The Rise of Canonical and Apocryphal Literature

All approaches toward understanding how the New Testament came to be must pass through the rather narrow narrative of what the term “canon” means and why it is important. Said another way, can we grasp what the scriptures are without understanding how they came to be the scriptures? The short answer is no. The long answer now presents itself.

Canon

The word “canon” enjoyed a long history before it became a part of the English language. Its first ancestor was the biblical Hebrew term קָנֶה (qaneh), which is related to similar terms in Akkadian and Ugaritic and bears the meaning “reed” or “measuring rod” as well as other related concepts.¹ From here, the term migrated into Greek—one of the few Hebrew words that was adopted by the Greeks—where it took the form κανών (kanōn). Significantly, in the Greek world, kanōn took on a metaphorical meaning of the standard, the ideal, the measure “by which the empirical world must be judged.”² It is in this sense generally that the word kanōn came to be attached to the idea of scripture, or writings from God’s authorized representatives that set the divine standards for personal conduct, personal and communal worship, and community interaction.³

In the New Testament, only two passages present themselves for review where the Greek term κανών appears, both from the Apostle Paul and written in the late AD 40s and mid-50s.⁴ One passage is rather straightforward; the other is more complex. Let us begin with Galatians 6:15–16, which reads, “It does not matter⁵ if a person is circumcised or not; what matters is for him to become an altogether new creature. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, who form the Israel of God” (Jerusalem Bible). Noting that the Greek κανών is translated “rule” in this passage, the meaning is plain. For Paul, the noun carries the sense of a “standard” that applies to one’s attitude toward both those who are the same and those who are different from oneself, Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised. Moreover, implicit is a “norm of action” that guides the believer to welcome into the faith those who are different, opening the believer to becoming a “new creature”⁶ and to enjoying God’s “peace and mercy” in this life. This person then becomes a member of the new “Israel of God” as it is now constituted in the wake of Jesus’ ministry and Atonement.⁷

Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 10:13–16 presents a different slant in a “linguistically difficult passage,” as Beyer remarks.⁸ It includes three occurrences of κανών—in verses 13, 15, and 16. Because no modern translation mirrors uniformly the occurrences of this term in the underlying Greek text of these passages, let us deal with them on a verse-by-verse basis. In the first passage, 10:13, Paul points out that the heart of the matter has to do with boasting—that is, taking credit for what another missionary has done, something that latecomers to Corinth have done at Paul’s expense. After all, he was the first missionary to arrive in the city and to preach there (see Acts 18:1–7). In 10:13, we read of Paul that “we will not boast of things without [= beyond] our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us.” Here the word “rule” translates κανών; the “rule” represents a “standard,” but with a slightly different sense than that in Galatians 6:15–16. In this Corinthian passage, it refers to the call of Paul to his apostleship, effectively “the labor God has assigned to us” (2 Cor. 10:13),⁹ an experience that set out the parameters of Paul’s future ministry. The other occurrences of κανών flesh out this view.

Second Corinthians 10:15 offers to us the following: we have the “hope, when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you according to our rule abundantly.” Again, κανών is translated as “rule.” The sense is that as the members of the Corinthian congregation grow in their faith, Paul can then turn his attention to other places where the gospel has not yet been preached, “in the regions beyond you” (10:16), thus filling his apostolic commission more “abundantly.”

The language of 2 Corinthians 10:16 is a little more difficult to elucidate. The King James Version reads, “not to boast in another man’s line of things,” where the term κανών is rendered “line of things.” The sense has to do with not taking credit for another person’s spiritual stewardship or spiritual responsibilities that he or she has been assigned and has fulfilled.¹⁰ Thus the idea of a “standard” rests within this expression, a standard of generous missionary behavior toward the labors of other missionaries and preachers.¹¹

Happily, after the days of Paul, early Christian sources document how standards came to play a significant role in the developing church (the word κανών itself came into prominence only in the fourth century). We will highlight three important developments. First, during the first century AD, church congregations that arose across the Mediterranean region and beyond exhibited a basic unity that took its character from a focus on Jesus and his Resurrection. But this fundamental unity was not to last. In one of the earliest New Testament documents, Paul’s letter to the Galatians, written perhaps as early as AD 48,¹² Paul railed against certain believers who had introduced “another gospel” and who “would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:6–7). Though fellow Christians, these people were outsiders to the Galatian branches. In this way, as time went on, subtle and, in some cases, not-so-subtle differences exhibited themselves among congregations in what they taught about Christ, in the sacred books that they began to accept and read, and in their ecclesiastical practices. By the late first century and the beginning of the second, as apostolic authority waned, differences had become the norm according to preserved records. In some areas, what later came to be regarded as heretical was, in fact, the form that budding Christianity took.¹³

Next, during the second century, as Christians became more self-conscious of who they were in a Roman world that had turned hostile, church leaders perceived a need to establish boundaries that imposed norms on what to believe, how to worship, and how to govern the church. Admittedly, difficulties with Roman authorities were not the only challenges that church members faced. For example, we read in the surviving correspondence of Ignatius, the second-century bishop of Antioch in what is now southernmost Turkey, that competing forms of Christianity had by then emerged in cities and towns because of a crippling struggle over who held real authority in the church. What is more, it is impossible to determine whether Ignatius or his opponents possessed a purer form of Christian belief and standards. Let us look more closely.

Two of the major themes in Ignatius’s seven letters have to do with a hoped-for unity behind the local bishops and a worrisome concern about an invading heresy. Clearly, something big was driving both his insistent appeals for believers to unite behind their bishops¹⁴ and his warning of a cancerous heresy that, from his viewpoint, had invaded churches in Asia Minor and beyond. Philadelphia served as an example of other congregations in western Asia Minor where Ignatius knew of the existence of what he called “many specious wolves.”¹⁵ In William Schoedel’s judgment, “A threat to Ignatius’ authority by some Antiochene Christians evidently played a significant role in determining what Ignatius was to do and to say.”¹⁶ Further, there was a “loss of control of the church in Antioch and the emergence of a group opposed to [Ignatius’s] authority.”¹⁷ This group may have consisted of “Judaizers,” who taught the observance of the Mosaic law, because Ignatius “seems to have been more or less prepared with arguments” against such groups in Magnesia and Philadelphia.¹⁸ In addition, the grinding difficulties between Ignatius and his Christian opponents in Antioch seem to arise in part because of personal animosities.¹⁹ Personalities simply got in the way of unity among the Christians. And none of these issues could be settled by Apostles; by then they were off the mortal stage.

Third, the final push for standardization came largely as a result of the church’s convulsive confrontation with gnosticism, a loosely framed belief system that disparaged the God of the Old Testament as being too strict and generally emphasized that salvation came because of what a person knew rather than through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. This monumental struggle, which left the surviving church with deep wounds in its doctrines,²⁰ propelled church leaders toward standardizing a collection of scripture. Why? Because one of the important gnostic teachers, an antisemitic man named Marcion, who hailed from the port city of Sinope on the south coast of the Black Sea, created a New Testament of sorts about AD 150 that consisted of an edited version of the Gospel of Luke and a collection of Paul’s letters.²¹ Other gnostic teachers simply produced their own sacred writings—Gospels, Epistles, and, later, Apocalypses—that they claimed went back to the early Apostles and prominent teachers. Although certain Christian writers from the late second and early third centuries, basing their work on the good sense of earlier unnamed leaders,²² had begun to collect and assess documents that could stand side by side with “the law and the prophets” of the Old Testament, the fresh and growing gnostic productions of course sounded alarm bells throughout Christendom. Resting their judgment on what they trusted from the first generation of believers, including especially the Apostles, church leaders responded by drawing up lists of accepted writings.

One of the early efforts resulted in the intriguing list to be found in the fragmentary Muratori Canon that goes back to circa AD 200 and was initially composed in Rome.²³ The opening lines are missing, wherein a discussion of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark must have appeared. But the register of accepted books includes almost all those in our current New Testament except the Epistle to the Hebrews and the letters of Peter, James, and 3 John. Although later Christian authors raised questions about the suitability of the book of Revelation for worship, the Muratori Canon shows the inner good sense that the earliest Christians possessed in what they decided to read and discuss in their meetings; they were not deceived by compositions that grew far from the apostolic tree.

That said, during the second century and especially the third, the term κανών became linked to three expressions, which hardened into statements that included certain beliefs and excluded others. The so-called Rule of Truth “is binding truth as this is proclaimed by the Church and as it has taken shape in its preaching.”²⁴ Its companion, the Rule of Faith, or the Latin regula fidei, has to do with “the norm that bounded the limits of the Christian search for truth.” To put it another way, “it embraces not just a confession of faith, but also the observance of customs affirmed in the church.”²⁵ The third expression, the Rule of the Church, or Ecclesiastical Rule, embraced these two and set out “the baptismal confession . . . [and] the whole sum of Christian doctrine . . . and the right execution of ecclesiastical actions.”²⁶ Such rules or standards had come about because of “the coming to an end of the genuine authority” of the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry and Resurrection.²⁷

From circa AD 400 onward, the meaning of the term κανών “was fixed more and more narrowly” as the church labored forward in its attempts to set “the norm” for its “ecclesiastical teaching.”²⁸ In the western, Latin-speaking part of the church, the word “canon” mirrored this meaning. Specifically, the word was applied to “the resolutions of Church councils . . . after Nicea [in AD 325].” Beginning in the fifth century, decisions made in councils “were gathered in collections of canons”—that is, collections of rules that spelled out doctrine, church governance, and accepted modes of worship.²⁹ Most importantly, from the mid-fourth century, the term κανών was applied both to “the collection of the sacred writings” inherited from the synagogue, now known as the Old Testament or Old Covenant, and to the New Testament, “which had already taken essential shape from c. 200.”³⁰ In different words, as Adolf Jülicher wrote, “In using the word ‘canonical’ the Christian of 200 had exactly the same feelings as if he had said: Divine, holy, infallible, an absolute standard.”³¹

The Canonization of the New Testament

In the spring of AD 367, the thirty-ninth festal letter of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, set out for the first time the collection of books and letters that now make up our New Testament.³² For almost two centuries before this moment, Christian writers and leaders had made efforts to create a list of works that would stand side by side with the Old Testament. In its Greek form, the list of works would be called the Septuagint. This process, made up of numerous local decisions in different areas of the Roman world, rested on books and letters from the apostolic period already adopted in many congregations for reading and teaching. After all, it was apparent that Paul intended at least some of his letters be read in church services, opening the possibility of collecting works from the era of the Apostles that would meet Christians’ spiritual needs even though most had not been written for such a purpose (see 1 Thes. 5:27; Col. 4:16). These instructions from Paul were matched by directions in the book of Revelation that it be read and, under threat of a curse, its words not be changed (see Rev. 1:3; 22:18–19).³³

Even though we understand that the New Testament frames “a collection of writings which in the first place were read and loved in the churches and only then were combined in a canon,”³⁴ the process of producing the New Testament labeled some works as acceptable and others not. One famous example involved a man named Serapion, the bishop of Antioch from AD 191 to 210. His writings exist only in fragmentary form and quotes by others. In an important passage, Eusebius quotes from a letter of Serapion to church members in Rhossus, which was located about thirty miles to the north of Antioch on the Gulf of Issus, the easternmost reach of the Mediterranean Sea. In this letter, Serapion reversed an earlier opinion he had about the Gospel of Peter. We read that initially he had instructed that “the Gospel put forward by them [of Rhossus] in the name of Peter, . . . let it be read.” Later, however, after reading the text, he concluded that those “who studied this very Gospel [are] . . . Docetae,” who did not accept that Jesus had a human nature. He decided that “the most part indeed was in accordance with the true teaching of the Saviour, but that some things were added.”³⁵ It is from a large fragment of this Gospel, found at Akhmîm in Upper Egypt in the winter of 1886, that we can see items added to the New Testament accounts. The most notable centers on Jesus’ Crucifixion—“And they brought two malefactors, and crucified the Lord betwixt them. But he kept silence, as one feeling no pain.”³⁶ In this light, the Gospel of Peter understood that Jesus was beyond suffering in his mortal life, a point that completely reversed what was written in the earlier Gospel narratives (see, for example, Matt. 16:21; Mark 14:33–34; Luke 24:26). Therefore, this text was to be rejected on this basis alone.

Though a few exceptions are known, in a general way Jewish leaders and savants had already been making these kinds of decisions about documents that were candidates for their Bible, our Old Testament, discarding both the records now found among the fourteen books of the Old Testament Apocrypha and the so-called pseudepigrapha. For them, this process came to an end in the second century AD. Their criteria were simple: Did the doctrines and history expressed in a text stand within the parameters set out in the old, trusted accounts, and were the connections to known ancient personalities credible in the light of the same old accounts? But that is only part of the story. For them, the accepted records “represented the communication of revealed truth from God to man.”³⁷

Standing at a midpoint in the growth of Christian scripture, Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–215) could write about the conjoining of the Hebrew scriptures and the newly assembled Christian documents under the umbrella of the church: “The ecclesiastical rule [κανών] is the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord.”³⁸ The “covenant” here, of course, was the nascent New Testament, the still-growing body of Christian scripture that was taking its place next to the “the law and the prophets.”³⁹ About the time of Clement’s greatest activity as a teacher at the school of Alexandria (c. AD 190–202), the Muratori Canon took shape in Rome. As we have already seen, the only documents omitted from our current New Testament were Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John. A little more than a century later, the historian Eusebius presented the books accepted in his congregation in Caesarea. His list admitted most New Testament books except those he called “disputed”—the Epistles of James and Jude, 2 Peter, and 3 John. Eusebius also hinted at a reluctance among some church members to embrace the Apocalypse of John by writing, “if it really seem right” to include it with the other sacred books.⁴⁰

Naturally, a number of works were set aside. The reasons differed. In the case of the Muratori Canon, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter—likely not the version of the Apocalypse of Peter found in 1945 among the Nag Hammadi texts in Upper Egypt⁴¹—were judged to be acceptable for private instruction and worship but not to be read in the churches. The works of the heresiarchs Arsinous, Valentinus, Miltiades, and Basilides “of Asia Minor” were to be avoided at all costs.⁴² Eusebius painted a different picture of forbidden delicacies and added to the earlier list. Even though he knew that certain books had been flirting with the status of scripture, he called “not genuine” five works that Christians had been reading for more than a hundred years—the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, and “the so-called Teachings of the Apostles.” He was warm toward the Gospel of the Hebrews in which especially Jewish Christians “take a special pleasure.” This document survives only in fragmentary form and recorded the visit of the resurrected Jesus to his brother James, a report found nowhere else (see 1 Cor. 15:7).⁴³ He dismissed the “Gospels of Peter and Thomas and Matthias” as well as the “Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles” as “the forgeries of heretics.”⁴⁴

From such decisions were born the rejected books, the New Testament Apocrypha (see the following section). As we have learned, the process of selecting the New Testament scriptural canon did not come down to a simple decision by one or a handful of prominent Christian leaders. It rather grew out of the collected wisdom and experience of church members over a period of many decades. By the time of Eusebius, in the early fourth century, he could write about “those writings which the tradition of the Church has deemed true and genuine and acknowledged” in contrast to “the others outside their number.”⁴⁵ To be sure, not all the loose ends would be tied up for another fifty years, until Athanasius wrote his celebratory letter for Easter in AD 367 wherein he lists the works that are now in our New Testament.

Apocryphal Texts in the New Testament: 
Quotations and Allusions

Quotations of and allusions to the Old Testament that occur inside the New Testament are well-known. However, not many readers of the New Testament are familiar with how the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings influenced its authors. Some of the texts that appear to have affected them—the list is substantial—include the extracanonical books of Enoch, Baruch, Ezra or Esdras, Maccabees, Tobit, Sirach, Jubilees, the Psalms of Solomon, the Testament or Assumption of Moses, the Life of Adam and Eve, the Ascension of Isaiah, and others.

The collection of texts known as the Apocrypha consists of ancient religious texts incorporated into Catholic Bibles and others but are generally not considered to be canonical by Protestants. They are also known as deuterocanonical (“second canon”) texts and are made up of books such as 1 and 2 Esdras, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the Song of the Three Children, the Story of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon.

The books reckoned among the Apocrypha relate to Old Testament, or occasionally, intertestamental characters and events. Many texts are categorized as “New Testament Apocrypha” because they were written by early Christians about Jesus and the Apostles. Over time, disagreements arose between Christian groups regarding the canonical status of some of these. Examples include the Protoevangelium of James, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and many more. Because most apocryphal texts were written after the New Testament documents, or at the same time in a few cases, most commentators do not believe that they influenced the New Testament. We shall discuss each Apocryphal text separately (see the following section).⁴⁶

Several passages in the New Testament cite texts that were apparently thought to be authoritative then but now are not considered canonical. For example, in Colossians 4:16, Paul encourages the Saints to read his letter to the Laodiceans. This letter was never part of the New Testament and no longer exists. Jude 1:14–15 explicitly cites a prophecy of Enoch found in the text of 1 Enoch,⁴⁷ which is widely available today. 2 Timothy 3:8 mentions Jannes and Jambres, Egyptian magicians who challenged Moses, but those names are only found in apocryphal texts and do not appear anywhere in the Old Testament. We can discover several similar examples of interactions between apocryphal texts and the New Testament records.

Let us examine a few specific examples of known apocryphal or pseudepigraphal texts that are quoted or alluded to in the New Testament. We begin with the important book known as 1 Enoch, as it appears in Jude and also 1 and 2 Peter. Jude 1:14–15 reads as follows: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints. To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” This verse is a direct quote from 1 Enoch 1:9. Jude apparently had access to this text and considered it a prophecy of enough legitimacy and authority that he felt comfortable quoting it verbatim in his letter. Furthermore, the discussion of the fallen angels in Jude 1:6 is generally understood by scholars to be drawing on the account of the “Watchers” in 1 Enoch 6–19.⁴⁸ Jude appears to see the fulfillment of Enoch’s prophecy in his own time, applying the prophecies about the “saints” and the “ungodly” to the church members of his day.

This same pericope from 1 Enoch appears to have influenced the author of 1 and 2 Peter. Second Peter 2:4 evidently alludes to the story of the rebellious angels and their imprisonment in a similar manner to Jude.⁴⁹ First Peter is arguably even more influenced by 1 Enoch in ways that are distinct from those of Jude and 2 Peter. George Nickelsburg outlined several parallel themes between 1 Peter and 1 Enoch 108. The following chart represents some of his findings.⁵⁰

Scholars have long recognized the apocalyptic features of the Gospel of Matthew, and some argue that the book is heavily influenced by the texts of 1 Enoch and possibly 2 Enoch.⁵¹ Recently, research compared the similar worldview shared by these texts, concluding that the main areas of Enochic influence can be found both in the first four chapters of Matthew and in the “Son of Man” sayings. For example, Amy Richter argues for significant influence of 1 Enoch on the genealogy and infancy narrative found in the first two chapters of Matthew, albeit observing that Matthew does not quote from that text directly. Regarding the infancy narrative, the elements in Matthew that she asserts are dependent on 1 Enoch are (1) Matthew’s genealogy that features four women from the Old Testament record, (2) Joseph’s unwillingness to accept Mary’s explanation about her pregnancy, (3) the presence of revelatory dreams that shape and move the story forward, and (4) notables who, guided by astral signs, travel far to worship the child of promise.⁵² Richter notes the similarities between the story of Jesus’ conception and birth and that of Noah at the end of 1 Enoch. Her findings can be summarized in the following chart.⁵³

Additionally, Richter compares several elements in Matthew’s account of Christ’s ministry with the “Watchers” narrative. She points to the Watchers’ “illicit pedagogy” versus Jesus’ “righteous pedagogy,”⁵⁴ the Watchers’ illicit sexual relationships versus Jesus’ rejection of illicit sexual relationships,⁵⁵ the Watchers’ violence versus Jesus’ peace,⁵⁶ the Watchers or demons bringing disease versus Jesus healing and casting out demons,⁵⁷ and the Watchers teaching idolatry versus Jesus teaching true worship.⁵⁸

Several scholars have noticed the parallels between the “Son of Man” sayings in Matthew and the Son of Man figure in the Enochic Book of Parables or Similitudes (1 En. 37–71).⁵⁹ According to George Nickelsburg and James VanderKam, some consensus now exists that the author of Matthew knew the parables.⁶⁰ Notably, Leslie Walck explores this relationship in her monograph The Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch and in Matthew. She finds the highest concentration of similarities between the two texts in the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:36–43) and the description of the Final Judgment (Matt. 25:31–46), which are unique to Matthew in the synoptic Gospels. Both of these sections in Matthew treat the topic of the eschatological judgment. A principal feature of the Son of Man in both Matthew and this section of 1 Enoch is that he is an eschatological judge.⁶¹ In both, Walck notices, the Son of Man is seated on a throne of glory in the company of angels to judge the world. Thereupon, he divides the people of the earth into the righteous and wicked.

In this connection, the description of the Son of Man’s throne as “the throne of his glory” appears only in the parables of Enoch and Matthew.⁶² According to Walck, Matthew’s theme of judgment bears deeper similarities to the concepts in 1 Enoch than the other synoptics do. Furthermore, the judgment scenes in 1 Enoch and Matthew are distinct from other similar scenarios in other texts.⁶³

It could be argued that, although Matthew appears to know the apocalyptic traditions found in the Enochic literature well, he seems to be taking attributes described for Enoch and demonstrating that Christ is the ideal or true bearer of those attributes and that Christ is ultimately able to fulfill or complete what Enoch could not. Richter explains that Jesus repairs the damage that the Watchers did to the world and also sets out the important role of women in Matthew’s narrative:

The child Jesus is shown by Matthew to be the fulfiller to the legacy of Enoch, the promised one who will redeem and save his people, establish righteousness on the earth, and ultimately redress the effects of the watchers’ transgression. Moreover, by viewing Matthew’s genealogy and infancy narratives through the lens of the Enochic watchers’ template, one gains a view into how, according to Matthew’s Gospel, women play a particular role in the story of Jesus. That is, alongside Joseph, Herod, the magi and some other notable male characters in the narrative, women’s participation in Matthew’s Gospel is prominent. . . . It is often in the examples of women and Jesus’ interaction with women in the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus overcomes the watchers’ transgression described in 1 Enoch.⁶⁴

It should be noted that, recently, Andrei Orlov has argued for the influence of the book of 2 Enoch on Matthew’s temptation narrative, asserting that the story of the ascension of Enoch may have been a template for the story of Jesus’ temptation by Satan.⁶⁵ Many scholars now consider 2 Enoch to be earlier than, or perhaps contemporary with, the writing of Matthew. Orlov explains that in 2 Enoch, the patriarch is elevated to heaven to become the servant of God, and the angels there worship him. This sequence, Orlov points out, is also similar to what happens to Adam in some of the Adam texts, such as the primary Adam books—the angels bow down to Adam to worship him. In a few of those accounts, however, Satan and some of his followers refuse to worship Adam, rebel, and are cast out of heaven. Orlov observes that this theme can also be found in 2 Enoch.

Orlov argues that Matthew picks up on these themes in his narrative where, like Enoch and Adam, Jesus is taken up to an elevated place and is there tempted to give Satan the honor that Satan refused to grant to Adam. Throughout the temptation narrative, we see Satan serving as a psychopomp, “transporting angel,” for Jesus, taking him to the temple in Jerusalem and then to the highest mountain. This function is fulfilled by angels in many apocalyptic texts. In 2 Enoch, two angels take Enoch to heaven. Perhaps importantly, the text also relates that Melchizedek was taken to the Garden of Eden by the angel Gabriel. In Matthew, instead of an angel being Jesus’ psychopomp, Satan also serves as the angelus interpres, “interpreting angel,” showing Jesus various scenes in vision and explaining them to him.⁶⁶

Orlov observes that, much as the angels do with the visionary person of the Enochic and other apocalyptic texts, Satan takes Jesus on a “gradual upward progression . . . from the desert to a pinnacle in the temple and finally to a sacred mountain.”⁶⁷ The highest point of the sacred mountain is often seen as the location of the throne of God (see 1 En. 25:3). It is at this highest point (on the “exceeding high mountain”) that, in the apocalyptic traditions, we would normally see, as mentioned previously, the visionary man humbling himself before God and worshiping him. We would also expect to see the motifs of veneration—such as anointing, clothing in glory, enthronement, and worship by the angels—applied to the exalted human himself. In Matthew, however, instead of these honors being bestowed on Jesus, we see the situation inverted and Satan asking Jesus to worship him. Satan assigns to himself the attributes and duties of Deity as he attempts to imitate God. Orlov explains that, in the apocalyptic texts, the goal of the visionary is usually to reach the highest heaven, prostrate himself before the throne of God, and become identified with the divine figure on the throne. What we may be seeing in Matthew, he argues, is Satan trying to persuade Jesus to bow down before him so that Jesus would be identified with Satan instead of God.⁶⁸

Beyond the influence of the Enochic literature, we meet many additional quotations of and allusions to other apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts. Besides the allusions to Enochic texts, Jude refers to a text known as the Assumption of Moses. Jude 1:9 reads, “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” Although portions of the Assumption of Moses are extant today, this section quoted by Jude is lost. The only reason we know that Jude is quoting this text is because the early Christian authors Clement of Alexandria⁶⁹ and Origen⁷⁰ affirmed that this was the case.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, a verse seemingly draws from the apocryphal Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah.⁷¹ Hebrews 11:37 describes the dreadful fate of some of God’s prophets: “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” The line about a prophet being sawn asunder echoes a similar description in the Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah 5:2, 11, 14: “And when Isaiah was being sawn in sunder, Belchira stood up, accusing him, and all the false prophets stood up, laughing and rejoicing because of Isaiah. . . . And they seized and sawed in sunder Isaiah, the son of Amoz, with a wooden saw. . . . And when Isaiah was being sawn in sunder, he neither cried aloud nor wept, but his lips spake with the Holy Spirit until he was sawn in twain.” Hebrews does not produce a direct quote and the connection is somewhat speculative. The legend about Isaiah being sawn asunder was evidently a popular one at the beginning of the Christian era, and it appears in both the Jerusalem (Sanhedrin 10:2)⁷² and Babylonian (Yebamot 49:2) Talmuds. Of the known references to this event, the Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah is the most likely to have informed the author of Hebrews.

First Corinthians 2:9 preserves a passage that the Apostle Paul considered to be a quotation of an older text: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” The way this passage is introduced (“as it is written”) makes it look as if Paul is quoting a known authoritative text of scripture. However, there is no obvious source for this line. Something of a consensus exists that Paul may be citing a version of Isaiah 64:4 (“Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him”). The early Christian Fathers were not so sure and speculated widely on where the line came from, including within several apocryphal texts. Origen, Zacharias of Chrysopolis, and others believed that the words were derived from an apocryphal book, most likely the Apocalypse of Elias.⁷³ It seems more likely, however, that the passage is a loose rendering, or a different version, of Isaiah 64:4.

A similar case arises in Ephesians 5:14, which is also set up as an authoritative quotation: “Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” The “he” of the passage likely refers to God, here speaking through the scriptures. The closest Old Testament verse is Isaiah 60:1, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” The ideas expressed in the two passages are similar, but the wording is quite different. Epiphanius said the source was the Apocalypse of Elias, and Euthalius believed it was a Jeremiah apocryphon.⁷⁴ It is difficult to establish the source, but it does appear to be ancient Christian poetry that Paul adopted in his text.

John 7:38 also comes into play: “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” No passage in the Old Testament says this. However, the passage cannot be tied to any specific apocryphal text. It is possible that it stems from an alternate version of some canonical document, but it is not clear which text is a possible candidate.

Second Timothy 3:8 mentions a couple of characters whose names appear nowhere in the canonical scriptures: “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth.” The names of these Egyptian magicians occur only in apocryphal tradition. The earliest known reference occurs in the Dead Sea Scrolls’ Damascus Document: “For in times past Moses and Aaron stood in the power of the Prince of Lights and Belial raised up Yannes and his brother in his cunning when seeking to do evil to Israel the first time.”⁷⁵

These personalities are mentioned in various apocryphal texts, and Origen claims that 2 Timothy is quoting from the book of Jannes and Jambre.⁷⁶ It is reasonable to conclude that the author is making use of apocryphal traditions here.

New Testament Apocrypha

The aggregate of texts known in modern times as the “New Testament Apocrypha” was not gathered anciently into a recognizable collection. These texts are essentially derivative documents or imitation documents. That is, they model themselves largely on the New Testament books and include gospels, acts, epistles, and revelations. Often, they repeat events or important words that we find in the New Testament, but with a twist, evidently intending to replace or improve or cast doubt on the earlier New Testament version. Often, they attempt to fill in blank spots where we lack information, such as Jesus’ childhood and his post-Resurrection ministry. Early Christians rejected these documents as authentic records of Jesus and the Apostles because, when set next to the texts that became accepted, these records appeared blemished or deficient. But this does not mean that they are without any value when reconstructing the world of the New Testament and what followed.

Many of these accounts survive by name only, mentioned scornfully in the written works of early church authors. The fact that only a limited number of these records have been discovered points to the energy with which authorities in the early church pursued and expunged them. Those texts that unexpectedly endured were found in out-of-the-way places, distant from the halls of power within the Roman Empire. They became linked with Christian interests following the Edict of Milan, agreed to by Constantine and Licinius, that introduced Roman tolerance for all religions in AD 313.

Upper Egypt, far from the immediate reach of the bishop of Alexandria and other church authorities, cradled some of these texts, which were discovered in a single ceramic jar in 1945 near the river town of Nag Hammadi. Of the fifty-two treatises preserved in thirteen books (some are duplicate copies), twenty exhibit clear ties to the New Testament. Of that number, only the Gospel of Thomas has risen in scholarly deliberations. Many scholars believe its roots go back to the time of the composition of the New Testament Gospels (c. AD 70–95) and therefore sheds light on the attempts to create a record of Jesus’ mortal and post-mortal ministries.⁷⁷

As a group, the New Testament apocryphal accounts preserve an astonishing diversity of doctrine and historical understanding. As we might expect, the Gospels dominate in numbers because of the interest in the Savior. These apocryphal texts fill in blank spots. For instance, we find accounts of Jesus’ childhood—called infancy gospels—wherein, when angry with a playmate, Jesus turned the other child into an animal or bird, or crippled him, obliging the child’s parents to plead with Mary and Joseph that they control their son or that the child be restored.⁷⁸ In another account, the five-year-old Jesus formed pools of water in a brook. When a playmate undid the pools so that the brook ran freely, Jesus was said to curse the boy and to wither him as a diseased tree. The parents of the boy brought him to Joseph and rancorously accused him of lacking control over the child Jesus.⁷⁹ While such an account seems strange, one apparent motivation for rehearsing this kind of story is to show that Jesus was fully a part of this world, not some otherworldly personality, thus affirming the created order.

Other records claim to open windows onto Jesus’ post-mortal ministering, usually emphasizing the secrets of salvation that he imparted to one or another of his disciples, with a complementary lack of stress on Jesus’ atoning suffering and death. The disciple to whom the Risen Savior passed his special teaching therefore became the custodian of this doctrine. An example of such a text is the First Apocalypse of James from Codex V of the Nag Hammadi Library. Here the resurrected Savior interacted with his brother James—called in Christian literature “the brother of the Lord” or “the Just”—and revealed the secrets of eternity. In this document, Jesus’ death and Resurrection were reduced to the expression “The Lord [Jesus] . . . fulfilled what was fitting,” a clear shift of focus away from his Atonement (V.3.30.12–13).⁸⁰ Although important reasons exist for distrusting the historical accuracy of these “passion gospels,” as M. R. James calls them,⁸¹ a person cannot escape the overall impression that they reaffirm the strength and significance of Jesus’ post-mortal ministry, as already disclosed in the Gospels and the book of Acts (see, for example, John 20:11–21:23; Acts 1:1–11).⁸²

The apocryphal acts that are tied to the name of certain Apostles raise similar concerns about doctrine and historical reliability. The Acts of John the Apostle will illustrate. In one scene, John speaks of touching the Savior: “Sometimes when I would lay hold on [Jesus], I met with a material and solid body, and at other times, again, when I felt him, the substance was immaterial and as if it existed not at all” (Acts of John 93). This report clearly touches on the view that during Jesus’ mortal ministry, his body was immaterial or otherworldly. In contrast, one tradition embedded in the Acts of John ties to the spot on the Mount of Olives where Jesus evidently taught his disciples about the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the world (see Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) as well as where he ascended into heaven (see Acts 1:9–12). The tradition says that, during the Crucifixion, John fled to “the cave”—obviously a well-known location—where the spiritual Christ appeared to him to offer sacred teaching, thus conferring a measure of holiness on the place (Acts of John 97).⁸³

Other books of acts offer interesting tidbits. For example, the famous Hymn of the Pearl, embedded in the Acts of Thomas the Apostle, sketches the story of a heavenly son who descended into the world and was caught by its allures, in the process losing his memory of his celestial origins. He was then rescued by an awakening, saving word sent from above, which led him back to his heavenly parents and to his earlier glory (see Acts of Thomas 108–13).⁸⁴

On balance, the apocryphal acts meet the standard received by Joseph Smith when he sought out the Lord to learn whether to translate the books forming the Old Testament Apocrypha that were bound in his Bible: “There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly; There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men” (D&C 91:1–2).

Of the few apocryphal Epistles, only the Epistle to the Laodiceans has caught the attention of scholars as a possibly authentic letter from Paul. Within its brief lines there is little of real interest.⁸⁵ We know such a letter existed because it is mentioned in Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians in 4:16. But most students doubt that the sixth-century copy of this short letter preserves the one that Paul pointed to in his Colossian correspondence.⁸⁶

As the gifts of the Spirit receded into memory, a natural interest grew up among early Christians in the revelatory visions of past apostles and seers. Many visionary accounts were tied to the Old Testament, only a few to the New. Perhaps the most important of the apocryphal apocalypses is the Apocalypse of Peter, dated to the second century AD and known from a number of diverse sources, which underscores its broad Christian appeal.⁸⁷ Much of this text has to do with the next life, including the punishments that come upon the wicked. When a person reviews the account, it becomes clear that Christian art, which portrays the Judgment and the consequent punishments handed out therein, took inspiration from this kind of text, if not from the apocalypse itself. Heaven is described as “a very great region outside this world exceeding bright with light, and the air of that place illuminated with the beams of the sun, and the earth of itself flowering with blossoms that fade not” (Apoc. of Peter 15). In contrast, in a “very squalid . . . place of punishment” were to be seen “some . . . hanging by their tongues; and these were they that blasphemed the way of righteousness, and under them was laid fire flaming and tormenting them” (Apoc. of Peter 21–22).⁸⁸

Aside from occasional unusual elements in the apocryphal New Testament documents, some students find little to interest them. The apocryphal accounts tend to find their inspiration from earlier New Testament books, imitating and adjusting them. While some of what we find in the apocryphal acts may go back to real historical events, caution arises because of untrustworthy aspects.⁸⁹ Again, the words of the Lord to Joseph Smith serve as a measure: “There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly; There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men” (D&C 91:1–2).

For Further Reading

Griggs, C. Wilfred, ed. Apocryphal Writings and the Latter-day Saints. Religious Studies Monograph Series no. 13. Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1986.

James, Montague Rhodes. The Apocryphal New Testament: Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.

Hennecke, Edgar, and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, eds. New Testament Apocrypha. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963.

Nibley, Hugh. When the Lights Went Out: Three Studies on the Ancient Apostasy. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1970.

Wayment, Thomas A. The Text of the New Testament Apocrypha (100–400 CE). New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Ehrman, Bart D., and Zlatko Pleše. The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.