List of Gospels

The canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John can be found in most Christian Bibles

Gospels are a genre of Early Christian literature claiming to recount the life of Jesus, to preserve his teachings, or to reveal aspects of God's nature. The New Testament has four canonical gospels which are accepted as the only authentic and apostolic gospels by the Christians, but many others exist, or used to exist, and are called either New Testament apocrypha or pseudepigrapha. Some of these have left considerable traces on Christian traditions, including iconography.

The word "gospel" – Old English for "Good News" – is the English term for the Greek word ευαγγέλιον (euangélion) which means "blessed proclamation", and from which we get the word evangel and its cognates.

Canonical gospels

• Synoptic gospels
  • Gospel of Mark
    • Longer ending of Mark (see also the Freer Logion)
  • Gospel of Matthew
  • Gospel of Luke
• Gospel of John

Hypothesized sources of the synoptic gospels

• Cross Gospel – John Dominic Crossan's proposed source of the Passion narrative in Mark (and in the Gospel of Peter; see below)
• Q source – Q is material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark
• M Source – M is material unique to Matthew
• L Source – L is material unique to Luke

Hypothesized sources of the Gospel of John

• Signs Gospel – narrative of the Seven Signs
• Discourses Gospel – source of the discourse material

Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha

Gnostic gospels

• Gospel of Thomas – possibly proto-Gnostic; 1st to mid 2nd century; collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, 31 of them with no parallel in the canonical gospels
• Gospel of Marcion – 2nd century; potentially an edited version of the Gospel of Luke or a document which predates Luke (see: Marcionism)
• Gospel of Basilides – composed in Egypt around 120 to 140 AD; thought to be a gnostic gospel harmony of the canonical gospels
• Gospel of Truth (Valentinian) – mid 2nd century; departed from earlier gnostic works by admitting and defending the physicality of Christ and his resurrection.
• Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms – mid 2nd century; thought to be a gnostic cosmology, most likely in the form of a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples.
• Gospel of Mary – 2nd century
• Gospel of Judas – 2nd century
• Greek Gospel of the Egyptians – second quarter of the 2nd century
• Gospel of Philip
• Pseudo-Gospel of the Twelve – A Syriac language gospel titled the Gospel of the Twelve. This work is shorter than the regular gospels and seems to be different from the lost Gospel of the Twelve.^[1]
• Gospel of Perfection – 4th century; an Ophite poem that is only mentioned once by a single patristic source, Epiphanius^[2] and is referred to once in the 6th century Gospel of the Infancy
• The Gospel of the Lots of Mary - 6th century.

Jewish-Christian gospels

• Gospel of the Hebrews
• Gospel of the Nazarenes
• Gospel of the Ebionites
• Gospel of the Twelve

Infancy gospels

• Armenian Infancy Gospel
• Protoevangelium of James
• Libellus de Nativitate Sanctae Mariae (Gospel of the Nativity of Mary)
• Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
• History of Joseph the Carpenter
• Infancy Gospel of Thomas
• Latin Infancy Gospel (Arundel 404)
• Syriac Infancy Gospel

Other gospels

• Gospel of the Lots of Mary (Coptic collection of 37 oracles; ca. A.D. 500)^[3]

Partially preserved gospels

• Gospel of Peter

Fragmentary preserved gospels^[α]

• Gospel of Eve – mentioned only once by Epiphanius circa 400, who preserves a single brief passage in quotation.
• Gospel of Mani – 3rd century – attributed to the Persian Mani, the founder of Manichaeism.
• Gospel of the Saviour (also known as the Unknown Berlin gospel) – highly fragmentary 6th-century manuscript based on a late 2nd- or early 3rd-century original. A dialogue rather than a narrative; heavily Gnostic in character in that salvation is dependent upon possessing secret knowledge.
• Coptic Gospel of the Twelve – late 2nd century Coptic language work – although often equated with the Gospel of the Ebionites, it appears to be an attempt to re-tell the Gospel of John in the pattern of the Synoptics; it quotes extensively from John's Gospel.

Reconstructed gospels^[β]

• Secret Gospel of Mark – suspect: the single source mentioning it is considered by many to be a modern forgery, and it disappeared before it could be independently authenticated.
• Gospel of Matthias

Lost gospels

• Gospel of Cerinthus – ca. 90–120 AD – according to Epiphanius^[4] this is a Jewish gospel identical to the Gospel of the Ebionites and, apparently, a truncated version of Matthew's Gospel according to the Hebrews.
• Gospel of Apelles – mid-to-late 2nd century; a further edited version of Marcion's edited version of Luke.
• Gospel of Valentinus^[5]
• Gospel of the Encratites^[6]
• Gospel of Andrew – mentioned by only two 5th-century sources (Augustine and Pope Innocent I) who list it as apocryphal.^[7]
• Gospel of Barnabas – not to be confused with the 16th century pro-Moslem work of the same name; this work is mentioned only once, in the 5th century Decree of Gelasius which lists it as apocryphal.
• Gospel of Bartholomew – mentioned by only two 5th-century sources which list it as apocryphal.^[8]
• Gospel of Hesychius – mentioned only by Jerome and the Decree of Gelasius that list it as apocryphal.^[9]
• Gospel of Lucius^[9] – mentioned only by Jerome and the Decree of Gelasius that list it as apocryphal.
• Gospel of Merinthus^[10] – mentioned only by Epiphanius; probably the Gospel of Cerinthus, and the confusion due to a scribal error.
• An unknown number of other Gnostic gospels not cited by name.^[11]
• Gospel of the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets^[12]
• Memoirs of the Apostles – Lost narrative of the life of Jesus, mentioned by Justin Martyr. The passages quoted by Justin may have originated from a gospel harmony of the Synoptic Gospels composed by Justin or his school.

Fragments of possibly unknown or lost (or existing) gospels^[α]

• Papyrus Egerton 2 – late 2nd-century manuscript of possibly earlier original; contents parallel John 5:39–47, 10:31–39; Matt 1:40–45, 8:1–4, 22:15–22; Mark 1:40–45, 12:13–17; and Luke 5:12–16, 17:11–14, 20:20–26, but differ textually; also contains incomplete miracle account with no equivalent in canonical Gospels
• Fayyum Fragment – a fragment of about 100 Greek letters in 3rd century script; the text seems to parallel Mark 14:26–31
• Oxyrhynchus Papyri – Fragments #1, 654, & 655 appear to be fragments of Thomas; #210 is related to MT 7:17–19 and LK 6:43–44 but not identical to them; #840 contains a short vignette about Jesus and a Pharisee not found in any known gospel, the source text is probably mid 2nd century; #1224 consists of paraphrases of Mark 2:17 and Luke 9:50
• Gospel of Jesus' Wife – 4th century at the earliest.
• Papyrus Berolinensis 11710 – 6th-century Greek fragment, possibly from an apocrpyhal gospel or amulet based on John.
• Papyrus Cairensis 10735 – 6th–7th century Greek fragment, possibly from a lost gospel, may be a homily or commentary.
• Papyrus Merton 51 – Fragment from apocryphal gospel or a homily on Luke 6:7.
• Strasbourg Fragment – Fragment of a lost gospel, probably related to Acts of John.

Medieval gospels

• Gospel of the Seventy – a lost 8th–9th-century Manichean work
• Gospel of Nicodemus – a post 10th-century Christian devotional work (or works) in many variants. The first section is highly dependent upon the 5th century "Acts of Pilate"
• Gospel of Barnabas – a 16th-century harmony of the four canonical gospels, probably of Spanish (Morisco) origin, or possibly Italian

Modern gospels

See also

Notes

Footnotes

References

• New Testament Apocrypha, by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, R. M. Wilson.
• New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and Related Writings, by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, R. M. Wilson.
• History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred, by Charles B. Waite.

External links

• The Fifth Gospel Five lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1913