What are the apocryphal gospels?

Answer

The term “apocrypha” originates from the Greek word meaning “obscure” or “hidden.” The apocryphal gospels received this name because they were not widely recognized in the early church.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are referred to as the canonical gospels because the early church acknowledged them as accurate, authoritative, and inspired records of Jesus’ life and teachings. Apart from these four works, there were numerous other writings claiming to document additional words and actions of Jesus. These writings lack authority, inspiration, and at times, accuracy in portraying Jesus’ life and teachings.

Many of the apocryphal gospels were deemed useful but not inspired by the early church. Over time, additional texts like the Gnostic gospels have surfaced, which the early church would have considered heretical. Presently, the term “apocryphal gospel” encompasses any non-canonical early text claiming to depict Jesus’ life and teachings. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants do not recognize any apocryphal gospels as authoritative or inspired. However, contemporary scholarship, as seen in the Jesus Seminar, generally views these “gospels” as valuable records essential for a comprehensive understanding of Jesus’ life and teachings.

Certain apocryphal gospels have been lost, but references to them exist in other early Christian writings, where they were likely regarded as beneficial though not inspired. Examples of such works include the Gospel of Andrew, the Gospel of Bartholomew, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the Memoirs of the Apostles.

Some apocryphal gospels were produced by heretical sects aiming to manipulate Jesus’ teachings for their own agendas. Works like the Gospel of Marcion, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth fall into this category. The Gospel of Thomas is likely part of the apocryphal gospels.

Only the best-known because it was popularized by Princeton University Professor of Religion Elaine Pagels in her 2004 bestseller Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.

Some of the apocryphal gospels, like the Gospel of Peter, are just bizarre. In this work, we encounter an actual talking cross.

The Secret Gospel of Mark has only recently come to light and suggests that Jesus may have had a homosexual relationship with Mark. Further investigation suggests that this find was a hoax perpetrated by Morton Smith, the man who claimed to have discovered it. However, modern critical scholarship uncritically accepted it as genuine for a time.

Because of the wide variety of teaching in these apocryphal gospels, some scholars prefer to speak of “early Christianities,” implying that there was never a single, unified, accurate, authoritative teaching about Jesus but that each group collected partial truth to suit their own needs. The group that we now call orthodox was the group that eventually gained prominence; thus, the gospels that they preferred (the canonical gospels) were accepted as authoritative while the others were suppressed. This is essentially the premise behind Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code. Such theories contradict the fact that the early church received “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” «Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. », (Jude 1:3).

On further investigation, we find that the apocryphal gospels that present some of the most divergent views on who Jesus was and what He taught were written much later than the canonical gospels. There is no evidence for the views they present in other writings of the early church. Scholars who put all the gospels on equal footing tend to

To avoid being overly critical of the canonical gospels and excessively accepting of the apocryphal gospels.

The existing apocryphal gospels are easily accessible online for anyone interested in reading them. For an academic evangelical evaluation of the apocryphal gospels, we suggest reading “Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholarship Distorts the Gospels” by Craig Evans. For a more accessible explanation, we recommend Chapter 1 of “The Case for the Real Jesus” by Lee Strobel.