There are literally dozens of Gospels that were floating around the ancient world. We are all familiar with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, But there are also many other Gospels like the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and so on.
Why do we only accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the Canonical Gospels?
The Canonical Gospels are the officially accepted Gospels. They are called Canonical because the word “canon” means “an official list or approved collection of written works.” This is because these are the ones that are accepted as officially inspired, as concluded in the 4th Century.
These Gospels met the criteria of St. Athanasius who said that they had to be Apostolic, Catholic, and liturgical.
Apostolic means that it had to be attributed to an Apostle (or to an apostolic tradition). In ancient days, many believed that Matthew and John were written by members of the 12. Mark was thought to be the secretary to St. Peter. And Luke was known to be a companion of St. Paul. And while the non-Canonical Gospels bear the names of Apostles, their connection was always taken as dubious.
Catholic means that it had to be something in the universal Church, and not just in a small geographical region. A number of the other Gospels were found only in a very small community and not accepted by the entire Church. In fact, within only a few decades of them being written, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all accepted as authentic. The other non-Canonical Gospels were not.
Liturgical means that it had to have been incorporated in the worship of the Christian communities. Just as we do now, we read from the Gospels at our Eucharistic celebrations. And the only ones that were always accepted to be a part of this were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The Non-Canonical Gospels are the ones that are not in the officially accepted list of inspired books. These are divided into the categories of the Gnostic Gospels, which express different versions of the Gnostic heresy, and the rest are called the apocryphal Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels were written by the Gnostic heretics in order to give legitimacy to their heresy by putting their theology into the mouth of Christ. But these were written much later than the original Gospels. The apocryphal Gospels may not be part of this heretical group, but they lack to criteria set out by Athanasius.
So what makes us think that the Four Gospels are authentic historically?
The Four Canonical Gospels are authenticated by orality, dissimilarity, multiple attestation, the embarrassment factor, and coherence.
Orality means that it captures how the sayings of Jesus were brief and memorable (for example, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but give to God what belongs to God.” Mark 12:17).
Dissimilarity speaks to how the words and actions of Jesus are so out of the norm of the society of his day and were not part of the conventional thinking (for example, in John 4, Jesus speaks to a Samaritan Woman, which was breaking social barriers of the day).
Multiple attestation means that the teaching can be found in several places in more than just that one Gospel (for example, at the Last Supper in the Synoptic Gospels and in John 6, Jesus says that we have to eat His Body and drink His Blood).
The embarrassment factor means that the teachings may cause some level of discomfort for those reading the story, so it is unlikely that the Gospel writers included it if it was not true (for example, the first witnesses to the Resurrection were women, which would actually mean that ancient peoples would be less likely to believe the story to be true).
And coherence means the portrait of Jesus that we find through the other criteria is consistent. While Jesus may speak a bit differently in John than in the Synoptic Gospels, there is a harmony that is consistent between them all.
The Non-Canonical Gospels fail these tests. They do not appear to be based on any eyewitness memories of the words and deeds of Jesus, they are written much later than the Canonical Gospels (probably in the 2nd century, as demonstrated by their several anachronisms), and it is concluded that they are entirely fictitious.
That is why we hold only to the four Canonical Gospels.
Copyright 2025, WL Grayson
W.L. Grayson
I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.