Jimmy Akin

Earlier I suggested that the only way a significant movement to include a new document in the New Testament would get started was if we found something that looked like an authentic, first century apostolic epistle, gospel, or proto-gospel.

Let me clarify what I mean by the latter.

It is standardly assumed that there are lost sources behind the four gospels as we have them. The most talked about is a source called "Q," which is allegedly where a bunch of the material in Matthew and Luke comes from. It is not clear whether Q was an oral source or a written source, but many assume the latter. It also is not clear if Q even existed (there are other ways to account for the material besides positing Q and there are arguments against Q), though this is the standard claim these days. (Personally, I’m not convinced, though I’m open.)

Luke, at any rate, mentions that he used written sources in composing his gospel, and unless he’s referring exclusively to Matthew and Mark, that means there’s a lost source.

If we turned up Q or something else that looked like it might be a source behind the canonical gospels, that would be what I’m calling a "proto-gospel," and it would really set the cat among the pidgeons. The scholarly debates would be endless.

And it would be one of the few things that could conceivably spartk a New Testament inclusion movement.

How would that play out?

First, there’d be a buncha folks going "Ooo! Aaaah!" over the document in an uncritical manner and it would sell a bazillion copies.

Then there’d be a buncha folks going "I’m very favorably impressed, but we mustn’t be hasty."

Then there’s be a buncha folks going "Hey, let’s reserve judgement on this thing."

Then there’d be a buncha folks going, "This looks fake to me."

And finally there’d be a buncha folks going "This new document is of the devil!"

There’d be a big fight that would remain inconclusive for some time, probably generations.

Eventually, some publisher might decide to stick the document in Bibles it’s printing. Then there would be another huge controversy over this. (To mitigate it, the publisher might print the document as an appendix, not claiming it to be authentic or inspired but merely "useful," but that would still start a huge controversy.)

In the end, though, standard Bible would continue to outsell the ones that had the document in it. A few Christians (in newly-created denominations following denominational divides over the new book) might use it, but traditional Christians–who would be and would remain the great majority–would not include it in their Bibles, however fascinated or perplexed they might be by it.

What would the Catholic Church do?

Nothing.

Certainly in the beginning.

In our lifetimes we might get a few cautionary statements, but the attitude of the Church would very much be a "Let’s wait and see" attitude. The Church is not about to preemptorially endorse a work of such a sensitive nature if it might turn out to be fake. Neither is it about to preemptorially condemn such a work if it might turn out to be genuine. We’d get cautionary statements telling Catholics not to regard it as Scripture but to otherwise reserve judgement on it, and that would be about it.

And that’s probably the way it would stay.

Forever.

Hypothetically, the Church could use its infallibility to make a determination that the document falls into one of the following classes:

1. Fake
2. Authentic but not inspired
3. Authentic and inspired but not to be included in the New Testament
4. Authenatic and inspired and to be included in the New Testament

But the odds of any such determination at any date, even long after our lifetimes, would be very, very low.

The reason is that not making a determination would be so much easier than making one. It would be hard to prove it fake since, per supposition, we’ve already said that it appears authentic.

It would be hard to prove it authentic but not inspired since (a) we have no independent test for inspiration besides Tradition (which is absent here) and (b) we have no precedent for an authentically apostolic work that is non-inspired.

It would be hard to prove it authentic and inspired but not to be included among the Scriptures because of (a) the lack of a test for inspiration apart from Tradition and (b) we have no precedent for an inspired work that is not to be included in the Scriptures.

It would be hard to prove that it should be put in Scripture because (a) again, no independent tst for inspiration and (b) we have no precedent for including new works in Scripture.

The Church would thus find it much easier to simply downplay the matter, to be open to what value the document might have historically, but not to do anything to encourage folks to think of it on the same plane as the known Scriptures.

The only way I can see an infallible determination being made would be if, probably after centuries, a huge controversy was tearing the Church apart and one was needed for pastoral reasons.

In that case the likelihood would be that the decision would come down this way:

While this document may have many useful and instructive things to tell us, the Holy Spirit did not choose in His providence to shepherd it into the New Testament at the time it was codified. He did not choose to have it be part of the patrimony of Christendom down through the ages. Consequently, since the Scriptures as they have been historically known form the patrimony of the Church that God intended it to have uniquely in all ages of its development, it is hereby infallibly defined that the new document–whatever value it may have–is not to be placed in the canon of Scripture.

Only it’d be said more flowery than that.

The recent and ongoing decipherment of the Oxyrhynchus papyri raises a question of what the Christian community would do if we found a new Christian document purporting to be from the first century, say a new letter of St. Paul or a "lost gospel."

The paramount question in folks minds would be: Should this be added to the New Testament?

There are parallels for this already.

In the 20th century we found a whole slew of early Christian and semi-Christian documents. In particular, the Nag Hammadi find gave us a bunch of Gnostic gospels dating from the second and third centuries.

Did those get added?

Nope. We got a bunch of breathless documentaries on The History Channel and A & E, and a bunch of folks got confused by them, but there was no serious move to add them to the New Testament. Not even the Jesus’ Seminar’s publication of the Gospel of Thomas alongside the four canonical gospels caused any serious move to add it to the New Testament in the broader Christian community.

The reason is that these documents have almost no historical value and were written way after the apostolic age, automatically disqualifying them from New Testament inclusion in the eyes of traditional Christians.

If Oxyrhynchus turns out to have more of the same, expect more of the same.

But what if we find something from the first century?

Again: It’s already happened.

We’ve long had Clement’s epistle, which dates from the late first century. We’ve also got things like the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas and the Didache, both of which are first century texts.

There has been no move to include these in the New Testament either. While Clement was a pope, he wasn’t closely enough associated with the apostles for his epistle to make it in. It also contains material that, to modern eyes, would make it problematic to include (e.g., his seeming treatment of the phoenix as if it were a real bird).

Pseudo-Barnabas is even worse in that regard (he gets his biology demonstrably wrong regarding rabbits–saying that hares develop a new bodily orifice [apparently on their posteriors] for each year of life, kind of the way trees get rings).

And the Didache, despite its presentation as "the teaching of the twelve apostles" was demonstrably late and not clearly written by apostles or their associates, however much useful info it may have on first century Christianity.

So the mere find of a first century document would not create a mass movement to stick it in the New Testament.

The only way that would even conceivably get started would be if we found what appeared to be a first century gospel, proto-gospel, or epistle of an apostle.

If we found something that looked like the epistle to the Hebrews, for example, that contained lots of neat doctrine but doesn’t claim to be written by an apostle, no mass inclusion movement would begin.

Even if we got something by a known New Testament figure, like Timothy or Sylvanus or Apollos, there wouldn’t be a big inclusion movement.

Only if we got an apostolic epistle, a gospel, or a proto-gospel would a significant inclusion movement even get started.

What would happen then?

See next blog post.