J.D. Atkins
Yes. Part of it is a matter of sequence. What I find in my book is that the early docetists, which would include some Gnostics, because some Gnostics were also Docetists as well. These are various types of early heresies. There’s so many of them, because Irenaeus will say that they’re so popular. They pop up like mushrooms all over a field. You know, there’s always a new docetic or gnostic sect. The point is that these early readers of Luke and John, they are assuming the text is authoritative to begin with. Well, what I found in my work was that nearly all of the early docetists or Gnostics, that deal with the resurrection of Jesus, they are, in fact, dependent on one of the gospel narratives. They accept the gospel narratives as authoritative for the most part.
David Capes
So these Docetists and these Gnostics are looking at these texts, they believe they are
authoritative, but they’re interpreting them in a different way.
J.D. Atkins
That’s right, yes. To give you one example, there is what is often referred to as the Ophite
account. It’s in Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.30. Ophite is a later term for the name of that sect that Irenaeus is dealing with. But that account works right through Luke’s texts from the birth narrative to the resurrection. And it just reinterprets each section of the text. What it does is: it actually uses language to say that these are the eyewitness accounts of the apostles. It affirms that. This is a heretic, affirming that, taking it as an authoritative, eyewitness account of the apostles. They treat it like scripture, but they reinterpret it. One of the reasons why they have to reinterpret it is because it’s already set as authoritative. I coined a term in my book, which is basically a new verb, “docetize”, or a new noun, “docetization”.
David Capes
That’s what scholars do? They just make up words!
J.D. Atkins
It’s an analogy with allegorization. When they had a text and they didn’t want to read it literally, then oftentimes they would allegorize. The early Gnostics, they would regularly allegorize the Old Testament and the Gospels. But docetization is similar. It’s a way of taking a text but not taking it literally. But it’s not taking it figuratively either. It’s more saying, this seemed to be the case. We get the word docetism form the Greek word dokein. Which can be translated “seems” or “appears”. They would take the narrative and say it only seemed to be this way.
I think the Ophite account says something like Jesus Christ only seemed to be in the flesh. Or you have Justin Martyr responding to another docetic text saying, he only seemed to eat fish. Some Marcionites will say the same type of thing, because it’s already an authoritative text. You can’t get around it unless you reinterpret it. It becomes a hermeneutical, exegetical battle in the second century over Luke and John.
David Capes
How we take these texts. Well, I’ve got to ask about the doubt of the apostles. Because that’s the title of your book, The Doubt of the Apostles. How does the doubt of the apostles function for the docetists, and how did it function in the New Testament?
J.D. Atkins
I use doubt as a broader theme. There’s a number of different words that are used in the
resurrection narratives, and every single one of them has it right. You have Matthew often
translated, “they worshiped, but some doubted” (Matthew 28:16-20). Everyone knows the Thomas story. And then, of course, there are the various places where the apostles disbelieved. In Luke 24 Jesus will also say “how foolish and slow of heart to believe”. And even the longer ending of Mark will refer to Jesus rebuking the apostles for their hardness of heart in not believing.
You’ve got this theme that’s throughout the resurrection narratives in the Gospels. The way
modern scholars read that theme is they tend to see it as an apologetic device. So modern
scholars say doubt is a good thing. It means that we’re not gullible. We’re not just believing
anything. We demand evidence and proof before we believe. And so modern scholars say
that’s what the gospel writers are doing. They’re including the doubt of the apostles in order to assure the reader that they doubted, and they still came to faith. You can trust them.
Now, what I argue in my book is that while that makes sense to a modern reader, it didn’t make sense to ancient Jewish and Christian readers. In the ancient world, doubt is seen not as something that makes you wise so that you can get to certainty. Rather, doubt is seen as
foolishness or as hard-heartedness. We actually see this in the gospels themselves; Jesus will rebuke the Emmaus disciples for being foolish and slow of heart to believe. In the longer ending of Mark, he rebukes them for their hard-heartedness. You can see it in James. The double-minded man is unstable in his mind. And so, it’s actually a negative thing.
What happens in the early church in the second century is you have two different trends of
dealing with the doubt of the apostles. You have the Orthodox guys, the church fathers who are defending the faith. What they do, almost without fail, is delete the doubt. When they retell the story, they don’t even mention it. And then when you get a little bit later to folks like Origen, for example, or later with John Chrysostom, they’ll try to defend the apostles. Origen will try to explain, by saying this is why they doubted. And then John Chrysostom will say he was commenting on the “but some doubted” or “but they doubted”, depending on how you translate the verse in Matthew 28:17. And I’m paraphrasing, give the evangelists some credit. They were being honest and not hiding their faults. At one point, Augustine will even say “the disease that the lambs shudder at, the leading rams had”. It was shocking to them that the apostles would have this doubt, and disbelief.
David Capes
Because they’re understanding the term doubt, in a negative way.
J.D. Atkins
In a very negative sense, and that has a very negative connotation in the ancient world.
David Capes
Okay, talk about the Docetists.
J.D. Atkins
So the Docetists take advantage of the doubt. They would use it as an opportunity to say, you can’t really trust these disciples. You see the disciples. They saw this and they saw that, but they didn’t have the proper special revelation from Jesus at a later point that told them how to reinterpret these things. They would use the doubt as an opportunity to criticize the apostles and say that you can’t really trust these accounts, in a sense. You know, even though they were eyewitnesses.
David Capes
They really weren’t sure what they were saying.
J.D. Atkins
They really didn’t understand. They saw what they saw, but they didn’t really understand what they were seeing. What happens then is that the doubt of the apostles is actually something that satisfies what we would call “the criterion of embarrassment” in the historical Jesus studies. In the sense that the evangelists include it, despite the fact that it would cause problems. And it did cause problems. And so actually, much like today, we see that the women were the first to see the empty tomb and the first to see the risen Jesus, and we say, nobody would make that up in the ancient world.
David Capes
Because women we’re not considered trustworthy themselves.
J.D. Atkins
Yes. In the ancient world, because of the culture, their witness wasn’t considered as valid. And so, the evangelists certainly didn’t make that up in the similar way. What I argue at the end of my book, in the last chapter, is that the doubt of the apostles functions similarly. That’s also something that the evangelist would never have made up, because it would only lead to more problems.
David Capes
It’s a little bit embarrassing that the heroes of the story just don’t quite get it, or they’re not really sure. And you wouldn’t make up that kind of thing. It’s part of the authenticity, I think, of the story.
J.D. Atkins
Yes. And funny enough, aside from Thomas, none of the apostles are explicitly said to believe. Obviously, you can infer that they did believe.
David Capes
But other than Thomas, who said “My Lord and my God”.
J.D. Atkins
Yes! And his Christology is right. And when Jesus responds to him, there’s the question. Jesus responds and says, you believe because you have seen. Blessed are those, that believe, though they haven’t seen. So even Thomas’ belief, Jesus was a little bit critical of it.
David Capes
It’s a fascinating book. It’s entitled, “The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church. Subtitled The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of The Gospels in Ancient Reception and Modern Debate.” J.D. Atkins, thanks for being with us today on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
J.D. Atkins
Thank you for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
