What are the differences between the Gospels and the apocryphal works? Which can pass historical scrutiny and theological muster? And why are we correct to exclude the apocryphal works from the canonical Gospels?
Though liberal scholars with an open view of the Christian canon often elevate the value of the apocryphal gospels, none of these writings was ever seriously considered for inclusion in the New Testament. To the contrary, the church father Irenaeus of Lyon, writing in around 180 AD, strenuously argued that the very structure of creation required that there be only four Gospels, “since there are four zones of the world in which we live and four principal winds” (Against Heresies 3.11.8). For him and others, having four Gospels in the collection of Christian writings was as natural as north and south, east and west.
The earliest available canonical list, the Muratorian Fragment, titled after an Italian archeologist named Muratori and dated to around 180 AD, likewise includes four, and only these four, Gospels. Indeed, the early Christians, epitomized by the quote from the church father Irenaeus above, didn’t even think of the canonical Gospels as four separate Gospels but considered them to be the one fourfold gospel according to these primary witnesses: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
And Then There Were None: Thomas, Philip, Mary, Nicodemus, and Other Alleged Rivals to the Canonical Gospels
The apocryphal gospels that are sometimes mentioned as rivals to the four canonical ones are the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Mary, and Nicodemus, each of which I will discuss briefly in turn. First, it’s worthwhile to note that, almost certainly, none of the individuals mentioned in those titles was the respective author. This contrasts with the authorship of the Gospels of Matthew and John by the apostles bearing those names; the authorship of Mark’s Gospel by Mark, Peter’s and Paul’s associate (1 Pet. 5:13; 2 Tim. 4:11); and the authorship of Luke’s Gospel by the “beloved physician” and travel companion of the apostle Paul (Col. 4:14).
The (Non-)Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, and written in the Coptic language (not Greek as the four canonical Gospels), consists of 114 putative sayings of Jesus. It is therefore misleading to call Thomas a “gospel” as this is normally understood to refer to a narrative of the life and passion of Jesus. Conversely, Thomas makes no mention of any of Jesus’s miracles and has no passion narrative or account of Jesus’s resurrection. Many of the sayings included in Thomas are tinged with gnostic philosophy, a second-century heresy that pitted the physical and spiritual realms against each other and asserted the superiority of the latter over the former.[1] Other sayings in Thomas bear a fairly close resemblance to sayings of Jesus featured in the canonical Gospels, which suggests that Thomas was written later and borrowed from one or several of the New Testament Gospels.
1. See, e.g., Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 151 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Nicholas Perrin, Thomas, The Other Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007).
One gets the impression that Thomas is a later gnostic adaptation of some of Jesus’s teachings from the authentic Gospels, or perhaps the Diatessaron, a second-century harmony of the four Gospels prepared by the church father, Tatian. The theological content of this “Gospel” sharply departs from those in the canon. The essential message of Thomas is that humans should embark on a quest to discover the divine spark within themselves. Conversely, Thomas denies human sinfulness and the need for redemption and a substitutionary atonement. Further, while Thomas is very popular with feminist scholars, ironically Thomas disparages females and closes with the assertion that “every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Gospel of Thomas 114). In any case, the manuscript evidence suggests the middle of the second century as the earliest likely date of composition.
The Gospels of Philip, Mary, Nicodemus, and Other Candidates
The Gospel of Philip fares no better in its standing. It was not written by Philip; it likely dates to the third century; it promulgates some strange gnostic teachings (such as disputing the virgin birth, on the premise that a “female” [the Holy Spirit] cannot conceive by a female [Mary the mother of Jesus]); and it was never a serious candidate for inclusion in the New Testament.
The Gospel of Mary—most likely referring to Mary Magdalene—is a Coptic fragmentary account of Jesus’s alleged conversation with his disciples and a spurious dialogue between Mary and the disciples recounting a vision of Jesus Mary claims to have had. It is most commonly dated to the second century, reflects gnostic thought, and was never mentioned by any church father.
The Gospel of Nicodemus is a composite of two documents, the Acts of Pilate and Descent into Hell, and likely dates to the fifth or sixth century. It was popular in medieval times and served as the source for legends surrounding Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail.
Other apocryphal gospels are the Gospel of Peter (which betrays a dependence on Matthew’s Gospel), Secret Mark (which has been unmasked as a late forgery by Stephen Carlson in his entertaining work The Gospel Hoax), and the Coptic work bearing the headline-grabbing title Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (touted as authentic by Harvard professor Karen King, but likewise exposed as a forgery by the Coptic scholar Christian Askeland).[2]
2. For more detailed information, see Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum, and Charles L. Quarles, The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016), 140–53. See also Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 157, 164–69. On Secret Mark, see Stephen C. Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005).
Unreliable and Inauthentic
None of the apocryphal gospels can serve as a reliable historical source for our understanding of Jesus. In each and every case, these so-called “gospels” represent gnostic, heretical distortions of authentic Jesus material.
Why would anyone want to replace first-century eyewitness sources, namely the four canonical Gospels, with second-century or later gnostic gospels that are both heretical in nature and patently derivative of these genuine Gospels?
The only “evidence” in favor of such a historical approach is the alleged conspiracy to suppress the evidence for the authenticity of the apocryphal gospels by the “orthodox” party in early Christianity (i.e., the early Christians). This theory has been propagated by detractors such as Bart Ehrman, chair of the religion department at the University of North Carolina, who proposes that the winners of the battles for orthodoxy in the second and subsequent centuries rewrote actual history to cement their ecclesiastical power. But this is unsupported by the available evidence and hardly worth being considered the product of responsible historical research.
Conclusion
I conclude that the apocryphal gospels are disqualified from serving as reliable historical sources of the life of Jesus due to their unknown (pseudonymous) authorship, gnostic theology, and late date of writing (second or later century), not to mention that these gospels were written in languages such as Coptic, not, like the four New Testament Gospels, in Greek, the lingua franca of the first century.
The four canonical Gospels tower head and shoulders above any alleged rivals and are alone to be trusted as authoritative eyewitness sources of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
We will therefore do well to read, study, and reflect on the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as we seek to answer Jesus’s question which rings through the ages, “Who do you say that I am?”[3]
3. For a recent work providing a spiritually nurturing survey of the four Gospels, see Andreas J. Köstenberger, Introducing Jesus: The Fourfold Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2025). See also Peter J. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018).
The answer, I suggest, is that Jesus was not a gnostic revealer who helped people discover the divine spark within them, but a crucified Savior who died in our place on a wooden Roman cross so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
