Which is your favourite Gospel? Matthew? John?
What about the Gospel of Thomas? Or Barnabas? Or Philip? Or Mary, Nicodemus or Judas? ‘Gospels’ bearing these names can be found in the ancient world. So, have we got a censored version of the life of Jesus in our New Testament? Do we need to read these additional gospels in case there is something we haven’t been told?
Dan Brown played on these concerns to great effect in his bestselling Da Vinci Code novel. One of his characters, the historian Sir Leigh Teabing, claims: ‘Some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert. And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi…’ With claims like these, the general impression given is that our New Testament is a selective compilation, ignoring a vast array of rival accounts of Jesus. This impression comes from a profound distortion of the facts.
Out of time
There are many gospels from the time of the early church. But not all were written anywhere near the time of Jesus.
