The Apocryphal Gospels

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ancients – "The Apocryphal Gospels"

Introduction In the June 29, 2025 episode of The Ancients, host Tristan Hughes delves into the intriguing world of the Apocryphal Gospels with special guest Catherine Nixey, a journalist and author known for her work on early Christianity. The conversation explores the diverse and often overlooked accounts of Jesus's life that did not make it into the canonical Bible, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of early Christian texts and beliefs.

Understanding Apocryphal Gospels Tristan Hughes introduces the concept of Apocryphal Gospels—those early Christian writings about Jesus that were not included in the New Testament. Catherine Nixey explains that while the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are well-known, there were nearly 40 other texts documented by scholars, with the actual number likely being much higher due to many works being lost over time. These texts were widely popular in various Christian communities and provided alternative narratives about Jesus’s life and teachings.

Diversity in Early Christianity Catherine emphasizes that early Christianity was not monolithic. Instead, it consisted of multiple "early Christianities," each with its own beliefs, practices, and texts. This diversity is evident in how different groups portrayed Jesus, with some depicting him in ways that starkly contrast with the canonical image. For instance, some Apocryphal Gospels present Jesus as more violent or miraculous than the depictions found in the New Testament.

Notable Apocryphal Gospels Explored

1. The Infancy Gospel of James:

   • Details Enhanced: This gospel provides an elaborate account of Mary’s life, including her upbringing and the circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth, which are only briefly mentioned in the Bible.
   • Influential Elements: Features such as Mary riding a donkey during Jesus’s birth and the Nativity scene set in a cave originate from this text, significantly shaping later Christian iconography.
   • Impact on Tradition: The stories from this gospel influenced the Catholic Church’s reverence for Mary and altered traditional Nativity narratives.

2. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas:

   • Contrasting Portrayal: Unlike the loving and miraculous image of Jesus found in the Bible, this gospel depicts a young Jesus exhibiting violent and uncontrollable behavior.
   • Narrative Highlights: Includes stories of Jesus cursing a boy into oblivion and causing harm to those around him, presenting a starkly different character from the canonical texts.

3. The Gospel of Judas:

   • Alternative Perspectives: Offers a different viewpoint on Judas Iscariot, the disciple known for betraying Jesus, suggesting that his actions were essential for the fulfillment of divine plans.
   • Revered in Some Circles: While Judas is vilified in mainstream Christianity, this gospel presents him in a more complex and sometimes revered light within certain early Christian communities.

The Process of Canonization Catherine discusses how the canonization of the Bible was not a simple or uniform process. Instead of a formal council deciding which texts to include, it was an organic evolution influenced by the popularity and acceptance of certain gospels within various Christian groups. Over time, the four canonical gospels became dominant, while others were labeled as Apocrypha or heretical and gradually faded from mainstream belief.

Impact on Christian Art and Tradition Many elements now considered standard in Christian art and tradition, such as the depiction of Jesus’s birth in a cave or Mary’s prominent role, originate from these Apocryphal texts. Early Christian art often included scenes and motifs derived from these non-canonical gospels, reflecting the diverse beliefs and stories that once surrounded Jesus’s life.

Magical Texts and Early Christianity The discussion extends to magical texts associated with early Christianity, which often intertwined religious narratives with magical practices. These texts included descriptions of miracles and supernatural events that were similar to those found in non-Christian ancient texts, highlighting the blurred lines between religion and magic in the ancient world. Such texts were eventually condemned and destroyed by mainstream Christianity as it sought to establish orthodoxy.

Conclusion and Reflections Catherine Nixey wraps up the discussion by emphasizing the tentative and diverse nature of early Christian narratives about Jesus. She highlights how the selection of canonical gospels shaped the future of Christianity, often suppressing alternative stories that offered different perspectives on Jesus’s life and mission. The episode underscores the importance of understanding these Apocryphal Gospels to gain a fuller picture of early Christian thought and the formation of the biblical canon.

Final Thoughts The episode provides a thought-provoking exploration of the Apocryphal Gospels, revealing the rich tapestry of early Christian beliefs and the complex process through which certain texts were elevated while others were marginalized. For listeners interested in ancient history and the development of religious texts, this episode offers valuable insights into the untold stories of early Christianity.

Notable Insights

• Early Christianity was characterized by a multitude of diverse beliefs and texts, often referred to as "early Christianities."
• Apocryphal Gospels played a significant role in shaping Christian traditions and practices, even though they were not included in the canonical Bible.
• The process of canonization was influenced more by organic acceptance within communities rather than formal decisions by a central authority.
• Magical elements in Apocryphal texts highlight the intersection of religion and magic in the ancient world, challenging modern perceptions of early Christian practices.

Audience Takeaway Listeners gain an appreciation for the complexity and diversity of early Christian writings, understanding how Apocryphal Gospels contributed to shaping modern Christian traditions and beliefs. The episode encourages a re-examination of widely accepted narratives by shedding light on lesser-known texts that offer alternative views of Jesus’s life and the formation of Christian doctrine.

Transcript

[Tristan Hughes]

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[Catherine Nixey]

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[Catherine Nixey]

Hey guys, welcome to the Ancients. Today's episode is all about the apocryphal gospel. So those gospels, those accounts of Jesus's life and more that didn't make it into the Bible. I had no idea just how rich and diverse the world of early Christianity was, but this episode really shines a massive spotlight on it and I hope you guys find it as interesting as I did recording it Our guest is the journalist and author Catherine Nixie. Catherine has recently written a new book called Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God. Let's go.

[Tristan Hughes]

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four gospels that make up a crucial part of the New Testament, detailing the life and miracles of Jesus. But in the early centuries of Christianity, almost 2,000 years ago, there were many more gospels, many more stories about the Son of God, some more violent and extreme than others. Today, these writings have been labelled apocrypha. They ultimately were not integrated into the accepted canon of scripture, and yet for centuries, many of them remained incredibly popular. They revealed how different groups of early Christians learnt different stories about Christ. Today, we're going to explore some of these texts and the extraordinary stories they told about Jesus life that aren't mainstream today.

[Catherine Nixey]

This is the story of the Apocryphal.

[Tristan Hughes]

Gospels with our guest, Catherine Nixie.

[Catherine Nixey]

Catherine, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. It's been too long.

Oh, it's a delight to be here. Thank you for having me.

And to talk about the Apocryphal Gospels. Catherine, I had no idea just how many different accounts of Jesus's life there was in the early centuries of Christianity.

No, and nor did I. I was brought up Catholic. I was the daughter of a monk and a nun and so we went to church every Sunday and I kind of got quite a good Catholic education from my parents. But the Catholic, you were always a little bit vague. I didn't, don't think I understood everything that was going on in church. I thought for quite a long time that God was called Peter because we seemed to say, thanks, Peter, God, all the way through Mass. So it was a sort of religious upbringing, but not a kind of theologically testing upbringing. And then when I was a bit older, I started reading actually classical texts. Really, this is how I came to this. So I'm a classicist at Classics at university. And I remember coming across people who had definite echoes of Jesus in, in their lives, in their stories. These people who were born of virgins grew up to become healers laid on their healing hands. And sometimes this would be like four centuries before Jesus. And so the similarities were really obvious. And then I started reading more and then I discovered that not only were there all these kind of Jesus alikes in the classical world, there were also, within Christianity, huge varieties of Jesus. So there's a Jesus who so many Christians believed hadn't been crucified, he'd got someone else crucified in his stead and then stood opposite LAUGHING because if you're a God, why are you going to let yourself be crucified? And there was a Jesus who killed people, and then there was a Jesus who impregnated his own mother, Mary himself. Because, of course, if God is three in one and God made Mary pregnant, then also so did Jesus. But it's a bit weird to think about some of these things.

We're going to delve into some of these stories throughout the chat. First of all, also, is it fair to say I did say earlier, like, early Christianity, but do some people now say, actually it's better to say early Christianities?

Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, it sounds like one of the kind of irritating things that academics say to make things more complicated than they need to be and to confuse the general public, but it really is a much better way of looking at it. And it's also, there was such a wide variety of Christianity, not only in what they believed, but also what they read, but also in how they lived. And, you know, some Christianities had bishops who were women. The practices were widely, wildly differing. So it is definitely better to say early Christianities. The way a lovely description is, the early Christians used to describe themselves as this kind of field of wheat that was constantly being invaded by the tares, the kind of weeds of heresy. Whereas now what they say is what you have to imagine is a field of competing saplings. And it's not at all clear which one of these is going to grow up to become the kind of mighty oak of Christianity in later years.

And is there a case even within the apocryphal Gospels? Well, actually, first of all, Catherine, I should ask, what do we mean by apocryphal?

Like, fundamentally, for the people listening to this, it's the ones that are not in the Bible that you will probably pick up. In the Western world, there's a bit of variety between different Christianities. Now, Coptic Christianity will have slightly different books to us, but fundamentally, if it's not in the Bible that you pick up, that's what we think of as the apocryphal Gospels. It means sort of covered up in secret in Greek. They weren't really that covered up or that secret for centuries. They were hugely popular. And a lot of what will come onto this, I'm sure, but a lot of what we think of as inverted comments. Real Christianity is in fact from the apocryphal Gospels. So things such as hell or the donkey that Mary rides on in the Nativity. So if any of you were Mary's in the Nativity, the donkey that you sat on or sung about, that came from an extraordinary apocryphal, so called gospel.

And also with. With the word apocryphal. Of course we say apocryphal gospels, but I know in your book there are works covered that aren't just gospels. I mean, can the word apocryphal also be given to other religious Christian texts that didn't make it into the Bible?

Yes, exactly, exactly. So gospel means good news. The word gospel in Greek is euangelion, which means eu in Greek is good. And angelion is news, like an angel is a messenger. So it's something that brings news. It's that same word that keeps coming up. So gospel is just a translation of that. And that's really something that tells the story of Jesus's life. But there's more books in the Bible than just as we know, you know, the Bible is a library, not a book. There's more books in the Bible than just those that tell the stories of Jesus's life. So there's lots and lots and lots of texts that the way it usually gets described is. Didn't make the final cut. It wasn't quite like that. They were not directors sitting on their chairs saying, no, that scene doesn't come in. It was a much more organic process. You believe in them, it was guided divinely. If you don't believe in them, you know, you would say it's more like certain groups had certain texts.

And do we get a sense over time that certain apocryphal texts were viewed as worse than others that didn't make into the final cut?

Yes, definitely. Some were viewed as worst. I think there was a sort of element of the ones that came close to being included. I mean, it's a sort of narcissism of small differences also. And then there were other ones that were to us kind of quite radical and quite weird, but they were accepted elsewhere. I think what you have to kind of get rid of in your mind in listening to this again, it's that slightly annoying Christianities rather than Christianity. Because if you were in Christian in India and there were a lot of Christians in India from early on, you would be reading, thinking different things to if you were a Christian in England, where Christianity arrived quite late. So you would be thinking different things. And it feels weird to us because we have been brought up on a mono, what we call a monotheistic, monolithic religion. You know, the Catholic Church spread over Europe for over a millennium and had control like considerable control over what was read and thought under its aegis. But actually, other religions at the time when Christianity was around were completely different, depending on where you went. So you would get a different Zeus in Greece to the Zeus Jupiter that you would get in Italy. It was considered normal that gods would change, and it was considered normal that you would adapt your gods. You know, Julius Caesar saw gods as kind of evolutions of the same thing. And early Christians tried to argue that their God, their Jesus, was an evolution of what was in pagan gods. They would say, well, we're just like you. You know, what we say about Jesus is no different to what you say about Asclepius, say, and then they change their mind.

So let's move on now to the apocryphal Gospels and explore a few of the accounts and a few of them. I know that in your book you explore in some really extraordinary details. First off, this was a bit of an impossible question because I'm not sure, like, do we know how many apocryphal gospels there were in total?

We don't know. Oxford University Press did a book recently of apocryphal gospels and they had 40 texts, but I mean, there were definitely way more. And some of them are found only kind of, you know, like lots of ancient texts, they're found very, very serendipitously. Like quite a lot of them were found in a jar. Others were found. Some, some we had loads of copies of. Two of my favorite ones, in fact, we had loads of copies of. But some of them, they're fragmentary, so you're almost. They're almost lost. So many more, I'm sure, existed but have been lost.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes.

[Catherine Nixey]

As you say, if many of them fell out of fashion, that's, you know, if they're not written and written and written, that they can easily be lost. And actually, it's quite lucky that they survive in certain cases. It strikes me that there seem to be quite a few of these Gospels that explore the birth of Jesus, that explore the birth of Christ. Am I not right? Well, am I not mistaken?

You are. You are. Too many negatives.

Yeah, I know.

Yes or a no. Yes.

Am I correct?

There we go. You are absolutely correct, yes. Because the thing is, it makes a lot of sense. A lot of what they explore is kind of what you feel is in a vertical is left out of the Bible. It's what you want to know. You want to know more about Mary, you want to know more about Joseph, you definitely want to know more about that conversation. Whatever it was when Mary says to Joseph, oh, by the way, I'm pregnant and it's by God. You know, these are the things you want to know about the birth of a deity. Who would not want to know about that? And these are the things, these things that the Bible actually bounces over pretty quickly, that the apocryphal gospels really go into in detail. And the birth of Jesus is one that has gone into an enormous detail in. Well, I don't know if this is one of the ones that you're interested in, but.

Well, I think we're going to go through them. But shall we do the Infancy Gospel of James first? Because this feels a big one.

Oh, yes, yes, go on. Yeah. The Infancy Gospel of James. This sort of went wildly out of fashion. I don't know if you'd heard of it before.

Never. Not before reading the book.

Okay, okay. The Infancy Gospel of James. If you have ever been Mary or Joseph in a school play, this is your gospel. The birth of Jesus is really very lightly covered in the Bible. It is kind of bounced over. The Bible actually spends more time explaining travel arrangements and tax than it does the actual birth itself. So this begins. It's actually a very beautiful gospel. It has a scene in it when Mary tells Joseph that she is pregnant and that it's by God. Joseph comes home from what seems to be a business trip. And so she says that he's pregnant and Joseph is genuinely very upset, kind of, I think understandably. And he is very skeptical of her defending herself and saying that she's pregnant by God. But he kind of comes around to it and they set off with Mary on a donkey. And so if you have ever sung those songs in the school nativity where Mary is on a donkey, that is not from the Bible. There are no donkeys in the New Testament. That is from this. As an aside, I went on a donkey walking holiday when I was pregnant and I have a lot more I can say. It is a very bad way to get around. I thought of Mary a lot and I thought I really took my hat off to her. I feel she put up with a lot. But after the donkey holiday, I thought she put up with a lot more. Anyway, so they're walking along and Mary says that they have this lovely phrase. She says, the child that's in me presseth to come forth. So her contractions are beginning, in other words. And Joseph so finds a cave. This is a stroke of luck. He finds a cave for her to give birth in. So if you've ever seen her I always used to be puzzled when I was younger when you saw depictions of the Nativity in a cave. It's kind of popular in Europe, more popular in Europe than it is here. So this is what it comes from. It's not in the Bible. So Joseph finds a cave in which he can give birth, and then an even greater stroke of luck, there's a midwife who turns up. And so the midwife comes in to help. And then Mary starts to go into a really strong, strong neighbour. Joseph leaves, as is a habit in those days, and Joseph. Then it kind of switches to Joseph, and he's standing outside and then he's looking just sort of across the landscape, and he realizes that something strange has happened. So he realizes that he was watching a shepherd who is about to hit his flock, and his arm has frozen in midair. He looks up to the sky and the birds that were flying across, they have frozen also in midair. The stars themselves have stopped moving. So time itself, a standstill, a God has been born. Jesus has been born. And he goes back into the cave and the midwife is there, Mary is there, Jesus is there. Everyone's very happy. The midwife is so excited, she runs outside and she sees a woman and she says, I've got something amazing to tell you. A virgin has given birth. And this woman is, not without reason, a little bit skeptical. And then she says, well, I don't believe that. She says, I won't believe that until I come in and thrust my hand in and search for the parts. In other words, conduct a virginity test on Mary, who's just given birth. And the midwife, which I think is very much not to her credit, immediately says, okay, come in. And she doesn't seem to ask Mary either. So this woman comes in. We don't know what Mary is saying about this or feeling about this. So the woman comes into the cave and she puts her hands into Mary's vagina. And the response of Mary's vagina is completely unambiguous because the woman's hand is burnt clean off. And then the woman says, whoa, as you read, whoa. You feel here that I always feel that Mary ought to be the patron saint of birthing women after this, because you do reach a point when you've had enough. Anyway, she says, because I have tested the living God, my hand falleth away from me in fire. And this gospel was enormously influential, so we've completely forgotten its existence. But as I say, if you were Mary or Joseph in the school nativity, that Trotting around on the donkey, that is not from the Bible, that's from this. If you see a nativity from a cave, that is not from the Bible, that's from this. It changed the calendar of the Catholic Church. It changed the character of the Catholic Church. The Catholic reverence of Mary is thought to come from this Gospel. It was enormously popular. Its importance is really impossible to overstate.

So does it certainly seem then, that in certain of these apocryphal Gospels, the ones that cover the birth of Jesus, that Mary is given more attention to than in the canonical four that we have surviving today, that you actually have more information about Mary in these ones that didn't make the final cut?

Yes, absolutely. As a really is a really good point. A lot of what they're doing is filling in what we would call backstory for characters that we're interested in but don't have enough information on. You know, there's clearly a huge hunger to know about the Mother of God. Of course you would want to know that women in particular, who women are not that there are more women in the Gospels than perhaps some people think, but. And they have a more prominent role perhaps, than history has always recognized. But there is not that much Mary in the Gospels. There really isn't. And so what a lot of these Gospels do is they add in bits, so they're often explaining things that seem puzzling. There's another Gospel that explains the story about the camel, camel through the eye of the needle. Because obviously there's a lot of rich people listening to the story about. It's harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. There's a nabocrofal gospel that shows how this happens because Peter makes a magical needle that gets so big that you can even ride a camel through it. And not just a camel, you can even. Because. Because this is what these Gospels are like. They really are extraordinary. Put a prostitute on top of the camel and ride a camel and a harlot through it. Any puzzles that you had with the Bible, they fill in. And that's what these do.

[Tristan Hughes]

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[Catherine Nixey]

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[Catherine Nixey]

I would also ask about Joseph. Do we hear much about Joseph in these apocryphal gospels as well? Because it sounds like there's a bit more skepticism around the virginity of Mary when Jesus is born.

Joseph never has a man deserved his sainthood more, I think, than Joseph. Yeah, there is, there is a lot of skepticism. So there's a wonderful gospel that kind of gets wrapped up into something else, but it's basically Joseph doesn't come around to the idea that this is the son of God. And there's an extraordinary gospel in which Joseph and Mary, so they've that by this point they fled to Egypt and they're traveling through Egypt and Joseph is kind of like a tourist in a country where he doesn't like the food. So he's really grumbling about everything. Oh, I don't like this. Oh, now we've left our home. Oh, and the date palms are too high and I can't get any of them. And then he says the most extraordinary thing. He says, he turns to Mary and he says, well, he sort of says, you know, she's obviously claiming it's the son of God. He says, I have often thought to myself that perhaps I just had sex with you while I was drunk. And to people who are not brought up Christian, you just think, well, it seems like a reasonable thing for, you know, he's confronted with some odd circumstances to people who are brought up Christian. I mean, this is sort of extraordinary. And I think it's, it's extraordinary to think that Christians ever thought it was acceptable to write this down. And I think that gives you a sense of how different the early atmosphere was and how it was. Perhaps Christianity was closer to other religions in lots of ways when it began than it has become since.

But do we think, as mentioned near the beginning, you know, how it's early Christianities, do we think sometimes that a bit of skepticism around the virgin birth story in certain of these gospels, do we think that actually reflected an actual concern, an actual debate amongst certain early Christian groups?

Yes, definitely, without a doubt. There were early Christians who said that Mary was just born from Joseph as from Joseph's seed as all men are born from their fathers. So the virgin birth is only actually mentioned in two of the four gospels. It was not a universally accepted Christian tenet and it was also, it was incredibly mocked by everybody outside Christianity. So Celsus again, of course he absolutely scorned the idea that there was a virgin birth. He said, oh God, Mary, no, she just got knocked up by a Greek soldier who was called Pantheros, which sounds a bit like the Greek word for virgin, which is Parthenos, which you see in words like Parthenon, that's where that word comes from. So he says he just, she just got knocked up by a Greek soldier and then she made up the story of the virgin birth to cover her shame and then she fled from her home. And this is when Celsus also piles in with his comment about his sort of that not many feminists in the ancient world has to be said. He says that God, even if he was going to choose anyone, he wouldn't have chosen Mary. He was God, he could have anyone he liked. He would have chosen a queen, not a kind of peasant somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Well, let's move on to another gospel, apocryphal gospel that I have in my notes here. It's still an infancy gospel, but I believe it concerns not the birth but the young Jesus years. It's the infancy gospel of Thomas. And it seems the portrayal you get of Jesus when he's very young in this gospel is, dare I say, he's out of control, he's on a rampage, he's murderous.

This is extraordinary. When the apocryphal gospels kind of came back to light after having been sort of forgotten for centuries, this was one of the ones that genuinely distressed people. When you read it, you can see why. So Jesus to us is milk and honey, sunbeams in Sunday school. Jesus, you know, he's suffered, the little children, Jesus, he's got lambs and he's always loving. It was not obvious in the ancient world that a God would be that kind of kind. Slash to the ancient eyes, a bit sappy. So it is with sort of some surprise that we read the ancient text known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. It begins when Jesus is, he's around five and I don't know if any of you have had five year olds, you know what they're like. And he's playing by the water, he's playing by the stream and he's doing it on the Sabbath and he shouldn't be doing it on the, the Sabbath, but so which will kind of come into some importance later. So he's playing by the stream, and he's damming the water. And that's lovely. You know, everyone who has a child, it's great to get them to a stream. You have a quiet half hour while they just muck about damming water. But this Jesus is actually a bit more sinister than that because he's not doing it with his hands, he's just doing it with his words. So he says a word and the waters seem to change their course. He says another word and the waters seem to run clear. And then a little boy, who has perhaps not noticed how odd this is, comes up and he breaks the dam that Jesus has made. And Jesus turns to him in a fury and he says, you insolent, godless ignoramus. What harm did they do to you? You shall also wither like a tree. It's a very weird curse. And bear neither leaves nor root nor fruit. Now, you don't quite know what that means, but the effect is absolutely instantaneous because this poor little boy shrivels up and becomes withered and deformed. And so that's a bad start to the day. And then Jesus goes home and is clearly sort of been set off on the wrong footing. And he's walking through the village and somebody bumps into him. And it might have been an accident, it might not. As everyone who small children knows, this can't really get on their wick. And it gets on Jesus. He turns around and he says to the boy, you shall not go further on your way. And then the boy drops down dead. And it goes on like this. And then his teacher, he's a bit snitty to his teacher, and his teacher whacks him on the back of the head and the teacher falls unconscious. And eventually people go and complain to Mary and Joseph, I mean, poor Joseph. And they're complaining because Jesus has not unreasonably killed their child. And others cross because he's deformed their child. And Joseph says to Mary, do not let him outside the door, for all those who cross him die. So this is a very. Again, it's a very different Jesus to the Jesus that we know. But it was very popular and remained popular for centuries.

I find interesting that that infancy gospel is attributed to Thomas. The one before is attributed to James. But do we think these works were actually originally written by the disciples, by the people who they're attributed to?

No, no, no. They're much later. They're much later. The James one was earlier than some of the others. It's about. Probably 120, around about that. So they're later than the ones that we have in the Bible. The attributions come later because they give them an air of authority. We don't really know who is writing these things now at all. No, definitely not.

Is there also a story kind of keeping on the more infamous Jesus portrayal that you get in some of these? Is there one where he has a brother and he sells his brother into slavery?

Yes, this was popular in India, in the East. You're never quite sure what they mean when they say India. But Thomas, Christians would use this text for a long time. It's believed, it's not quite clear where, anyway. But basically, in this story, Jesus has a brother and he's also described as his twin. It's very confusing. We don't know in what way he is his twin. And he seems to be almost an identical twin. And actually, scholars really can't fathom this because if he is, if they were in the womb together, I mean, like, the problems that can. Like, you don't even need to think very hard to think of what the problems are that have been raised by them that Jesus may have an identical twin. So what they seem to think is that this man is just a bit like Jesus. He looks a bit like him, seems to be. Seems to be the kind of likely thing, possibly also a brother. Anyway. But there's a point in the Gospels that we. We still have where Jesus kind of sends all his followers out to kind of go and spread the word. But in this story, one of them, Thomas, does not want to go. And what Jesus does instead is he's. He's kind of trying to persuade him to go to India and he doesn't want to go. So what Jesus does is when he's not looking, when Thomas is not looking, he sells him into slavery. He sees a merchant nearby, an Indian merchant, and he says, you see that man over there? Jesus says to him, and he says. He sort of more or less says, well, you can have him. So he writes that, and he even writes him out a receipt. And so again, this is a kind of underhand, duplicitous Jesus, unlike the Jesus that modern Christians would recognize from the Bible. I mean, not one of the interesting things I think perhaps about these is that when you go back to the Bible, having read them, you also notice that there are faces to Jesus in the Bible that you perhaps don't notice when you read it the first time. Because, I mean, you know, you were brought up Christian, I was brought up Christian. You're expecting to see a Loving Jesus. But actually there's bits in the Bible where Jesus is not loving at all. He says things like, I have come not to bring peace, but a sword. It's. There's a bit in Tolstoy, there's a bit in Anna Karenina where you get Levin spending ages saying, you know, what a difficult passage this is. Why is he saying that? Why has he not come to bring peace? So one of the things that the apocryphal gospels did when they were first discovered, they kind of came out in the 1820s. A newspaper man called William Hone found them and he instantly realized what a hit he had on his hands. And he printed them and they caused a huge, huge scandal from which Hone really barely, kind of barely recovered. He did recover and he didn't. He spent the rest of his life defending himself for doing this. But one of the things they do is that they throw the Christian story into relief. And they also make you go back to the Bible, the Bible as we know it, and reread it, and you see that there are textures in it that you've not noticed.

And it seems like we've only covered a few of the stories and there are so many more I've got in my notes that there's also a gospel of Judas. I mean, I don't know anything about it, but. But it sounds absolutely extraordinary that you have one of these gospels that is attributed to the figure who obviously betrays Jesus Christ in the canonical gospels in the story that we have.

Yes, but was also revered in other Christianities because if there is no Judas, then there is no crucifixion. And if there's no crucifixion, then there's no salvation. So he wasn't universally reviled. He was for some, an essential part of the story and revered accordingly.

You also mentioned, of course, with Jesus's message in the Bible, you know, when you look back at it, you actually notice some almost a hardened view the new mighty expect. And I remember interviewing Helen Bond in the past and with the story of Jesus and how his message is quite apocalyptic. You know, get ready, be prepared for what's coming. Similar to what you were saying with other figures at the time with that kind of message. And I noticed that amongst these apocryphal texts, you also have these apocalypses. I've got apocalypses of Peter and Paul. I mean, do we know what these are?

The apocalypses are so much fun. So they are in the same way that nobody reads Dante's Paradiso. Everyone reads The Inferno, because you want to know what's being horrible things are being done to like Florentine bankers deep in the bowels of hell. I mean, the apocalypses are brilliant fun and Christians get really cross about them early on. Like official Christianity sort of says, you shouldn't read these, these are not for reading, these are not nice. Obviously nobody can get enough of them because the Gospels offer all good and nice things and these offer money lenders standing up to their necks in pus and women who harlots being punished in really disgusting, genuinely revolting ways. I mean they, they are this sort of, of sort symphony of sadism. And what's interesting about them is that they really puzzled some Victorian scholars because they were just like, how, how is this, where is this coming from? But really it's not that much of a mystery because this kind of proportionate punishment, what we think of as hell, is not just a bad place, it's not just an unpleasant place, it's a somewhere, it's a kind of tit for tat place. You do something nasty in this life and you will be punished in a similar sort of mirror image way in hell. So there are people in these apocalypses, for example, there is women who spend too long doing their hair, so they, in, in, in hell they find themselves held up by their hair. Or you know, there's adulterers who find themselves held up by their feet, which doesn't sound that bad until you realize that feet is an ancient euphemism for testicles, so that they are like perpetually suspended. So there are just sort of page after page of this absolutely gruesome sadism. And all ancient readers clearly loved it, but it was also, it was absolutely common in ancient descriptions of hell. So if you read Virgil, who was writing in the first century B.C. before Christ, he has a very similar sounding hell. If you read Plato, he has a very similar sounding hell five centuries earlier. And you are having these things in ancient non Christian texts. You get burning fiery lakes, you get things that sound very like demons with pitchforks. You get people being punished again and again until their sin is washed clean. Obviously you get Nero in hell, he's punished. He's in everybody's hell.

Is he, is he actually in the Apocalypse texts?

I mean, he's not in the pre apocalypse text. No, no, he's in the non apocalyptic ones. But I'm sure if they, I'm sure I have no doubt that they would put him in if they could.

Yes, I know there's a link in the book of revelation of something that he could be the Antichrist thing about that's another story, isn't it?

Yeah, it's like the kind of good, the sort of nice shiny Sunday school bits of Christianity are there in non Christian text but so are these sort of fiery burny hellish bits because there isn't really hell in that way in the New Testament it comes from these later frowned upon texts.

[Grainger]

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[Catherine Nixey]

Now Katherine, are there any other particular works that you'd like to mention that that are either apocrypha or are linked to the apocryphal works?

I think some of the most striking texts are the magical texts and they're most striking I think because they were the most forbidden in the ancient world. So these were actively, these were definitely actively destroyed. There was lots of. Nobody liked magical texts. But what we forget about the ancient world is that they were. We think about the Romans, we Think about their kind of sensible people, sensible, straight roads, sensible, straight minds. They liked architecture, engineering. They occasionally let their hair down with gladiators, but otherwise they were pretty kind of, you know, they like concrete. Romans were a concrete people with concrete thoughts. They were not at all the ancient world teamed with ghosts and the supernatural and with magic. You have ancient Roman laws, some of the earliest Roman laws forbid magical practices. And so if they're forbidding them, they believe in them and you get it all the way through. And there were lots of various different magical practices which, when they were, came to light in sort of the. In manuscripts that, again, that survived on a slender, slender thread into the modern world world. They really shock the people who are reading them because what they. What you found reading these manuscripts was that you found things like people who could make water solid so that you could run over it as if it was the ground. You found people who could perform miracles, who could raise people from the dead. You found instructions on how to raise people from the dead. And you found instructions on how to call down a God from heaven, how to become like a God from heaven yourself, how to heal the blind, how to cure the lame. There's an index in the magical book book and it's got like, sort of all the. All the miracles are there. You know, heal the blind, cure the lame. There's quite a lot, quite a lot of things about impotence, actually, which didn't make it into the Bible. But they are medical texts and they are clearly hugely popular in the ancient world. Magical figures were. When Jesus arrived, people just thought of him as a magician. That is what he is seen as by the ancient world. Almost all ancient observers categorize him as a magician or a charlatan or a huckster, but really it's magic that he's seen as doing. And it's Christians who kind of forbid this word magic, and kind of becomes extremely unpopular in Christianity. And magical texts are forbidden, magical texts are burnt. And when you read them, you can see why, because almost any miracle that Jesus does in the Gospels will find a counterpoint. Water into wine. Absolutely. But not just wine. And I mentioned earlier, any kind of wine, really fancy wine, whatever vintage you want, you will find loaves, fishes, but you will also get side orders. And they also do. These magical texts can enable you to have sort of what sounds a bit like salad dressing as well. So it was hugely popular. And what is interesting is it wasn't that fought against by some Christians, because one of the things that you use to do magic it appears in these texts and it appears elsewhere in other things is a wand, what we would call a wand. And if you look at early paintings of Jesus, what he appears with, his most common, what they call attribute after the scroll for teaching, is a wand. So when Jesus turns water into wine, he's holding a wand. When he raises people from the dead, he's holding a wand. What is happening is you have this enormous crossover between what we would call religion and what we would call magic. But there isn't really that divide in the ancient world. And of course, it's there in the people who come to see Jesus that we know them as three. There weren't three, but magi, which just means magicians. We call them wise men did not mean wise men, it meant magician.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes.

[Catherine Nixey]

And how many of them were there? That's another great question that we've covered in the past. But it also brings. It's a really nice thing as we start wrapping up, isn't it? If you had all of these different texts and all of these different kind of versions of Christianity right at the beginning and how they were viewing Jesus and his story. I'm guessing you get tales from these various apocrypha. I'm guessing you must see them in early Christian art. You know, you don't just see the versions that are shown in the. In the four gospels that we know today, that presumably you can also see in surviving artwork scenes and tales from these various apocryphal works.

Yes, you can, absolutely. Partly because a lot of these stories are going to be transmitted orally. A lot of people are not going to be literate either. So they're going to be taking these things. Certainly not literate in the way that we think of literacy. So just say quickly on the paintings. Yeah, you see them in early artworks, you see them in late artworks. Like when you're looking at a painting of Mary standing over Jesus in the manger and they're in a cave, as they often are. That is from the Apocrypha. If you're looking at a painting of hell. That is from the Apocrypha. If you're looking at a painting in which there is a donkey behind the manger of Jesus. That is from the Apocrypha.

If you see someone getting their hand burned off, I guess that is exactly.

That's one of those. And yes, somebody sent me a picture of that from Italy yesterday. But I think the thing to think is we kind of. We are so book bound, and our books are bound like they're Literally bound. When you see a Bible, it is in a shut cover. It has a big black cover, this Bible, black cover. Often, you know, if you see them in a church, they'll often be chained to the pulpit. You know, these feel like these words were written in stone. They feel as immovable as stone to us. But there was nothing like that in the ancient world. And most people couldn't read them. Most people were hearing them. And those who were forming these stories, I think a really crucial thing to understand is that there were not many. So it's estimated we assume that Jesus was born, that was it, game over. But you have to realize how tentative the Christian story was and how, how it took a long time for Christianity to establish itself, in which time it varied a lot. So by that year 100, there were probably only 7,000 thousand Christians of any kind of whom it's estimated only 50 could read. So a small handful of people are making decisions that will have staggering, unimaginable to them, I am sure.

Consequences, absolutely. So in the 4th century, where you see that, that great explosion, Catherine, this has been extraordinary. My last question, but you kind of mentioned it at the beginning, is that with the ultimate choosing of which gospels are canon and that the rest are apocrypha and I guess then heresy, it doesn't sound like there's almost a Council of Nicaea equivalent in like the kind of deciding is it just which ones endure and remain the most popular over the centuries.

So the way I, I view it is that some were clearly nonsense, many were clearly later, and the oldest ones are the ones that we have, the, the ones that we have in the Bible. They were the oldest ones. There were possibly, very possibly ones before that, but they have, they do not exist. Mr. James, who was one of the ones who did the first translation, the first popular English translation of these got, was very caustic about this. He said, you know, they didn't sit around like newspaper editors saying, this one's in, this one's out. It wasn't like that. It was that different groups of Christians would have used different texts. And the four gospels that we know were dominant from, if not the beginning, very early.

Catherine, this has been such a fantastic chat. Last, but certainly not least alongside. It's such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. Your book on this topic, which explores all of this and so much more. It is called.

Yeah, no, it's called, it's called Heresy. The subtitle is Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God, but it's called Heresy because it's a Greek word and it sounds like a bad word to us. Heresy came to me in a bad thing. But in ancient Greek, heresy just, it comes from the Greek word hieromai, which means I take for myself, I choose. And in ancient Greek texts, heresy was a great thing thing. It was, it meant that you were using your intellect to choose the answer, the story, the thing that you thought was best. And it's In Christianity, within 100 years, Christians arrive and start calling heresy by far more negative connotations. So Christians start to see it as a, a poison, a gangrene, a cancer to be cut out. In the words of St. Augustine, it's shit to be voided from the body of the Catholic Church. So that's why I called it heresy. It was because it is, is an unacceptable thing. But it was once a beautiful thing to think different things, to think for yourself.

It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today.

Thank you so much for having me.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, there you go. There was Catherine Nixie, the author and journalist talking through the story of the.

[Catherine Nixey]

Apocryphal gospels and shining more light on.

[Tristan Hughes]

The context behind these early centuries of.

[Catherine Nixey]

Christianity or these early Christian almost 2,000 years ago.

[Tristan Hughes]

I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well where we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of Historyhit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.

[Grainger]

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