Why were many gospels left out of the Bible?

Answer 1

A:

There were numerous gospels written in the first two centuries. Those we even know about are only known because copies survived or because of references made to them by other writers. Many more were probably written but have long since been forgotten because they did not arouse sufficient hostility on the part of clergy in what would become the dominant catholic-orthodox branch of Christianity.

It should be noted that no known gospel was written by disciples of Jesus or associates of those disciples. The four New Testament gospels, favoured by the dominant catholic-orthodox Christians, were anonymous until attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John later in the second century. Others were either anonymous and subsequently attributed to apostles, were given general names such as Gospel of the Hebrews, or were outright forgeries in the names of apostles.

For Christian authorities, the authenticity of a gospel depended on whether the message of that gospel was consistent with what those authorities taught. Although the four gospels we now know were all anonymous, they 'must' have been authentic, because the Church Fathers agreed with them. Therefore they must have been written by apostles or their associates, and every effort was made to identify the persons thought likely to have written them. Other gospels, signed or apparently signed by apostles, were rejected as forgeries because they contained material that, in the view of the Church Fathers, could not have come from the apostles.

It is possible that the earliest recognised gospel was the Gospel of Thomas. The hypothetical 'Q' document, sometimes also known as the 'Q' Gospel, probably also pre-dates Mark, the earliest New Testament gospel. While the Q Gospel is not actually in The Bible, it survives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which were partly based on Q.