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Writing the Agrapha:
The “Unwritten Sayings” of Jesus in the Early Church
By: Reuben M. Bredenhof
rm.bredenhof@gmail.com
www.reubenbredenhof.com
Agrapha: Introduction and Definition
Christians are sometimes said to be a “people of the Book,” for it is particularly the Bible
that has given shape to the church. After accepting the canon of the Hebrew Old Testament, over
time Christians gathered a variety of additional books that would form the canon of the Greek
New Testament. The bulk of these latter books concern the figure who is so central to church’s
identity: Jesus Christ. A few New Testament authors endeavoured to record the events of his life;
these authors were the Gospel writers, known to us as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Other
authors would delve more deeply into the implications of it all, but the Gospel-writers gave the
core of the Jesus story, the vital foundation on which the later superstructure would be built. It is
this supreme importance of Jesus to the Christian faith which makes understandable the
eagerness of persons and groups in the first centuries of the church to appeal to the very words he
was reported to have said. In this context a thorny problem arises, for not every purported saying
of Jesus is found in the four canonical Gospels. It is such sayings that have traditionally been
called the agrapha.
Literally, an agraphon (plural: agrapha) is something “not written.” As a few writers
pedantically point out, the word “is not really appropriate, for if the agrapha are not written in
the four Gospels, they are written elsewhere, otherwise we should not know about them.”
1
For
1
F.F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans,
1974), 82; cf. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient
2
this reason, some prefer the description “isolated saying”
2
to the older term agrapha. For ease of
reference, however, we will employ the traditional nomenclature of agrapha (plural) and
agraphon (singular) in referring to these sayings.
A generally accepted definition of the agrapha is as follows: “Sayings attributed to Jesus
that are not found in the authentic text of the canonical gospels.”
3
It is this definition that is in
the background of our study of the agrapha. About this definition a few comments are
appropriate. First, we limit ourselves to the sayings which are said to have been uttered by Jesus
during his earthly ministry.
4
Second, it must be stated that our standard for judging whether a
saying is actually “unwritten” is the text of the four canonical Gospels; if a saying of Jesus is not
found in the New Testament Gospels, it will be termed an agraphon. Third, and making more
specific the former point, we focus ourselves on the Greek text of the Gospels that is most widely
accepted as authentic.
5
Let us now turn to a survey of the agrapha by giving attention to their varied sources and
contents.
6
Through this survey and the following analysis we will see that the agrapha, while
Evidence (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), 180. More helpfully, W.D. Stroker (in his article
“Agrapha” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 1, ed. David N. Freedman [New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992])
points out that this designation is “related to the idea that these materials were initially preserved orally and only
later were incorporated into written documents, frequently as individual, isolated sayings” (92).
2
Otfried Hofius, “Isolated Sayings of the Lord,” in New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, ed. W. Schneemelcher, trans.
R. Wilson (Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1991), 89.
3
For close approximations of this definition, see, e.g., “Agrapha” in E.A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 30; see also E.M. Yamauchi’s article
“Agrapha” in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 1, rev. ed., ed. G.W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979), 69.
4
There are some sayings attributed to the pre-existent or the ascended Jesus (e.g., 2 Cor 12:9; Rev 1:8, etc.); such
materials we ought to exclude because of their markedly different character and context. There is also no shortage of
legendary narrative material about Jesus as a child that was produced by later Christians; included in this material
are the various infancy gospels (e.g., Protevangel of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), written to fill out the
sparse depictions in the canonical gospels of Jesus’s birth and childhood.
5
This inevitably involves the subjective judgment of text historians, but on the few texts that concern us there is a
general consensus that, while they should not be considered as authentic, they do form part of the Jesus tradition
current in the early church.
6
In our survey, we will begin with the sources of the agrapha that are historically closest to the four canonical
gospels, proceeding to those at a greater distance.
3
not contributing any new information about Jesus, are illustrative of how people in the early
church viewed and interacted with the important Jesus tradition.
A Survey of the Agrapha
The New Testament
The parameters of our definition determine that we ought to consider an agraphon any
saying not recorded in the four canonical Gospels. A good test of this definition is found in the
first source of agrapha, the New Testament itself. There we find one clear example of an
agraphon, in Acts 20:35. In this text Luke records Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders; Paul
encourages them to help the weak among them, as “the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more
blessed to give than to receive.’” This saying is termed an agraphon because, while it may be
found written in the Christian holy Scripture, it is not recorded anywhere in the four Gospels as a
word of Jesus.
7
There are other New Testament texts sometimes purported to be agrapha.
8
One
example is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, where Paul, in describing the coming parousia, bases his
description on a “word from the Lord.” However, the Gospel-writers do not record Jesus saying
anything about the parousia inclusive of the particular details provided by Paul. This has given
rise to varying theories about the provenance of this teaching of Paul, with one suggestion being
that Paul is here referring to an “unwritten” saying of Jesus.
9
7
It also attested as a saying of the Lord in ApostConst 4.2; Didasc. 4.3; and perhaps also in Did. 1.5.
8
For examples, cf. Joachim Jeremias’s study, Unknown Sayings of Jesus, trans. Reginald Fuller, 2nd English ed.
(London: SPCK, 1964), 13-14.
9
For a helpful discussion of 1 Thess 4:15-17, see David E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient
Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1983), 253-254. Aune concludes that the two most
probable theories are that the saying is based on an agraphon, or that the saying is based on an oracle originating
with Paul or another Christian prophet.
4
Textual Variants in the Greek New Testament
As already suggested in our comments on the definition of agrapha, there are sayings of
Jesus which are found in portions of the Greek New Testament text that, because of weaker
manuscript support, are generally not accepted as authentic. As Bruce explains,
In the early Christian generations there were some ‘floating’ accounts of what Jesus
said…not originally belonging to any Gospel, which were saved from being lost by being
included by some scribe or editor in a manuscript of one of the Gospels.
10
There are several such examples of such agrapha, though a few of the sayings stand out as better
supported by the manuscript evidence.
11
One fairly well-attested saying occurs at Luke 6:4-5;
there Codex Bezae adds, “On the same day, seeing one working on the sabbath, he said to him:
‘Man, if you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do not know, you are cursed,
and a transgressor of the law.” Another “floating passage” is found at John 7:53 - 8:11, the story
of the woman taken in adultery.
12
While many scholars reject both of these passage on the
grounds of textual and form criticism, these ancient passages nevertheless include Jesus
traditions which were current in the early church.
Apocryphal Gospels and Acts
The New Testament Apocrypha is a corpus of Christian writings dated broadly from the
end of the first century to the ninth. These writings usually claim to have been written by one of
the apostles or their associates. The various non-canonical Gospels (of Mary, Peter, the Hebrews,
etc.) and Acts (of Peter, etc.) contain numerous sayings that are attributed to Jesus.
13
In the
Gospel of Peter, the pseudonymous Peter recalls that Jesus said, “They that are with me have not
10
Bruce, Christian Origins, 82
11
For agrapha that are generally considered to be additions to the authentic Greek text of the four gospels, see M.R.
James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924; reprint, 1993), 33-34; cf. Jeremias,
Unknown Sayings, 15-17.
12
Alternately, this episode is sometimes found at the end of Luke 21, which is perhaps a more appropriate setting.
5
understood me.” Included in this class of agrapha are the materials found at the ancient site of
Oxyrhynchus in Egypt in 1897.
14
One of the papyri discovered was entitled “Sayings of Our
Lord”, a papyrus which includes eight sayings.
15
Other sayings discovered at Oxyrhynchus are
POxy 655: “He himself will give you your clothing;” while another is POxy 840: “But take care
lest you also suffer the same things as they; for the evil doers among men receive their reward
not among the living only, but also await punishment and much torment.”
Gnostic literature
The various Gnostic movements current during the early centuries of the church produced
many writings which “put [their] own peculiar theories and truths of revelation into the mouth
of…Christ.”
16
This body of literature includes such works as the Apocryphon of James, where
one finds several dominical sayings about the kingdom of God, as well as parables of the
kingdom.
17
The largest single collection of agrapha is the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.
18
This
manuscript was discovered along with forty-four other treaties at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt
in 1945. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas includes 114 different sayings of Jesus, understood to
have been words uttered by Jesus before Easter. Some sayings include: “I have hurled fire on the
world, and behold, I guard it until it burns” (logion 10); “Be wanderers” (logion 42); and, “It is
not possible for a man to ride two horses or to draw two bows (logion 47).
13
Technically the Gospel of Thomas is also considered an apocryphal gospel, but because of its strong Gnostic
emphases, we will consider it sub “Gnostic Literature”.
14
For a summary of these finds, see J. Fitzmeyer, “The Oxyrhynchus Logoi of Jesus and the Coptic Gospel
according to Thomas,” Theological Studies 20 (1959), 505-560.
15
Interestingly, the eight sayings from the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1 are also found in the Gospel of Thomas.
16
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 22.
17
Cf. the study of C. Hedrick, “Kingdom Sayings and Parables of Jesus in The Apocryphon of James: Tradition and
Redaction,” New Testament Studies 29 (1983), 1-24. Hedrick’s purpose is “to legitimize one ‘step child’ of New
Testament scholarship as a valid source for investigating the earliest levels [sic] of Jesus traditions” (1).
18
Because of the importance of the Gospel of Thomas to agrapha research, we will deal with it in a brief excursus at
the end of this survey.
6
Manichean and Mandean Writings
Agrapha are also found in fairly large numbers in the Manichean and Mandean
writings.
19
In the second Coptic Psalm-book, there is this purported saying of Jesus: “The grey-
haired men, the little children instruct them. They that are six years old instruct them that are
sixty years old.” Another saying is from the Manichean Psalter: “I am near to you, like the
clothing of your body” (Ps 239).
Church Fathers and Early Church Writers
There is also a host of instances where church fathers and other early church writers
claim they are quoting a dominical saying.
20
Tertullian gives this saying of Jesus, which he
reportedly said when the disciples fell asleep three times in the garden during his agony: “No
man that is not tempted shall obtain the kingdom of heaven.”
21
Irenaeus cites Jesus: “I have
often desired to hear one of these words, but I had no one who could utter it.”
22
Clement of
Alexandria offers this dominical saying: “He who is married should not renounce his wife, and
he who is married should not marry”
23
Homilies that are (falsely) said to be written by Clement
of Alexandria also include several purported sayings of the Lord; one such saying is this: “You
shall keep my secrets for me and for the sons of my house.”
24
19
For a sampling and analysis of the agrapha in the Manichean and Mandean literature, see Henri-Charles Puech,
“Other Gnostic Gospels and Related Literature,” in New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, ed. W. Schneemelcher, trans.
R. Wilson (Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1991), 402-404.
20
For extensive examples of the patristic agrapha, see James, Apocryphal, 34-37; and Jeremias, Unknown Sayings,
20-22.
21
De Bapt. 20.2. The saying is probably from Acts 14:22; cf. sub “Analysis”.
22
Adv. Haer. 1.20.2.
23
Strom. 3.15.97.
24
The agrapha in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies have been evaluated extensively by L.L. Kline in The Sayings of
Jesus in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, SBLDS 14 (Missoula, MT: Scholars’ Press, 1975); for his conclusions on
the authenticity and the provenance of these various agrapha, see pp. 167ff.
7
In this connection, we should consider Papias’s interest in agrapha. Papias was the
bishop of Hieropolis in Asia Minor in the early second century. Although the work of Papias
(entitled “An Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord”) is no longer extant, we learn from extracts
preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea that he endeavoured to collect the sayings of Jesus which had
not been included in the canonical Gospels. Papias knew of these Gospels, “but he felt that a
reliable oral tradition preserved a greater sense of authenticity than anything available only in
written form.”
25
In the words of Papias,
“If ever there came by way someone who had associated with the elders, I used to inquire
about the words of the elders: ‘What did Andrew or Peter say, or Philip or Thomas or
James, or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples?’”
26
Though we only have extracts of his work, it seems that not much worthwhile material was
available to Papias. His best-known agraphon details the amazing plenitude of the coming age:
“The Lord taught about those times and said, “The day will come in which vines will grow with
10,000 shoots each, and each shoot will bear 10,000 branches,” and so on.
27
In passing, we note
that this utterance, claimed to be recalled by someone who knew the apostle John, is paralleled in
Jewish apocalyptic literature and rabbinical tradition, which argues strongly against its
authenticity.
Jewish Writings
The Talmud preserves a couple of “unwritten” sayings of Jesus. One example is a saying
recalled by a Christian in dialogue with R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, “Of the hire of a harlot was it
gathered, and unto the hire of a harlot shall it return. From filth it came, and to filth shall it return
25
Bruce, Christian Origins, 84.
26
Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3.
27
Quoted by Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.33.3.
8
again.”
28
The other saying from the Talmud is an Aramaic version of Matthew 5:17, “Do not
think that I have come to abolish the Law or Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to
fulfill them.”
Islamic Writings
The Koran recognizes Jesus as a true prophet. At Sura 61:6 it claims that Jesus said: “I
am the messenger of Allah unto you…bringing good tidings of a messenger who comes after me,
whose name is the Praised One.” Consistent with Jesus’s place in the Koran, we find numerous
agrapha in other Islamic writings; as Hofius notes, “Wisdom sayings of varied
provenance…were ascribed to Jesus by Islamic authors because of the respect accorded to
him.”
29
One example of this widespread phenomenon is the dominical saying in an Arabic
inscription in Northern India: “The world is a bridge. Pass over it, but build not your dwelling
there!”
30
Excursus: The Gospel of Thomas as a Collection of Agrapha
Though it was not discovered until 1945, a work with the title “Gospel of Thomas” is
mentioned from as early as the third century. Already by writers like Origen, Jerome and
Ambrose, this work was rejected as heterodox.
31
This Gospel is not a Gospel in the same sense
of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, for it contains only a record of Jesus’s sayings. Yet the short
28
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, discusses this statement on pp. 28-30 and concludes that, while it might appear
authentic because in it Jesus demonstrates characteristic freedom in his attitude toward the Mosaic law, it was
probably “invented in order to discredit Jesus” (30).
29
Hofius, “Isolated Sayings”, 89-90; cf. Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 25-26.
30
Hofius, “Isolated Sayings”, 91.
31
For brief comments on the early history, the language, and the possible author of the Gospel of Thomas, see Beate
Blatz, “The Coptic Gospel of Thomas,” in New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, ed. W. Schneemelcher, trans. R.
Wilson (Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1991), 110-112.
9
prologue indicates that it is intended to be a message of salvation.
32
After the prologue follow
the sayings, most of them introduced with the formula, “Jesus said.” Fitzmeyer describes the
sayings’ genre and structure:
These sayings sometimes resemble maxims or proverbs, sometimes parables, [and]
sometimes answer a question put by a disciple and thus form part of a conversation. They
are strung together without any apparent logical order; once in a while catchword bonds
can be the reason for joining two sayings.
33
There is no indication that the work was meant to replace the canonical Jesus tradition, though it
contains no references to the earthy activity of Jesus that is so central to the four Gospels.
34
The sayings can be classified into roughly four groups.
35
First, there are logia which are
nearly identical to dominical sayings in the canonical Gospels; for example, logion 54: “Blessed
are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” The second group is those sayings which are
paraphrases or variants of what is found in the canonical Gospels. Particularly the dominical
parables fall into this category, either compressed (logion 57) or expanded (logion 64) by the
author. Third, there are logia which are patterned after sayings of Jesus not found in the
canonical Gospels but in the patristic writings. For example, logion 82 is known also from
Origen’s exposition of Jeremiah (3.3): “He that is near me is near the fire. He that is far from me
is far from the kingdom.”
36
Finally, there are the great number of sayings in the Gospel of
Thomas which were previously unknown; these bear a definite Gnostic stamp.
37
Even from the prologue’s reference to Jesus’s “secret words,” the Gospel of Thomas
betrays its Gnostic character. Blatz demonstrates this further, summing up the theology of the
Gospel of Thomas:
32
“These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. And he
said: He who shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste of death.”
33
Fitzmeyer, “The Oxyrhynchus Logoi”, 508.
34
This is likely due to the Gnostic view that salvation is outside of history (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, 186).
35
Fitzmeyer, “The Oxyrhynchus Logoi”, 508-509.
10
Jesus appears as the living one…the revealer, who imparts to the disciples the secret of
his – and their – origin… The world is negatively assessed (log. 55, 56, and 80). The
human body is a corpse… Man is still of divine origin (log. 3, 85 and 87)… Only the
present character of the kingdom [of heaven] seems to be important, and this is strongly
spiritualized (log. 113).
38
Despite having these general Gnostic characteristics, a more precise classification of the Gospel
of Thomas is not possible. “In terms of the history of theology many lines run together in the
Gospel…it cannot be assigned to any particular group,” whether Jewish-Christian Gnostic, or
Syrian Gnostic, or more ascetic Gnostic, or Valentinian Gnostic.
39
The precise function of the Gospel of Thomas within the Gnostic movement is also
unclear. Grant points out that Gnostic leaders would “provide highly subtle exegesis of the
mysterious sayings of Jesus [in the canonical Gospels]… In addition, they used books purporting
to contain the authentic sayings of Jesus, known only to a select group of disciples”
40
Whether
the Gospel of Thomas was in wide circulation, or was restricted to use by Gnostic leaders, is
unknown.
41
Since its discovery, there has been much debate over the character and importance of the
Gospel of Thomas, and concomitantly, over its relation to the canonical Gospels. While some
sayings likely were lifted straight out of the canonical Gospels, some scholars suggest that not
only the logia identical with those in the four Gospels, but also the logia which are paraphrases
and those with patristic parallels could well preserve a tradition of Jesus’s sayings which is
36
On this logion, see sub “Analysis – Possibly Authentic Agrapha”,
37
Cf. earlier examples sub “Survey – Gnostic Literature”.
38
Blatz, “Gospel of Thomas”, 113-114; cf. the summary of motives for selection in B. Gärtner, The Theology of the
Gospel of Thomas, trans. Eric J. Sharpe (London: Collins, 1961), 73.
39
Blatz, “Gospel of Thomas,” 114; this could be due to the syncretistic character of Gnosticism in general.
40
Robert M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine: The Rise and Triumph of Christianity in the Roman World (Louisville,
KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1970; Reprint 2004), 121.
41
It is known that the Gospel of Thomas was used by the Manicheans (Blatz, “Gospel of Thomas”, 111).
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literarily independent of the canonical tradition.
42
The debate over the place of the Gospel of
Thomas in the study of the New Testament and the early church will certainly continue. Perhaps
the most prudent approach to it would be “to judge each saying individually,”
43
investigating to
what extent “they contradict the content of the New Testament Gospels, and the picture of Jesus
given there.”
44
Analysis of the Agrapha
When analyzing the agrapha, patterns of their possible development emerge. After some
analysis and an outline of suggested manners of provenance, we will provide some criteria for
evaluation that have emerged.
Provenance: Suggestions
The first category can be termed tendentious inventions.
45
This category includes the
majority of Jesus traditions outside of the Gospels. “Here the motive for invention is the desire to
find sanction for sectarian tenets.”
46
For example, as already seen in our discussion of the
Gospel of Thomas, many of its sayings were crafted in support of Gnostic emphases.
47
To give
another example, consider logion 77 of the Gospel of Thomas: “Lift up the stone, and there you
will find me; cleave the wood and I am there.” While this saying is interpreted in different
42
Stroker, “Agrapha”, 93. Cf. also Helmut Koester, “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels,” Harvard Theological
Review 73 (1980), 112-119; Koester purports that the lack of a biographical framework and other so-called later
additions indicate that the Gospel of Thomas is “at least as old and valuable” as the canonical gospels (130).
43
Fitzmeyer, “The Oxyrhynchus Logoi”, 510.
44
Gärtner, Theology, 50; Gärtner acknowledges that there may be a source of more ‘primitive’ logia that has given
rise to the logia in the Gospel of Thomas, though he acknowledges that this source is purely hypothetical (52).
45
We largely follow the analysis of Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 26-43.
46
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 27.
47
J.K. Elliott in The Apocryphal Jesus (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996) perhaps refers inadvertently
to the Gnostic character of many of the agrapha when he suggests “the secret sayings of Jesus” as an alternative to
the not entirely accurate name agrapha (55).
12
ways,
48
most scholars agree that it is a typically Gnostic sentiment of a pantheistic Christ.
49
As
for the other apocryphal Gospels, it is well known that “many of these gospels were composed
and used by Christian groups which the orthodox church rejected as heretical.”
50
In this category
we may then include the Manichean and Mandean sayings. Puech observes that these agrapha
are largely taken from the Gnostic apocryphal Gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas.
51
Related to the agrapha which have sectarian theological emphases, are those sayings –
again, most often with Gnostic overtones – which were invented in support of particular ethical
teachings. The Gospel of Egyptians has the Saviour saying, “I am come to undo the works of the
female.”
52
Conversely, there were other Gnostic texts which spoke of how sexual intercourse
was “‘a mystical union’ which lifted them into the kingdom of God.”
53
Other sayings have clearly been invented or modified from the canonical Gospels for
apologetical purposes. For example, in the Gospel of the Nazaraeans, we find a dominical saying
which emphasizes the sinlessness of Jesus. This saying is vis-à-vis those heretical Christians who
pointed to Jesus’s baptism by John as evidence of his need for washing from sin: “What sin have
I committed,” Jesus asks those who urge him to be baptized by John, “that I should go and be
baptized by him?”
54
Still other sayings have been invented with polemical intent. An example of
this is the first agraphon from the Talmud that we discussed earlier, which was most likely
invented in an attempt to discredit Jesus.
48
See Yamauchi, “Agrapha”, 70; some see the elements in this logion as referring to the Easter cross and empty
tomb, respectively.
49
Cf. Gärtner, Theology, 144-146.
50
James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress
Press, 1971), 163.
51
Puech, “Gnostic Gospels”, 402.
52
Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Strom., 3.9.63.2; statements of a similar vein are found in the Gospel of
Thomas; see logion 114, “Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
53
Grant, Augustus, 72; he cites a Valentinian statement recorded by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.6.4).
54
Quoted by Jerome, Adv. Pelag. 3.2.
13
A second major category are tendentious modifications. Rather than inventing new
sayings, “it was easier…to modify already existing sayings.”
55
For example, in the Gospel of
Peter, the severity of Jesus’s cry of dereliction from the cross has been diminished into: “My
power, my power, you have forsaken me.”
A third class of the agrapha are legendary inventions. While not necessarily of heretical
intent, they are “products of the imaginative fantasy of early Christian writers.”
56
One such
example is the Letter of Jesus to Abgar of Edessa, “an attempt to trace the origins of the Syrian
church to the time of Jesus.”
57
Included in this class are also those sayings which were crafted
out of a later reverence for Jesus; this describes particularly the agrapha found in Islamic
writings.
A fourth grouping are those which can be termed erroneous transferences. This is “the
erroneous attribution to Jesus of sayings from other sources.”
58
A possible source for one of
Papias’s agrapha, regarding the plenitude of the coming age, has already been pointed out.
59
The saying from Acts 20:35, also mentioned earlier, was a maxim current in the Greco-Roman
world that might have been put into the mouth of Jesus by Paul.
60
A saying that is attributed to
Jesus by Justin Martyr, “There will be divisions and factions” (Dial. 35.3), is probably inspired
by 1 Corinthians 11:18.
Other agrapha can be placed in a fifth category, generally described as modifications of
dominical sayings. These are usually cases of “expansion (or abbreviation), rhetorical
modification, embroidering, elucidation, clarification, correction… inaccurate quotation… [or]
55
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 30.
56
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings., 31.
57
Yamauchi, “Agrapha”, 69.
58
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 32.
59
Cf. sub “Survey – Church Fathers and Early Church Writers”.
60
Or, as some scholars might insist, it was Luke who had Paul put this saying into the mouth of Jesus.
14
harmonization of synoptic parallels.”
61
One common device for expanding canonical dominical
sayings is through parallelismus membrorum; an example of this occurs in a few manuscripts at
Luke 10:16, where it is added: “and he that hears me hears him that sent me.” An agraphon that
has likely arisen through the combination of diverse elements occurs in the Gospel of Thomas
(logion 25): “Love your brother as your soul; keep him as the apple of your eye.” This is a free
rendering of the love commandment (Lev 19:18; cf. Matt 19:19), combined with a saying from
Deuteronomy 32:10 or Psalm 17:8.
62
A sixth category of agrapha are those that appear to be Gospel narratives transformed
into dominical sayings: “Occasionally a narrative or an editorial passage…has been altered to
direct speech and put into the mouth of Jesus.”
63
An example of this occurs in the Syrian church
father Aphraates, who portrays Jesus as saying, “Pray, and do not lose heart.”
64
This agraphon
has likely arisen from the editorial comment made in the narrative at Luke 18:1.
Still other agrapha can be classed as artificially constructed connecting links, either as
introductions or conclusions. An example of this phenomenon is the doxology placed (in some
manuscripts) at the end of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13).
Criteria for Evaluation
As we have seen, the analysis of the agrapha is carried out in a negative fashion: that is,
possibly authentic agrapha are discovered through the elimination of inauthentic agrapha. The
merits of this quest for authentic agrapha we will discuss below; for now, let us briefly make
more explicit our criteria for evaluation.
61
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 35.
62
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 36-37.
63
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 37.
64
Demonstrationes 4.16.
15
Firstly, the context of some agrapha argues effectively against their authenticity.
65
Some
sayings are firmly embedded in legendary narratives. The context of other sayings informs us
that they have been formulated with polemical, apologetical or reverential intent. Still other
sayings are found within works of a heretical slant. While contextual considerations cannot be
determinative, they make us hesitant in accepting an agraphon as authentic.
Secondly, the criteria of the history of tradition needs to be considered. For an agraphon
to be considered possibly authentic, there should be independence of the canonical tradition.
66
That is, the saying should not appear to be derived from a narrative account in the canonical
Gospels; it should not be a conflation of two (or more) sayings in the Gospels; and it should not
be an elaboration of a saying in the Gospels. Related to this, a possibly authentic agraphon
should be independent of other traditions as well, such as Jewish or secular literature.
Finally, to these two criteria we can add the criterion that an agraphon should have
Palestinian or Jewish characteristics.
67
That is, an agraphon can be evaluated in terms of how it
approximates the Semitic manner in which Jesus spoke, and the Semitic thought-world in which
his words were current.
65
For the following criteria, see Hofius, “Isolated Sayings”, 89-90; cf. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, 183-184.
66
The lack of independence of many agraphon vis-à-vis the canonical tradition has lately been re-evaluated. In
short, if the source of the isolated dominical sayings (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas) is re-dated to an earlier period
than the canonical gospels, it is actually the canonical gospels that might contain the later conflations,
embellishments and inventions. Such a view is taken by W.D. Stroker in Extracanonical Sayings of Jesus, SBLRBS
18 (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1989), and by J.D. Crossan, in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean
Jewish Peasant (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1991). These scholars generally follow H. Koester’s approach,
as applied in, among other works, his article “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels” (mentioned above). There
Koester pleads against a prejudiced view of “apocryphal works,” a title he rejects as already having connotations of
being false and spurious. While we should aim to be fair in our treatment of early Christian literature, J.A. Meier in
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1 (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1991) points out that the
current radical re-dating and re-valuing of much of this literature – including the Gospel of Thomas – is historically
and textually untenable (116-118; 128-149; cf. his conclusions on 140-141).
67
Charlesworth and Evans, “Jesus”, 489.
16
We would be remiss if we did not point out difficulties inherent in the process of isolating
authentic agrapha.
68
Sometimes the agrapha are truly “isolated,” without any context which can
aid us in making a judgment. Further, a comparison of the canonical Gospels themselves reveal
that they contain many repeated or even conflated sayings, which does not necessitate their
rejection.
69
It is also plausible that Jesus would have made use of – or unconsciously
approximated – current wisdom traditions in his teachings, whether Jewish or Greco-Roman.
Possibly Authentic Agrapha
Having eliminated many agrapha for various reasons, and also having conceded that the
quest for authentic agrapha is not without methodological difficulties, let us now tentatively
suggest some possibly authentic agrapha on the basis of the above criteria.
70
Of such sayings
Jeremias says, “[their] attestation and subject-matter do not give rise to objections of weight,
which are perfectly compatible with the synoptic tradition, and whose authenticity admits of
serious consideration.”
71
68
For these caveats, in part, see Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, 184-185.
69
Some scholars would also dispute the authenticity of portions of the canonical gospels themselves, which
exacerbates the difficulty in evaluating the agrapha, for it is the canonical gospels which form a key part of the basis
of this evaluation. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, points out how this gives rise to a certain circularity: “What from the
agrapha is deemed authentic rests on a prior determination of what is deemed authentic in the canonical Gospels,
with the result that the authentic agrapha tend to duplicate the canonical sayings” (215).
70
While there is not, unsurprisingly, perfect agreement among scholars as to what agrapha might be authentic, these
sayings are often included in scholars’ wheat once all the chaff has been thrown to the wind. E.g., see Jeremias,
Unknown Sayings, 42-43, cf. Hofius, “Isolated Sayings,” 91; cf. also Charlesworth and Evans, “Jesus”, 484-489.
There are differences in the estimation of the authentic agrapha; Jeremias suggests eighteen; Hofius reduces that by
half, and then casts doubt even on five of these, because of concerns about their history of tradition.
71
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 42. This statement must be balanced with Hofius’s reduction of Jeremias’s eighteen
candidates by two-thirds, to which Meier, Marginal Jew, concurs; he judges some of Jeremias’ candidates to be
supported by rather tendentious argumentation (113-114).
17
The statement about Sabbath observance in Luke 6:5, cited above, is possibly authentic.
72
So too, the saying from the Syriac Liber Graduum: “As you are found, so will you be led away”
(Sermon 3.3, cf. 15.4).
73
The Stromata of Clement of Alexandria might preserve an authentic
saying: “Ask for the great things, and God will add to you what is small” (1.24.158).
74
A
passage from the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (2.51.1) is also generally accepted: “Be
competent money-changers!”
75
From Origen’s commentary on the prophet Jeremiah (3:3), a
saying that we already noted from the Gospel of Thomas (logion 82): “He that is near me is near
the fire. He that is far from me is far from the kingdom.”
76
Jerome cites a dominical saying
recorded in the Gospel of the Hebrews that is possibly authentic: “And only then shall you be
glad, when you look on your brother with love.”
77
A final agraphon generally accepted as
authentic is found in the Oxyrhynchus papyri: “[He who today] stands far off will tomorrow be
[near to you]” (POxy 1224).
72
Bruce, Christian Origins, explains that the saying is quite consistent with Jesus’s teaching on the Sabbath: “The
implication is that a violation of the letter of the law may be permissible, and even commendable, if it based on
principle, but not if it springs from a spirit of negligence or rebellion” (83).
73
Cf. Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho 35.3. On this saying Hofius, “Isolated Sayings,” notes that it could
simply be “a meagre summary” of Mt 24:27,40 (90).
74
Hofius, “Isolated Sayings”, observes that this could be “a secondary application” of Mt 6:33 to prayer (90).
75
This saying is quoted or alluded to over fifty times in the church fathers and early church writers; “the idea is that
we should be like the money changers who can detect counterfeit coins among the genuine” (Yamauchi, “Agrapha”,
70). Again Hofius, “Isolated Sayings”, (following W. Bauer) sounds a cautionary note, and says this might simply
be an epexegetical statement on 1 Thess 5:21 (90).
76
Didymus, in commenting on Ps 88:8, quotes the same saying. Hofius, “Isolated Sayings,” observes that it borders
on Luke 22:49 and Mark 9:49, though this does not demand that we “assume dependence” (90). A different form of
this saying may be found in Ignatius’s statement that he was “near to the words, near to God.” (Smyrn. 4.2), which is
said to argue for its authenticity; nevertheless, interesting parallels to the saying can also be found in Greek
literature; e.g., Aesop: “He who is near Zeus is near the lightning” (cf. Stroker, Extracanonical, 194).
77
In Ephes. 5.4; Hofius, “Isolated Sayings”, concedes that it “can scarcely be conceived as a secondary modification
of the love commandment” of Lev 19:18, quoted in Mt 19:19 (90).
18
Conclusions: Value Judgments
Judgments on the significance of individual agrapha are typically made according to a
three-fold standard.
78
Simply, some are termed “valueless,” others “possibly valuable,” and still
others “valuable.” Yet even if we compare the agrapha to the canonical Gospels, we find that
even the best of the former are far from theologically valuable. Overall, the agrapha are of
decidedly poor quality, relative to the textually well-attested New Testament sources; this
“contrast highlights the precious value of the canonical gospels.”
79
As Jeremias puts it, after
sifting out his “possibly authentic” agrapha: “The extracanonical literature, taken as a whole,
manifests a surprising poverty…Only here and there, amid a mass of worthless rubbish, do we
come across a priceless jewel.”
80
Indeed, one might be inclined to conclude with Meier, “A
great deal of effort over dubious material [has produced] absolutely no significant new data.”
81
However, there is no need to end this study on a such a dismal note. The character of the
evidence considered already warns us that it is misguided to expect the agrapha to contribute
greatly to our understanding of who Jesus actually was and what he actually said; rather, “The
primary historical value of these documents is rooted in their own time and space;
82
that is, they
belong to “a study of the patristic church from the 2nd to the 4th century.”
83
And if we do study
the agrapha on their own merits, we discover that they can provide us with useful information
78
For the following classification, see J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993),
26; cf. also the three categories of L. Vaganay, “Agrapha”, in Dictionnaire de la Bible. Supplement, vol. 1, ed. Louis
Pirot (Paris: Libraire Letouzey et Ane, 1928), cols. 184-189.
79
Yamauchi, “Agrapha”, 71; cf. Vaganay, “Agrapha”, “Par le contraste, nous faire mieux apprécier le caractère
divin des sentences authentiques” (col. 193).
80
Jeremias, Unknown Sayings, 120.
81
Meier, Marginal Jew, 114.
82
Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, 216.
83
Meier, Marginal Jew, 123.
19
about their authors and the setting in which the sayings arose.
84
Indeed, throughout this paper we
have noted possible historical reasons for the creation of different agrapha. In this sense we can
say that the agrapha do have an element of value, apart from any question of authenticity.
One area in which a study of the agrapha broadens our understanding is regarding the
process of the transmission of the Jesus tradition within early Christianity.
85
Van Voorst points
out: “The four canonical gospels could not possibly hold everything Jesus did or said during his
ministry, or even what the early church remembered about him.”
86
This means that, as the
textual variants in the Greek New Testament might also indicate, some sayings may have
circulated independently in the early church, preserved and passed on orally. Once the canonical
Gospels were written, this oral tradition did not die out, yet we must also note,
The writing of the canonical Gospels did change the situation. The canonical Gospels –
long before they were recognized as “canonical” – were regularly preached on at
worship, studied in catechetical schools, and cited strictly and loosely by patristic
authors; and so increasingly they lodged themselves in the memory of individual
Christians and whole communities. Inevitably they “contaminated” and modified the oral
tradition that existed before and alongside themselves.
87
It is this powerful influence of the canonical Gospels which must be considered when studying
many of the writings of the early church. Indeed, the “four canonical Gospels embrace with great
completeness almost all the early Church knew of the sayings and deeds of Jesus in the second
half of the first century.”
88
84
Though we disagree with his re-dating of the early Christian literature, we appreciate Stroker’s concern that in the
sometimes obsessive quest for authentic agrapha, most of them will simply be relegated “to the periphery” without
due attention having been given to their historical value (Extracanonical, 1).
85
Birger Gerhardsson has argued that rigorous rabbinic methods were used by Jesus when he taught his disciples;
they accorded authority “to his remembered teaching…[and] therefore took care about its accurate transmission. For
a brief summary of the theory of Gerhardsson, see D. Hill, “On the Evidence for the Creative Role of Christian
Prophets,” New Testament Studies 20 (1974), 264.
86
Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, 179; cf. John 21:25.
87
Meier, Marginal Jew, 131.
88
Charlesworth and Evans, “Jesus”, 490.
20
A study of the agrapha also contributes a broader picture of how different groups within
early Christianity interacted with the Jesus tradition. For example, we have observed that the
early church writers evidently did not always have the text of the canonical Gospels in front of
them, but “quoted” Jesus from memory.
89
Sometimes they also cited alleged sayings of Jesus
from apocryphal works uncritically; an important aspect of this issue is the question of how
widely known (and accepted) the canon of Scripture actually was in the first centuries of the
church. Nevertheless, even if the early church writers sometimes quoted erroneously or
transferred sayings into the mouth of Jesus in order “to score a theological point,”
90
in general
we see that the writers were eager to appeal to the sayings of Jesus, and most often they did
appeal to those sayings that were known to be genuine.
While some agrapha likely came about unintentionally, we have seen that this was not
always the case. The abundance of agrapha produced by some Christian groups confronts us
“with a ‘Christianity’ unlike any group described by the Evangelists or in which the Evangelists
live.”
91
As the products of particular communities – particularly the Gnostic communities – the
“agrapha illustrate the growth of tradition and the accretion of legend.”
92
Such growth can help
us in reconstructing the social and theological setting from which these sayings came, for
“sayings were shaped and redacted in large measure to meet the needs of the communities.”
93
From the evidence, we see that in some Christian quarters the sayings included in the works of
the incipient canon were not always considered to be fixed, but were altered according to
sectarian need.
89
Charleworth and Evans, “Jesus”, 131, helpfully point out that early Christians had “none of our…academic zeal
for exact citation of a written text.”
90
Meier, Marginal Jew, 131.
91
Charlesworth and Evans, “Jesus”, 490.
92
Elliott, New Testament, 26.
93
Stroker, Extracanonical, 2.
21
In conclusion, while canonical sayings of Jesus were modified or new sayings were
invented because of theological gravamen and social peculiarities within some circles, the
evidence does not lead us to claim that the orthodox church in the early centuries freely crafted
dominical sayings.
94
The foundation for the church’s knowledge about Jesus had been well laid
in the canonical Gospels; there was no need to add to this foundation, but only to build on it
through further reflection on what He had said.
94
Stroker, Extracanonical, 490-491. In this connection, the authors refer to a discussion in New Testament circles
on the role of Christian prophets in the early church. Some scholars (e.g., M.E. Boring, in The Continuing Voice of
Jesus: Christian Prophecy and the Gospel Tradition [Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1991],
following R. Bultmann (History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John March [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963]) argue
that Christian prophets had a key role in continually creating or modifying sayings of Jesus; other scholars (e.g., D.
Hill, “Creative Role”; J.D.G. Dunn in “Prophetic ‘I’-sayings and the Jesus Tradition: The Importance of Testing
Prophetic Utterances in Early Christianity,” New Testament Studies 24 [1978], 175-198) more plausibly discount
this possibility, pointing to the extreme paucity of “Synoptic-like sayings preserved for us in the earliest Christian
literature outside the Synoptic Gospels” (Dunn, 181; emphasis original).
22
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