Gospels

Early Christianity was filled with numerous sects. Many of them didn’t exist for more than a few hundred years.

The word Gospel is believed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon term God-spell, meaning “good story,” a rendering of the Latin evangelium and the Greek euangelion, meaning “good news” or “good telling.”

The Christian Bible ("Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth") contains four books called Gospels. These canonical texts narrate the life of Jesus from the start of His ministry to His death. Most of these stories are well-known, as virtually every Christian can recount some of the main events from them. They can also list at least one (if not at all four) by name and order. However, what far fewer people can do is list one or more of the Gospels that did not make it into the Bible.

This list includes ten of the most interesting Gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible. Each of these was written by ancient Christians but ultimately rejected. Some were rejected for purely editorial reasons, such as questions about their authorship, while others contained teachings and stories about Jesus which were far too controversial or heretical. Fortunately for modern readers, most of these books still exist in part or in whole and can be read at any time online.

"Gospel" or "Gospels" originally meant the Christian message, but in the 2nd century came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out; in this sense including both the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (the four evangelists), and various apocryphal Gospels dating from the same periods.

The first three of these are usually referred to as the "Synoptic Gospels," because they look at things in a similar way, or they are similar in the way that they tell the story. But there were many others that we know existed or used to exist, and are called either New Testament apocrypha or pseudepigrapha.

1. There's The Gospel of Peter, which claims to have been written by Peter, Jesus’s close friend and disciple. However, this is not the case. For one, it was written at least a century after Peter would have lived. It also uses all four canonical Gospels as sources.
2. The Gospel of Thomas, is the most well-known Gospel not found in the Bible. It was likely written in the 1st or 2nd century, but it was lost throughout most of history. It was rediscovered by accident in 1945 by peasants in Egypt. Since then, it has been the fascination of countless researchers. It is different from other Gospels. Instead of telling the story of Jesus, or even being written like a sermon, it contains His sayings. Except, most of these sayings are not in the Bible. Some of them are cryptic and even contradict sayings found in the official Gospels. Some sections even paint Jesus as a God and not human. Scholars believe this was one of the main reasons the book was rejected.
3. The Gospel of Mary (Mary Magdalene), one of the most important and controversial Gospels to be discovered is considered non-canonical in Christian orthodoxy. It was discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century Berlin Gnostic Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502) written in Sahidic Coptic. No one truly knew it existed until then.
4. The Gospel of Philip, is yet another Gnostic Gospel, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dated to around the 3rd century but lost in medieval times until rediscovered by accident, buried with other texts near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, in 1945.
5. The Gospel of the Ebionites, was rejected when the Christian Bible was compiled. It was considered too close to Judaism and outdated in terms of philosophy.
6. The Gospel of the Nazarenes, was written in the 2nd century, as many of the Gospels. Like the Ebionites, the Nazarenes also kept Jewish customs and laws. Their Gospel also emphasized Jesus’s Jewishness. Curiously, it was also written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.
7. The Gospel of Truth, was probably as well written in the 2nd century, possibly by an ancient Christian philosopher named Valentinus. The odd name of the book suggests it was written to correct ideas in other Gospels. However, like the Gospel of Philip, this book was deemed not a true Gospel. It does not contain the life of Jesus or detail His deeds. Instead, it reads like a sermon or a theological text.
8. The Gospel of the Savior, was likely also written in the 2nd century, although dating it has been difficult due to there being little historical mention of it. It is not known why it was rejected, but scholars have compared the content to other rejected books.
9. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, often confused with the more well-known Gospel of Thomas, is unclear who wrote it, when, or even where, but the two books ostensibly have nothing to do with one another.
10. The Gospel of Judas, is the single most controversial Gospel to have been discovered. The text was probably written in the 4th century and was then lost until the 20th century. Portions of the text can be read today, but much of its content is lost.

Gnostic Gospels saw no connection between Jesus and the nation of Israel and the acts of God in the Old Testament.

The books called "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John" are traditionally thought to have been written by Matthew, a disciple who was a tax collector; Mark, the secretary of the disciple Peter; Luke, the traveling companion of Paul; and John the "Beloved Disciple" mentioned in the fourth Gospel;

According to the hypothesis of Marcan priority, the Gospel of Mark was written first and then used as a source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

The oral traditions within the Church formed the substance of the Gospels, the earliest book of which is Mark, written around 70 A.D., 40 years after the death of Jesus.

Traditionally, 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament were attributed to Paul the Apostle, who famously converted to Christianity after meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus and wrote a series of letters that helped spread the faith throughout the Mediterranean world.

Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 or 14 are traditionally attributed to Paul, though only 7 of these Pauline epistles are accepted as being entirely authentic and dictated by St. Paul himself.

They are the Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest copies of the Bible, one of the four great , which is held at the Vatican, and the Codex Sinaiticus, or "Sinai Bible" one of the four great uncial codices, ancient, handwritten copies of a Christian Bible in Greek. It is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in uncial letters on parchment and dated paleographically to the mid-4th century, most of which is held at the British Library in London.

"If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." Saint Augustine

Food for thought!