The Lost Books of the Bible

Most people consider ancient heresies obscure, boring, and irrelevant, but in the twenty-first century Gnosticism, is alive, well, and making news.           

            Gnosticism was not so much an organized religious system as a variety of beliefs in which the material world was thought to be evil and salvation comes through a higher knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. Stephan Hoeller, a modern Gnostic, explains that Gnosticim is a “conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings . . . and that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life.”

            “Gnosticism . . . was not a heresy so much as a rival” to Christianity,” says historian Will Durant.

            Various Gnostic groups had mostly disappeared by the fifth century and would be nothing more than an interesting footnote for students of early church history if not for three recent events.

Nag Hammadi Codex II, opened at the conclusion of the Gospel of Thomas, courtesy of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California            First, in 1945 a library of more than fifty Gnostic texts was found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, about forty miles northwest of Luxor. The best known, the Gospel of Thomas, is not an account of the life of Christ, but 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Other texts (popularly known as The Gnostic Gospels) include the Gospel of Mary, the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Truth, and the Acts of Peter. They created quite a stir when they were discovered. Headlines promised a new look at the life of Christ, playing on popular intrigue with anything new, secret, or suppressed—a clever marketing twist on the early church’s condemnation of Gnosticism.

            Second, in 2003 The Da Vinci Code, one of the bestselling books of this century, suggested that the Gnostic Gospels had as much—or more—validity as the New Testament books and that their exclusion from the canon occurred at the time of Constantine (a misinterpretation of Constantine’s request to Eusebius to make fifty copies of Scripture for the churches in Constantinople). The Da Vinci Code was a well-written novel with suspense, intrigue, and murder, but because it suggested that what the church has taught about Jesus is wrong and that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, it heightened interest in Gnostic writings.

            Third, in May 2006 The National Geographic published a lead article on the discovery of The Gospel of Judas, which contains “the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke” with Judas Iscariot. The magazine gave the article major promotion and presented Judas not as the disciple who betrayed Jesus, but as the disciple who was the closest to Him and turned Him over to the authorities because Jesus had asked him to do so. The New York Times quoted an executive of the geographic society that The Gospel of Judas “is considered by scholars and scientists to be the most significant ancient, nonbiblical text to be found in the past 60 years”—a claim that is more hype than fact.

            In spite of the headlines and press releases, there is nothing new about the Gnostic texts. The Gospel of Judas has been known for centuries. Irenaeus called it “fictitious history.” The fourth-century historian and theologian Eusebius distinguished “between those writings which, according to the tradition of the Church, are true and genuine and recognized” and “those which the heretics put forward under the name of the apostles; including, for instance, such books as the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, . . . and the Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles.” (The Gospel of Thomas was among the manuscripts at Nag Hammadi.) The “thought and purport of their contents are completely out of harmony with true orthodoxy and clearly show themselves that they are the forgeries of heretics . . . to be cast aside as altogether absurd and impious.”

            In spite of the warnings of Irenaeus and Eusebius, Gnosticism is alive and well.

The Bible of the American Revolution

The British did not let Americans print English-language Bibles. Although the first book, The Bay Psalm Book, was printed in 1640, it was another 140 years before an English Bible was printed in America.

Title page of the Aitken Bible, Library of CongressAs long as the colonists were subject to British law, they could not print the King James Version, which was—and still is—copyrighted by the British Crown and can be printed only by license from the king or queen. When independence from Britain was declared, British law no longer governed the colonists. In addition, the war cut off imports of many goods, including Bibles.

A committee of the Continental Congress suggested in 1777 that “the use of the Bible is so universal and its importance so great” that Congress should order a printing of Bibles or “import twenty thousand Bibles from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere.” Bids were solicited from printers, but they were all too expensive. Because of the British army’s capture of Philadelphia and Congress’s lack of money, the Bibles were never imported.

Robert Aitken, a Philadelphia bookseller and one of the five printers who had bid on the Bible and who was already printing the Journals of Congress, printed a New Testament in 1777. He reprinted it several times.  Encouraged by his success, Aitken asked for the financial support of Congress to print the entire Bible.

The money was never granted, but Aitken printed ten thousand copies of the complete Bible anyway in 1782, the first English Bible printed in America. In the front he reproduced a resolution passed by the Continental Congress on September 10, 1782:

The United States in Congress assembled highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, . . . and . . . recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorize him to publish this recommendation in the manner he shall think proper.       

Today fewer than forty copies of Aitken’s Bible exist, making it one of the rarest books in the world. While these Bibles were being printed, the colonies were at war with England, and at one point Aitken had to bury the type in a barn to prevent British soldiers from destroying it

Seven years later Aitken asked Congress to grant him the exclusive right to print Bibles in America for fourteen years. The request was denied, and by 1800 there were fifteen editions of the New Testament and twenty of the whole Bible in print from a variety of American printers.

There have been reports of earlier printings of the English Bible in America, most notably in an 1810 book on The History of Printing in America. But no confirmed copy of an earlier printing of the English Bible has ever been found.