Resurrection in Some Apocryphal Gospels

(avg. read time: 13–26 mins.)

Last month, we addressed a fragmentary apocryphal Gospel in the Gospel according to Peter. Here, we will be addressing the other early apocryphal Gospels that are not linked with Nag Hammadi, but which also meet the condition of explicitly featuring resurrection. Various apocryphal Gospels are either non-extant or too fragmentary to know what, if anything, they said about the subject of resurrection. For example, the Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony probably included reference to the resurrection originally, but the only fragment we have stops short of the empty tomb or resurrection appearances as it addresses Jesus’s death and the lead-up to his burial. The Gospels we can address include the so-called “Gospel of the Hebrews,” the Gospel of the Nazoreans (both of which are preserved in fragmentary references across a number of early Christian writings), and the Gospel according to Nicodemus, which is also known as the Acts of Pilate. These texts can be found online at various places, including Early Christian Writings. As with the entry on the Gospel according to Peter, my format of moving from explicit references to implicit links will not work here. And as a reminder, like other longer entries in this series (such as this one), the full version will only be available to paid subscribers.

Gospel of the Hebrews

The name often given to this Gospel indicates its popularity among early Jewish Christians. Of the fragments the early Christians referenced, the one most interesting for our purposes comes from Jerome’s Of Illustrious Men (De viris illustribus) 2 on James. Jerome references this Gospel of the Hebrews that he had recently translated into Greek and Latin, recalling what it said, “after the resurrection [resurrectionem] of the Savior.” At this point in the story, Jesus had given his burial cloth to the servant of the high priest, which exemplifies an element we also noted in the Gospel according to Peter that later works were intentional about including witnesses among the adversaries of the early Christians to the resurrected Jesus. The implied story goes further than sight, though, and implies at least an element of touch in that Jesus interacts with a tangible object and gives it to another.

After this, Jesus is said to have appeared to James after James had taken an oath not to eat bread “from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he saw him risen [resurgentem] from those who sleep.” The implication of this passage is contrary to the canonical Gospels and their presentation of James as not being among the disciples of Jesus prior to his death.¹ But it is unsurprising that Jewish Christians with a particular affinity for James would want to portray him as a disciple from the start, particularly as one who eagerly anticipated Jesus’s resurrection. It is also out of keeping with the canonical Gospels to have one of the disciples expecting to see him resurrected at this point in the story (i.e., to portray one of them as presently believing his predictions before his death), given that James’s fast began after the Last Supper.

Three other elements of this statement are worth briefly noting. One, akin to Luke 24 particularly, we are seeing a setup for how James’s encounter with the risen Jesus will have the breaking of bread as a prominent element, given that he is currently fasting in anticipation thereof. While the story is not explicitly and specifically presented here as an instance of the Eucharist/Communion like when James had partaken of “the cup of the Lord,” it has been a common tradition for a fast to be broken for/with the taking of Communion. Two, the prepositional phrase in Latin parallels our often noted Greek phrase “from/out of the dead” that signifies separation from the dead. Three, another element in line with what we have frequently noted elsewhere is how death is presented in terms of sleep and the dead are presented in terms of sleepers (among other places, see here, here, and here). It is an especially Jewish and Christian way of referring to the dead, stressing both the analogy of sleep and death as well as the impermanence of death in the light of resurrection. Moreover, it is an appropriate complement of the most common resurrection verbs also having the sense of waking up and/or getting up from sleep (as highlighted in the last link).

In any case, the actual event is narrated shortly thereafter, as the Lord tells James to bring a table and bread. Jesus then takes the bread, blesses it, and breaks it to give to James. This recalls both the occasion of the Lord’s Supper and Jesus breaking bread with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 (specifically vv. 30 and 35). Jesus then tells James, “My brother, eat your bread, for the Son of Man is/has risen [resurrexit] from those who sleep.” Both this verb and the earlier referenced one come from resurgo, and the lexical link in Jesus’s words to James further underscores how James’s hope of seeing the Lord “risen from those who sleep” has been fulfilled.

In this we see an attempt to give some narrative detail to what is only briefly summarized in 1 Cor 15:7 with Paul’s statement from the pre-Pauline creed that Jesus had appeared to James. It is otherwise not narrated anywhere in the NT, but the fact that it is referenced here shows how the story had been told, presumably in more detailed fashion, among the earliest testimonies to the risen Jesus (on the text from 1 Corinthians, see the pertinent portion of my dissertation here as well as here). This story appears to be secondary to what we find in the Gospels and Paul, not least since it tries to “rehabilitate” James’s image in terms of being a disciple of Jesus before his death and as one who fully expected Jesus to rise again ahead of all the rest of “those who sleep.” The reference to the breaking of bread recalls Luke 24, but I do not think that we should assume that it is strictly dependent on it. This simply seems to cohere with stories of the risen Jesus and the kind of thing he did (cf. also John 21:9, 13; Acts 10:41). And while it has been popular to assert that this breaking of bread is evidence of anti-docetic tendencies, there is no need to make such an assertion. It is simply taken for granted that this is the sort of implication of what a resurrected person could do (again, see here as well as here). As it is, docetists tended to take such events as narrated here for granted, but they reinterpreted them (as noted by J. D. Atkins in his The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church).²

Jerome makes one other reference to this Gospel that he recently translated in connection with Ignatius, saying that he bore witness to it (Vir. ill. 16). It should be noted that Ignatius himself does not indicate his source, so that he does not specifically link it to the Gospel of the Hebrews. Jerome also misattributes the quote to Ignatius’s letter to Polycarp, but it is from his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, specifically from 3:1–2. Since we have already gone over that text here, we will skip revisiting it now.

Gospel of the Nazoreans

This Jewish Christian Gospel, apparently from Syria (whereas the Gospel of the Hebrews is regularly connected with Egypt), is often linked with the Gospel according to Matthew. This Gospel and/or the Gospel of the Hebrews is referenced in some manuscripts of Matthew noting variant readings by “the Jewish” text. The actual resurrection narrative section of the Gospel has not been referenced anywhere, with the possible exception of an allusion in the following medieval remark from the “Celtic Catechesis” of the Breton Vaticanus Regin. (lat. 49):

These eight days of the Passover at which Christ, the Son of God, rose again signify eight days after the recurrence[?] of the Passover at which all the seed of Adam will be judged, as is proclaimed in the Gospel of the Hebrews; and for this reason the learned believe that the day of judgment will be at Easter time, because on that day Christ rose again, that on that day also the saints should rise again.³

It is difficult to be sure if this should be assigned to this Gospel or the previous one. But this does illustrate some confusion among various Christian authors as to whether a text belonged to the same body as what Jerome refers to as the Gospel of the Hebrews or if it should rather be identified with a Gospel popular among the Nazoreans of Syria. In this instance, it is hard to be sure what all should be attributed to the Gospel in question, whether it is the entire typological link of Passover with the final judgment and eschatological resurrection or some part thereof.

Interestingly, what remains of the text is pertinent for a part of Matthew that links to Jesus’s resurrection in Matt 12:40 (see here). While the text as we have it implicitly links Jonah being in the belly of the great fish for “three days and three nights” with Jesus/the Son of Man being in the heart of the earth for that time, that particular correlation of “three days and three nights” is missing in the text of this “Jewish Gospel.” Why it is absent can only be speculated, but it is notable that this only simplifies the correlation of Jesus’s resurrection and Jonah’s prefiguration. It does not do away with the linking of the resurrection and the “sign of Jonah” altogether. (On Jonah as an example of imagery with resurrection resonance, see here and here.)

Moreover, in support of the text likely having a resurrection narrative at one point is the variant it provides of Matt 27:65. Some manuscripts with reference to this Gospel note that Pilate sent men to guard the tomb, which, like the Gospel according to Peter, makes clear that the guards at the tomb were Roman. As I noted in the post on the aforementioned Gospel, this is a point of dispute in Gospel scholarship as to whether the guards were Jewish temple guards or Roman soldiers.

Gospel according to Nicodemus/Acts of Pilate