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Scholarly Smackdown:
Did Paul Distort Christianity?
With Elaine Pagels & Ben Witherington III

To help make sense of the scholarly debates about Jesus and Paul, we
asked two of the preeminent scholars to email each other about early
Christianity (while letting us peek in). Elaine Pagels, a professor of
religion at Princeton, is the author of the bestselling Beyond Belief
and The Gnostic Gospels. Ben Witherington III is professor of New
Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and
author of The Paul Quest and numerous other books.



From: Elaine Pagels
To: Ben Witherington III
Date: April 1, 2004

Dear Ben,

Reflecting on Jesus and Paul, I'm intrigued by the difference in what
they taught. According to Mark, the earliest of the gospels, Jesus came
to announce that "the Kingdom of God is coming-repent, and believe in
the good news!" Matthew and Luke added sayings in which Jesus tells
what one has to do to "enter the Kingdom"--which range from "take what
you have and give to the poor" to "love the Lord your God with all your
heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself."

Yet Paul's "gospel" was not about the Kingdom--it was about Jesus.
Paul, instead of asking his audience to follow the teachings of Jesus,
demanded belief in what he called "my gospel," which declared that
"Christ died for our sins...and that he was raised." Astonishingly,
although Paul had never met Jesus, he insisted that, having encountered
the risen Christ in a blaze of heavenly light, he understood the gospel
far better than any of those who, like Peter and James, had known Jesus
well. Paul knew Christ through his own direct encounter in "visions and
revelations."
And this passionate and intense apostle, who said he wanted to be "all
things to all people," went a long way in succeeding! Even today, the
issues he addresses in his letters--from Jewish practices to sexual
ones, from his views of God, Christ, baptism, and resurrection--are
often read in radically different ways.

Take, for example, Paul's bitter argument with Peter. Most Christians
take Paul to mean that the Torah given to Israel has become obsolete;
followers of Jesus can forget about circumcision and kosher laws. But a
few scholars, including my colleague John Gager at Princeton, suggest
that Paul meant that while Jews should continue following Torah, Christ
opened up a new way of salvation especially for Gentiles. I wish that I
thought this more ecumenical view was what Paul meant--but I suspect it
wasn't: no wonder they call Paul the "founder of Christianity."

Or a second issue: George Bernard Shaw called Paul the "eternal enemy
of women" because of his negative views of women and his "hatred of
sex" (like many male commentators, Shaw thought of women and sex as
virtually synonymous). One lone (male) scholar, Robin Scroggs, says
that Paul was "the greatest spokesman for women's lib" (you can tell he
was writing in the '70s!) But I think Scroggs far overstates the case,
for although Paul included women among his patrons and fellow
evangelists and said that "in Christ there is neither male nor female,
slave nor free," he nevertheless took for granted that husbands rule
wives, and that "man is the....reflection of God, but woman is the
reflection of man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for
man." Slaves, too, although they may be "one in Christ" with Christian
owners nevertheless remain slaves until the "age to come" arrives. Paul
thought it wouldn't be a long wait, but 1,900 years later, his letters
fueled the pro-slavery propaganda of the Christian American South.

In his own time and ever afterward, many Christians revered Paul for
teaching--and practicing--celibacy, since he characterized marriage as
a form of equal-opportunity bondage. He believed its only excuse was to
legitimate sexual intercourse and only, he warned, between heterosexual
married partners (during times they were not engaged in prayer) for
those too "weak" to renounce sex altogether. It's amazing to me that
the letters Paul wrote to various groups some 20 to 30 years after
Jesus' death have been taken as if they were blueprints for "Christian"
sexual and social attitudes--for 2,000 years so far.


Yet radical as they were, the intense conviction they carried earned
them wide prestige--so much so that those who disagreed with Paul and
wanted to reaffirm traditional Jewish values of family and procreation
did this by writing letters they attributed to Paul that taught
opposite values-and put them into the New Testament under Paul's name!
Here is what I mean: like many other New Testament scholars, I share
the view that Paul only wrote seven of the 13 so-called "letters of
Paul" that are in the New Testament (only these share his distinctive
and eloquent style). The six "deutero- Pauline" (this means
"secondarily Pauline," but perhaps could be called more bluntly
"pseudo-Pauline") letters take Paul's inclinations to subordinate women
and slaves to a new level. The letters to Timothy are good examples.
They insist that bishops should be married men, whose capacity to
control their wives and slaves demonstrated their capacity to "rule
over the church"; in these letters, the fiery and charismatic Paul
becomes the very model of an ecclesiastical bureaucrat.

What I find very intriguing, too, is how imaginative and rich Paul's
language is. He often reminds his audience of how many "visions and
revelations" God had granted him directly--even an unexpected glimpse
into heaven during his lifetime, in which he says he saw and heard
"things that no mortal is allowed to utter." These visions inspired
believers and "heretics" from Marcion to Valentinus. The picture of
Christ that Paul borrowed from an ancient Christian hymn, as one who,
being "equal with God," voluntarily "emptied himself, and became a
human being," taking on the form of a slave to redeem a lost humanity,
became enormously influential in later Christian interpretations of
Jesus and his mission, from the church father Irenaeus to Valentinus.

In fact, the African church father Tertullian grumbled that Paul had
become the "apostle to the heretics"--and many religious visionaries,
from the first century to the present, have claimed him as "the great
apostle." For while those who called themselves orthodox claimed to
love Paul, so did those they called heretics, as we can see from the
recently discovered library of ancient Christian books discovered at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. These texts begin with the Prayer of the
Apostle Paul and include the Apocalypse of Paul as well as dozens of
other texts like the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth, whose
anonymous authors love Paul's letters, and quote them all the time. Yet
because some of the pseudo-Pauline letters--I Timothy, for
example-pictures Paul as a champion of orthodoxy (even though that
orthodoxy had not been invented in Paul's day), certain church fathers
were able to reclaim the disputed territory of Paul's letters for the
churches they called "orthodox."

What all this suggests to me, Ben, is that, historically speaking at
least, there is no one single way to read the letters of this
astonishing apostle, which still intensely engage many Christians.
Enough for now: I'll close this ramble with one of Paul's passages that
I love: "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."

Looking forward to your reply,

Yours sincerely, Elaine


From: Ben Witherington III
To: Elaine Pagels
Date: April 2, 2004

Dear Elaine:

You're off to a rousing start, and I can see this discussion is going
to be far from boring! I must tell you from the outset that I am more
than a little weary of the old liberal rant that goes "back to Jesus,
and away with Paul, the first great corrupter of the simple Gospel of
Jesus."

The idea of Jesus as Messiah was not an invention of Paul. In our
earliest Gospel Mark, Jesus not only predicts his own death and
resurrection three times in three chapters (Mk. 8-10) but suggests,
alluding to Is. 53, that his death would provide a ransom for many. In
other words, Jesus had a messianic self-understanding.

You seem to have also overlooked that even in the undisputed Pauline
letters, there are six or seven places where Paul talks about the
Kingdom of God as both present and also future, using the same sort of
language as Jesus about inheriting or obtaining or entering the Kingdom
as Jesus uses (see e.g. 1 Cor. 15.50). It is a caricature of Paul's
Gospel to say it was not about the Kingdom but about Jesus--it was
about both. It is likewise a caricature of the teaching of Jesus, even
if we confine ourselves to Mark, the earliest Gospel, to say that
Jesus' teaching was just about the Kingdom and not about himself.
Perhaps we can move on from the old stereotypes and admit that a
non-eschatological, non-Jewish, non-messianic Jesus just doesn't make
sense given our earliest and best evidence about him--by which I mean
the four canonical Gospels and elsewhere in the New Testament.

In regard to your various complaints about Paul, I think you are right
that Paul does say in Galatians that the Mosaic Law--while a good and
glorious gift of God--was given only for a specific period of time in
the life of God's people, and that now that Christ has come, it is time
to recognize that new occasions teach new duties.

While Paul was fine with being the "Jew to the Jew and the Gentile to
the Gentile," he did not believe Jewish Christians needed to keep the
Mosaic covenant. It could be seen as a blessed option, but not an
obligation for anyone who was in Christ. His was a more radical
position than that of some Jerusalem Jewish Christians. One of the
reasons why Paul takes such a view, as he makes plain in a text like
Rom. 9-11, is that he believes that Christ was and is the messiah of
the Jews, as well as the Savior of the Gentiles. He believes that God
intends for there to be only one people of God in the long run, namely
Jew and Gentile united in Christ. On this matter, I suspect we agree.

It's also a caricature to paint Paul as some sort of endorser of an
oppressive patriarchalism. Paul was a major proponent, not only of
women in ministry, but also of a significant overhaul of the
traditional patriarchal family structure.

Let me suggest for a moment that Colossians and Ephesians, as I and
most scholars still think, are by Paul. I suggest another way to read
those books' household codes. These codes, however much they have been
misused down through the centuries to repress women, must, in fact, be
read in the context of other similar comments by both Gentiles and Jews
about household management and in light of Paul's rhetorical purposes.

Furthermore, Colossians in general, and Col. 3-4 in particular, is the
sort of thing one would say as an opening salvo to an audience one has
never addressed before. Paul had not been to Colossae, a church which
seems to have been founded by some of his co-workers. When he begins to
address the issue of Christians household structures he must start
where they are -- and then begin to move them in a more Christian
direction. Thus in Colossians we see him attempting to lessen the
harsher effects of the patriarchal structure on all the subordinate
members of the family.



He does this in two ways: he addresses all the members of the
family--including the children and slaves, as well as the wives--as
free moral agents. He does not, for example, do what we find in other
household codes where the head of the household is told how to manage
his extended family. Paul urges a limiting of the head-of-household's
power and obligates him to provide loving and compassionate treatment
of the other members of his family. The exhortation to love especially
distinguishes Paul from most other ancient advice to the head of the
household.

In Ephesians, Paul goes much further in trying to inject the leaven of
the Gospel into the pre-existing patriarchal structure. He begins his
whole discussion by exhorting all Christians to be subject to one
another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5.21). In short, he exhorts
men and women to mutual submission, which certainly cannot be said to
simply baptize the patriarchal structure as it is. In fact, Ephes. 5.22
is elliptical, and so when Paul gets around to saying "wives to
husbands as to the Lord." and so on, he is presupposing the meaning of
submission enunciated in vs. 21--namely that that wife's submission
should only be offered in the context of mutual submission. When the
husband is exhorted to love his wife as Christ does the church, this is
another form that mutual submission takes in Christ.

In Philemon, he says the sort of thing that one would say to a close
friend or confidant. In regard to the slavery issue, to read what is
said in Colossians and Ephesians outside the context of other Pauline
remarks in Philemon and 1 Cor. 7 is a huge mistake. In Philemon, we
hear loud and clear the clarion call for the emancipation of the slave
Onesimus. He is to be treated "no longer as a slave, but as a brother
in Christ." Paul's remarks in Colossians and Ephesians are meant to
ameliorate the situation and help slaves out, and when Paul has the
opportunity, as he does in Philemon, this shows where his argument is
leading--toward emancipation.

I will save the majority of my comments on the Nag Hammadi finds for
the next e-mail, but for now I'll just say that those documents do not
deserve the name Christian. They are antithetical to what our
first-century sources would characterize as Christian--values which
include, among other things, a profoundly Jewish appreciation of the
goodness of creation, human sexuality, and marriage.

Gnosticism certainly deserved to be deemed a heresy precisely because:
1) It is so very anti-Semitic in character; 2) It espouses a message of
self-salvation from within, which is antithetical to the idea of a God
who intervenes repeatedly in human history and even takes on human
form, lives, dies, and rises again--a God who offers salvation from
without, through Jesus, by grace through faith; and 3) Gnosticism is
profoundly elitist--it's self-salvation only for those in the know. As
you yourself have suggested, theology is reduced to anthropology in the
hands of the Gnostics.

More to come. For now I will just re-stress-enough with the caricatures
of Paul. He was more in concert with Jesus and Jesus' agenda than you
allow. And Paul was a far better advocate for women than several of the
Gnostics who urged that women had to become "male," or like a man, in
order to be fully human and so saved.


Cordially,
Ben

From: Elaine Pagels
To: Ben Witherington III
Date: April 5, 2004

Dear Ben,

Receiving your e-mail, I see that we have much to discuss, especially
Paul's views of marriage and slavery, on which we have different
viewpoints.

First, however, let's get the ground rules clear. Since I completely
agree with you that we should do away with "old stereotypes," I was
surprised-and, frankly, disappointed----that you immediately introduced
three such stereotypes-beginning with "liberal" (surrounded by rather
nasty characterizations) vs. "conservative."

Actually, I think of historians of Christianity, like myself, as people
who think there is much worth conserving. Yet it is true that I am one
of those who does not hear "liberal" (or "conservative," for that
matter) as a dirty word. I often associate the term with liberal
democracy-with the vision of a free society, in which diverse points of
view are discussed with mutual respect-as, for example, in this open
conversation.

What makes this point so important is not just that you then distorted
what I said-or, rather, what I did not say--but that the whole point of
my opening statement was to show that as the author of 2 Peter 3:15
wrote early in the second century. The letters of "our beloved brother
Paul" contain some things that are "hard to understand"-and so have
been interpreted in widely different ways.

Since you and I have some substantive disagreements on what Paul said,
it's important for those participating in this conversation who are not
scholars to know that this discussion is not just a matter of "liberal"
vs. "conservative,"-much less "he said, she said"-- but that serious
scholars, the great majority of them Christians, like you and me, can
honestly interpret these letters differently. Those who want to read
more about the various viewpoints will find here suggestions of a few
places to start, so that they may come to their own decisions.

But first, just a comment on the other two stereotypes you brought in
with the first one-and then proceeded to attack--as if attributing them
to me: first, the view of Paul as "the great corrupter of the simple
Gospel of Jesus."

What set you off in this direction, apparently, was that I started by
pointing out the obvious fact that strikes--and often puzzles--anyone
who compares the Gospel of Mark with, say, the opening of Galatians, or
of I Corinthians 15: that what Paul preaches as gospel is quite
different from what Jesus proclaims, according to Mark (1:15). Noting
this, of course, is an essential starting point for understanding our
topic-Jesus and Paul.

Second, you brought in the stereotype of a "non-eschatological,
non-Jewish, non-messianic Jesus." Whomever you are addressing here (and
no one, so far as I know, suggests that Jesus was not Jewish; the rest,
I would guess, belong to your recent discussion with our colleague Dom
Crossan), your polemic certainly was not relevant to this conversation.
Since you obviously don't know my views on this, I'll simply state that
my own views follow the basic line of Schweitzer's argument-articulated
better, in terms of contemporary scholarship, by such scholars as E.P.
Sanders in The Historical Figure of Jesus and others like you, who see
Jesus primarily as an apocalyptic preacher, whom Mark and the other
gospel writes place clearly in Jewish tradition, both prophetic and
messianic.

So please throw away the straw men, and address what I actually do say.
And, of course, you can expect the same collegial courtesy from me.
What interested me when invited to do this conversation with you is
that, having used your writings in my courses at Princeton University,
I believed that we could have a serious and substantive discussion of
the complex issues of how we read Paul, and what it means for the ways
we understand Christianity today.


So let's talk about the two issues on which you express yourself most
strongly-Paul's views of marriage and of slavery. In my opening
message, I indicated that Paul expresses serious reservations about the
place of marriage in the lives of the Christians he addresses. You
replied that, as you read him, Paul endorses what you call the
"Christian" and "profoundly Jewish appreciation of the goodness of
creation, human sexuality, and marriage."

Second, I pointed out that Paul seems to accept slavery as a necessary
condition of human society--as he experienced it in the first
century--as indispensable to ordinary life as using money. You, on the
other hand, take Paul's letter to Philemon as a "loud and clarion call
for the emancipation" of a slave. I wish I could agree with you on both
points. Who would not like to have the weight of Paul's authority
agreeing with his or her own convictions? But as a historian, I find
the evidence does not support those conclusions.

First, what does Paul say about marriage? As you know, how we answer
this question has everything to do with which letters later included in
the "Pauline corpus" were actually written by the apostle himself. I
follow the view of many of our colleagues that, of the 13 letters later
included under the loose rubric of "Pauline," Paul himself actually
wrote those that demonstrate the distinctive style, vocabulary, and
viewpoints that we find in the earliest collections-his letters to the
Romans, I-II Corinthians, I (and maybe II) Thessalonians), Galatians,
Phillipians, and Philemon.

Reading what he writes in his major discussions about marriage and
sexuality, then, in I Corinthians 6-11, I find nothing to suggest that
Paul thought marriage--at least for followers of Christ, himself and
those he converted--was "good." Yes, he certainly inherited what you
rightly characterize as a "profoundly Jewish view," but he tells
believers in Corinth that "in view of the impending crisis"--the coming
end of the world, which, as you say, he anticipated was imminent,
everything now looks different. Startlingly, in I Corinthians 6, he
uses the Genesis passage that rabbis generally took as a statement
about marriage as if it applied to recourse to prostitutes-and then
contrasts the believer who is "one in spirit" with the Lord to someone
involved with prostitution. Then, when he addresses the question of
marriage directly in I Corinthians 7, he never says it is "good"-much
less any of the other affirmations you make above. What he does say is
"good" is celibacy (7:1,); remaining single, as he does, is "good"(7:8)
(although he may well have been widowed himself, and in Galatians he
says he has a right to travel with a wife, should he choose to). But he
advises those who cannot remain single and celibate that "because of
immorality" they are better off marrying, "for it is better to marry
than to burn (with passion)"(7:3-6.).

Paul says he wishes that all believers were unmarried, like himself,
but acknowledges that not everyone has "the gift" of celibacy, and that
Jesus himself prohibited divorce; however, he thinks that the unmarried
will be happier, freer to devote themselves to the Lord, and better
prepared to face "the impending crisis" of the eschatological age.

Here Paul says nothing about the "goodness of marriage and sexuality,"
nor of the sacred purpose that Jewish tradition finds in both-the
capacity to fulfill the first divine commandment, to "be fruitful and
multiply"-not only because of what seem to be his own particular views
of sexuality and marriage, but especially because of the "shortness of
time" in which, as you say, he believes himself to be living. (Those
interested in a fuller discussion of Jesus and Paul's views on
sexuality and marriage are referred to the first chapters of my book,
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent.)

What, then, is the basis for your view that Paul affirms the "Christian
and profoundly Jewish" affirmation of marriage and sexuality? As you
indicate in your e-mail, everything depends on which of the letters now
included in the collection called "the Pauline corpus" actually were
written by Paul. You can see I take the conservative view that the
genuine letters of Paul are those that demonstrate his distinctive
style, vocabulary, and viewpoints-a conservative view because all
scholars, so far as I know, would agree that Paul wrote these letters.

Your argument, however, depends on a suggestion, that, as your e-mail
indicates, you know many would not agree with- that other letters that
are often called "deutero"(secondarily) Pauline were also written by
Paul. Instead, we have evidence that persuades many of us that they
were, instead, written by followers of Paul after his death, to extend
his views, and invoke his authority.

Yet your e-mail indicates that you do agree that some of the letters
often called "Pauline" were not written by Paul-specifically, the
letters of 1-2 Timothy and Titus. For had you thought that Paul did
actually write 1-2 Timothy, Titus (and Hebrews for that matter), you
could have found much in them to bolster your own view. Since you say
nothing about any of these, I take your silence to mean that you agree
with the rest of us that these are not letters Paul actually wrote.

What you invoke as the basis for your contention that Paul affirmed
Jewish tradition about the "goodness of marriage and sexuality" are the
letters called Colossians and Ephesians. I appreciate how cautiously
you phrase this: "If you will allow me to suggest for a moment that
Colossians and Ephesians.are by Paul, a view that I agree with"-since
you know that very many of our fellow scholars do not agree with you.

As you can see, I am among those who agree with the view expressed in
what is perhaps the most widely used current text, Bart Ehrman's The
New Testament: A Historical Introduction, that if Colossians were
actually written by Paul, " then ..Paul adopted a different writing
style, advocated different views, and assumed a different tone from his
other letters." Ehrman speaks for many when he says, "We must conclude
that Paul did not write the letter."

I trust you will note that you find here no wild-eyed feminist
critique, no discussions (so far) about important other topics, like
Paul's views of homosexuality.

Yet the view you express so tentatively here is, of course, essential
for the case you make, since only in the deutero-Pauline letters-and
not in any of those we all agree are genuine-are statements that
confirm the view you express above. And although the various
deutero-Pauline letters differ in style and viewpoint, they all agree
in reaffirming that what Paul really meant is what you say he
meant-that he reaffirmed a "traditional Jewish view about the goodness
of marriage and sexuality."

That is as true for I Timothy and Hebrews as of Colossians and
Ephesians. All attempt to remedy what they seem to acknowledge as a
major problem in Paul's letters--that Paul did not express the
traditional Jewish affirmation of marriage-and all intend to reinstate
Paul (as your view does as well) as a traditionally minded Jew in this
respect.

In the process, as you know, all of them reinforced-with the minor
modifications you note-traditional views of the dominance of the
husband over wife, master over slaves, and father over children, by
invoking Greco-Roman "household codes," as you note. (Those interested
in these issues might enjoy Dennis MacDonald's book, The Legend and the
Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon, and David Balch's Let
Wives Be Submissive -which explores the "household codes" in I Peter,
but which may help illuminate how they come into Colossians and
Ephesians).

This leads to the second issue: You say you hear in Paul's letter to
Philemon concerning his runaway slave "a loud and clear clarion call
for the emancipation" of this slave. Here I can only point out that if
this is what Paul meant to say, he failed to say so-much less say it
loud and clear! Yes, he accepts the slave as a "brother" in Christ;
yes, he urges the aggrieved master, also a Christian, to accept the
slave back without punishment, as a favor to Paul, also as a "brother"
in Christ; yes, he expects that the relationship between master and
slave henceforth "will be set in the context of the church, and
transformed by the love that is active there," as we read in the
preface to this letter in the New Revised Standard Version of the
Bible.

But the one question Paul does not discuss is emancipating the slave.
Let me quote again from that standard preface: "Paul does not address
the general question of slavery as a social institution, nor does he
discuss whether or not Onesimus should be set free." Ehrman's text
discusses this issues, and concludes that "unfortunately, there is
little in the text" that suggests this; adding that "it may be that
modern abhorrence for slavery has led interpreters to find in Paul a
man ahead of his time, who opposed the practice."

Finally, let me make something clear: I am not finding fault with Paul
for having views that are somehow "deficient" by 21st century
standards. On the contrary. As an historian, I would ask the opposite:
how could we possibly expect Paul to have anticipated the situations of
Christians for thousands of years after his death-or to have provided
ready "answers" for all the urgent social questions that have emerged
during all that time?

As one who has enormous respect for this "first Christian theologian"
and his powerfully expressed views, and as an historian, I suggest we
need to see him in his context, as a man who, as you say, expected the
end of the age to come soon, and who found the twin "bondages" of
slavery and marriage to be nearly irrelevant, since he thought both
would soon be obsolete (I Cor 7:29-31).

What I am suggesting, then, is that we who read Paul over 2,000 years
after he wrote need to remember that, remarkable as he was, he was also
a man of his own times. When we see Paul in historical context, we need
to recognize that just as he addressed the issues he confronted in the
first century, so we need to address those in ours.

So while his views on sexuality, slavery, marriage are still, for many
Christians, an important first word, they can hardly be the last. Those
who try to make him their all-purpose authority on everything often end
up with a Paul who conveniently suits our time-because we are reading
our values back into his words. Instead, as you see, I think we need to
take on the responsibility for sifting and testing these issues-on the
basis of tradition, often, but without pretending that past tradition
solves all present problems for us. It is true that Paul has a vision
of human society that transcends these distinctions-in Christ-yet the
assumptions of this first century teacher have for nearly two millennia
provided ammunition to those who have claimed that slavery and other
forms of social domination are divinely ordained.

And now, Ben, I am delighted to turn to the question of how we
understand the canon. Even to read Paul accurately, we have had to
engage this very important issue. And I look forward to getting into
the issues you say you intend to raise, since it is on these that
questions of authority-then and now-often turn.


Yours sincerely, Elaine

From: Ben Witherington III
To: Elaine Pagels
Date: April 6, 2004

Dear Elaine:

Well, I can see from your second letter that it is a good thing we had
a ground-clearing exercise in the first exchange so that we are not
talking past each other.

Since this part of the discussion is going to be about Paul, I intend
to focus on Paul's views of eschatology and marriage within parameters
we both accept, so I will limit myself to what Paul says in 1
Thessalonians and in the Corinthian correspondence.

For the record, I think the Pastoral Epistles were written by a
co-worker of Paul, probably right at the end of Paul's life, or just
after, and fully reflect both the views and wishes of Paul. If you're
in Mamertine prison preparing for execution, you need a little help to
get the word out.

Also for the record, I am astounded to hear what you say about Bart
Ehrman's Introduction to the New Testament. It is not even close to
being the most-used text in either colleges or seminaries. Try the
recent much-praised Introduction by Green, Meye Thompson and Achtemeir.
It does a far better job of introducing the New Testament and it
doesn't have Ehrman's axes to grind in regard to the canon or the
earliest forms of Christianity.

Let's get down to Paul's actual views. In regard to his eschatology, I
have expressed my views as clearly as possible in my book Jesus, Paul,
and the End of the World. Neither Jesus nor Paul went for the
eschatological jackpot of believing, much less predicting, that the end
would definitely come in their lifetimes or shortly thereafter (see
e.g. Mk. 13.32). Paul considered it possible that the Second Coming
might transpire before long. The "thief in the night" motif, used by
both Jesus and Paul, speaks clearly enough of a coming at an unknown
and surprising time, meaning everyone must always be prepared.

I do agree that the eschatological views of both Jesus and Paul
condition what they both say about marriage, family and related issues.
But both Jesus and Paul affirm fidelity in marriage and celibacy in
singleness as two good options for the followers of Jesus. Let's
consider what Paul actually says about these matters.

Take, for instance, 1 Thess. 4.3-8. Without doubt, this is a passage
about holiness in relationships. I would say that the majority of
commentators believe Paul is talking about not defrauding a brother or
sister by invading their marriage. Instead, believers are to learn how
to acquire a wife in holiness and in honor. But even if this turns out
to be a more general exhortation to holiness in all relationships, 1
Cor. 7 is quite clear.

I, along with the large majority of those who have written commentaries
on 1 Corinthians, feel certain that 1 Cor. 7.1--"It is good for a man
not to touch a woman"--does not in any way represent Paul's own views.
Here he quotes an opinion of some Corinthians, an opinion which he then
qualifies before setting out his own view.

Notice how he phrases the matter: "Now in regard to the things about
which you wrote: 'It is good for a man...'" It is not Paul's view that
"it is good for a man not to touch a woman"; it is the view of various
ascetical Corinthians. To the contrary, says Paul, at the very least,
in view of the problem of sexual immorality (already at issue in
Corinth, as 1 Cor. 5-6 shows) "each man should have his own wife, and
each woman her own husband."

This hardly sounds like a Paul who thinks that marriage is somehow
inappropriate or unclean in the eschatological age. Indeed, it sounds
like someone who thinks it is the appropriate, normal course for the
vast majority of his converts. Paul speaks in terms of a `charisma,' a
grace gift. Some believers have the grace gift to remain single for the
sake of the Kingdom, and they will have less anxieties about family if
they do so, and can be more single-mindedly focused on God. But others
are given the grace to be married in the Lord. Both are good options in
Paul's view. Marriage and sexual relationships within marriage are seen
by Paul as grace gift from God, and marital partners are encouraged not
to deprive each other in regard to sex.

With the majority of Corinthian commentators, I don't think 1 Cor. 7.6
reflects Paul making a concession to marriage. Rather, it's Paul
conceding a time apart from sexual relationships in marriage for the
sake of prayer. Paul is not ascetical when it comes to human sexual
relationships, any more than Jesus was. Jesus spoke of the goodness of
the one flesh union of men and women joined together by God (see Mk.
10). To say otherwise is to badly misread both the meaning and the
trajectory of both Jesus' remarks in Mk. 10 and Paul's remarks in 1
Cor. 7.

There are, in fact, some pretty radically egalitarian remarks by Paul
in this same section of 1 Cor. 7, not the least of which is he says
that the husband's body belongs to the wife. I doubt you will find
another first- century person in that patriarchal culture speaking as
directly as that! There will be no sexual double standard for Paul. Men
and women both must be chaste and only express their sexual desires
with their marriage partners.

Indeed, Paul goes on to say in 1 Cor. 7.14 that the unbelieving spouse
of a Christian person is "sancitified" by their relationship with the
believer, and so there is no reason for the believer to initiate a
separation from their unbelieving partner. Again, this hardly sounds
like Paul the ascetic.

Two more small points--- it is big mistake to translate 1 Cor. 7.26 as
if it reads "now because of the imminent crisis" (i.e. the eschaton).
It's another blunder to translate 1 Cor. 7.29 "the time is short." The
former text says clearly enough, "in view of the present crisis or
distress," and the later text reads literally "the time has been
shortened." The latter probably refers to an event that has already
happened which has changed the eschatological situation-namely the
Christ event, his death and resurrection. This is what he means when he
says the `schema' or form of this world is already passing away (notice
it is a process already set in motion). The former text, 1 Cor. 7.26,
is speaking about some present crisis affecting Corinth, not about the
impending Second Coming.

The problem, Elaine, is that your misreading of Paul's and Jesus'
eschatology leads to your misreading of at least Paul's remarks about
marriage as well. As for 1 Cor. 6.16, Paul is not denigrating marriage
there! He is making deliberately shocking use of the Genesis text, in
order to shock his audience into seeing the spiritual implications of
becoming one body with a prostitute. It has nothing to do with Paul
suggesting that sex is somehow inherently dirty or inappropriate for
Christians. 1 Cor. 7.5 will not allow for such a reading of 1 Cor.
6.16.

I look forward to the discussion about the canon next time.

Cordially,

Ben Witherington

From: Ben Witherington III
To: Elaine Pagels
Date: April 22, 2004

Dear Elaine:

It hardly seems possible that our dialogue is already just about over.
It was just getting interesting. In this e-mail, I want to address the
formation of the canon, the Gospel of Thomas, and the role of
Gnosticism in early Christianity. This is a tall order for a single
e-mail, but I will do my best.

Let's start with the subject of Gnosticism first. I, along with the
majority of New Testament scholars, do not think we can really talk
about there being an extant belief system called "Gnosticism" in the
first century A.D. Most scholars prefer the term "proto-Gnostic" for
ideas found in some documents that may date to the first century A.D.

The earliest of the so-called Gnostic Gospels is generally agreed to be
Thomas. As you know, there is considerable debate as to whether one
should really even call this document Gnostic.

But let's suppose for the sake of argument that it is. Is there any
good reason to think this document, or any Gnostic document, comes from
the first century A.D. or represents early Christian beliefs from the
apostolic age? In my view, the answer is probably "no," for a whole
host of reasons:

1) There seem to be echoes, allusions, and partial quotations from all
sorts of NT documents in Thomas-not only echoes of all four canonical
Gospels but also echoes from some of the Pauline corpus, from Hebrews,
and from Johannine literature. In addition, as Craig Evans has pointed
out, there is rather clear evidence that Thomas' author knows the final
redaction of the four canonical Gospels, not just its source material.

Evans writes*: "Quoting or alluding to more than half of the writings
of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1-2
Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Col., 1 Thess., 1 Timothy, Hebrews
1, Rev.), Thomas could be little more than a collage of New Testament
and apocryphal material that have been interpreted, often
allegorically, in such a way as to advance second- and third-century
Gnostic ideas."


"The entire system of salvation offered in Gnostic documents is at odds
with that [of] New Testament texts." --Ben Witherington III


Evans' careful demonstration shows that Thomas is even dependent on
documents widely believed to be written in the last decade of the first
century--i.e., the Johannine literature, including Revelation. I can't
think of any scholar who has written a commentary on John and thinks
that Thomas is earlier, or that Thomas influenced John.

Where could the author of Thomas have come into contact with all this
material before at least the early second century A.D.? My answer is,
nowhere. Thomas could not have been written before the second century
A.D., particularly because the Gospel of John--which you rightly say
bears the closest affinity with Thomas of any canonical Gospel--dates
to the last decade of the first century.

There is no strong case to be made that any Gnostic document, even
Thomas, reflects first-century Christian beliefs. To the contrary, even
Thomas is a meditation on the earlier documents of the New Testament
era. Earliest Christianity was certainly less diverse than you and
Karen King seem to think, and there were already standards of right
believing in the first century A.D.

2) The character of Gnostic documents reflects a reaction, indeed an
over-reaction, to the strongly Jewish flavor of all the New Testament
documents, which in my judgment were all written by Jews, or perhaps in
the case of Luke-Acts by a Jewish sympathizer (a God-fearer). These
Gnostic characteristics include:


strong matter-spirit dualism
often, very strong asceticism
no positive use of the OT
an anti-Semitic and anti-creation theology bias

The Gnostic documents seem to have been written almost exclusively by
Gentiles. Perhaps this is why the Jewishness of the historical Jesus
gets almost completely lost in the Gnostic documents. More could be
said along these lines, and my forthcoming book The Gospel Code deals
in some depth with the Gospel of Thomas. But let's move on to the
post-apostolic age, which saw the creation of the New Testament canon.

In the first place, it seems clear to me that there was already a
collection of Paul's letters, as well as a codex collection of the four
canonical Gospels, circulating in the early second century A.D. They
were apostolic and sacred texts used for teaching and preaching in the
church (see 2 Peter 3.15-16). One of the reasons none of the Gnostic
documents were ever recognized as canonical or apostolic texts even in
the second century (indeed, they were deemed heretical by Irenaeus,
Tertullian, and various others) is precisely because they were so out
of character with the profoundly Jewish nature and belief system found
in the apostolic documents.

We really shouldn't talk about the "exclusion" of Gnostic documents
from the canon, because frankly, they were never seriously considered
for inclusion (as Bruce Metzger taught me long ago when I took early
church history from him at Princeton). Not a single early canon list,
or council, or church Father--not even someone like Origen--lists any
of these documents as possible sacred texts for early Christians. By
their very non-Jewish and non-early Christian character, they excluded
themselves.

It is thus an exercise in revisionist history to blame Constantine or
the council of Nicea for imposing some standard or orthodoxy and canon
that was not already widely accepted in the church, both West and East.
All the council of Nicea did was formalize and recognize what was
already widely accepted in the church-that only apostolic and
eyewitness documents from the first century A.D. should be in the
canon. As James Dunn has recently said, the canonical Gospels and the
letters of Paul already show us the parameters of right thinking about
Jesus.

There's another good reason for questioning the notion of Gnostic
Christians in the first century A.D.: The entire system of salvation
offered in Gnostic documents is at odds with that found in numerous New
Testament texts. Gnosticism emphasizes esoteric knowledge and
matter-spirit dualism. The focus of the New Testament is on the
historical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, not on some esoteric
knowledge that Jesus revealed to the elite after Easter. And it is
precisely the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that is said to be
the means of our salvation.

While salvation does of course involve knowing certain things, it would
be incorrect to say that it involves obtaining some sort of esoteric
secret knowledge. The focus of the New Testament is belief in the
atoning death of Jesus, which overcame the world's sin problem.
Information without transformation of human nature availeth not, and it
was believed that if one confessed Jesus as the crucified and risen
Lord, and believed that God raised him from the dead, one was saved.
Salvation was more a matter of who one trusts as Lord and Savior than
whether one could cope with esoteric ideas about aeons and demi-urges
and matter being evil and spirit being good. As you yourself have said,
in Gnosticism theology is reduced to anthropology. This is quite
foreign to the Christocentric focus of the New Testament.

There is much more I wish we could discuss, but this will have to do.
Thanks so much for being willing to talk about these matters, in ways
which I hope our readers will find helpful.

Blessings on you and your family,

Ben Witherington

From: Elaine Pagels
To: Ben Witherington III
Date: May 1, 2004
Dear Ben,


Thank you for your letter, which helpfully clarified various viewpoints
on these early gospels-and on the early Christian movement. As I read
it, you make two basic points:


First, that sources like the Gospel of Thomas, being "Gnostic," must be
late sources-coming from the second century, or later-and therefore
have nothing to do with the beginnings of the Christian movement.


Second, that what we find in the Gospel of Thomas is "at odds with what
we find in New Testament texts"-that is, confession of Jesus as the
"crucified and risen Lord."


What those of us working on these texts have come to conclude, in the
course of extensive research on the Gospel of Thomas and the New
Testament gospels, is that the first point is wrong, and the second is
questionable. Instead, we're convinced of the following:


First: The Gospel of Thomas is not "Gnostic," but a "gospel" compiled
from various sayings traditions, probably around the end of the first
century (my dating).


Second: Instead of being "at odds" with what we find in the canonical
gospels, the Gospel of Thomas presupposes what Mark tells of Jesus'
life, teachings, death, and resurrection-and claims to go beyond it.
Thomas depicts the Risen Jesus speaking not of "forgiveness of sins"
and "faith," but encouraging each one to "seek, and you shall find" a
relationship to God.


Both of your points are assumptions all of us, I would guess, were
taught in graduate school. The earliest editors of "Gnostic" texts
thought that they were dualistic, escapist, nihilistic, involving
"esoteric ideas about aeons and demiurges," as you yourself write. As
my former teacher at Harvard, Krister Stendhal, said to me recently
about these texts, "we just thought these were weird."


But can you point to any evidence of such "esoteric ideas" in Thomas?
Anything about "aeons and demiurges"? Those first editors, not finding
such evidence, assumed that this just goes to show how sneaky heretics
are-they do not say what they mean. So when they found no evidence for
such nihilism or dualism-on the contrary, the Gospel of Thomas speaks
continually of God as the One good "Father of all"-they just read these
into the text. Some scholars, usually those not very familiar with
these sources, still do.


So first let's talk about "Gnosticism"-and what I used to (but no
longer) call "Gnostic Gospels." I have to take responsibility for part
of the misunderstanding. Having been taught that these texts were
"Gnostic," I just accepted it, and even coined the term "Gnostic
gospels," which became the title of my book. I agree with you that we
have no evidence for what we call "Gnosticism" from the first century,
and have learned from our colleagues that what we thought about
"Gnosticism" has virtually nothing to do with a text like the Gospel of
Thomas-or, for that matter, with the New Testament Gospel of John which
our teachers said also showed "Gnostic influences."


What we came to see, Ben, when we worked carefully comparing the
various gospel texts, is that we do find in Thomas, just as you say,
many resonances with the New Testament gospels. Many sayings in Thomas
are either the same or similar to their parallels in Matthew and Luke
("blessed are the poor"; the parables of the sower, of the "pearl of
great price," the fisherman, and many others). Second, Thomas holds
other sayings that resonate with the language of the Gospel of John
(e.g. "I am the light of the world...")


You conclude that these are all taken from written New Testament
sources-which brings you to an early second century date. However, I
tend to agree with Harvard scholar Helmut Koester (Ancient Christian
Gospels) and others: whoever put together the Gospel of Thomas
apparently had access to the kind of sources Matthew and Luke used to
write their gospels. Koester suggests that the Gospel of Thomas comes
from about the year 50, and so is the earliest of the New Testament
gospels. I hold to a more conservative dating, since I think Thomas
also includes what looks like later sayings tradition, parallel with
the Gospel of John. I think a date of 90-100 fits both the sources and
the papyrus evidence, although these dates are only educated guesses,
as you know.


A further indication that Thomas is not "Gnostic," by your own
definition, is that it does use the Old Testament in a very positive
way-just as the Gospel of John does. Both frame their views of the
gospel with midrashic interpretations of Genesis 1. Recognizing this
has led scholars far beyond what you learned as a graduate student from
Bruce Metzger, and what I learned in graduate school. That's why those
of us working in this field-including Birger Pearson-have come to
recognize these texts not as "Gnostic"-whatever that fuzzy term
meant-but as early Christian, and immersed, like all the early
Christian sources we know, in the Hebrew Bible.


Early Christian sources-bishop Irenaeus, for example-tell us that the
Gospel of Thomas is one of those that some Christians revered; that's
why we think that the movement was much more diverse than any of us
were taught, or than anyone imagined before the 1945 discovery of these
texts. Indeed, the Nag Hammadi texts were originally copied and read by
Christian monks in one of the first monasteries to be established in
Egypt.


Second: As you say, the New Testament books focus on "belief in the
atoning death of Jesus." The Gospel of Thomas, indeed, is different; it
begins with the words, "these are the secret words which the Living
Jesus spoke." It's true that the teachings of Thomas are not about
"belief in the atoning death of Jesus." Here, instead, the "Living
Jesus" encourages his disciples to "seek, and you shall find," adding
that "the one who seeks should not stop seeking until he finds; and
when he finds, he will be troubled; and when he is troubled, he will be
astonished..." This collection of teachings urges not "speculation," as
we were taught, but seeking God-and suffering through the process of
discovering one's relationship to "the living Jesus" and to God.


Like you, I was taught a generation ago that this kind of teaching was
antithetical to what we find in "the real gospels." Since that time,
however, many scholars have realized that the Gospel of Thomas would
make no sense to anyone who was not already familiar with the account
of Jesus' activities, his death, and resurrection as, for example, the
Gospel of Mark tells it. Like John's gospel, Thomas' apparently assumes
that the reader already knows about Jesus, and knows about his public
teaching. Otherwise, offering his "secret teaching" would make no sense
at all. But for those who already have accepted the public teaching,
certain disciples are ready to learn the "secret teaching" which goes
beyond this. John's gospel, of course, relates such intimate teaching
in chapters 13-18, in what we call the "farewell discourses" that Jesus
directs to his disciples alone.


Instead of offering a wholly different teaching, then, the gospel of
Thomas, like John's "farewell discourses," claims to go beyond what one
already has learned. Nothing here suggests that faith does not
matter-in fact, it is assumed; but what is also assumed is that some
will now want to go beyond belief-beyond the elementary teaching-in a
process of spiritual inquiry. Teachers like this cited Paul as their
model-as in I Corinthians 2 he declares that, so long as he was
speaking to immature Christians-"babies in Christ"-he "decided to
acknowledge nothing, among you, except Jesus Christ crucified,"
although, he says, "we do speak wisdom among those who are mature-the
hidden wisdom of God, which God ordained before the ages (aeons) for
our glory." Paul goes on to allude to mat