How should we use the Bible in apologetics? The Christian Bible contains four books called Gospels. Some were rejected for purely editorial reasons, such as questions about their authorship, while others contained teachings and stories about Jesus which were far too controversial or heretical. In a day of depressing headlines and uncertainty all around us, good news is very welcome. Parts of it don’t even sound like Christianity but rather other religions from the ancient world (like Manichaeism). Finding a gospel with his name attached seemed almost too bizarre to be true. Since the only long fragment is a Coptic translation, most of the original Greek text is still lost. On top of that, few people still read or spoke Aramaic at the time. Listed here is a simple summary of different gospels found in the Bible, yet is not exhaustive. The apocryphal and gnostic gospels were not lost to the early church; rather, early Christians knew about and rejected them because they were written long after Jesus’s original followers had died and clearly contained fanciful and heretical ideas (see Irenaeus in AD 180). Rather than appearing as the protagonist, He seemed to be a dark and menacing figure. Plus, most Christians would have disagreed with their ideas about the Trinity. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In the New Testament Gospels, Judas is presented as the man who betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. For instance, His famous “remove this cup from me” speech takes place in a dream and not a garden. They also disagreed with fundamental aspects of wider Christian philosophy. Most of the text was damaged, but there was just enough left to get a sense of what the complete book was like. © 2020 North American Mission Board, SBC. It features stories in which young Jesus strikes other children dead for offenses like bumping into him (4:1-2; see also 14:3). I’ve compiled a list of each book of the Bible ranked according to word count and how long they take to read (based on a slow reader’s speed of 100 words per minute). The term originally meant the Christian message itself, but in the second century, it came to be used for the books in which the message was set out. The higher the vote, the further up an answer is. The four records comprise one Gospel: "the gospel of God regarding his Son." The text was discovered in an Egyptian tomb in the 19th century. The reason this gospel is such an important discovery has to do with its contents. Ignorance, not sin, is the ultimate problem. There are more than four ancient documents which claim to be gospels, or which contain stories of Jesus, including works like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and a number of “infancy gospels”—fanciful accounts of Jesus’ birth and childhood. Scholars believe this was one of the main reasons the book was rejected. A German scholar purchased it in Cairo in the 19th century from an antique collector. Only small sections of this gospel still exist, as excerpts or written in the margins of other texts. Unsurprisingly, the Gospel of the Ebionites was rejected when the Bible was compiled. Alicia Sarkar is a Bengali-Canadian writer and researcher. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that the Gospel of Thomas was popular for much of early Christianity. Choose the calculator you like. The most prominent of these are the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In fact, early writers referred to the four books in the singular. Like many gospels, it narrates the story of Jesus’s life, but this one also focuses on His closest followers. It was criticized by most ancient Christian writers for its discrepancies, and it was quickly labeled heretical. Privacy Policy & Copyright Notice. The Ebionites were one such sect, lasting from the second to fourth centuries. Notably, most Christians considered God as part of a Holy Trinity, which they rejected. For the curious, the text is available in almost its entirety. Intelligent Bible study collects the facts first. In the latter, Jesus invites Judas to betray him. Jesus does many of the same things, except at different times and places. There were probably about forty gospels in antiquity. However, instead of focusing on the 12 disciples most Christians know, it places Mary Magdalene at the center of the story. There is no way to prove that what they claim God said, and then wrote in the Bible is something that God actually said.

how many gospels are there not in the bible

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