Why ‘Lost’ Gospels Go Viral—and the Real Ones Don’t

Two years ago—in fall 2023—the internet was abuzz over the publication of an ancient manuscript that seemed to contain material from one of the most famous gospels outside our New Testament: the Gospel of Thomas. The online chatter was immense, which was why I wrote a lengthy article analyzing this discovery.

Unbeknownst to most people, however, the same volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (vol. 87) also contained two manuscripts of the New Testament, one from Romans and one from Revelation. But these received hardly any attention from the media. There was no buzz.

This disparity highlights an intriguing reality: There always seems to be a disproportionate cultural fascination with “lost” gospels or “hidden” texts about Jesus. Write an article about the canonical texts, and you might get a few hits. Write an article about a new, lost, or forgotten gospel—and how it changes everything we know about Jesus—and there’s a reasonable chance it’ll go viral.

Publishers haven’t missed our culture’s insatiable appetite for all things lost. Books are more likely to sell if you can find a way to get some key words in the title: “lost,” “forgotten,” “secret,” or “hidden.” Here’s a sampling of real titles just over the last couple of decades:

This raises an important question: Why are people so intrigued by the concept of “lost” gospels?

Allure of the Hidden

In 2001, Philip Jenkins published an intriguing little book that hasn’t received the attention it deserves: Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. Jenkins tackles this issue head-on, arguing that modern scholarship has been derailed by an imbalanced quest to replace the canonical gospels with alternative versions like the Gospel of Thomas.

While Jenkins explores many motives and causes behind our culture’s fascination with lost gospels, he homes in on one. The Western world, particularly America, perpetually distrusts authority, especially religious authority. Jenkins writes, “Quintessentially American is the distrust of external authorities such as the clergy, and the sense that through their affected learning, the priests have hidden the truth from the people.”

The Western world is inherently drawn to conspiracy theories. We love the idea that for generations we thought the truth was one thing, only to discover it’s something different. And usually such a “discovery” is achieved through the earnest and tiresome work of intrepid reporters or investigators working against the machine. After all, if “the truth is out there,” then you just need a Mulder and Scully to uncover it.

There’s a reason such conspiracy theories are so attractive. If someone can believe that the church (or Christianity) has been wrong for thousands of years, then exposing that wrongness suddenly becomes a work of justice and liberation. It allows scholars (or reporters or even laypeople) to feel they have a worthy cause to fight for. They’re now on a righteous quest to free people from religious oppression.

So, argues Jenkins, these lost gospels are perfectly suited to meet this cultural need. They provide an opportunity for people to believe what they always wanted to believe anyway.

Quest for Equality

But there’s more going on here than just a proclivity toward conspiracy theories. The interest in these lost gospels is also driven by another quintessentially American value: a desire to give every view an equal standing.

Lost gospels are attractive to our culture because they’re a reminder of the diverse viewpoints that exist about Jesus. They demonstrate that not all understood Jesus in the same way. They reveal that the landscape of religious viewpoints is vast and wide. And, of course, this is true. There are many religious positions out there. Opinions about the identity and person of Jesus abound.

But the issue isn’t the existence of diversity. Rather, it’s the implications our world draws from that diversity. Our culture moves subtly from merely observing diversity to insisting it must mean no one view can possibly be right.

Our culture moves subtly from merely observing diversity to insisting it must mean no one view can possibly be right.

So, lost gospels are attractive precisely because they allow a person to say, “See, I told you there are other legitimate perspectives out there about the person of Jesus.”

The work of the German scholar Walter Bauer has been particularly influential in raising questions about the theological character of early Christianity. His 1934 book, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, argues that in the earliest centuries, there was no such thing as “Christianity.” Rather, there were many different “Christianities,” each claiming to be the original, authentic version. And, argues Bauer, each of these versions of Christianity had its own books, its own gospels about what Jesus said and did.

Why does Bauer’s theory matter? Because it effectively means all gospels are (or must be) the same. We only value Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because those were the gospels valued by the version of Christianity that eventually prevailed. If another Christian group had prevailed, maybe we’d be reading the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Mary.

In sum, it seems some people are drawn to alternative gospels because (at least in their minds) these provide the opportunity to pick the version of Jesus they prefer. If all versions of Jesus are equally valid, I can just choose the one I like.

Better Way

There’s nothing wrong with being intrigued by lost gospels. I’m intrigued by them! A large portion of my academic career has been devoted to studying them.

But we always have to make sure we aren’t studying any gospel—including the canonical gospels—merely to satisfy or justify our preexisting preferences about the way we want Jesus to be. We don’t simply get to create the Jesus we like or the Jesus we prefer.

Instead, we need to discover Jesus as he actually was. The only way to do that is to engage in a historical investigation into whatever gospel is in front of us, asking whether there are reasons to think it accurately captures the Jesus of history.

How can that historical investigation be done? How can we determine which gospels are genuine? In The Genuine Jesus and the Counterfeit Christs: New Testament and Apocryphal Gospels, Simon Gathercole, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, charts a clear way forward.

This new volume—essentially an abridged version of his earlier and larger work The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books—argues that the best way to distinguish early gospels from one another isn’t by analyzing their authorship, date, or popularity but their theological message.

Gathercole says that the theological standard to which any gospel should be compared is the gospel message of the apostles. But where do we turn to discover this message? He argues it can be found in the “creedal” statement laid out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11 and the major theological loci it contains. In that statement, argues Gathercole, Paul essentially summarizes the apostolic message in four key elements: (1) Jesus as the “Christ” (or Messiah), (2) Jesus’s saving death, (3) Jesus’s resurrection, and (4) Jesus’s fulfillment of Scripture.

The best way to distinguish early gospels from one another isn’t by analyzing their authorship, date, or popularity but their theological message.

With this theological standard in hand, Gathercole spends the bulk of the volume simply comparing various gospels to that standard. Of course, he compares Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to this creedal formula to see how they measure up. And then he compares a selection of apocryphal gospels to this creedal formula: the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, Marcion’s Gospel, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of Mary.

Gathercole reaches two key conclusions. First, the canonical gospels form a very close match with the early apostolic message, whereas the apocryphal gospels typically don’t. Apocryphal gospels might share some of the four theological points, but none contains all of them. Second, the reason the canonical gospels match the early apostolic message isn’t coincidence or happenstance but because the canonical gospels are historically connected to the early apostles. Gathercole then offers a brief historical account of how the four gospels are connected to apostolic sources (e.g., Mark is dependent on Peter’s own teachings).

Insightful Perspective

All in all, Gathercole provides an insightful perspective on how to differentiate gospels from one another. He succeeds wonderfully in debunking the all-gospels-are-the-same paradigm that’s so dominant in our culture, and even in the academy.

Of course, theological comparison isn’t an absolute criterion for distinguishing canonical from apocryphal gospels (and Gathercole never claims it is). While the existing apocryphal gospels don’t fully match up to these four theological loci, it’s certainly possible an apocryphal gospel could, in principle, affirm all four theological truths in an orthodox manner. We currently have fragments of apocryphal gospels that are more or less orthodox, though their fragmentary nature prevents a full analysis.

Here’s the key point: While unorthodox views are enough to disqualify a gospel from canonical status, orthodox views aren’t sufficient to qualify them. Canonical gospels are certainly orthodox, but they’re more than orthodox.

If our goal, however, isn’t so much to establish canonical versus noncanonical boundaries but rather to establish which gospels most accurately reflect the earliest apostolic message to which we have access, then Gathercole’s volume has demonstrated the canonical gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are undoubtedly most consistent with the earliest Christian teachings about Jesus. The comparison isn’t even close.

For this reason, my hope is that The Genuine Jesus and the Counterfeit Christs will be widely read. This slimmed-down volume is clearly intended for more than scholars but also for pastors, ministry leaders, and just about any person interested in knowing more about the origins of our gospels.

Readers will realize our gospels aren’t in the canon merely because of political pressure or an ecclesiastical power grab. They aren’t there arbitrarily or randomly. They’re there because they embody, most faithfully, the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

News Source : https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/genuine-jesus-counterfeit-christs/