was the one true Christianity, while every one of the numerous competing branches mentioned in Ehrman (2003) were “heresies”? We simply do not know if any of these diverse branches of 2nd century Christianity really had the authentic teachings of Jesus and Apostles. By bringing up the example of Alberto Rivera and Cardinal Bea, Lundahl (2022m) only proves my point. People often lie about what authority figures supposedly said and it’s very likely that some of the writers of the New Testament along with some of the early Church Fathers also lied about what Jesus, Peter, Paul and the other Apostles said and did (Ehrman 2013). Each of these diverse early Christian groups claimed to be the true “Christians” and that all other competing Christianities were supposedly “frauds” and “heretics”. It sounds a lot like the turf wars still occurring between conservative Roman Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants today.
Let me be quite clear about what I’m saying. When I equate the “saints” Polycarp, Irenaeus and Ignatius with Basilides or Valentinus, I’m saying that none of them can be trusted. Someone is lying or perhaps none of them had an accurate account of what Jesus and the Apostles actually did and taught. Contrary to Mr. Lundahl’s biases, we can’t necessarily say that it was only the “heretics” that were misled and lying. Nevertheless, considering the numerous failed prophecies about Jesus (e.g., Matthew 16:28; Loftus 2010) and horrible advice (e.g., Matthew 5:29) in the New Testament and the other surviving documents of both the “heretics” and the Church Fathers, the claims are largely wrong anyway.
References:
BeDuhn, J.D. 2013. The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon: Polebridge Press: Salem, OR, USA, 387pp.
Ehrman, B.D. 2003. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew: Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 294pp.
Ehrman, B.D. 2012. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings: Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, 536pp.
Ehrman, B.D. 2013. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics: Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 628pp.
Loftus, J.W. 2010. “At Best Jesus Was a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet” in Chapter 12, J.W. Loftus (ed.) Why Faith Fails: The Christian Delusion: Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, pp. 316-343.
Molina, P.A. 2016. Paul in Rome: A Case Study on the Formation and Transmission of Traditions: Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 305 pp.
Price, R.M. 2006. The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formulative Texts: Signature Books: Salt Lake City, UT, USA, 1209pp.
Price, R.M. 2012. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul: Signature Books: Salt Lake City, UT, USA, 561pp.
Price, R.M. 2017. Holy Fable: Volume II: The Gospels and Acts Undistorted by Faith: Mindvendor Press, Coppell, TX, USA, 449pp.
Price, R.M. 2018. Holy Fable: Volume III: The Gospels and Acts Undistorted by Faith: Mindvendor Press, Coppell, TX, USA, 259pp.