Can chatbots provide useful perspective? The Gospel of Mary

I've spent a few posts laying important groundwork exploring the limitations and biases of the current-generation chatbots. While sometimes their training materials are liabilities that cause preconceptions or limitations to what they see, at other times their training materials contain useful insights that may come to light. Here are some examples from the conversation I had with a bot on the text known as the Gospel of Mary. 

I'll start with a standard question that I ask the bots whenever it is focused on one of the Biblical or alternative gospels:

Me: Using only the PDF, to what extent is the material religious, and to what extent is it philosophical?

PDF: The material in the PDF is primarily spiritual and philosophical in nature. The text consists of spiritual teachings and dialogues between characters that explore topics such as the nature of matter, the soul, and the essence of every nature. While there are some references to religious figures and concepts, such as the Son of Man and sin, these are presented in a philosophical context rather than a strictly religious one. Overall, the text appears to be more concerned with exploring spiritual and philosophical ideas than with promoting any particular religious tradition or practice.

While the bot's answer does not cite sources, it communicates the general assessment the Gospel of Mary is philosophical and/or spiritual, not a religious text. But the contents of that spirituality do not seem to be on the same topics that are typically covered in Christian material. I've emphasized the part of the answer above that identifies some of the main topics of the Gospel of Mary, and use the bot's wording in my follow-up question:

Me: Based on any information available to you, what philosophical traditions share a focus on the nature of matter, the soul, and the essence of every nature?

PDF: There are several philosophical traditions that share a focus on the nature of matter, the soul, and the essence of every nature. One such tradition is Neoplatonism, which was a school of thought that emerged in the third century AD and drew heavily on the ideas of Plato. Neoplatonists believed in a hierarchy of being that extended from matter at the bottom to God at the top, with the soul occupying an intermediate position. They also believed that everything in existence had an underlying essence or nature that could be understood through contemplation and philosophical inquiry.

Another tradition that shares a focus on these topics is Gnosticism, which was a diverse set of religious and philosophical movements that emerged in the first few centuries AD. Gnostics believed in a dualistic worldview in which matter was seen as inherently flawed or evil, while spirit or soul was seen as divine. They also believed in the existence of hidden knowledge or gnosis that could be attained through spiritual practices and contemplation.

Finally, some aspects of Eastern philosophy, such as Taoism and Buddhism, also explore similar themes related to the nature of matter, consciousness, and reality. These traditions often emphasize concepts such as impermanence, emptiness, and non-dualism as ways to understand the true nature of existence.

We know that those first-generation Christians who learned directly from Jesus carried his message to other places, often starting in the synagogues speaking to those who shared their religious views and traditions. Once they got outside the synagogue doors in Greece or Egypt, though, they were no longer speaking to people with a Jewish worldview. How did those other cultures hear the message? Without framework-level ideas of sin and sacrifice structuring their understanding, how does a Neoplatonist or a Gnostic understand the concepts of sin and redemption?

Me: Using only the PDF, what are the main themes identifiable in the text?

PDF: Based on the content of the PDF, some of the main themes that can be identified are:

1. The interconnectedness of all things and the importance of seeking harmony.
2. The concept that sin is created by people's actions that go against their true nature.
3. The idea that healing comes from returning to the root of our essence.
4. The pursuit of spiritual enlightenment and release from worldly attachments.
5. The importance of listening and understanding the teachings in order to achieve peace and silence.

The language is noticeably different than what is used in the Bible. Let's start with the bot's second point: the idea that sin is created by people's actions that go against their true nature. If we take "true nature" to mean something like "unfallen humanity", then "actions that go against their true nature" is a fair definition of sin. The Christian using a Jewish framework has ideas of "repentance" as turning back to God, "sanctification" as spiritual purification and striving for it, "fellowship" as being restored to that right relationship with God and other people. Those same ideas show up in different language -- in a different framework -- in the Gospel of Mary. While we may think of "reconnecting to God spiritually as it was originally meant to be", the Neoplatonist or Gnostic might hear that "healing comes from returning to the root of our essence." I'll leave it as an exercise to any interested reader to connect some of the other dots.

Some parts do get lost in translation to that other worldview. The idea that "healing is returning to the root of our essence" is a recognizable way of thinking about repentance and new life. Given that it's important to return to the root of our essence in that worldview, how does it identify that root? The Gospel of Mary mentions, "That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature in order to restore it to its root." In the Gospel of Mary, Jesus has lost his identity -- he is never mentioned by name, never identified. The "Savior" speaks briefly at the start of the surviving text; for most of the text the Savior is discussed in his absence. Strikingly, the words "God" and "Father" do not occur in the surviving text. Those concepts do not seem to have been a comfortable fit for the hearers who are grappling with what they have heard.

I'd like to bring out one more point in which the bot -- or its uncredited reference material -- has provided some insight. A large portion of the surviving text relays the story of Mary having a vision. In Biblical visions, typically the end point of the vision is a glimpse of God. In Mary's vision, instead, the end point was silence. I wanted to get some background on that:

Me: As you mentioned, the PDF includes a dialogue between the soul and Mary about release from worldly attachments and achieving silence. What spiritual or philosophical groups would see it as a worthy achievement to release worldly attachments and achieve silence?

PDF: Many spiritual and philosophical groups would see the achievement of releasing worldly attachments and achieving silence as a worthy goal. For example, in Eastern philosophy, practices such as meditation and mindfulness are often used to cultivate detachment from worldly concerns and achieve a state of inner peace or silence. In Buddhism, the concept of Nirvana refers to a state of ultimate liberation from suffering and attachment to the material world.

Similarly, in Western philosophy, the Stoics believed in cultivating an attitude of detachment from external events and focusing on developing inner virtue and wisdom. The Neoplatonists also emphasized the importance of contemplation and spiritual purification as a means of achieving union with the divine.

In addition, many religious traditions also emphasize the importance of releasing worldly attachments and achieving inner peace or silence. For example, in Christianity, contemplative practices such as prayer and meditation are often used to cultivate a deeper connection with God and achieve a state of inner stillness. In Hinduism, the concept of moksha refers to liberation from the cycle of birth and death through spiritual realization.

Overall, many spiritual and philosophical groups across different traditions see the achievement of releasing worldly attachments and achieving silence as a worthy goal that can lead to greater spiritual insight, inner peace, and liberation from suffering.

For the evangelists who first carried the message of Jesus outside of Israel, their first stop was the local synagogue where they typically found their first set of people who believed in Jesus as the promised Messiah. Once they branched out beyond the Jewish community, they found a different worldview where no one was waiting for a Messiah, and may not have believed in a good God who created the world. The dialogs in the Gospel of Mary -- and the existence of the Gospel of Mary -- seem to reflect an early stage in how the Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and possibly also Stoics first grappled with the message of Jesus -- and the accompanying ideas of healing and redemption.

The Gospel of Judas: Why Barbelo and Yaldabaoth are relevant to that conversation

End note, moved to the top: My apologies if some of the material in this post is not within the bounds of traditional Christian or Jewish belief. It comes with the territory of reading and commenting on the Gospel of Judas. Yet if we're going to assess that document at all, then we go into that territory.

Anyone reading the Gospel of Judas will come across the names of spiritual beings such as Barbelo and Yaldabaoth, along with a cosmic origin story involving emanations / generations and aeons. These unfamiliar names are flags that the Gospel of Judas comes from a certain Gnostic sub-group called Sethians. Without claiming any familiarity with Sethians myself, I'll pass along that some encyclopedia references suggest that the Sethians were a fusion of diaspora Hellenistic Judaism and some Greek beliefs. This fusion could have been early enough to predate Christianity, though the available sources so far suggest that without confidence, as the early range of possible origin dates for the Sethian movement. At any rate, it would mean the Sethians could have been an existing group in the Jewish diaspora at the time the evangelists brought the news of Jesus to the Jews scattered around the Roman empire.

On the consideration that the Sethians may have already been in the Jewish diaspora when the evangelists began to proclaim Jesus, I'd expect that the Sethians were less-than-mainstream in the Jewish community. More than one line of reasoning suggests it. We're familiar with several Jewish sects from the Jewish homeland from that era such as Pharisees and Sadducees -- not so much the Sethians. Also, some of the key figures in their cosmology such as Barbelo are never named in the Jewish cosmology of Genesis, never mentioned in Jewish Scriptures, never discussed in the conversations about Jewish controversies that are recorded in the New Testament. If we were to make a Venn diagram of mainstream Second Temple Judaism and its belief systems, several of the Sethian tenets about God / divinity seem to lie squarely outside the area shared by Pharisees and Sadducees, though with enough overlap to see that the Sethians owe some of their views to Judaism (or possibly: try to incorporate their Jewish ideas of origins into their Sethian views). 

The Sethian origin story (per the encyclopedia articles I've reviewed) has a sympathetic view of the serpent of Genesis and its role in humans' gain of knowledge, and possibly in humans' freedom from lesser religious systems. It is not a far reach to see a parallel with the Sethian Gospel of Judas and its sympathetic view of the betrayer's place in redemption. If the Sethians are as much about that alternative origin as the encyclopedia articles suggest, then the Gospel of Judas is a nearly-obvious interpretation of Jesus' betrayal from the Sethian point of view.

Why does this matter for us in our modern day? That depends on each person's interest in assessing the older texts that are presented as alternative gospels. I have mentioned before that I see some of these "alternative gospels" as coming from a stage in which the first Jewish-Christian evangelists met other cultures. While the New Testament shows us the Jewish disciples grappling with the Gentiles' non-Jewishness, it looks to me as though we see the opposite happening in some of the alternative gospels. We see non-Jewish cultures grapple with Jesus' Jewishness, or re-interpret Jesus within their own cultural and philosophical references. 

Because I have not at this point made any study of Sethians for their own sake, my knowledge of them is limited. Their worldview in the Gospel of Judas -- with layers of different generations/emanations and their respective divine beings -- comes across to this novice as complicated, tedious, and contrived. My underlying interest is where this puzzle piece fits into the classical world's understanding of Jesus. With its reliance on figures such as Barbelo and Yaldabaoth, the puzzle piece fits outside of the area that is bounded by Jewish Scriptures or grounded in Jewish Scriptures, edging into the esoteric beliefs of some sects in the diaspora.

Geographical References - Gnostic Gospels

I'm now trying my hand at some basic google maps to plot the geographical references in the Gnostic Gospels. The map below reflects some of my learning curve with google maps, no doubt. Amid the many modern-day features that come pre-loaded on these maps -- and it doesn't seem that google currently allows these pre-loaded features to be turned off -- I have plotted the geographical items referenced in the Gnostic Gospels. Some notes are in order and are placed below the map.



If we consider the classification "Gnostic Gospel" to be useful -- which is beyond the scope of this post -- then this map includes geographical references from all the documents that I have typically included in this classification: The Gospel of Thomas (Coptic), the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of Mary. Among those 4 documents, together they reference a total of 5 different geographical items, with Jerusalem being mentioned 3 times in the Gospel of Philip for a total of 8 references to those 5 different geographical items:

	Israel / Israelite	Jerusalem	Jordan	Judea / Judaea	Samaria / Samaritan
Gospel of Thomas (Coptic)	1	0	0	1	1
Gospel of Philip	0	3	1	0	1
Gospel of Truth
Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Mary are counted among the Gnostic Gospels, but do not mention any geographical locations.

For thoroughness' sake I'd want to mention why a reference to "Nazareth" isn't plotted even though the Gospel of Philip includes several Nazareth-related words: it is because the author of the Gospel of Philip does not seem to consider it to be a geographical reference. Here is the passage in question from the Gospel of Philip, for those who want to assess for themselves whether "Nazorean", "Nazarene", or "Nazara" was recognized by the Gospel of Philip's author as having any geographical significance:

The apostles who were before us had these names for him: "Jesus, the Nazorean, Messiah", that is, "Jesus, the Nazorean, the Christ". The last name is "Christ", the first is "Jesus", that in the middle is "the Nazarene". "Messiah" has two meanings, both "the Christ" and "the measured". "Jesus" in Hebrew is "the redemption". "Nazara" is "the Truth". "The Nazarene" then, is "the Truth". "Christ" has been measured. "The Nazarene" and "Jesus" are they who have been measured.

The map above has layers, and when reviewing it in google maps you should be able to turn on and off the layers corresponding to each particular gnostic gospel, to allow an individual view of a particular gospel, or a combined view of all (the default view).

Weighing the Alternative Gospels: The Gnostic Gospels

This post resumes a project that I had set aside and have always intended to continue: an objective, computerized statistical analysis of all the various documents that are called gospels, both those that are in the Bible and those that are not.

I had previously posted word clouds as an overview of several alternative gospels that are (or some contend might be) classified as Gnostic. This type of introduction is important because the word "gospel" may cause certain expectations for those familiar with the four Biblical gospels. In the Biblical gospels, the focus on Jesus' life and teachings results in documents where the most commonly-used word is "Jesus" in each of the four. That expectation of the word "gospel" may not apply to all of the alternative gospels, which do not always share that same focus on Jesus. I've included the most commonly-used word here for each of the Gnostic gospels, with links to more complete word clouds for those interested.

• The Gospel of Truth: most commonly-used word is "father"
• The Gospel of Thomas (possibly Gnostic) most commonly-used word is "Jesus"
• The Gospel of Mary most commonly-used word is "Savior"
• The Gospel of Philip most commonly-used word is "man"

For reference, there is also a Venn diagram of their major areas of focus showing the top 10 words used in each of those gospels. "Jesus" is included as the most common word for the Gospel of Thomas, but does not make the top 10 words for any of the other Gnostic documents covered here. It is important for those familiar with the Biblical gospels that we do not not carry forward too many assumptions about the content of the alternative gospels simply from the fact many scholars refer to them as gospels.

One important item lacking so far is any indication of their size. For instance, in the Biblical gospels, Luke is the longest (the NIV text that I used had around 24180 words) and Mark is the shortest (around 13840 words), by word count.

How much material is in the Gnostic gospels? This type of overview is important again as a perspective-check for people who are used to the word "gospel" referring to the canonical gospels, and so carry over some expectations to the alternative gospels, to find that those expectations may not apply.

• The Gospel of Truth 5650 words
• The Gospel of Thomas (possibly Gnostic) 5220 words
• The Gospel of Mary 1150 words
• The Gospel of Philip 9000 words

The Gnostic gospels are relatively shorter than the Biblical gospels. They range from the longest (the Gospel of Philip, where "Jesus" is not among the top 10 most common words) at about 2/3 the length of the Gospel of Mark, to the shortest (the Gospel of Mary) at less than 1/10 the length of the Gospel of Mark.

I hope to continue this series with other, non-Gnostic gospels in an upcoming post

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Technical notes: This initial comparison has been done using English texts for the word counts. Since the various documents are in different original languages, if we want to compare word counts at all then the comparison has to be in a common language, otherwise the different meaning-density of the languages would skew the results. So English will work as a common-denominator language for an initial survey of relative lengths. For the sake of the word counts, I did not include things that were not part of the original document's text such as introductory remarks, concluding remarks, chapter headings, or parenthetical references to other documents. I also excluded thing that were not actual words such as verse numbers or the standalone punctuation mark " - ". I did keep any ellipsis marks ("...") as part of the text for word counts, on the hopes that the translators were accurate there and it did stand for one or more words in a damaged ancient manuscript.) The results are rounded to the nearest 10 words.

Update: 02/04/2018: I found that some of the counts had been mis-transcribed here, and have updated accordingly.

Apocryphal gospels as "fan fiction"

I enjoy fan fiction -- you know, those fan-written stories for things that ended too soon. I've read fan fiction for book series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and for the occasional TV show too.

What is the appeal of fan fiction? In a word: More. You get to the end of something good, and you want more. Seven Harry Potter books seems like a lot -- unless you really came to enjoy the characters. And then you didn't want it to end.

Most Fan fiction has fairly predictable subject matter. Here are some common things that happen in fan fiction:

• Events may be told from a different character's point of view.
• A different person may be the central character, or a minor character may become a major character.
• They may narrate events that were not described in the original work. Sometimes there are entirely new scenes, but more often they provide "deleted scene" information or untold back story to the original work.
• They may try a slightly different personality for a character, and see what kind of impact that would have on events. What if Bella Swan (Twilight) hadn't been so insecure and needy? What if Edward hadn't been such a gentleman? What if Dumbledore (Harry Potter) had actually been evil?
• Often they explore different relationships. For example, what if Hermione Granger had become interested in someone besides Ron Weasley? Or what if a character without a romantic history, such as Neville Longbottom, had been given that chance?

There are other types of material for fan fiction, but these are among the most common.

What does it have to do with the apocryphal gospels?

As best I can tell, the right literary category for many of the apocryphal gospels is "fan fiction". Fan fiction has some rules: the main characters are taken from another work or group of works. You can tell the characters are borrowed because they're not really introduced; they're assumed to be known to the reader already.

Many of us have, at some point in our lives, experienced a sense of disappointment that we cannot read a whole world filled with books about what people remembered of Jesus, as the fourth gospel suggests could have been done. What we want, in a word, is more. As far as the usual types of fan fiction, we see them represented among the apocryphal gospels:

• Events are told from another point-of-view, such as one of the Mary's.
• "Missing scenes" gospels create tales of Jesus' childhood, or of Mary and Joseph's back story.
• Minor characters come to the foreground in the Gospel of Judas or of Mary.
• Alternative relationships develop, such as between Jesus and Mary.

Not all of the apocryphal gospels are fan fiction; some are sayings collections, or meditations on theology. But for some of them, it looks like they were written from a simple desire to have more material on Jesus.

In unexpected places

A Christian might not normally look for inspiration or insight in the Gospel of Philip, one of the non-canonical "lost scripture" type writings of the early church. To me, it does not make sense to think of the "Gospel of Philip" as a lost gospel because when you read the text, it makes no attempt to be a biography of Jesus. Calling it a "lost gospel" is to misclassify it; it is more of a reflection on the sacraments, the Scriptures, and occasionally on Jesus from the early church, from a portion of the church we would find a little ... off the beaten path. It belongs in the "unorthodox patristics" section of the church library, not in the "lost gospels" section.

I have called the writing unorthodox, so I will explain what I mean by that before I mention what good I have found in it. Here is a quote to ground the discussion in the actual text:

The world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining his desire.

It is one question whether someone may sympathize with this thought; it is another question whether it reflects a mainstream Christian understanding of the book of Genesis. This reflection on Genesis is fairly far outside of the historical mainstream of reflections on Genesis when it calls this world a mistake. Genesis describes a world that was originally Paradise, very good in every way. Mainstream Christian thought then does not consider the world to be a mistake or a matter of God missing the mark and falling short of attaining his desire. (It's entertaining to me that some people will not allow that this text is Gnostic because it finds some good in the material world where an "orthodox" Gnostic text would not ... but the same writers often have no trouble classifying it as a Christian text even though it is not an "orthodox" Christian text. I think the Gnostic-orthodox purists will eventually have to acknowledge there was such a thing as being unorthodox from the Gnostic point-of-view as well as from the apostolic-orthodox perspective.) But on the main point, when I classify the text as unorthodox, that is meant to describe where it lies in the spectrum of early Christian beliefs: it lies outside the mainstream of what was believed in the early church. That mainstream was formed by those who took their cue from the earliest church, the apostles, and the preceding Jewish thought in the synagogues from which the Christian church originally arose. The Gnostic writings tended to form in cultures where Jewish thought and Jewish understanding was not the starting point when interpreting Scripture. Those cultures may have had a fresh take on Jewish Scripture due to their relative unfamiliarity with it, but the established Hebrew-based camp also considered the non-Hebrew readers to make beginners' mistakes on some basic points. At any rate, that interpretation of Genesis is not valid from outside of the Gnostic perspective, so other perspectives would necessarily find it "unorthodox".

I'm not writing this to criticize the Gospel of Philip even if I do take some time to say why I'm quoting it and what type of writing it seems to be. My point is that the Gospel of Philip does belong in the "unorthodox patristics" section of the church library. It has some useful things to say.

Here is an insight that would be at home in any Christian sermon:

Faith receives, love gives. No one will be able to receive without faith. No one will be able to give without love.

Here the Gnostic writers have reflected on what the New Testament teaches about faith and love. It distills many of the teachings of the New Testament into a memorable saying that is valid from more than just the Gnostic perspective.

Or here again:

An ass which turns a millstone did a hundred miles walking. When it was loosed it found that it was still at the same place. There are men who make many journeys, but make no progress towards any destination.

That's good sermon material there, an illustration which is not limited in appeal to those who share the same dogmatic presuppositions as the Gnostics. The analogy we might use now is a "treadmill", which is the closest we get to the old-style mills with lots of effort but going nowhere. The caution is that we shouldn't mistake movement for progress; apparently it was just as much a problem for Gnostics in the second or third century as it is now.

And here is one last example of something interesting in the Gospel of Philip. The first part looks like an example of the ancients not really understanding genetics, but by the end it has made a useful point despite it all:

The children a woman bears resemble the man who loves her. If her husband loves her, then they resemble her husband. If it is an adulterer, then they resemble the adulterer. Frequently, if a woman sleeps with her husband out of necessity, while her heart is with the adulterer with whom she usually has intercourse, the child she will bear is born resembling the adulterer. Now you who live together with the Son of God, love not the world, but love the Lord, in order that those you will bring forth may not resemble the world, but may resemble the Lord.

I think if we found this passage in any other commentary on Scripture from the second or third centuries, we would bear with it patiently and take it for what it is worth. And that is basically my point with the Gospel of Philip.

Little-known facts about some non-canonical gospels

This post should wrap up my current series on objectively observable differences between the canonical gospels and the non-canonical gospels. Thank you all for your patience with this; it's an interest of mine.

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Many people are familiar with the canonical gospels; that is, familiar with the type of material they contain. The canonical gospels exist to convey accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. They have a biography-style presentation. Matthew and Luke start just before Jesus' birth and quickly move on to Jesus' entry onto the public stage; Mark and John begin with Jesus' debut as a public figure at his baptism. From there, all four canonical gospels relate a series of teachings and events. Large parts of the narrative are event-driven, particularly the confrontation with the religious and political powers, a trial on capital charges, and an execution recounted in some detail including Jesus' death and burial. All four continue with an empty tomb and the announcement of Jesus' resurrection; three continue with additional events past that point. When we hear the word "gospel", we therefore tend to think of that type of document: a narrative of Jesus' life and teachings recounted in the form of biography.

A little-known, little-acknowledged fact about the "alternative" gospels is that many of them are not this sort of document at all. The best of the lot are probably the (Coptic) Gospel of Thomas, which is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, and the Gospel of Peter which does follow a narrative framework. These documents have certain problems, but at least they intend to recount the life or teachings of Jesus.

One other gospel does intend to give a sort of account of part of Jesus' life. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is supposed to be a retelling of Jesus' childhood. It could nearly be subtitled, "Bad-tempered child with superpowers terrorizes village" -- at least for the first half. By the end, he has learned to use his powers for good instead of evil, and it finishes with "the boy Jesus at the Temple" account known to us from Luke's gospel. Quotes from bad tempered little Jesus include, "You godless, brainless moron" (right before he strikes another child dead) and "I taunted you! For I know that you are amazed by little things and have minuscule minds." The people of his hometown are in awe of him and his many miracles. An interesting feature comes to light when studying the text: the part borrowed from Luke contains the only mentions of events occurring in a specific geographical place (Jerusalem) and the only mention of the name of his mother, Mary. It is also the scene with a noticeably stronger Jewish context: we see the Pharisees and the Temple, along with the Feast of Passover, here and only here in the narrative. I find it interesting that a number of tangible and realistic supporting details are found only in the part that is borrowed from the canonical gospel of Luke.

Of the other well-known alternative "gospels", most show relatively little interest in giving a biographical account of Jesus' life or in giving a collection of his sayings. Based on what they actually contain, these other gospels may not have been intended to convey accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus.

• The Gospel of the Savior briefly recounts a couple of events from a single night of Jesus' life. The text never identifies Jesus by name. The events recounted are part of the Last Supper and the prayer afterward. In keeping with the non-geographical nature of the actions recorded in the text, the trip to Gethsemane from the canonical gospels is replaced here with a vision of heaven, where the prayer occurs before the Father's throne. Those are the only events from the life of Jesus that are recounted. A good section of the text consists of the main character -- presumably Jesus -- leading a responsory prayer largely centered on himself and his importance as their leader. The responsory prayer looks like an excerpt from an early Christian worship service; that section may be of more interest in the field of the history of worship than in the events of the life of Jesus.
  
• The Gospel of Mary, like the Gospel of the Savior, never identifies Jesus by name; but here the unnamed "Savior" is not the central character. Granted, again we are working with fragmentary pieces of surviving text, but the surviving pieces mainly consist of a vision that Mary is supposed to have seen. No events from the life of Jesus are recounted. In certain places there are some sayings attributed to the unnamed Savior, which can be divided into two categories. Many of the things attributed to the Savior are generically applicable known sayings of Jesus; "he who has ears let him hear" is used twice within the space of a few verses, and the variant "he who has a mind to understand, let him understand" makes an appearance too. In between such stock and generic phrases from the canonical gospels, the Savior's other sayings sound as though they were taken from Greek philosophy, such as "the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its nature alone."
  
• The Gospel of Philip may possibly recount Jesus' baptism, though even that is uncertain because the text is only partially complete. That is the only event from the life of Jesus that may have been recounted in the way that we would have expected from the canonical gospels. The Gospel of Philip consists of more general discussion of religion and philosophy from its own perspective, and is not particularly centered on Jesus. In the surviving text, the phrase "bridal chamber" appears more often than the name "Jesus". As a point of interest, the author of the Gospel of Philip quotes Matthew, John, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Peter, expecting the readers to be familiar with them and to consider them authoritative.
  
• The Gospel of Truth is fairly long as non-canonical gospels go; it is roughly 40% of the length of the Gospel of Mark, or 1/4 of the length of the Gospel of Luke. The name "Jesus" occurs a mere four times in the translation I've found. It does not give an account of any events in the life of Jesus. It is largely a theological interpretation, not what we would think of as a "gospel."
  
• The Protoevangelium of James mostly follows the story of Mary in the years leading up to Jesus' birth. It ends shortly after Jesus' birth and the visit of the astrologers. As most of the narrative happens before his birth, its purpose is not to record the life of Jesus.

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I've had to rein myself in, to make myself stop here. The measurable differences in quality between the canonical gospels and the non-canonical gospels are many, and the differences run deep. The non-canonical gospels are generally shorter, generally later, generally less Jewish, generally have less context as far as place and time, and are often less interested in recording the life of Jesus. For some of them, I think the appropriate genre is not "gospel" but "fan fiction". For others, I think the appropriate genre is not "gospel" but "theological interpretation". Some never identify identify Jesus by name in the surviving text. One is a sayings-only collection without enough background on the conversations from which the sayings are taken.

I'm not saying the non-canonical documents are without any merit; I have found points of interest in them. I may yet do a write-up on my favorite parts of the non-canonical gospels. But I am saying that even the whole collection of them together tells you measurably, objectively less about the historical Jesus than, say, the Gospel of Luke by itself.

The historical Jesus is Jewish: Gauging a gospel's historical view of Jesus

It has become increasingly common for skeptics to say that there is no real difference of quality between the canonical gospels -- the ones in the New Testament -- and the non-canonical gospels. The claim is increasingly made that equally viable gospels were "suppressed" by political means as an exercise in the winners writing the history books.

When I first decided to see whether there was anything to this, I set out to read the non-canonical gospels. I was forcefully struck by an impression that these were very different in general quality from the New Testament gospels. But I wanted to be sure, and I asked myself, "Is it simply a matter of my familiarity with the canonical gospels, or is there something objectively, measurably different about the non-canonical gospels?" I set about seeing if there was a way to actually measure differences in a way that anybody could fact-check for themselves.

In this post, I'll cover one of the first things I noticed: the non-canonical gospels, by and large, have a Jesus who is not particularly Jewish, and disciples who are not particularly Jewish. I've done a more thorough write-up previously; for now I want to mention that I'm hardly the only one to have noticed this.

As a case in point, I'd like to introduce a book to you that demonstrates this fairly well. It's a Jewish book on the history of the liturgy. My regular readers will know I'm very fond of liturgical prayer. In my research on the history of the liturgy, I came across a book described by its dust jacket as "the most complete scholarly study of Jewish liturgy in existence today." Naturally, I couldn't resist getting a copy. The book is Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History by Ismar Elbogen. The original edition (1913) was in German. At the time of the 1993 English translation, it was noted (again, from the dust jacket), "Eighty years after its first appearance, Elbogen's magisterial work remains the most thorough academic study of the Jewish liturgy ever written." His primary sources are many and varied, including the Talmud, Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, a host of Jewish writers through the ages, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Paul's letter to the Galatians, the Didache, Justin Martyr, and the Apostolic Constitutions, among others. Curiously (or not so curiously), I have not been able to find any references in this book to the Gospel of Mary, or the Gospel of Philip, or any of the non-canonical gospels.

Before we look at why this might happen, I should mention why this work takes so much notice of certain Christian writings: it uses them to establish historical facts about Jewish liturgy and worship, especially as it is practiced in the synagogue. The canonical gospels contain first-century evidence of what Jewish worship was like. There is a record of Hanukkah being celebrated in Jerusalem under the name the Feast of Dedication; it is applicable to the discussion of the history of Hanukkah. The book considers parallels between traditional Jewish prayers and other prayers recorded in the canonical gospels, and uses that to show how far traditional Jewish prayers were already developed at that point in time. The canonical gospels were referenced for peoples' reactions to the practice of giving scholars preferred seats in the synagogues, for whether the Jewish synagogue worship already included readings from the prophets and sermons on those readings, for whether the twice-weekly fast was already in place before the fall of the Temple. There is evidence on the development of the role of the synagogue leader in speaking to people who were out of order; when Jesus heals on the Sabbath, the fellow who objects has the proper title for the person who was supposed to maintain order in the synagogue. There is even evidence in the New Testament for some very detailed aspects of the Jewish liturgy: that the person who gave the sermon was first called to read, that the reading occurred while standing, that the sermon occurred while sitting. The gospels are used as evidence for the location of certain particular synagogues, and for the practice (also known elsewhere) that non-Jews might contribute to building a synagogue. All these very Jewish facts in the New Testament are placed alongside a continuum of Jewish writings to form a coherent whole of which they are an integral piece. Here I have focused only on the gospels, but the book takes the same approach to the book of Acts and Paul's letter to the Galatians.

So this author's interest in the New Testament comes down to this: how much historical information can you learn about first-century Jewish worship in general, and in particular the liturgical worship common in synagogues? The Jesus in the canonical gospels is a regular at the synagogue.

As for the non-canonical gospels, I have looked through the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Savior, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Protoevangelium of James; I have found on-line electronic editions of these to double-check my searches. I have not found a reference to a "synagogue" in any of them. Exactly how Jewish is a Jesus who never goes to a synagogue?

If the historical Jesus is a Jewish figure of interest in the area of religion, that's a huge point, that some gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) can be used by historians of Jewish liturgy and provide useful data on first-century Jewish worship, while other gospels do not even mention a synagogue, much less provide detailed information on first-century Jewish worship practices. That is a measurable difference in the quality of the works. The works that are measurably better in telling us about first-century Jewish religious life just happen to be the ones that the early Christian church found to be better sources in general. Large numbers of non-canonical gospels have a Jesus who never goes to a synagogue; the works are of no historical interest for scholars of first-century Judaism. Their Jesus seems ... out of context for a first-century Jew. If we grant that the historical Jesus is Jewish, then here is one objectively measurable point in favor of the canonical gospels having more to say about the historical Jesus.

Gnostic Gospels and Canonical Gospels: An Assessment of Jewish Context

As I mentioned when reviewing the canonical gospels for Jewish background, an obvious thing runs the risk of being overlooked or undervalued. The canonical gospels, on a basic level, are Jewish documents: they assume Jewish background, religious concepts, and culture. The Gnostic gospels, on that basic level, are far less Jewish.

Again, as mentioned with the canonical gospels, the basic "wordcount" method gives a useful snapshot but does miss a few things when assessing Jewish background. In some of the Gnostic gospels -- even some with higher Jewish context scores -- much of that Jewish context score comes from a handful of key words being repeated frequently. For example, the repetition of "holy", "sacrifice", and "Adam" account for the majority of the Jewish context score in the Gospel of Philip. A handful of mentions of the three words "holy", "law", and "Sabbath" account for almost the entire Jewish context score of the Gospel of Truth. The surviving text of these four Gnostic gospels contains no mention of Moses or David, no mention of a synagogue, no mention of the Feast of Passover or any of the Jewish feasts, only one mention of Abraham among the four of them, and no mention of Isaac or Jacob. For comparison, in the canonical gospels there are over thirty mentions of Abraham, over twenty mentions of either Isaac or Jacob, nearly forty mentions each of Moses and David, over forty mentions of a synagogue, and over thirty mentions of specific Jewish feasts such as the Feast of Passover. The relative absence of Jewish context in the Gnostic gospels is striking.

Another thing seen less clearly from the composite scores is the actual count of words. The Gospel of Mary -- second highest-scoring among these four Gnostic gospels -- contains only eight total words including repeat occurrences of the same words. The four occurrences of the word "sin" account for fully half the Jewish context score of the Gospel of Mary. The entire combined count of Jewish context flag words in the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Truth is in the low thirties; nearly half of these are either "sin" or "holy". To take another thumbnail sketch of Jewish context: the combined length of the four Gnostic gospels is slightly longer than the Gospel of John, yet the combined count of Jewish context words among them is roughly half that of the Gospel of John. This is more remarkable given that the Gospel of John is the least saturated with Jewish context among the four canonical gospels. Among this combined set of Gnostic gospels, the majority of Jewish context words comes from the Gospel of Philip, in which the three individual words "holy", "sacrifice" and "Adam" account for the majority of its Jewish context score. The average Jewish context score of the other three Gnostic gospels is roughly 1/4 of that of the lowest-scoring canonical gospel.

Individual Gnostic gospels have interesting emphases; for example the Gospel of Philip mentions Adam more often than all the canonical gospels combined, though it is it unclear whether the author of the Gospel of Philip was fully familiar with the account of Adam from the book of Genesis or whether there is some other explanation for the noticeable variances from the Genesis account. Likewise the concept of the holy (including Holy Spirit) is emphasized more in some of the Gnostic gospels than in the canonicals, where in some of the Gnostic gospels the use of the word "holy" is the single most prominent carryover from the Jewish worldview. The word "holy" figures so prominently as the key Jewish concept in the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Philip that the word "holy" by itself accounts for roughly 40% of the Jewish context score in each of those two gospels.

At times, the Gnostic gospels bring up a Jewish concept only to disagree with it as already seen in the review of the Gospel of Mary. The Gospel of Philip discusses Jewish Temple sacrifices in a way that makes it highly unlikely that the author(s) had ever personally been to the Temple in Jerusalem while it was still standing. The specific handling of Jewish concept-words in the Gnostic gospels does not always reflect familiarity with and acceptance of a Jewish context, but at times instead reflects unfamiliarity with or disagreement with those same Jewish concepts. The Gospel of Philip has some interesting features in its appropriation of Jewish words and concepts which will be discussed in a separate post.

The Gnostic gospels seem to reflect a stage in Christianity in which there was some hesitation from the Gentiles about Jesus' Jewishness; one of the most distinctive features of these four Gnostic gospels is the relative de-emphasis of Jesus' Jewish context compared with the four canonical gospels. Christian readers may well be familiar with the fact that the early Jewish Christian church struggled with the influx of Gentiles; it appears that, on the opposite side of the same coin, the early Gentiles struggled with Jesus' Jewishness in a day and age when worship was closely bound up with national identity. Most of the Gnostic gospels show Jesus -- and Christianity -- systematically stripped of Jewish context. The Gnostic gospels are a fascinating remnant from an earlier stage of Christianity with an early competition over the identity of Jesus. In the Gnostic gospels, the Gentile Christians pose a question to the early Jewish Christian church: does Jesus require a Jewish context?

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A note on which gospels were included here as Gnostic gospels: I am aware there is some discussion about which gospels qualify as Gnostic, and again some discussion about whether "Gnostic" is an entirely useful category. I have included the Gospel of Thomas in this discussion about Gnostics even though there is still some question whether it truly belongs with the Gnostics, still there is enough possibility that it belongs here that I will include it here. I have not included the Gospel of Judas even though I am sure it belongs, but the ongoing controversies about the correct translation have made me prefer to delay this type of review until the vital translation controversies are better settled.

Gospel of Truth (Gnostic): Word Cloud

able (4) above (5) aeons (5) alone (14) anything (7) appeared (9) became (5) become (6) being (18) belongs (4) book (8) brought (8) called (8) children (5) cold (4) comes (9) death (4) deficiency (12) depth (5) discovery (6) disturbed (6) draws (5) either (4) emanations (6) empty (6) error (12) existence (14) father (87) filled (4) fitting (4) form (10) forth (19) fragrance (7) fruit (4) gave (11) gives (4) grace (6) having (19) heart (7) hidden (7) himself (18) ignorant (9) incomprehensible (4) indeed (6) invisible (4) itself (5) jars (4) jesus (4) knew (5) knowledge (26) known (9) knows (10) lacks (6) letters (4) life (6) light (12) living (5) love (4) manifest (6) matter (5) means (6) mercy (6) nor (16) nothing (9) oblivion (10) ones (6) order (13) others (6) perfect (28) person (5) pleroma (11) power (8) rather (8) reason (11) receive (21) rest (13) return (5) revealed (11) root (6) search (8) since (18) something (4) son (13) spaces (9) speak (9) spirit (7) spoke (4) spoken (4) themselves (9) therefore (11) things (11) think (5) totality (19) truth (19) unity (8) vanish (6) whom (15) whose (5) wishes (5) work (6)

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Text used: The Gnostic Society Library

Gospel of Thomas (Gnostic?): Word Cloud

able (4) against (9) alive (4) away (7) become (27) being (14) birds (4) blessed (11) body (5) bought (4) brothers (7) carry (4) cast (6) children (4) comes (5) corpse (4) days (5) dead (4) death (5) die (4) dinner (4) disciples (22) ears (9) earth (6) eat (5) empty (4) enter (10) evil (5) excused (4) eye (9) fall (4) fast (5) father (28) fell (4) field (6) finds (5) fire (4) fish (5) flesh (4) forth (5) fruit (4) garments (4) god (4) hate (7) hear (11) heaven (7) hidden (8) house (10) invites (6) jesus (110) kill (6) kingdom (22) lest (7) light (11) living (10) love (4) male (5) man (34) manifest (6) master (11) merchant (4) money (4) mother (9) mouth (4) nor (7) nothing (6) order (4) outside (8) power (4) pray (4) produce (6) rather (4) realize (4) remain (4) repose (4) saying (5) sea (4) seek (5) sent (4) servant (8) sky (4) son (13) soul (5) spirit (5) stand (4) stones (5) superior (5) things (11) thomas (4) took (4) until (6) weeds (4) whoever (18) whom (7) wine (5) wise (4) woman (5) world (16) worthy (5) yourselves (8)

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Text: The Gnostic Society Library, Lambdin translation

Gospel of Mary (Gnostic): Word Cloud

answered (8) began (3) bound (4) desire (3) forms (3) gospel (3) hear (4) ignorance (3) kingdom (3) lord (3) man (3) mary (6) matter (3) mind (3) nature (7) nor (4) peter (7) power (4) preach (4) roots (3) savior (13) saying (4) sin (4) since (3) soul (9) things (3) third (3) vision (4) woman (3) words (3)

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Text: The Gnostic Society Library

Gospel of Philip (Gnostic): Word Cloud

ability (7) able (29) above (17) adam (9) angel (7) animals (17) anointed (12) apostles (7) appeared (8) baptism (8) became (9) become (18) begets (12) begotten (12) being (24) belong (12) below (8) bridal (25) bridegroom (7) called (19) chamber (26) children (12) chrism (10) christ (22) christian (8) created (13) darkness (7) dead (11) death (15) die (14) disciples (9) eat (6) everything (13) evil (16) exist (7) faith (6) father (32) fire (13) fitting (6) flesh (18) form (7) free (17) god (24) heaven (11) hidden (23) himself (9) holy (38) human (7) ignorance (7) image (14) indeed (13) jesus (20) kingdom (7) knowledge (12) life (11) light (33) living (8) lord (15) love (20) man (67) marriage (8) mother (10) mystery (7) names (10) neither (10) nor (26) nothing (7) nourished (7) offered (6) order (13) others (13) people (9) perfect (21) person (9) possesses (7) power (16) reason (9) receive (31) rest (8) resurrection (9) revealed (16) rise (9) root (10) separated (7) since (16) slave (16) son (42) soul (8) spirit (38) themselves (11) things (32) tree (13) true (7) truth (27) united (13) water (21) whom (8) wish (6) woman (9) world (49)

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Text: The Gnostic Society Library

The Gospel of Mary: An Assessment of Its Historical Value

Many of us are familiar with the canonical gospels of the life of Christ, but less so with the non-canonical "lost gospels". The Christian canon of Scripture was settled some time ago. These days the question is being revisited: was that question decided appropriately? Were legitimate witnesses to the life and teachings of Jesus excluded? This post will examine the historical value of the Gospel of Mary, both in terms of knowing the history of Jesus and in terms of its own value as an ancient text related to Christianity.

The events recorded in the Gospel of Mary
The Gospel of Mary as we have it survives only in part. The surviving parts relate a conversation between the Savior and several disciples, then a vision of Mary and her comments on the revelation, which occupy much of the text. At the end we have a discussion among Peter, Andrew, Levi, and Mary on how Mary's vision and revelation will be received.

Identifying the people discussed
The named characters in the text that we have are Mary, Andrew, Peter, and Levi. Another main character, the Savior, is not identified by name in the surviving text, though there is no serious doubt that Jesus is intended. The other characters -- Mary, Andrew, Peter, and Levi -- are not introduced in the text that we have; what we know of them is mainly their names. Possibly the missing earlier pages identified the people with more certainty or gave them some background, or possibly the readers are expected to be familiar with these people already.

Identifying the time and place of the events
The text is short of clues for determining the time and place of the conversations and vision recorded. No dates or physical places in this world are mentioned. It is debatable whether a time and place are actually significant for visions, which are typically ahistorical in their focus.

Identifying the culture
One striking feature for readers already familiar with the canonical gospels is the lack of Jewishness of the Gospel of Mary. There is no mention of the names of Abraham or David or Moses, no mention of previous written Scripture or the prophets, nothing of the historical consciousness of the Jewish people that is so familiar from the canonical gospels. There is no mention of towns or cities in Israel, the Temple, the synagogue, the annual feasts, the Jewish priesthood, or anything that would locate the speakers firmly within a Jewish context. There is no mention of dates, places, or events that would locate the speakers in the first century, unless we accept as given from other sources about Jesus that it is enough to name these people, likely already well-known by the time this document came to be written.

There are, to be sure, a few ideas with obvious Jewish references, particularly sin, law, and the Son of Man. Other ideas may be the shared intellectual property of many cultures. The reference to the Jewish concept of law is brief, as the Savior is reported to say early in the surviving text: "See that you do not give any law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it." A similar idea is repeated towards the end of the text. It is difficult to be certain whether or not the author(s) of the text had an understanding of the Jewish concept of law. The material on such things is so brief that it is difficult to assess. At any rate, ideas such as sin and law are minor in this text in comparison to the ideas which are more emphasized.

Besides the text's striking lack of Jewish context and culture, some of the sayings of Jesus seem foreign, not only to our expectations based on canonical Scriptures, but foreign to the Jewish mindset. We find the Gospel of Mary's Savior saying, "The nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its nature alone" followed closely by the familiar refrain, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." While on a few occasions the Gospel of Mary presents familiar phrases, there are many phrases which seem out of place not only to those familiar with the canonical gospels, but also with those expecting a phrase at home within Second Temple Judaism. The concern with resolving the nature of matter seems more reminiscent of non-Jewish philosophy. The Gospel of Mary's Savior does not speak of lost sheep and breaking bread, but speaks of philosophical abstractions. The words "God" and "Father" never appear in the surviving text. "Nature" and "matter", "roots" and "forms" play a significant part in the Gospel of Mary. These clues may eventually allow us to identify with more certainty the cultural or intellectual background behind this text. At any rate it seems out of step with first-century Judaism.

The nature of the vision and the revelation
The vision and revelation occupy a good portion of the text we have, though that too is interrupted by missing pages in our best surviving manuscript. We have portrayed a soul's ascent past a series of obstacles. The soul ascends apparently alone and on the way meets hostile powers. An excerpt gives the flavor of the material here: "When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, which took seven forms." Here we see a familiar mystical pattern of assigning exact, typically symbolic, numbers to the metaphysical abstractions or spiritual manifestations being discussed. Along the way, the soul meets foes such as the Power of Ignorance and the Power of Wrath, which are overcome by the pilgrim soul, alone, by means of a wise answer. After passing the final obstacle on the pilgrim way, at the end of the journey, the soul was "released from a world, and in a type from a heavenly type, and from the fetter of oblivion which is transient. From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence."

Again, this may take an adjustment for those accustomed to visions from a Jewish or first century Jewish-Christian context. At the end of the journey here, the soul finds no vision of God, nor of the world restored, nor of paradise, nor of a restored Temple. The soul hears no voice from God and has not even an angel for a companion. The consummation of the vision is apparently an aeon of silence. Again, comparative studies may eventually allow us to locate the cultural or religious background in which a mystical vision would climax in an aeon of silence.

The drama
The most interesting point of the Gospel of Mary is not so much the words of Jesus which are frequently of stock philosophical material though not of Jewish stock, nor the vision, which again seems of conventional material. The most interesting point is the confrontation which ensues when Mary has delivered this material to the disciples.

The first to speak is Andrew. "Say what you wish to say about what she has said, I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas." Andrew responds that these ideas are strange; but where would the Gospel of Mary's Andrew get an idea of what is strange? Unless the early missing pages turn up, we may not know the basis for his statement. But if he is meant more as an "everyman", then possibly these ideas were considered strange compared with the things Jesus was known to have taught from other sources. At any rate, regardless of how Andrew's comments are to be taken, there is at least a kernel of accuracy there: the ideas revealed by the Gospel of Mary's Savior are by and large unJewish, foreign concerns from a Savior now transplanted to foreign lands. Andrew's words go largely unnoticed because at that moment, someone else says something truly asinine.

The next to speak is Peter. "Did he really speak with a woman without our knowledge and not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?" At this Mary, predictably, dissolves into tears, making a brief speech of the "Don't you believe me?" variety.

The last to speak is Levi. "Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. This is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man and acquire him for ourselves as he commanded us, and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said."

The drama is nicely done. The Gospel of Mary's Peter had it coming: his inexcusable rudeness and appalling pettiness is soundly put down by Levi, the damsel in distress is defended, and they all proclaim the gospel boldly ever after.

The Gospel of Mary and the Historical Jesus
The Gospel of Mary portrays the Savior as a philosopher interested in the abstract, one without Jewish context. There is a tendency throughout the Gospel of Mary to the abstract. Not only is Jesus interested in the abstract of resolving the roots of nature, but Jesus himself is abstracted. He is no longer Jesus from the town of Nazareth. In the surviving text, he has no ties to "Jesus" or "Nazareth", he is simply -- and abstractly -- the Savior. Unfortunately, we will not gain any fresh insights into Jesus of Nazareth from the surviving text as we have it.

The Gospel of Mary and Early Christianity
Fortunately, the Gospel of Mary is not without historical value. It shows us an early stage in the formation of Christianity in which Christ was first transplanted into foreign cultures. Here Jesus has no Jewish context, and makes himself understood in a foreign land with foreign ideas. We see Jesus at a stage when his Jewishness may have been viewed with suspicion by other nations, not always at peace with the Jews. In comparing this text to other gospels, we see a struggle over the identity of Jesus at a time when religion often went hand-in-hand with ethnic identity. Was it possible for a non-Jew to have a Jewish savior? In this text, at this stage in the battle over the identity of Jesus, Jesus has almost entirely lost his Jewish identity.

It would be tempting to comment on the battle of the sexes in the Gospel of Mary, but that aspect has already been thoroughly discussed. I will say this: the battle of the sexes is probably the most human part of the Gospel of Mary, which otherwise tends to dwell in a world of abstractions. Without Peter acting the part of the insensitive macho, Andrew's objections might well have stood, and the whole Gospel of Mary might have been lost to us.