What about the Gnostic gospels?
Question 1076
Every so often, a documentary or news headline will announce some “lost gospel” that supposedly reveals the “real” Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Philip—these texts get trotted out as if they might overturn two thousand years of Christian faith. So what are these documents, and should they shake our confidence in the New Testament?
What Are the Gnostic Gospels?
The term “Gnostic gospels” refers to a collection of texts, most famously discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. A farmer digging for fertiliser unearthed a sealed jar containing thirteen leather-bound codices. These documents, written in Coptic (a late form of Egyptian), included works like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of the Egyptians, among others.
The word “Gnostic” comes from the Greek γνῶσις (gnōsis), meaning “knowledge.” Gnosticism was not a single movement but a collection of religious ideas that flourished in the second and third centuries. The basic Gnostic worldview held that the material world was evil, created by an inferior or malevolent deity (often called the Demiurge), and that salvation came through secret spiritual knowledge that enabled the divine spark within a person to escape the prison of the body.
This is fundamentally incompatible with biblical Christianity, which teaches that the material world was created good by the one true God (Genesis 1:31), that God Himself took on human flesh in Jesus (John 1:14), and that our bodies will be resurrected and glorified, not discarded (1 Corinthians 15:42–44).
Why Were They Not Included in the Bible?
The Gnostic texts were never serious contenders for inclusion in the New Testament canon. The early Church did not sit down in the fourth century and arbitrarily pick which books they liked—the canon emerged organically as churches recognised which writings bore the marks of apostolic authority and consistent teaching.
The criteria were straightforward. First, apostolic origin or connection: was the book written by an apostle or someone in direct contact with the apostles? Second, orthodoxy: did it align with the teaching already received from Jesus through the apostles? Third, catholicity: was it universally accepted and used by churches across the Roman world?
The Gnostic gospels fail on all three counts. They were written too late to have apostolic authorship—most scholars, including non-Christian ones, date them to the mid-second century at the earliest, some 100 to 150 years after Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, often considered the earliest, is typically dated between AD 140 and 180. The Gospel of Judas comes from even later, around AD 180. Compare this to Paul’s letters, written in the 50s, or Mark’s Gospel, likely written in the 60s.
Their content also differs dramatically from the apostolic witness. The Gospel of Thomas, for instance, is a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, with no narrative, no crucifixion, and no resurrection. Its final saying is particularly troubling: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'” This is utterly foreign to Jesus’ treatment of women in the canonical Gospels.
Do They Tell Us Anything About Jesus?
The Gnostic gospels tell us very little about the historical Jesus. What they do tell us is how Gnostic communities in the second and third centuries reimagined Jesus to fit their own theological framework. They took His name and authority and attached it to their own teachings—a practice the apostles warned against (2 Thessalonians 2:2; Galatians 1:8).
Some scholars have argued that a few sayings in the Gospel of Thomas might preserve authentic traditions not found in the canonical Gospels. This remains highly debated, and even if true, these would be isolated fragments rather than anything that changes our understanding of who Jesus was or what He taught. The overwhelming scholarly consensus, even among liberal historians, is that the canonical Gospels remain our earliest and most reliable sources for the life and teaching of Jesus.
Why Do They Get So Much Attention?
The fascination with Gnostic gospels often says more about our culture than about early Christianity. There is a certain appeal to the idea of hidden knowledge, of secret truths suppressed by the institutional Church. Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code exploited this brilliantly, weaving a fictional conspiracy around the Gospel of Philip’s reference to Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene (though the text is fragmentary and the word for where he kissed her is missing).
But the reality is far less dramatic. The early Church fathers like Irenaeus (writing around AD 180) knew about these texts and explicitly rejected them—not because they feared what they contained, but because they recognised them as late innovations that contradicted the apostolic faith. Irenaeus’s work Against Heresies provides detailed refutations of Gnostic teaching, demonstrating that these ideas were contested from the moment they appeared.
Conclusion
The Gnostic gospels are historically interesting documents that shed light on the diversity of religious thought in the second and third centuries. But they are not suppressed truths or hidden Scriptures. They emerged too late, taught doctrines incompatible with the apostolic witness, and were rejected by churches across the ancient world. Our New Testament stands on far firmer ground—written within living memory of Jesus, by eyewitnesses or their close associates, and recognised by the earliest Christian communities as bearing the authentic voice of God.
When someone asks whether these texts should make us doubt our Bible, we can answer with confidence: no. If anything, comparing them to the canonical Gospels only highlights how different, how coherent, and how historically grounded the apostolic witness truly is.
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8
Bibliography
- Bock, Darrell L. The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006.
- Evans, Craig A. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove: IVP, 2006.
- Irenaeus. Against Heresies. Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1885.
- Köstenberger, Andreas J., and Michael J. Kruger. The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.
- Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979.
- Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3rd ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990.