What are the lost gospels of the New Testament?
The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98.
Another test these books fail is that they aren't consistent with those books we know belong in the canon; they aren't inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Pet. 1:20-21). In addition, these books below weren't widely circulated amongst various early churches (i.e. catholicity). Lastly, as F.F. Bruce wrote:
By the time of Irenaeus, who, though a native of Asia Minor, was bishop of Lyons in Gaul about A.D. 180, the idea of a fourfold Gospel had become so axiomatic in the Church at large that he can refer to it as an established and recognized fact as obvious as the four cardinal points of the compass or the four winds:For as there are four quarters of the world in which we live, and four universal winds, and as the Church is dispersed over all the earth, and the gospel is the pillar and base of the Church and the breath of life, so it is natural that it should have four pillars, breathing immortality from every quarter and kindling the life of men anew. Whence it is manifest that the Word, the architect of all things, who sits upon the cherubim and holds all things together, having been manifested to men, has given us the gospel in fourfold form, but held together by one Spirit.
The Nag Hammadi library (aka: the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Gnosticism (from the Greek gnosis, meaning "knowledge") is said to have been the second great heresy faced by the early church (the first being the Judaizers). Gnosticism essentially observed, (1) salvation was a matter of acquiring and using secret knowledge, essentially self-knowledge; (2) it taught that Christ was lower than God, merely a pantheistic emanation; and (3) it denied the incarnation, etc. It influenced numerous cults and false teachers, and even today it is seen in such works as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
The chart below contains a list of a number of alleged "lost gospels" or "lost books" that are not and should not be in the New Testament.
A.D. |
|
---|---|
225 | Acts of John |
185 | Acts of Peter |
190 | Acts of Paul |
150 | Acts of Andrew |
215 | Acts of Thomas |
150-250 | Apocalypse of Peter |
175-225 | Apocryphon of James |
150-225 | Apocryphon of John |
150-200 | Dilogue of the Savior |
300 | Epistle to Laodiceans |
Late 1st Cen. | Eugnostos the Blessed |
175 | Excerpta ex Theodoto |
5th-6th Cen. | Gospel(s) of Bartholomew |
16th Cen. | Gospel of Barnabas |
150 | Gospel of Ebionites |
150 | Gospel of Hebrews |
2nd Cen. | Gospel of Judas |
120-180 | Gospel of Mary Magdalene |
150 | Gospel of Nazareans |
150 | Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate) |
150 | Gospel of Peter |
175-225 | Gospel of Philip |
2nd-3rd Cen. | Gospel of the Egyptians |
2nd Cen. | Gospel of the Savior |
90-180 | Gospel of Thomas |
225 | Infancy Gospel of Thomas |
200-250 | Gospel of Thomas the Contender |
150 | Gospel of Truth |
3rd Cen. | Hypostasis of the Archons |
150-200 | Interpretation of Knowledge |
175-200 | Letter to Rheginos (Treatise on the Resurrection) |
150 | Protoevangelium of James |
2nd Cen. | Pistis Sophia |
175-200 | Second Treatise of the Great Seth |
2nd Cen. | Sophia of Jesus Christ |
275-325 | Teachings of Silvanus |
175-200 | Treatise on the Resurrection (Letter to Rheginos) |
3rd-4th Cen. | Tripartite Tractate |
175-200 | Valentinian Exposition |
References:
Bock, Darrell. The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006).Bruce, F.F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (5th edition; Leicester: Intervarsity Press, 1959).
Warfield, B.B. The Canon of the New Testament: How and When Formed. (Philadelphia: The American Sunday-School Union, 1892).
Related Topics:
Apocrypha Accounts?The Catholic Bible?
God's Flawless Word
What is heresy?
What is Gnosticism?
The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament
Introduction to the New Testament
Dr. Joseph R. Nally, Jr., D.D., M.Div. is the Theological Editor at Third Millennium Ministries (Thirdmill).