Fun with Jesus

By Dante Stack

Will the real Jesus of Nazareth please stand up? Please stand up.

From miraculous Baby Jesus bathwater to a talking cross, the "other" gospels offer scintillating tales about Jesus of Nazareth. Expunged from the church for their un-orthodoxy, false author, or just because of their weirdness, the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, Mary and others offer us insight into a world we rarely encounter. What did the church look like before the New Testament took shape? What questions were people on the periphery of society asking about this Jesus of Nazareth? How were different faith traditions trying to manipulate Christ's work to fit into their philosophical box? How did the early church fellas choose what was true and what was worthy of the trash heap?

Fun with Jesus is a tour-de-force that flies through the non-Biblical gospels in search of one simple idea: is there any real Jesus here? Can the Messiah of the Protestant and Catholic faiths be found in these forged documents? The Gospel of John ends with the verse, "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

The whole world couldn't contain...

Maybe, just maybe, we can find the diamond in the rough. Maybe we can find just a little bit more of the real Jesus of Nazareth in the exaggerated rubble. But maybe we can find a glimmer of the real Jesus of Nazareth somewhere in that trash pile. And if not, we can have a good laugh while searching for him.

Come for the "Extra" Gospels. Stay for the jokes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stockade Amusement
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463389409

Dante Stack

Dante is a desperate believer.He has education in religion as well as cinema arts from Biola University. He's lived with his wife in Slovenia, Russia, and America. Sometimes he makes outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. No, wait, scratch that. That was Dr. Evil's father who made that outrageous claim. Not Dante. Mr. Stack would never say that. He's much too humble.Life is best lived with a dog and a wife.

Book preview

Fun with Jesus

a manic odyssey through the extra books about Christ

Table of Contents

DesperateStart

What?

Gospel of Thomas

Digestion 1: Sayings or Actions?

Infancy Gospel of Thomas

The Proto-Gospel of James

The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew

The Latin Infancy Gospel

Digestion 2: Let's talk Mohammad!

History of Joseph the Carpenter

The Nothing: Q and the lack

Jesus' Correspondence with Abgar

Digestion 3: Black or White or Read All Over

The Gospel of Nicodemus

Digestion 4: When did God's Voice Leave?

The Pilate Cycle

Morton Hears a Who: Secret Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Mary & The Greater Questions of Mary

Digestion 5: White Lies Matter

The Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Judas

Digestion 6: The Pit and the Pendulum

The Gospel of Truth

Spectre

Reclaiming Desperation

The Egerton Gospel

Choose Your Own Ending

References

Desperate Start

Let's begin this book by spoiling another book. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is fantastic. The story is told by Owen Meany's best friend, a dude named John Wheelwright, long after Owen's passing. The old friend recalls story after story from their childhood spent side-by-side. Some of the memories are funny, some wise, some a little gross. The title suggests that John's prayer is indeed for Owen, but that's not true. It's a selfish prayer. A desperate prayer. John prays for himself. Here lies the last sentence of John Wheelwright's prayer, a desperate plea to God for Owen some forty years after Owen's death:

O God -- please give him back! I shall keep asking You.²

John wants something very simple. John wants more stories with Owen.

More stories. It's a profound ask; a ridiculous plea.

Some believe Jesus to be the incarnate God of all creation who chose to display his love to us by experiencing life as a human. Others presume Jesus was just a 1st Century Judean utilizing David Copperfield-ian tricks to woo a sad, captive people to hope. A third group won't even admit that much, altogether denying the existence of a historical Jesus of Nazareth. No matter the perspective, all three groups can agree on one aspect of Jesus: Jesus is not living as a human (read: eating-sleeping-farting) among us now. The Christian will hesitate to agree with this sentiment, thinking, He is alive. This misses the point. He is not alive and walking and talking and eating among us as he once did. Christianity (the faith that has forever captured and enraptured my heart) espouses a Jesus who indeed currently is alive, alas is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Wherever that is, it is not here. Letting that seep in, we (both believer and skeptic) should all be keen to repeat John Wheelwright's prayer.

O God -- please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

This is a book in search of more. More of Jesus. More of him in anyway we can get it. The Gospel of John is easily the most poetic of the four canonical Gospels. John ends his book this way:

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.³

(John 21:20)

By John's own admission, there are plenty more stories to tell of Jesus from Galilee.

Are they lost? Gone forever? Can we get them back?

What?

So... what is this? What are we doing here?

You read the back cover (or the online book summary thingie), right? You know what you're getting into. What we've got here is Speaking Infant Jesus, Magical Toddler Jesus, Tall-as-a-Cloud Jesus, Breaking into Hell Jesus, Weirdo Jesus, Judas is my Homeboy Jesus, Everything you Touch is Bad Jesus, and we just got restocked with a Mostly-Regular Jesus here for your perusal.

What we got here... is all the Jesuses.

Take your pick!

Isn't this blasphemy? What About that Thing that Paul Said?

Reprimanding the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul wrote:

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

(2 Corinthians 11:3-5)³

The famous theologian and Bible commentator Matthew Henry sums up Paul's argument more succinctly than I can:

The apostle desired to preserve the Corinthians from being corrupted by the false apostles. There is but one Jesus, one Spirit, and one gospel, to be preached to them, and received by them; and why should any be prejudiced, by the devices of an adversary, against him who first taught them in faith? They should not listen to men, who, without cause, would draw them away from those who were the means of their conversion.⁴

So, then, why the heck should we expose ourselves to heresies and six feet of crap about the one so many of us hold as the sacred incarnation of God himself? Why, why, why? And to make matters worse, didn't Paul tell us to focus on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8)?! How is researching the vile lies about Jesus good for anything?

Maybe it's not. Maybe you're right.

My answer, at the end of the day, is simple: I wanna be in the room where it happens.5

What Happened?

The Broadway smash Hamilton features a song about Alexander Hamilton negotiating a deal with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to get his debt plan passed. The emotional thud of the song is the repeating line, No one else was in the room where it happened.⁵

When we think about the human ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, we are relying on words written by those who were in the room where it happened. But that's a funny thing. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John attempt to answer more questions than merely, 'What went down in the room where it happened.' Everyone in 1st century Palestine knew the broad details. The more interesting questions are: 'Why did it happen? How did it happen? How did the Son of God become a human? How did he heal people? Why did he have to die so terribly? Why did he resurrect? Why was he born to average folks? Why didn't he become a ruling king? How does his life's work affect the rest of us?' And on and on...

The four Gospels answer some of these questions... but not all of them.

You want what I want. That's why you're here. Maybe you don't know it yet. But it's true. I'll say it again in case you weren't paying attention. You want what I want. That's true, isn't it? Admit it. Admit it and we can move on.

Admit it.

Admit it.

Admit it.

Good.

So let's talk about what I want.

I want to know Jesus.

Again, that last line of John's Gospel:

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

(John 21:20)³

In short: Jesus did more than what was written about him. So much more. How do we get to that magical library? How do we learn more? What follows in this book is a desperate search through the myriads of apocryphal and pseudepigraphal Gospels in hopes of finding something true about Jesus. Finding just one more true thing about him would make the hunt worth it. Anything. Give me anything about Jesus. Anything I didn't know before. Anything.

What's the Style Here?

It's supposed to be fun. I'm not necessarily good at funny, so in lieu of good jokes, I've included lots of references to movies and stuff. It's enjoyable. We're having a good time. You love it here. You always have.

Beyond mere fun, this book is meant to be informative. I've read through these weirdo Gospels so you don't have to! In a quest to make each book summarized memorably, I've leveraged each chapter into three bite-sized sections:

Walkabout: a general summary of the book with scintillating quotes.

The Remembery: four simple questions that hopefully distill down for us the most memorable aspects of each Gospel.

Dating: in which Wayne's World⁶ quotes are featured prominently.

Additionally, there are six chapters I've called Digestion chapters. These are short reflections based on ideas surrounding the idea of additional Gospels. Together, we've eaten these Gospels (aka read them), next we need to digest them (process the information). Feel free to skip these chapters if intestines aren't your thing.

What does Wayne's World have to do with these Gospels?

Since the date in which each of these Gospels is written is pivotal to how we judge their potential validity, each book summary requires a discussion of its suspected date. But just throwing dates at you seems like madness. It would be very easy to not understand the impact of say, a date for a manuscript that's in the early part of the 2nd century CE. So, in lieu of dates, I've chosen to signify early church time periods with Wayne's World quotes. So, dog-ear this page. This list is important.

Here's the Wayne's World key extraordinaire!⁶

50-100 CE: If she was a president, she'd be Babe-raham Lincoln!

101-150 CE: It's like a new pair of underwear: At first, it's constrictive, but after awhile it becomes a part of you.

151-200 CE: We're looking down on Wayne's basement. Only that's not Wayne's basement. Isn't that weird?

201-300 CE: No stairway. Denied!

300-800 CE: Wow! What a totally amazing, excellent discovery... NOT!

801-later: It's sucking my will to live! Oh, the humanity!

*Never seen Wayne's World? Think this list is ridiculous? Here's what you need to know: the earlier, the better. The 1st century equals hallowed ground, meaning it was likely penned by someone who actually saw Jesus in the flesh.

What This Book Isn't

This book is wrong.

It just is.

You'll have to deal with that yourself.

The practice of simplification leads to error. This book is predominantly an exercise in simplifying abstract and complex writings, therefore this book is in error. My intention is not to create a tome worthy of peer review. My peers would destroy me (like they always do every night in my dreams—those dreadful cannibals). At the very least, they'd burn me in effigy. I'd be singing the lacrimosa of Joan of Arc before the noon day sun sets. It'd all be over for me. This, right here; this is not that. These words are not the first words of a doctoral thesis.

To simplify: this is not a textbook.

Counter-intuitively, this is not a book that is not interested in the truth. I know, I know, it's bad sport to write with double-negatives. That's another thing you're going to have to deal with. Due to the style and nature of this discourse, you're going to have to deal with me. I'm going to get in the way of the narrative. Tough beans. Deal with it. That leads me to my next point.

This is not an unbiased text (double-negatives for life!). That is to say... I'm biased. But so are you, so let's call it even-stevens, mmkay? Rather than try to suppress my inherent convictions, I've gleefully allowed them to bubble to the surface. The hope is that in putting my cards on the table, you'll be more apt to do so yourself.

I'd also like to note that this book does not endorse Michael Jackson or Olivia Newton-John. That's important. You can form your own opinion about those people on your own time.

To summarize:

*This book has errors (both real and imagined).

*This is not a textbook.

*This is a biased document.

*This book does not endorse MJ or ONJ.

So, you may ask, if this here manuscript is not those things, what the heck is it?

What This Book Is

Can we find him here? Everything else is superfluous.

Can we find him here? That's the risk we're taking.

It comes down to a simple syllogism.

If we love Jesus,

Every detail about him matters,

Therefore, we should always want more.

If I claim to love someone, let's say my wife, then everything she does should matter to me. If you don't know her (ergo, you don't love her and spend time with her like I do), then you don't care how she puts the dishes into the dishwasher. But I do. I care about that detail. Our loving relationship is filled up with millions of little details. Sure, some are heavier and more important than others, but they all come together to form a kaleidoscope of meaning. I get the privilege of seeing my wife in action everyday. That means every day I get to hoard a new host of little memories and moments, like a squirrel gathering acorns. It never ends. And it never should.

Such is the way I hope to enter into relationship with my God. I should be collecting details and savoring new acorns about him every day. And God being infinite should be all the more continuously intriguing to me.

Why not simply seek God in prayer? Why should I bother myself with reading lies about Jesus when I have access to the Holy Spirit at every turn?

It's a fair question.

Moments change us. Sometimes these moments are extremely personal: a wedding, a funeral, abuse. Sometimes the moments are universal: the Pearl Harbor attack, the release of Super Mario Bros. 3 (the best video game ever created), or Attila the Hun being convinced by Pope Leo I to not invade Rome. Moments make life inherently exciting. They are effervescent. They silently fall as snowflakes dissolving on your tongue before you can even taste it.

God was a man. This was a moment; a solitary experience. Something supernatural. Something cataclysmic. It happened once, and has yet to happen again. I want to examine that moment. It's the biggest and best moment in history. Let me into that moment. Again and again. I want surround sound, 360 degree surveillance on that sucker. Let me store up all the tiny fragments of that magnificent moment. I want to cherish them; collect them in my old tin lunch box. I wanna be in the room where it happens.

The reality is, in trying to find more authentic Jesus moments, we have to suffer a lot of idiots. More than that, we'll read abominable things. Jesus will be depicted poorly and detestably. His reputation will be slimed anew. But, for me, this is the cost of searching. You gotta sift through a ton of crap before you can find a gold nugget to cherish.

This is roller coaster. You've just strapped yourself in. It's too late now. We're clinking up the first hill already. The world below is getting smaller, smaller, smaller.

Hold on. It's a hell of a ride.

The Gospel of Thomas

You Know What Jesus Needs More of? Obscure Sayings!

We gotta start with the elephant stuck in the tiny room. The room is too small. The elephant's butt is pushing you against the wall. She can't even turn around, the room is so minuscule. You can't breathe. Her rump is crushing your lungs against the steel, windowless walls. Her weird tail (what's the deal with elephant tails anyway? Why are they so shoddy? They actually look the way little kids draw them!) keeps bristling your cheek, annoying the crap out of you.

The Gospel of Thomas is the elephant in the room. It's the non-biblical Gospel that pops up most often in social circles. I thought about leaving it for last on our tour of (possible) heresy, but no, that wouldn't be right. This elephant's gonna suffocate us if we don't start here. Our lungs are gonna be squeezed up and out of our mouths if we don't yell soon.

I'm yelling, Elephant! Right now.

Welcome my friends, to the diaspora. Clutch your loved ones. Squeeze your stuffed-animal-guinea-pig tight. We're getting lost in the mystery. And we're doing it now.

There's no story. What we've got here, is failure to communicate.7 In its entirety, the Gospel of Thomas is 114 sayings. That's it. Many of