The most important Gospels from Nag Hammadi are The Gospel of Phillip, The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth and The Gospel of Mary Magdallene. These Gospels present a somewhat different picture of what Jesus taught then that presented in the Synoptics. These four non-canonical Gospels are the core of what has become known as The Gnostic Gospels. For the purpose of our discussion, we will treat them as they were treated in the earliest Centuries of Christianity: of equal value to the Synoptics. As I said in my previous post, most of the earliest heresies, which are the progenitors of all the later heresies, fall under the rubric of Gnosticism. So, what is Gnosticism really?Gnosticism, according to the orthodox tradition, is presented as a heresy or group of heresies which to claims to have special knowledge about the teachings of Jesus. This special knowledge is often characterized by orthodoxy as being secret and not to be shared by everyone, especially the uninitiated. In reality, Gnosis is NOT a special form of knowledge, but rather a unique way of gaining knowledge.

I am not going to offer an entire course in Epistemology, the Philosophy of Knowing, on this blog. But I will offer a short summary of how the early Greek philosophers, who provided the philosophical underpinnings for the western world view, understood how humans gain knowledge. For them, all knowledge was divided into two basic categories. The first is Episteme, which is basically theoretical knowledge, what we call scientific knowledge. The other is Gnosis, which is intuitive or inspirational knowledge, what we call mystical. Gnosis is gained through meditation and self-reflection. Episteme is gained through empirical evidence, including research and education.

Most, if not all, of the great Gnostic theologians were first and foremost great mystics. Unlike the orthodox theologians, the Gnostics stressed personal religious experience, I.E. mystical knowledge, as the basis of religious authority rather then the authority of tradition, I.E. theoretical knowledge. Mystical knowledge is the basis for Charismatic Authority, which means the basis of Gnostic claims of authority are grounded in the person, not the office,  which is the basis of orthodox.

The major difference between Christian Gnosticism and Christian Orthodoxy was that Orthodoxy by rhe xecond century had established a basic hierarchy(bishop, priest and deacon) who’s authority was grounded not in the personal charisma of the titleholder but rather the power of the position. This power was rooted in the tradition of apostolic succession, I.E. each deacon, priest or bishop was ordained into his office by someone who’s ordination could be trace back to one of the original disciples. In the early church the bishops were seen as the direct descendants/successors of the disciples.

The Catholic Tradition has taught from the second century to the present that Peter was the first witness of the Resurrection, although both Synoptic and Gnostic Gospels provide evidence to the contrary. The alternative evidence states that Mary Magdellane was the first to see and speak to the Risen Christ, and that Peter, along with several others, did not see Christ until later in the day. For whatever reasons (which we will discuss in our posts on Magdellane), Orthodoxy shows to ignore that evidence, and the Catholic Church, uses the argument that Peter was the first witness as grounds for the primacy of the bishop of Rome – The Pope. Elaine Pagels, in her book the Gnostic Gospels, makes a very powerful argument for the necessity of the Orthodox Christian doctrine of bodily Resurrection in order to establish the tripartite hierarchy mentioned above. It is the fact that the disciples were the only valid witnesses to the actual Resurrected Jesus in bodily form. The Orthodox Doctrine of the Resurrection does not allow for any other witnesses other then those of the original disciples and perhaps Paul.

The Gnostics had a more charismatic view of the Resurrection. They believe that bodily Resurrection as taught by the Orthodox was a misinterpretation of what actually happened. They taught that bodily death was not necessary for resurrection. They saw resurrection more as a spiritual event rather then a physical one. They also taught that one could experience the Resurrected Jesus mystically if one was not alive at the time of the actual Resurrection. The implications of this Gnostic understanding of the Resurrection are extraordinary, and something that Pagels does not discuss, but we will in a later post.

I am not sure wether the Orthodox Doctrine came first or the Orthodox Doctrine of the Resurrection was first. This is one of those “chicken or egg” questions, which probably will never be answered difinitivly, however, I do agree with Pagels that there is a very close link between the Orthodox struggle for power and the development of Orthodox theology. The whole history of Christian Heresy can be understood as the struggle between charismatic authority and bureaucratic authority. Obviously, this will be a major theme of our discussions.

I feel that this dichotomy between Charisma and Bureaucracy, between Gnostic and Orthodox, is rooted in some very ancient western philosophical ideas that date back to ancient Greece. Remember that most of the earliest Christian polemicists were grounded in Greek philosophy, specifically Aristotle and Plato. The first of these philosophical assumptions, which we will discuss next time, is between Gnosis and Episteme, intuition and deductive reasoning.

As I have said in other posts and pages, history is written by the victors. In the case of Christianity, the victors claim to be the truth, orthodoxy. Any group or individual not ascribing to the “truth” of Orthodoxy is considered heretical. However, as we shall see, Orthodoxy is not defined by the correctness, in any absolute sense, of their it’s beliefs. Rather, Orthodoxy becomes Orthodoxy because it wield more political power then any other group. Orthodoxy, to put things in Weberian terms, develops a bureaucracy, an institutionalization hierarchy that wields a great deal of political power, while charismatic groups are forced underground and even completely suppressed by that bureaucracy.

I do not ascribe to the argument made by the Orthodox that the reason they became Orthodoxy and gained the associated political power was because they were the proponents of the true message of Christ. Far from it. It is my contention, which future posts will develop, that Christian Orthodoxy has totally distorted the true message of Jesus in order to gain political power. This grab for power dates all the way back to the time of Saint Paul the Apostle. In my opinion, The First Council of Jerusalem was nothing more then a power struggle among certain of the leaders of Christian factions, specifically Peter and Paul. As we shall see in the next few posts, the New Testament bears witness to at least three separate Christian factions: those Christians who held to their Jewish roots, the Pauline Christians, and the radicals chastised by Paul in his letters to Galatia, Corinth and the Thessalonica.

I strongly recommend that any of you who have a serious interest in the early history of Christianity read Pagel’s book. In her summary of the research on Gnosticism it becomes apparent that much of what is conflated under the rubric of Gnosticism is not nessecarily Christian. Much of the Orthodox criticism of the Gnostic Heresies uses non-Christian Gnostic texts, practices and beliefs as ammunition against Christian Gnostics. This is true even of the earliest Christian apologists such as Tertullian and Irenaeus. We shall focus sharply on only Christian Gnosticism in our discussion of the early heresies. It is my contention that the battle between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the first millennium can be understood as the battle between bureaucracy and charisma, with Orthodoxy being the former and Gnosticism being the latter. Gnosticism, as we shall see, puts it’s main emphasis on what Orthodoxy labels “secret” knowledge, but in reality, Gnosis is not secret knowledge, but rather a different form of knowledge, knowledge that is not learned by the transmission of a tradition, but rather through personal experience, I.E. that is mystical reflection. As we shall see, Orthodoxy has real problems with Christian Mystics, mainly because they claim authority and truth that is outside the accepted tradition, which makes them a real challenge to bureaucratic authority.

If you’ve not read it already, I recommend you go back and read Charismatic Authority of the Early Church.

So, what did Jesus mean when he said he came to “complete the Law”? It is my opinion that he saw himself as the completion of the Law in that he was the first, and therefore the archetype, to live up to what was expected of humans from God in terms of the original Covenant. This also explains why Jesus so often referred to himself as “Son of Man”. The Hebrew word for man is adama, from which we obviously Adam. Adam was the first man and he broke faith with god by eaten the forbidden fruit. For this Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden and humans were condemned to die.

Ancient Judaism does not really have any real concept of an afterlife. People just die and that’s the end. Because Jesus completes the Covenant that removes the taint of original sin and those who follow Jesus’ example are, like Jesus, granted life everlasting. One of the great heresies of Christianity, which we will discuss in detail elsewhere, is that Jesus was born “without sin” (Immaculate Conception). To foreshadow a bit more, I believe Jesus no more divine then any other human. His message was to reawaken our own understanding of humanity’s relationship to the Divine.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:17-19

What follows will cause some “good” Christians serious umbrage. Some will quote The Gospel of John and the Letters of Saint Paul to counter my interpretation however I want to make very clear the rules of engagement: my argument is based solely on the words of Jesus himself as they are presented Synoptic Gospels. As I will argue in future posts both John and Paul offer heretical interpretations of the Kerygma.

Secondly, since this blog is not intended to be a scholarly work at the level of a doctoral dissertation, I am not going to include a lot of the secondary sources that helped shape my thinking. Suffice it to say that that list would be quite extensive. I am not sure I could even remember them all. What was Jesus referring to when he used “The Law”? My feeling is, given his feelings about the pharisees who were the Jewish legalists of that time, The Law as Jesus uses the term refers specifically to the Ten Commandments. Jesus summarized The Law as follows:

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

Luke 10:27

Jesus said he came to fulfill The Law, not to destroy it. What did he mean by that? In order to answer that, we need to understand a bit more deeply what The Law meant to first-century Jews. That answer will be a bit lengthy so we will stop here and continue in part two.

The Catholic tradition uses the works of Eusebius(4th century) and Clement of Alexandria(Late 2nd century), as well as Scripture, for early church historical orthodoxy. According to Eusebius and Clement, James the Greater was one of the sons of Zebedee, and the brother of Saint John, who may or may have been the Evangelist. This James, according to the tradition, was beheaded in 44 CE, roughly 14 years after the Crucification and about 6 years prior to the first Council of Jerusalem mentioned in the letters of Saint Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. We will be discussing this Council in greater detail when we get to Saint Paul. So, Saint James the Greater could not have been the James, the brother of Jesus, who mediated the dispute about circumcision between Paul and Peter.

The catholic encyclopedia identifies James, son of Alpheus, as being the same person as James, brother of Jesus. That makes sense since Joseph at the time of Jesus’ birth was already considered an old man, He probably died sometime after Jesus was twelve, since he is mentioned as being present when Jesus was presented at the temple in Jerusalem. It is highly unlikely that he would have been alive thirty years after the Netivity. So James the lesser would be in modern terminology the half-brother of Jesuswith Mary being his mother and Alpheus, Mary’s second husband, being his father, Tradition believes that James the Lesser, the accepted first bishop of Jerusalem, was also martyred.

Therefore, we can safely conclude that Saint James the Lesser is the James mentioned in Acts. It is this James that resolves the dispute between Peter and Paul over circumcision. We will return to discuss this dispute in greater detail when we discuss Saint Paul. It is my opinion that the first great Christian heresy is the Pauline interpretation of Jesus’ message and Jesus’ understanding of who and what he was. Before we can discuss the Pauline heresy we need to look at how Jesus understood Mosaic Law and his relationship to The Law.

The following is excerpted from Wikipedia, The Free Online Encyclopedia. It provides some evidence that James the Lesser(aka also known as James the Just) may have been a Jewish High Priest. If this is true, this raises some very interesting questions about the orthodox traditions’ attitude toward Jews. We will discuss these questions in a later post.

The canonical writings of the New Testament, as well as other written sources from the Early Church, provide some insights into James’ life and his role in the Early Church. There is mention of him in the Gospel of John and the early portions of the Acts of the Apostles. The Synoptics mention his name, but no further information. However, the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles provide evidence that James was an important figure in the Christian community of Jerusalem.
Jerome, in his De Viris Illustribus, argued that James was not Jesus’ brother but his cousin, son of Mary of Cleophas, “the sister of the mother of our Lord of whom John makes mention in his book.”[23] After the Passion, Jerome wrote, the Apostles selected James as Bishop of Jerusalem. In describing James’ ascetic lifestyle, De Viris Illustribus, quotes Hegesippus’ account of James from the fifth book of Hegesippus’ lost Commentaries:
After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called James. This one was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels’ knees.[24]
Since it was unlawful for any but the high priest of the temple to enter the Holy of Holies, and then only once a year on Yom Kippur, Jerome’s quotation from Hegesippus indicates that James was considered a high priest. The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions suggest this.[25]

Below are the references to a follower of Jesus named James from the Gospel of Mark. The reason I start with Mark is that it is generally recognized as the earliest of the Synoptics and many experts consider it the cleanest of the gospels, the one closest to the actual events and words of Jesus.

Mark Chapter 3: The calling of the Twelve

13 And going up into a mountain, he called unto him whom he would himself: and they came to him. 14 And he made that twelve should be with him, and that he might send them to preach. 15 And he gave them power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils. 16 And to Simon he gave the name Peter: 17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he named them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder. 18 And Andrew and Philip, and Bartholomew and Matthew, and Thomas and James of Alpheus, and Thaddeus and Simon the Cananean: 19 And Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

Note that Mark’s list includes two persons named James: one is the son of Zebedee, the other the son of Alphaeus. Neither one can be the brother of Jesus, unless, of course, Joseph died when Jesus was quite young and Mary remarried, which is a plausible possibility since Joseph was an older man when Jesus was born.

Mark Chapter 6: Jesus returns home

1 And going out from thence, he went into his own country; and his disciples followed him. 2 And when the Sabbath was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were in admiration at his doctrine, saying: How came this man by all these things? and what wisdom is this that is given to him, and such mighty works as are wrought by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joseph, and Jude, and Simon? are not also his sisters here with us? And they were scandalized in regard of him. 4 And Jesus said to them: A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and in his own house, and among his own kindred. 5 And he could not do any miracles there, only that he cured a few that were sick, laying his hands upon them. He could not… Not for want of power, but because he would not work miracles in favor of obstinate and incredulous people, who were unworthy of such favors. 6 And he wondered because of their unbelief, and he went through the villages round about teaching.

This verse lists the brothers of Jesus, including one named James, but there is no mention of this James being a disciple or an Apostle. In fact, it appears to me that his brothers and sisters remained in “his own country” – Nazareth, perhaps? – while Jesus became an interant preacher. So, now we have three people named Jesus.

Mark Chapter 15: The witnesses to the Crucifixion

40 And there were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalen and Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joseph and Salome, 41 Who also when he was in Galilee followed him and ministered to him, and many other women that came up with him to Jerusalem. 42 And when evening was now come (because it was the Parasceve, that is, the day before the Sabbath), 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a noble counselor, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, came and went in boldly to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. 44 But Pilate wondered that he should be already dead. And sending for the centurion, he asked him if he were already dead. 45 And when he had understood it by the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. 46 And Joseph, buying fine linen and taking him down, wrapped him up in the fine linen and laid him in a sepulcher which was hewed out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the sepulcher. 47 And Mary Magdalen and Mary the mother of Joseph, beheld where he was laid.

Here we learn that James, the son of Alphaeus, had a mother named Mary, and a brother named Joseph. In the previous excerpt listing the brothers of Jesus, the names James and Joseph are cited as two of his brothers. Also note that Mark does not mention Mary, the mother of Jesus, as being present, unless Mary, the wife of Alphaeus, mentioned in this last excerpt is the Virgin Mary, which would make James the Lesser the brother of Jesus. Well, technically his half-brother, but in societies like ancient Israel that practice the levirate, the younger brother of a deceased man marrying his brother’s widow, all children, no matter which brother was the biological father, are considered brothers and sisters as long as they have the same mother.

So we can make a reasonable argument for consolidating all the references to James in Mark’s gospel to actually be references to two men only – James the Greater and James the Lesser. James the Greater was the brother of John, probably the older brother [the "greater"] and James the Lesser was the younger brother of Jesus ["the lesser"]. Those terms, which probably are mistranslations of the original Aramaic or koine Greek terms, were often used to refer to age relationships rather than any size relationships.

Now let’s look at the references to James in the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew Chapter 10: Listing of the Twelve

1 And having called his twelve disciples together, he gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of diseases, and all manner of infirmities. 2 And the names of the twelve Apostles are these: The first, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, 3 James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the publican, and James the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus, 4 Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

Matthew here presents the same two James as Mark did in his listing, with the same respective fathers. This can be taken as either independent confirmation of Mark’s list or, more likely. Matthew used Mark as a source for his gospel.

Matthew Chapter 13: Jesus comes home

Matthew Chapter 27: the witnesses to the Crucifixion

Luke Chapter 6: Listing the Twelve

Now that we have all the textual references to followers/disciples of Jesus named James we need to sort out who’s who. That is what we will try to do in the next post or two. Until we get to out discussion of Mary Magdalene, the posts will be a bit slower in coming, sense I need to do the research first.

P. S. I now have a Facebook page, so feel free to check it out, link in the sidebar.

When I first started thinking about examining the leadership of the Christian community immediately following the death and ascension of Jesus, I thought that this article about James, the brother of Jesus and the acknowledged leader of the Church in Jerusalem, at least. would be a fairly straightforward article, but when I started doing the research on James, I really got a lot more than I bargained for.

In the canonical texts of the New Testament, specifically the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters of Paul, who will be a central figure in our discussion of the earliest Christian leadership, there are references to a number of important figures named James, some who are identified as Apostles. The orthodox commentaries tend to identify these various persons as separate individuals, but I’m not so sure. I think an argument can be made that they may all refer to no more than a couple of individuals, and perhaps even all be the same Saint James, the brother of Jesus, the immediate successor to the mantle of leadership.

I am going to present the various canonical texts that mention the name James and we will try to sort things out. In the process of doing this, we may get some clues as to the politics involved in the earliest Christian communities and our research should shed some light on the First Council of Jerusalem, which set the tome for the political developments within Christianity for the first three or four centuries, until the conversion of Constantine the Great, which caused a major shift in Church politics and the relationship between Christian orthodoxy and Christian heresy.

As I have said in many places and many times, history is written by the winners and Christian history, especially the history of Christian heresy [heresiology] has, for the most part, been written by historians who are very much grounded in Christian orthodoxy. That means the assumptions they make and how they look at Christian events and Christian texts, especially those designated as Christian heresy, are colored by their belief in the teachings of orthodoxy. That is to be expected. We all need some kind of framework to use as a starting point for interpreting data Someone who works from different framework, say someone like me who is more grounded in Christian heresy than Christian orthodoxy, will see the same data in a different light.

For example, those who are grounded in Christian orthodoxy will be less critical of the canonical texts than someone grounded in Christian heresy. Since orthodoxy recognizes the Gospel of John as canonical, it may not see certain verses in that gospel as, not so much the truth of what Jesus really taught, but rather as redactions that were added to put forth and support the author’s theological agenda and/or to promote himself as an authoritative source, as canonical, of the truth. If you have not read my article, What Is Truth, you may want to read it for a more detailed explanation of my point.

A Christian heretic will not only see these ulterior motives for the original author, but may also see later redactions and emendations of the original that were used to promote the political agenda of orthodoxy. After all, lots of the core theology and the language/metaphors that appear in John’s Gospel are not found in the Synoptics, but are found in many of the heretical gnostic gospels. Was the Gospel of John originally written by a Gnostic author and cleaned up later to make it more acceptable to orthodoxy? That is one question that is a recurring theme of this blog.

Finally, I want to talk about lumpers and splitters. I was first introduced to this concept as an undergraduate in anthropology. When I first started studying anthropology, my interest was physical anthropology, especially human evolution. I was very much interested in the various species of australopithecines, especially those species presented as precursors of the genus homo, humans. With the discovery of Lucy and other specimens of australopithecus afarensis from the Afar, I got really interested in the question of biological classification, especially when it comes to fossil humans. It turns out that there are those in the field who want to keep homo sapiens as unique as possible, even to the point of distancing them as much as possible from every other fossil branch of the evolutionary tree. These splitters want every fossil species assigned to any genus, even a new one, other than homo, even if the evidence strongly suggests that the fossil could be a direct descendant of modern humans. Lumpers tend to want to keep related fossil species all in the same genus, which is what is done with other non-humanoid species.

I am a lumper more than a splitter I look for connections, for resemblances, for affinities. And that is how I am going to approach the question of who was/were the various people named James in the New Testament.

Next time, we will look at the various verses of the New Testament, excluding the Gospel of John, that refer to a person named James. We will look hard at trying to lump them as much as possible. Once we have established how many Jameses there really were, in the following post we will look at what John, who was the brother of one of the Jameses, and see what sense we can make of what John has to say about James. In the process we may learn a little about John himself.

The death of a charismatic leader is always a catastrophic event for the followers of that leader. As the Gospels clearly show, Jesus’s “departure” certainly was catastrophic for them immediately following the crucifixion. For the sake of discussion, we will accept the crucifixion as historical fact, but the resurrection will be relegated to matters of faith and therefore, open for challenge and discussion.

On the third day after the crucifixion, according to all traditions, heretical and orthodox, the first eyewitness accounts of the resurrection start to circulate among Jesus’ followers. According to the canonical Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the canonicals, and several of the “Gnostic Gospels” found at Nag Hammadi, the first person to encounter the resurrected Jesus was Mary Magdalen. She reported her encounter to other followers. Some accounts say she went and told Peter first, but the accuracy of that is open for discussion, because, as we shall see. there are political reasons-the primacy of the bishop of Rome] that raise some serious questions about whether Mary went to tell Peter first.

Mary Magdalen is one of my favorite characters in the Christian tradition and one of the most enigmatic. In the canonical Scriptures she is portrayed as a whore who was saved from stoning for adultery by Jesus and became one of his followers after she repented her sins. But in some non-canonical gospels, she is presented as the most favored of his followers. There is even a “heretical” tradition that Magdalen was the wife of Jesus and the mother of his children. We will discuss who Mary may have been in greater detail in an upcoming post.

Before you all dismiss this post as nothing more than idle speculation or the ravings of a heretic, remember that history, in this case the canonical Scriptures and the canonical tradition, were written by the victors, orthodoxy, in what we shall see was a struggle for authority [power] in the early Christian community between those who wanted authority legitimized by charismatic gifts and those who wanted authority based on bureaucratic legitimacy. This is what the struggle between the so-called Gnostic heresies and orthodoxy were about.

When Jesus was crucified and, as all Christian affirm, was resurrected and ascended to the Father, that left a vacancy, politically speaking, in the leadership of the first-century Christian community. Who would take over as the new authority figure in the early church? According to tradition and the Acts of the Apostles, the immediate successor to Jesus was his brother James, but there is little mention of his leadership in canonical Scripture. Rather, the leadership, according to Acts at least, seems to be vested in Simon Peter and in Paul.

What happened to James as successor to Jesus? According to Acts, James was acknowledged, somewhat perfunctorily, as the leader of the Church in Jerusalem. Why was James, who supposedly was the brother of Jesus, shunted aside in favor of Peter, who denied Jesus three times, and Paul, a Pharisee, a group that, according to the canonical scriptures. Jesus considered “a nest of vipers.” Also, again according the canonical scripture, Paul. prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus, was a fervent persecutor of the followers of Jesus.

By the end of the second century, the orthodox Christian church had developed the three basic pillars that define orthodox Christianity whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant: the Apostolic Creed, the Scriptural canon, and the basic bureaucratic structure of deacons, priests, and bishops.

Finally, I need to give credit where credit is due. The inspiration for and some of the basic ideas in this post came from my initial reading of Elaine Pagel’s The Gnostic Gospels. I also read Dan Brown’s book, The DaVinci Code, although it is classified as fiction, like any other good historical novel, it is based on some very solid historical research. I found it a terrific read with lots of very interesting insights into the history of the early Church, although I found the “thriller” plot line getting a bit strained, but that may be more personal prejudice than any failing on Brown’s part. I have never been a big fan of that genre.

What we will do then is look at the four potential successors to Jesus’ Charismatic Authority: James, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalen, in that order.