How the gospel story grew in the telling

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

For Christians, 'tis the season for shepherds and kings, animals and angels to gather together around the manger — at least in countless Nativity scenes around the world. But it takes more than any one of the four Gospels to assemble that precise tableau: The three kings (actually, astrologers) come from Matthew, while the shepherds come from Luke.

Did we say four Gospels? Actually, in the early centuries of the Christian church, there were quite a few more than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. For example, references to the ox and the donkey surrounding the infant Jesus come not from the four accepted gospels, but from an also-ran scripture called the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.

Still other apocryphal texts portray the child Jesus as a divine "Dennis the Menace" — smarting off to his neighbors, giving his playmates a swift kick, even striking an offending youngster dead and then grudgingly bringing him back to life. A lot of these ancient stories have come to be considered heretical. Nevertheless, they get a fresh airing in "The Secret Lives of Jesus," a documentary premiering Sunday on the National Geographic Channel.

The show, part of a TV triple-header timed to coincide with the buildup to Christmas, illustrates that the gospel story has been added to, fine-tuned and pruned through the centuries.

For some scriptural scholars, even the texts that have been excluded from the Christian canon have lessons to teach: "It's important for us to read all these texts, not just the texts that have been deemed orthodox," said Marvin Meyer, a religious-studies professor at Chapman University who has written extensively about the lesser-known texts.

For others, however, the apocryphal scriptures reveal more about the state of the Christian church in the centuries after its founding than about its true origins. "I would not say that we learn anything new about the historical Jesus or the birth of Jesus," said Ben Witherington, a professor of New Testament interpretation at the Asbury Theological Seminary.

Both Meyer and Witherington get their say in "The Secret Lives of Jesus" — and since this is "the season," after all, Witherington also appears in yet another holiday history lesson this weekend, "The Mystery of Christmas" on CBS' "48 Hours." In fact, this is prime time for reviewing the Nativity and the historical Jesus, on TV as well as in film ("The Nativity Story") and in the newsmagazines (Newsweek as well as U.S. News & World Report).

This season, there's an extra seasoning of controversy, sparked by the Hollywood-inspired fuss over "The Da Vinci Code" as well as this year's unveiling of the Gospel of Judas, a second-century retelling of Christ's Passion from a traditional villain's point of view. The National Geographic Channel will rebroadcast its "Gospel of Judas" documentary on Monday, and on Tuesday it will air "Secrets of Jerusalem's Holiest Sites," a new look at the Holy City's role in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The controversial theme of the Gospel of Judas — that Jesus actually asked Judas Iscariot to betray him as part of the grand plan for salvation — almost pales in comparison with some of the other stories brought to life in the "Secret Lives":

• The Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells of a Jesus who turns clay sparrows into real birds ... who argues with his parents ... who works magic on a miscut length of wood to get his father out of a jam ... who causes one playmate to wither up and die, but raises another from the dead.
• Mary Magdalene is identified as Jesus' closest disciple in the Gnostic gospels of Philip and Mary, sparking speculation over the centuries (including in "The Da Vinci Code") that they were husband and wife.
• The Apocalypse of Peter quotes the divine Jesus as saying that he didn't really die on the cross, but that only his "fleshly part" experienced the Passion. Other Gnostic texts claim that Jesus actually traded places with Simon the Cyrene — an innocent bystander who is depicted in the canonical gospels as helping Jesus carry the cross.
• Much more recently, a book published by Russian doctor-explorer Nikolas Notovitch in 1894 purports to be the account of Jesus' youthful years in the Himalayas, learning at the feet of Buddhist and Hindu holy men. Notovitch said the tale came from an ancient Tibetan document titled "The Life of Issa."

Most of these apocryphal stories aren't taken seriously by the scholars. "None of them come from before the latter part of the second century," Witherington said. "They're the ancient equivalent of Harlequin romance novels."

But they make for a good story in "Secret Lives of Jesus."

"It's like one-stop shopping for the apocryphal Jesus," Witherington joked. "But it really doesn't tell us about history."

MORE FROM SCIENCE

Science Section Front

Animals have personalities, too Creation Museum draws big crowds Scientists confirm shark's ‘virgin birth’ Super-sized dinos had super-sized stomachs Microscope shows how embryos grow Sounds of volcanic eruption recreated Satellites collect data on sea temperatures Mysterious DNA survives eons of evolution Scientist warns cash woes 'devastating' to science 'It's not science fiction — it's even cooler' Science Section Front   Add Science headlines to your news reader: