Want to write about early Christianity? Here are the rules of the game.
Rule #1. Christianity has remained in basically the same form for the last two thousand years. It's always been about 'Jesus Christ' and four gospels and whatever else appears in the existing canon. Everything belief, tradition or texts associated with 'heretics' isn't really important enough to take seriously. Unless of course it is developed as a kind of 'freak show' for our amusement.
Rule #2. Anything distinctive about 'the heresies' has to be attributed to their 'imagination.' All beliefs we share with the Church Fathers has to be attributed to 'apostolic tradition.'
Rule #3. Everything a Church Father says is true unless
(a) it is contradicted by another Church Father whom we like better
(b) it contradicts our inherited presuppositions
(c) it introduces the concept of 'Devil' or other supernatural forces in which case our job is to remove this concept but introduce more 'scientific terminology' in order to 'save' the original testimony.
Rule #4. Textual criticism is the only reliable means of understanding Christianity.
Rule #5. We don't need to consider lost gospels like that associated with the Marcionite community when we reconstruct the development of the gospels. If a text doesn't survive because it was banned or destroyed we ignore it with a good conscience because God didn't want that text to survive in the first place ... and who are we to disagree with God?
Rule #6. The Jews are authorities on any subject save for the topic of the messiah in which case they don't know what they are talking about because they are guided by an irrational hatred of Jesus.
Rule #7. The Gospel was written in Greek. All those testimonies to the contrary in the Church Fathers are misinformed. How do we know it was written in Greek? Well, that's the only language the vast majority of New Testament scholars can function in. God likes New Testament scholarship. He wouldn't have 'fooled' all these smart men into taking a language of secondary importance.
Rule #8. The Gospels were always four in number and the four surviving gospels all existed before the time of Irenaeus (who is the first to report the names of many of them). Scholarship has to accept the truthfulness of the identities preserved in the Catholic tradition. After all, God wouldn't have allowed his gift to humanity to disappear.
Rule #9. Anything Islam says about Jesus or Christianity has to be ignored because Islam is a 'false religion' - the 'religion of the sword' which only managed to advance its authority through violence and warfare - whose followers are utterly 'irrational.' Of course they are juxtaposed against a European tradition which has been virulently hostile to rational thought for two thousand years whose armies conquered the whole world and established Christianity everywhere they went.
Rule #10. You don't have to believe that science is better than faith in determining truth. Rather you just have to sound scientific while promoting a faith-based agenda.
Rule #11. Questioning the foundations of our existing system is 'speculation.' Developing ridiculously implausible theories which seeks to uphold or support the existing textual and historical framework preserved in the Catholic canon and the writings of the Church Fathers is 'good scholarship.'
Rule #12. You're never going to change 'the system' so why don't you just give in and join the rest of us spinning our wheels until we die. At best you'll find a position in some institution somewhere; at worst you won't end up embarrassing yourself!
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