Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way [Hardcover]

Philip Jenkins (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195135091 | ISBN-13: 978-0195135091 | Publication Date: June 28, 2001

Was Jesus really a subversive mystic whose true teachings were suppressed by an authoritarian church? Has the real nature of Christianity been deliberately obscured for centuries? Do recently discovered texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and even the Dead Sea Scrolls undermine the historical validity of the New Testament?
In this incisive critique, Philip Jenkins thoroughly and convincingly debunks such claims. Jenkins places the recent controversies surrounding the hidden gospels in a broad historical context and argues that, far from being revolutionary, such attempts to find an alternative Christianity date back at least to the Enlightenment. And by employing the appropriate scholarly and historical methodologies, he demonstrates that the texts purported to represent pristine Christianity were in fact composed long after the canonical gospels found in the Bible. Produced by obscure heretical movements, these texts offer no reliable new information about Jesus or the early church. They have attracted so much media attention chiefly because they seem to support radical, feminist, and post-modern positions in the modern church. Indeed, Jenkins shows how best-selling books on the "hidden gospels" have been taken up by an uncritical, scandal-hungry media as the basis for a social movement that could have dramatic effects on the faith and practice of contemporary Christianity.
Brilliantly researched and sharply argued, Hidden Gospels unearths both the complex agendas and flawed methods of scholars who have created a whole new mythology about Jesus and the early church.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In addition to attempting to find postmodern, multiple, nontraditional interpretations of traditional biblical texts, the renowned Jesus Seminar has published texts from outside the traditional canon, heralding them as new discoveries that suggest reinterpretation of traditional Christian theology and practice. In this book, Jenkins counters the interpretations of Jesus Seminar scholars, concisely and evenhandedly introducing their theories and presenting historical and textual evidence to contradict them. He questions their "discoveries" of texts that have been known to biblical scholars for at least two hundred years, challenges their dating of texts in order to impart them greater weight and traces many of their purportedly new interpretations to age-old traditions ("heresies" to the early Church) such as Gnosticism. He ascribes to the seminar scholars "inverted fundamentalism," claiming that these critics, ironically, assign great authority to historically questionable noncanonical texts, such as The Gospel of Thomas, while simultaneously challenging the authority and validity of the long-established canon. He attributes this bias to both a postmodern search for meaning and a lay audience hungry for religious truth, while noting that only new interpretations advance academic careers and attract media attention. In short, he argues that the Jesus Seminar offers nothing new under the sun. Jenkins closes out this forceful critique by noting "we can only hope" that when new biblical texts surface, they might be "evaluated on their merits, and not solely for their value in cultural battles."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A sober, and sobering, account of how some scholars have enthusiastically embraced 'new' or 'hidden' gospels which just happen to support certain currently fashionable ideologies--and of just how unwarranted such claims actually are."--N.T. Wright DD, Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey

"Jenkins has brilliantly identified the mythic dimension of the recent fascination with hidden gospels and alternative Christianities."--Luke Timothy Johnson, author of The Real Jesus

"Jenkins makes clear that the inflated claims of the boosters of the Gospel of Thomas are neither well founded nor all that new. This book places the recent 'selling of Nag Hammadi' within the larger context of American academic politics, social trends, and New Age religions, and does all this in a manner that remains accessible to the general reader."--John P. Meier, author of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus

"...nontechnical, lucid, and well argued."--Choice

"Jenkins has produced a vade mecum of discoveries, texts, relevant literature, and incisive critique--a 'must' for anyone interested in the origins and claims of the Gospels."--The Journal of Religion

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195135091
• ISBN-13: 978-0195135091
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,714,196 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Philip Jenkins is the author of The Lost History of Christianity and has a joint appointment as the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities in history and religious studies at Penn State University and as Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe and has been a guest on top national radio shows across the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exposing The X Files Approach to Biblical Studies, April 24, 2001

By 

Matthew A. Carr "Dom Elias" (Klosterneuburg, Austria) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Hardcover)

The X Files tells us that "The truth is out there" and anyone who has enjoyed this series knows that its appeal to (post?)modern Americans is its vast conspiracy involving aliens, repressive and secretive institutions, supernatural phenomena, the concealment of the truth for sinister reasons and lone rebels who risk life and limb to uncover the truth. Moulder and Scully are our heroes seeking to find what has been hidden from our eyes -- the truth -- and thereupon free us from our ignorance and darkness. It makes a great television show, but its appeal and success lies in the fact that at least some Americans suspect that there are dark forces out there oppressing us. The success of the movie the Matrix, a clever retelling of an ancient gnostic myth, shows this as well.

In "Hidden Gospels" Philip Jenkins ably shows how these type of conspiracy stories help to explain the ongoing appeal of the possibility of hidden gospels. For many Americans, today and yesterday, the possibility that there is a hidden gospel in which the "real Jesus" will finally be revealed -- free from all the alleged distortions of St. Paul, the Evangelists, ecumenical councils and historic Christianity, especially the Catholic Church -- is too seductive to relinquish.

Jenkins successfully shows that the discoveries of Qumran & Nag Hammadi and the subsequent body of scholarship produced on account of them do not represent a significant contribution to that which was already known. For example, Jenkins shows how many of the Nag Hammadi texts were already well-known and popularly disseminated in the 19th Century.

Having dealt with the question of their relative novelty, Jenkins then considers the reasons for their ongoing appeal. He concludes that a variety of factors have given rise to the success of hidden gospel industry. These include changes in the society and scholarly institutions, current ideological tastes, clever self-promotion of showmen-scholars and the financial interests of mass media and publishing houses. All of these factors contribute to a credible explanation for the enduring appeal of this pursuit.

The truth is out there -- and Jenkins has found it. Anyone interested in biblical studies and their popularization will do well to read this important and incisive study.

46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing..., October 13, 2002

By 

A. Ort "aorto" (Youngstown, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Hardcover)

Having studied, for a number of years, the very same texts Jenkins discusses in this book (see some of my other reviews), it dawned on me over time just what the agenda was behind those very scholars touting the texts as 'gospel' truths. Just as they accuse the 'orthodox' of political power mongering, so too are they in the end doing the very same thing. Mr. Jenkins has expressed quite clearly what I too discovered.

While the texts do reveal much about the early Christian movement, they do not tell us anything new about the times of Jesus. They tell us about the life and times of second and third century 'Christians'. Rather than an orthodox Church suppressing a 'true' Christianity, it is more likely the other way around: these groups splintered from a Church already in existence. And the texts we have reveal this -- not the early days of The Way.

Mr. Jenkins does a good, and in my opinion objective, job reporting the realities of the entire industry (and it is truly a powerhouse of an industry). There is an agenda and the results of their scholarly findings look remarakbly similar to the current popular beliefs of our age.

Showing the other side of the coin, this book reveals just what is misleading, even wrong, about the claims. For a long time I too was immersed in these texts and I too wanted to believe they were more representative and that the Church as we have it today in its various splinters was in fact a religious mechanism for political control (though I do believe there are some truths in this). But the reality is that these texts are not 'all that'. They, and the methodologies used in studying and presenting them to the mainstream, are flawed.

This is a book that lucidly and without sensationalism lays bare the facts. It presents the facts on the texts themselves but it goes deeper and reveals what is behind the current studies on these very texts. It is highly recommended to ensure that you don't buy this current wave of scholarship (which, as Mr. Jenkins reiterates, is far from 'new') hook, line and sinker. If you don't wish to have your beliefs shaken then this book may not be for you. But, if you are a seeker of facts in order to establish your own opinion, you won't be disappointed.

51 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, May 20, 2001

By 

Steve Jackson "stevejackson100atyahoocom" (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Hardcover)

In recent years, much attention has been given the claims that certain non-Canonical gospels and documents, such as the Gospel of Thomas, provide valuable information on the teaching of Jesus Christ. As Prof. Philip Jenkins shows, the obsession to find additional "gospels" is not a modern preoccupation but goes back even before the Nag Hammadi find in 1945. Parts of what is now known as the Gospel of Thomas were known for years. Some of the partisans in favor of Thomas assert that it is as old as, if not older than, the earliest synoptic Gospel. Because of the "mystical" and non-eschatological character of most of it (and other such works), the argument is made that it preserves the "real" teaching of Jesus: not the divine person of Christian orthodoxy, but the wandering sage, dispensing wisdom that just happens to coincide with so much of the modern temperament - mystical, egalitarian, feminist, etc. However, the claim that Thomas was written prior to 150 AD is week, and it is almost certain that the large majority of other gospels are dated much later than that. So when all is said and done, the claims of the Jesus Seminar and other radical scholars to find authentic sayings of Jesus in such works are without foundation.

The best part of the this book is its comprehensive nature. Prof. Jenkins places this question in theological, biblical, historical and sociological perspective. As he shows, there is nothing new about the claims that the non-Canonical gospels preserve other sayings of Jesus. Long before anyone heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some had argued that Jesus was an Essene. But the pace has accelerated. Recent television programs give prominence to radicals like Crossan instead of more main-stream scholars, giving the unsuspecting viewer the impression that orthodox Christianity is "hiding" some truths about Jesus that would be subversive of the faith.

I have one minor criticism of this work. Prof. Jenkins refers throughout the book to certain scholars, such as John P. Meier of Catholic University (author of A Marginal Jew) as "conservatives." Meier is no Crossan, but it is quite a stretch to use this term to describe him. While Meier accepts the historicity of much of the Gospels, he rejects substantial portions of it. Although the Roman Catholic Church has become more friendly toward higher criticism in recent years, it was quite shocking to see that Meier's work received the imprimatur of the Church.