What About the Other Books That Weren’t Included in the Bible?

As a sceptic investigating Christianity, Derek found there are other writings about Jesus outside the Bible – books which had been left out of the official version. Some re-discovered only recently, and with evocative names like the Gospels of Mary or Judas. Was it a case of cover-up by the early church? How would you know which ones were true? In this Short Answers video, Derek McIntyre explains why he trusts the four Gospels we find in the Bible.

Here is the cleaned-up transcript from the video with filler words, repetitions, and stuttering removed:

Transcript

What about the other books that weren’t included in the Bible? There are a number of other books—gospels, if you like—of Jesus that aren’t in the Bible. Some of these have survived to the present day and are available for both historians and the general public to read and study. The question is, why were they not included in the Bible?

You might have heard about ten years ago of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, which was translated into English in 2006 after being found in the 1970s. That’s just one of many other gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and so on and so forth.

These apocryphal gospels, as they’re commonly known, were written either well into the second century or later. They often contain more supernatural and fantastical descriptions of Jesus, just as historians might expect based on a rule of thumb they use: the longer the time period elapsing between something happening and it being written about, the greater the chances of legendary material getting into the narrative.

Historians use these apocryphal gospels as a source of information on Jesus, but they’re probably more useful for finding out what the beliefs were of the second- and third-century Christian communities that they sprung from. A question you might ask is: why aren’t they in the Bible? Why is it that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are in the Bible?

This was decided most likely at a council of Christian leaders in Nicaea around 325 AD. Interestingly, the four oldest gospels—that is, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were the ones that made the cut. These were the ones most commonly regarded throughout the Christian communities that existed at that time as authoritative. So that’s why the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are in the Bible, but the other ones aren’t.

The apocrypha are very interesting. You can look at them yourself, but the most authoritative gospels are the ones in the Bible. That reflects the view of the early Christian communities—the ones closest to the actual events being described.

When I was doing my research into who Jesus was as an agnostic, it was interesting that these apocryphal gospels really weren’t mentioned by any of the non-Christian historians I was reading about Jesus through. That’s not to say that there’s nothing of value in them, but the gospels we read in the Bible today are the ones you want to focus on if you want to find out about Jesus.

I would really recommend that you look at the Gospels and see what they say to you about Jesus. It can change your life.