The gospel in one word

I don’t know who said this first, but “the gospel is simple and it takes theologians to complicate it.”

Recently I gave myself the challenge of presenting a comprehensive and jargon-free gospel in less than 400 words. That exercise got me thinking. What if we limited the gospel to just one word, or two words? Or ten?

Could it be done? Can you do it?

Throughout the Bible you will find short declarations of the Good News. Below I have listed short gospels from Paul, Peter, James, John and Jesus. I also have one each from Spurgeon and Calvin. But what I would really like to hear is yours. What is your short version of the gospel? Everyone should have one for those small windows of opportunity.

If you want to send in your short gospel (use the comment form below), remember three things:

(1) The gospel is news – it’s an announcement, not an appeal.

(2) The gospel is good news. There’s no bad news in the good news. Hell and judgment are real, but they’re not good news.

(3) For maximum appeal, a good gospel should be simple. A famous theologian once summarized the gospel as adoption through propitiation. It’s a good summary but it has limited appeal. It won’t make much sense to the man in the street.

As we will see in below, the best short gospels use simple language and are self-explanatory:

1 word: Jesus! You cannot improve upon perfection and there’s no other name by which we’re saved (Acts 4:12). Grace and truth are found in Jesus. Jesus saves sinners and keeps Christians. Whatever your need, the answer is Jesus. Are you struggling with sin? Jesus is your victory. Are you suffering with illness? Jesus is your healing. Are you bound up with depression? Jesus is your freedom.

2 words: Christ alone! If we must add one word to the name “Jesus” or his proper title “Christ,” let it be the qualifier “alone.” He alone saves us, and he doesn’t need our help.

3 words: None but Jesus! It was good enough for Spurgeon.

4 words: Mercy triumphs over judgment! (James 2:13). And just so you have no doubt as to where mercy comes from, James tells us: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy” (Jas 5:11).

5 words: Jesus Christ and him crucified. That’s all Paul needed to know (1 Cor 2:1-5).

6 words: Saved by Christ; kept by Christ. Many Christians believe only the first part of that statement. They believe that Jesus gave them a fresh start, but not a new life. They are confessing their sins instead of their sonship. Instead of resting in his righteousness, they are striving to make themselves righteous. The good news is better than they think!

7 words: Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Think of a firefighter smashing through a concrete wall to save trapped orphans. That’s what Jesus did for us. When all hope was lost, he came. Now that’s good news!

8 words: Christ died, was buried, then rose. He reigns! (1 Cor 15:3-4,25). Everyone quotes the first three bits of Paul’s gospel and misses the punch-line. The good news is not just what Jesus has done, but what he’s doing (he’s reigning!) and yet to do (until his enemies have been put under his feet).

9 words: I want to come in and be with you (Rev 3:20). Religion offers carrots and sticks, but Jesus offers invitations.

10 words: I am the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6). As the song says, without the way there is no going, without the truth there is no knowing, and without the life, there is no living.

11 words: When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train (Ps 68:19). Ever seen those movies where the good guy beats the bad guy but then forgets to check whether the villain’s really been neutralized? Jesus is not like that. He has enslaved slavery, bound bondage, and captured captivity. Where are Jesus’ foes? They’re in his train, shackled and disarmed.

12 words: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). The Messiah whom the Jews looked for, has been exalted, made supreme, so that our sins might be forgiven and the Holy Spirit given (see Acts 2:38)

20 words: The Son of God became the Son of Man that the Sons of Men might become the Sons of God. John Calvin may or may not have said this – I can’t verify the source – but it’s true and it’s good news.

And that’s it! What do you think? Can you convey the joy of the good news in just a few words? I would love to hear your short gospel.
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We want to know the gospel well so that we can teach it to others with the intent to persuade them to trust Christ.

So we’ve demonstrated how to speak the gospel in six words.

And we’ve demonstrated how to speak the gospel in three minutes (I’ve timed it).

And now here is the gospel in one sentence:  Our sin is imputed to Christ and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us so that we can enjoy God forever (2 Cor. 5:21).

And in fact, if you want to get the gospel to one word, it’s substitution (as explained in the previous sentence).

God is love.

Whenever any kind of apologetic or doctrinal debate turns toward love, don’t many of us (the theologically «in» crowd) roll our eyes? For us older guard, what leaps to mind is the L word (liberal), or from the more recent decade the P word (postmodern), or the latest (and already fading) scapegoat, the E word (emergent). When love is appealed to, we often nod our heads impatiently and respond, «Yes, but . . .»

We are suspicious because love can be an excuse for mushy thinking and diluted theology—a ploy to minimize sin along with God’s wrath and justice.

We are suspicious because love can be an excuse for mushy thinking and diluted theology—a ploy to minimize sin along with God’s wrath and justice.

I know whereof I speak, because in this regard I’ve been among the greatest of sinners. My atheist friends would protest, «You Christians say God is love, but we sinners are not feeling it from the likes of you.» At least these days I avoid tossing out the exhausted cliché, «Yes, God loves sinners, but he hates sin.»

But how else are we to respond, for instance, to a persistent mother of a prodigal daughter who once again corners the first church leader she can find after the worship service and, with pleading whispers, begs for a simple welcoming gesture: «Couldn’t someone seek her out—just invite her to be a part of us? She won’t listen to me.»

We have all seen the awkward hesitancy in the eyes of everyone standing nearby. We’re all thinking the same thing: «Yes, God loves her daughter, but she wouldn’t be a good example for the children; she might lead some of our own into sin.»

God loves her, but . . .

The qualification is just as evident in our theological discourse. For instance, many found it a hard and bitter irony that something titled Love Wins could create such a tightening of the church’s collective gut rather than a rousing «Amen!» Given the supposed dichotomy between God’s love and justice, which do we suppose most Christians would be inclined to qualify with a «but»? You just don’t hear many folks saying, «God is just and righteous, but . . .»

But nothing—the dichotomy is false.

The Royal Law

As I’ve mulled over some familiar Scriptures, I have been drawn toward a rare certainty in their inescapably direct teaching: God himself is love by definition. Everything he has been about and is about is uncompromising love.

1. God preemptively loved the world. It’s so familiar, we can easily miss the profound implications: «For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son» (John 3:16). From Adam and Eve to the present day, God has loved all of us wicked people. In the very context of an Adam-and-Eve-fallen world, God so loved us.

God has always loved the yet-sinners. «But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!» (Rom. 5:8–9). Interesting, isn’t it, how God’s justice and wrath must be described in the context of his love? This brings us to something rather difficult.

2. God’s wrath is not an exception or counterpart to his love. Rather, it is a consequence of it. From their beginning, the Scriptures are clear that we must weigh the significance of the Fall itself on the scale of God’s love. The essence of Adam and Eve’s original sin act is the very same state we are all born into: God’s love distrusted, rejected, and unrequited.

The real concern for God’s wrath should be far more about our being born into it, over and above anything we could have done to earn it. Out of this inherited original divorce come all of the inevitable, unlovely, unloving consequences popularly known to be sins. Furthermore, it is this very state of our existence in God’s wrath that occasions his sacrificial love. It’s why he himself, God the Son, breaches the chasm that is sin, making our returning his love even possible.

In John’s first epistle, he makes this inescapably clear: «In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins» (4:10, NASB). So in love, God preemptively provided propitiation. This atonement, this appeasement cannot merely be a Savior Son rescuing sinners from the hands of an angry God. Of all things in which God the Father, Son, and Spirit must be one, it is «that he loved us.»

It’s not so much a matter of appeasing an angry God as restoring within us the capacity to love. When we respond in faith, we return to him the love for which we were created. Tragically, those who choose to remain «in sin» are simply «without» in respect to God’s love.

This is exactly why God’s wrath cannot be about eliciting fear, as if salvation were about avoiding the frightening prospects of God’s retribution or hate—as if Jesus actually came to save us from some monster God. John is clear on this: You don’t legitimately love God or neighbors out of fear of wrath (1 John 4:18–20). We love because God first loved us, not because he threatened or scared us into something we call faith.

God’s wrath cannot be about eliciting fear, as if salvation were about avoiding the frightening prospects of God’s retribution or hate—as if Jesus actually came to save us from some monster God.

3. God the Son said that the foundational, preeminent law of the entirety of Scripture is love. James calls it the «royal law» (2:8). Unequivocally, the entirety of the Bible’s good news message is love (Matt. 22:34–40; see also Mark 12:28–34). In fact, as Paul echoes in his letter to the Galatians, the whole of Scripture can be summed up in that single word: «[T]hrough love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself'» (5:13–14, NASB).

It’s no less than the essence of Jesus’ good news. The gospel is all about God’s love, our inability to love (sin), and God’s sacrificial remedy (love incarnate). All we must do is believe in his means of redemptive love (Jesus Christ and his gospel story) and respond in kind.

Putting Away Childish Things

One cannot discuss the preeminence of love without citing 1 Corinthians 13. But it has struck me recently how rare it is that I hear verses 11 through 13 (especially «put away childish things,» NKJV) cited in the context that Paul intended. Love’s preeminence is actually what God inspired Paul to represent it as the measure and mark of Christian maturity. Childish religion is about performance of good works, sin management, protectionism, and fear. The Christian who would be in right relationship with God will put away immature and inadequate motives, because from beginning to end, faith and hope are all about love.

The more I realize God’s love in thought and practice, the more I am transformed into his holiness, putting away childish rationalizations and hyperboles of justice, wrath, guilt, and fear. In our holy God’s economy, there is no counterpoint or equal to love. Everything that is truth comes down to love and is measured by it—everything! There is not a single piece of Scripture or theology that should be understood without the context of God’s love.

It should sadden us deeply that we Christians can be so prone to distrust love—to respond, «Well yes, love, but . . .»

If Christianity is not all about love, it is nothing but another impotent human religious construct: a loud and annoyingly cymbal. Because love is not rude, it cannot roll its eyes against the persistent pleas of a prodigal’s mother. Neither is it self-seeking, prioritizing the protection of those within from those without. And love keeps no record of wrongs, even of daughters who are unrepentantly living in God’s wrath.

For grown-up Christian thinking, there can be no alternative. There is no «but» to God’s love.

Craig Bubeck is director of product development at Wesleyan Publishing House. Go to ChristianBibleStudies.com for «God Is Love: Not Buts about It,» a Bible study based on this article.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.

HT: Tim Day

I got to spend some time with Bruxy at the North American Brethren in Christ General Conference this past July. When I asked him about what he has been reading lately, he responded “I’m reading everything I can get my hands on about the Gospel.” Here, Bruxy unpacks the broad scope of what he understands the core of the Gospel to be. He offers some great thoughts here.

What do you think? Where do you agree? How would you nuance things differently?

I think the one area that Bruxy didn’t touch on that is central to both Jesus and Paul’s gospel proclamation is one central way in which it functioned in the first century Jewish context. As Scot McKnight states in the King Jesus Gospel:

“The gospel for the apostle Paul is the salvation-unleashing Story of Jesus, Messiah-Lord-Son, that brings to completion the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures of the Old Testament.” (61)

I’m fairly confident that Bruxy would agree with some variation of the Gospel as the “climax of the covenant” (to borrow a phrase from NT Wright). He alludes to it when he says “…to shut down religion,” but doesn’t ougt-right make the narrative connection in this video. Jesus is Israel and Jesus therefore fulfills and completes the Old Testament story. This is one point that I’d want to add to Bruxy’s devotional video. Otherwise, this basically sums up my view of the good news as described in the New Testament!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the written accounts of the life of Jesus. For the Christian message, the «good news», see the gospel. For other uses, see Gospel (disambiguation).

Gospel originally meant the Christian message («the gospel»), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported.^[1] In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances.^[2] Modern biblical scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, but nevertheless, they provide a good idea of the public career of Jesus, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of the later Christian authors.^[3][4]

The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110.^[5][6][7] All four were anonymous (with the modern names added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses, and all are the end-products of long oral and written transmission.^[8] Mark was the first to be written, using a variety of sources.^[9][10] The authors of Matthew and Luke both independently used Mark for their narrative of Jesus’s career, supplementing it with a collection of sayings called «the Q source», and additional material unique to each.^[11] There is near-consensus that John had its origins as the hypothetical Signs Gospel thought to have been circulated within a Johannine community.^[12] The contradictions and discrepancies between the first three and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable.^[13]

Many non-canonical gospels were also written, all later than the four canonical gospels, and like them advocating the particular theological views of their various authors.^[14][15] Important examples include the gospels of Thomas, Peter, Judas, and Mary; infancy gospels such as that of James (the first to introduce the perpetual virginity of Mary); and gospel harmonies such as the Diatessaron.

Etymology[edit]

Gospel is the Old English translation of the Hellenistic Greek term εὐαγγέλιον, meaning «good news»;^[16] this may be seen from analysis of ευαγγέλιον (εὖ «good» + ἄγγελος «messenger» + -ιον diminutive suffix). The Greek term was Latinized as evangelium in the Vulgate, and translated into Latin as bona annuntiatio. In Old English, it was translated as gōdspel (gōd «good» + spel «news»). The Old English term was retained as gospel in Middle English Bible translations and hence remains in use also in Modern English.

Canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John[edit]

Contents[edit]

The four canonical gospels share the same basic outline of the life of Jesus: he begins his public ministry in conjunction with that of John the Baptist, calls disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the Pharisees, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead.^[17] Each has its own distinctive understanding of him and his divine role^[15][18] and scholars recognize that the differences of detail between the gospels are irreconcilable, and any attempt to harmonize them would only disrupt their distinct theological messages.^[19]

Matthew, Mark and Luke are termed the synoptic gospels because they present very similar accounts of the life of Jesus.^[20] Mark begins with the baptism of the adult Jesus and the heavenly declaration that he is the son of God; he gathers followers and begins his ministry, and tells his disciples that he must die in Jerusalem but that he will rise; in Jerusalem he is at first acclaimed but then rejected, betrayed, and crucified, and when the women who have followed him come to his tomb they find it empty.^[21] Mark never calls Jesus «God» or claims that he existed prior to his earthly life, apparently believes that he had a normal human parentage and birth, makes no attempt to trace his ancestry back to King David or Adam;^[22][23] it originally ended at Mark 16:8 and had no post-resurrection appearances, although Mark 16:7, in which the young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell «the disciples and Peter» that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author knew of the tradition.^[24]

The authors of Matthew and Luke added infancy and resurrection narratives to the story they found in Mark, although the two differ markedly.^[25] Each also makes subtle theological changes to Mark: the Markan miracle stories, for example, confirm Jesus’ status as an emissary of God (which was Mark’s understanding of the Messiah), but in Matthew they demonstrate his divinity,^[26] and the «young man» who appears at Jesus’ tomb in Mark becomes a radiant angel in Matthew.^[27][28] Luke, while following Mark’s plot more faithfully than Matthew, has expanded on the source, corrected Mark’s grammar and syntax, and eliminated some passages entirely, notably most of chapters 6 and 7.^[29]

John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus’s life.^[15] He presents a significantly different picture of Jesus’s career,^[20] omitting any mention of his ancestry, birth and childhood, his baptism, temptation and transfiguration;^[20] his chronology and arrangement of incidents is also distinctly different, clearly describing the passage of three years in Jesus’s ministry in contrast to the single year of the synoptics, placing the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning rather than at the end, and the Last Supper on the day before Passover instead of being a Passover meal.^[30] The Gospel of John is the only gospel to call Jesus God, and in contrast to Mark, where Jesus hides his identity as messiah, in John he openly proclaims it.^[31]

Composition[edit]

Like the rest of the New Testament, the four gospels were written in Greek.^[33] The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70,^[5] Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90,^[6] and John AD 90–110.^[7] Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses.^[8] A few conservative scholars defend the traditional ascriptions or attributions, but for a variety of reasons the majority of scholars have abandoned this view or hold it only tenuously.^[34]

In the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ death his followers expected him to return at any moment, certainly within their own lifetimes, and in consequence there was little motivation to write anything down for future generations, but as eyewitnesses began to die, and as the missionary needs of the church grew, there was an increasing demand and need for written versions of the founder’s life and teachings.^[35] The stages of this process can be summarised as follows:^[36]

• Oral traditions – stories and sayings passed on largely as separate self-contained units, not in any order;
• Written collections of miracle stories, parables, sayings, etc., with oral tradition continuing alongside these;
• Written proto-gospels preceding and serving as sources for the gospels – the dedicatory preface of Luke, for example, testifies to the existence of previous accounts of the life of Jesus.^[37]
• Gospels formed by combining proto-gospels, written collections and still-current oral tradition.

Mark is generally agreed to be the first gospel;^[9] it uses a variety of sources, including conflict stories (Mark 2:1–3:6), apocalyptic discourse (4:1–35), and collections of sayings, although not the sayings gospel known as the Gospel of Thomas and probably not the Q source used by Matthew and Luke.^[10] The authors of Matthew and Luke, acting independently, used Mark for their narrative of Jesus’s career, supplementing it with the collection of sayings called the Q source and additional material unique to each called the M source (Matthew) and the L source (Luke).^{[11][note 1]} Mark, Matthew and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because of the close similarities between them in terms of content, arrangement, and language.^[38] The authors and editors of John may have known the synoptics, but did not use them in the way that Matthew and Luke used Mark.^[39] There is a near-consensus that this gospel had its origins as a «signs» source (or gospel) that circulated within the Johannine community (which produced John and the three epistles associated with the name) and later expanded with a Passion narrative as well as a series of discourses.^{[12][note 2]}

All four also use the Jewish scriptures, by quoting or referencing passages, or by interpreting texts, or by alluding to or echoing biblical themes.^[41] Such use can be extensive: Mark’s description of the Parousia (second coming) is made up almost entirely of quotations from scripture.^[42] Matthew is full of quotations and allusions,^[43] and although John uses scripture in a far less explicit manner, its influence is still pervasive.^[44] Their source was the Greek version of the scriptures, called the Septuagint; they do not seem familiar with the original Hebrew.^[45]

Genre and historical reliability[edit]

The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of bios, or ancient biography.^[46] Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject’s reputation and memory; the gospels were never simply biographical, they were propaganda and kerygma (preaching).^[47] As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD,^[48] and as Luke’s attempt to link the birth of Jesus to the census of Quirinius demonstrates, there is no guarantee that the gospels are historically accurate.^[49]

The majority view among critical scholars is that the authors of Matthew and Luke have based their narratives on Mark’s gospel, editing him to suit their own ends, and the contradictions and discrepancies between these three and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable.^[13] In addition, the gospels we read today have been edited and corrupted over time, leading Origen to complain in the 3rd century that «the differences among manuscripts have become great, … [because copyists] either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please».^[50] Most of these are insignificant, but many are significant,^[51] an example being Matthew 1:18, altered to imply the pre-existence of Jesus.^[52] For these reasons modern scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, but nevertheless they do provide a good idea of the public career of Jesus, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of the later authors.^[3][4]

Scholars usually agree that John is not without historical value: certain of its sayings are as old or older than their synoptic counterparts, its representation of the topography around Jerusalem is often superior to that of the synoptics, its testimony that Jesus was executed before, rather than on, Passover, might well be more accurate, and its presentation of Jesus in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are possibly more historically plausible than their synoptic parallels.^[53] Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that the author had direct knowledge of events, or that his mentions of the Beloved Disciple as his source should be taken as a guarantee of his reliability.^[54]

Textual history and canonisation[edit]

The oldest gospel text known is 𝔓⁵², a fragment of John dating from the first half of the 2nd century.^[55] The creation of a Christian canon was probably a response to the career of the heretic Marcion (c. 85–160), who established a canon of his own with just one gospel, the Gospel of Marcion, similar to the Gospel of Luke.^[56] The Muratorian canon, the earliest surviving list of books considered (by its own author at least) to form Christian scripture, included Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Irenaeus of Lyons went further, stating that there must be four gospels and only four because there were four corners of the Earth and thus the Church should have four pillars.^[1][57] He referred to the four collectively as the «fourfold gospel» (euangelion tetramorphon).^[58]

Non-canonical (apocryphal) gospels[edit]

The many apocryphal gospels arose from the 1st century onward, frequently under assumed names to enhance their credibility and authority, and often from within branches of Christianity that were eventually branded heretical.^[59] They can be broadly organised into the following categories:^[60]

• Infancy gospels: arose in the 2nd century, include the Gospel of James, also called the Protoevangelium, which was the first to introduce the concept of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the unrelated Coptic Gospel of Thomas), both of which related many miraculous incidents from the life of Mary and the childhood of Jesus that are not included in the canonical gospels.
• Ministry gospels
• Sayings gospels and agrapha
• Passion, resurrection and post-resurrection gospels
• Gospel harmonies: in which the four canonical gospels are combined into a single narrative, either to present a consistent text or to produce a more accessible account of Jesus’ life.

The apocryphal gospels can also be seen in terms of the communities which produced them:

• The Jewish-Christian gospels are the products of Christians of Jewish origin who had not given up their Jewish identity: they regarded Jesus as the messiah of the Jewish scripture, but did not agree that he was God, an idea which, although central to Christianity as it eventually developed, is contrary to Jewish beliefs.
• Gnostic gospels uphold the idea that the universe is the product of a hierarchy of gods, of whom the Jewish god is a rather low-ranking member. Gnosticism holds that Jesus was entirely «spirit», and that his earthly life and death were therefore only an appearance, not a reality. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.^[61]

The major apocryphal gospels (after Bart Ehrman, «Lost Christianities» – comments on content are by Ehrman unless otherwise noted) ^[62]

Title	Probable date	Content
Epistle of the Apostles	Mid 2nd c.	Anti-gnostic dialogue between Jesus and the disciples after the resurrection, emphasising the reality of the flesh and of Jesus’ fleshly resurrection
Gospel According to the Hebrews	Early 2nd c.	Events in the life of Jesus; Jewish-Christian, with possible gnostic overtones
Gospel of the Ebionites	Early 2nd c.	Jewish-Christian, embodying anti-sacrificial concerns
Gospel of the Egyptians	Early 2nd c.	«Salome» figures prominently; Jewish-Christian stressing asceticism
Gospel of Mary	2nd c.	Dialogue of Mary Magdalene with the apostles, and her vision of Jesus’ secret teachings. It was originally written in Greek and is often interpreted as a Gnostic text. It is typically not considered a gospel by scholars since it does not focus on the life of Jesus.[63]
Gospel of the Nazareans	Early 2nd c.	Aramaic version of Matthew, possibly lacking the first two chapters; Jewish-Christian
Gospel of Nicodemus	5th c.	Jesus’ trial, crucifixion and descent into Hell
Gospel of Peter	Early 2nd c.	Fragmentary narrative of Jesus’ trial, death and emergence from the tomb. It seems to be hostile toward Jews, and includes docetic elements.[64] It is a narrative gospel and is notable for asserting that Herod, not Pontius Pilate, ordered the crucifixion of Jesus. It had been lost but was rediscovered in the 19th century.[64]
Gospel of Philip	3rd c.	Mystical reflections of the disciple Philip
Gospel of the Saviour	Late 2nd c.	Fragmentary account of Jesus’ last hours
Coptic Gospel of Thomas	Early 2nd c.	The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that the original may date from c. 150.[65] Some scholars believe that it may represent a tradition independent from the canonical gospels, but that developed over a long time and was influenced by Matthew and Luke;[65] other scholars believe it is a later text, dependent from the canonical gospels.[66][67] While it can be understood in Gnostic terms, it lacks the characteristic features of Gnostic doctrine.[65] It includes two unique parables, the parable of the empty jar and the parable of the assassin.[68] It had been lost but was discovered, in a Coptic version dating from c. 350, at Nag Hammadi in 1945–46, and three papyri, dated to c. 200, which contain fragments of a Greek text similar to but not identical with that in the Coptic language, have also been found.[65]
Infancy Gospel of Thomas	Early 2nd c.	Miraculous deeds of Jesus between the ages of five and twelve
Gospel of Truth	Mid 2nd c.	Joys of Salvation
Papyrus Egerton 2	Early 2nd c.	Fragmentary, four episodes from the life of Jesus
Diatessaron	Late 2nd c.	Gospel harmony (and the first such gospel harmony) composed by Tatian; may have been intended to replace the separate gospels as an authoritative text. It was accepted for liturgical purposes for as much as two centuries in Syria, but was eventually suppressed.[69][70]
Protoevangelium of James	Mid 2nd c.	Birth and early life of Mary, and birth of Jesus
Gospel of Marcion	Mid 2nd c.	Marcion of Sinope, c. 150, had a much shorter version of the gospel of Luke, differing substantially from what has now become the standard text of the gospel and far less oriented towards the Jewish scriptures. Marcion’s critics said that he had edited out the portions of Luke he did not like, though Marcion argued that his was the more genuinely original text. He is said to have rejected all other gospels, including those of Matthew, Mark and especially John, which he alleged had been forged by Irenaeus.
Secret Gospel of Mark	Uncertain	Allegedly a longer version of Mark written for an elect audience
Gospel of Judas	Late 2nd c.	Purports to tell the story of the gospel from the perspective of Judas, the disciple who is usually said to have betrayed Jesus. It paints an unusual picture of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, in that it appears to interpret Judas’s act not as betrayal, but rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus. The text was recovered from a cave in Egypt by a thief and thereafter sold on the black market until it was finally discovered by a collector who, with the help of academics from Yale and Princeton, was able to verify its authenticity. The document itself does not claim to have been authored by Judas (it is, rather, a gospel about Judas), and is known to date to at least 180 AD.[71]
Gospel of Barnabas	14th–16th c.	Contradicts the ministry of Jesus in canonical New Testament and strongly denies Pauline doctrine, but has clear parallels with Islam, mentioning Muhammad as Messenger of God. Jesus identifies himself as a prophet, not the son of God.[72]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

Quotations related to Gospel at Wikiquote

• A detailed discussion of the textual variants in the gospels – covering about 1200 variants on 2000 pages.
• Greek New Testament – the Greek text of the New Testament: specifically the Westcott-Hort text from 1881, combined with the NA26/27 variants.
• Synoptic Parallels A web tool for finding corresponding passages in the Gospels