Why Were the Gnostic Gospels Left Out of the Bible?

In December 1945 a farmer digging for fertile soil near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt broke open a large clay jar and found a set of leather-bound papyrus books. Among them were a "Gospel of Thomas," a "Gospel of Philip" and a "Gospel of Truth." In 2006 a "Gospel of Judas" followed. A common story grew up around both finds: early Christianity had many gospels, the bishops picked four that suited them, and the rest were suppressed.

If the four Gospels were chosen for convenience, the Church's picture of Jesus is a selection made by the winners. If they were received because they carried the apostles' witness, the story looks very different.

In brief

The Nag Hammadi codices are Coptic translations of mostly Greek works, copied in the fourth century or a little later. The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings, existed by about 200; scholars including Bart Ehrman, Mark Goodacre and Simon Gathercole date it to the second century, while others argue that some of its sayings or an earlier form go back to the first. The Gospel of Judas survives in one Coptic copy of the third or fourth century and was already condemned by Irenaeus around 180. No council voted these books out. Second-century bishops asked whether a book had been handed down from the apostles, agreed with the faith the churches had received, and was read in their worship. The Gnostic gospels failed all three tests. The Orthodox Church receives the four Gospels as her own book, enthroned on the altar and carried in procession at every Divine Liturgy.

Thesis: The Gnostic gospels were left out because they were not the apostolic Gospel the churches were already reading, not because a later authority suppressed equally ancient rivals.

What was found at Nag Hammadi

Elaine Pagels, whose The Gnostic Gospels (1979) made the find famous, tells the story from the account the finder, Muhammad 'Ali al-Samman, gave thirty years later: the jar, thirteen leather-bound books, a mother who burned some loose pages in her oven, and a journey through the Cairo antiquities market before most of the codices reached the Coptic Museum.¹ Some details rest on that single late account.

The contents are not in doubt. The books hold fifty-two tractates; because some works appear twice, the number of distinct texts is usually given as about forty-six.² They are in Coptic, the late form of Egyptian, mostly translated from Greek. Papyrus scraps reused in the covers give a traditional earliest date of 348 for the binding; Pagels places the manuscripts about 350 to 400.³ {{very-strong: The Nag Hammadi codices are Coptic copies made in the fourth century or a little later, so they show what was being read in late antique Egypt, not when each work was first written.}}

Who owned and buried them is disputed. The idea that monks of the nearby Pachomian monasteries hid them goes back to James Robinson, the scholar most associated with their publication, and Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott defended a monastic origin at length in 2015, placing the codices in fourth- and fifth-century monasteries. Nicola Denzey Lewis replied that interviews held thirty years after the find, excavations that "yielded nothing," and guesses about a deliberate burial weaken that case rather than support it.⁴ We do not know who hid the codices or why.

Are they really "Gnostic"?

Irenaeus and others described teachers who claimed a secret gnosis (knowledge), taught that the material world was made by an inferior being rather than the true God, and denied that Christ truly came in the flesh. Many Nag Hammadi texts fit that description, but the collection is mixed: Pagels describes it as ranging from secret gospels and poems to myths, magic and instructions for mystical practice. Michael Williams's Rethinking "Gnosticism" (1996) is subtitled "An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category," and Karen King's What Is Gnosticism? argues that the category owes much to ancient polemic.⁵

The Gospel of Thomas

The best known of these writings has no story of Jesus' birth, miracles, death or resurrection. It is a list of 114 sayings, most introduced with "Jesus said," and it opens: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down."⁶ Many sayings resemble those in Matthew, Mark and Luke, such as the mustard seed and the blind leading the blind. Others sound very different. In saying 77 Jesus says, "Split a piece of wood, and I am there." In the last, Peter asks that Mary leave, and Jesus replies: "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males."⁷

How early is it?

Three Greek fragments of Thomas had already been found at Oxyrhynchus. One (P.Oxy. 1) is dated by its handwriting to shortly after 200, the other two to the mid-third century, and they differ from the Coptic, which suggests the text was edited as it was copied.⁸ The first writer to name it is the author of the Refutation of All Heresies, traditionally Hippolytus of Rome, about 222 to 235. He says the Naassene sect quoted "the Gospel inscribed according to Thomas": "He who seeks me, will find me in children from seven years old."⁹ That is a variant of saying 4 in the Coptic: "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life."¹⁰

How much earlier than 200 it was composed is a real argument. Helmut Koester suggested, as Pagels reports, that the collection, though compiled about 140, may include traditions "possibly as early as the second half of the first century."¹¹ Stephen Patterson concluded that many of its sayings "derive from a parallel and separate tradition" independent of the Synoptics.¹² On the other side, Mark Goodacre's Thomas and the Gospels (2012) points to places where Thomas reproduces wording that Matthew or Luke added to their sources; Larry Hurtado wrote, "I judge Goodacre’s case very thorough, measured and persuasive."¹³ Simon Gathercole's major commentary also dates the work to the second century and finds dependence on the Synoptics, while allowing that it may preserve a few otherwise unknown sayings of Jesus.¹⁴

Bart Ehrman, no friend of traditional apologetics, grants that some of its parables may be preserved in an older form than their canonical versions, but argues that the book itself probably did not exist in the first century, since the ideas behind many of its sayings cannot be documented before the second.¹⁵ {{strong: The Gospel of Thomas as we have it was composed in the second century, though some individual sayings may be older.}} Even if a few sayings go back to Jesus, that would not make the book apostolic; the Gospels themselves say Jesus did much that they do not record (John 20:30).

The Gospel of Judas

The National Geographic Society published the Gospel of Judas in April 2006. Its single copy is in a Coptic book now called Codex Tchacos which surfaced in Egypt in the late 1970s and spent years on the antiquities market. The University of Arizona's radiocarbon laboratory dated samples from it to between 220 and 340.¹⁶ The title was known much earlier. About 180 Irenaeus described a group who said that Judas "accomplished the mystery of the betrayal," and added: "They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas."¹⁷ The editors identified the Coptic text with the work Irenaeus knew; that is probable but cannot be proved.

The first translation presented Judas as Jesus' most trusted disciple. In a New York Times op-ed of 1 December 2007, April DeConick argued that a word rendered "spirit" (daimon) means "demon" in these texts, and that the translators had emended a sentence to remove a negative, so that the text actually says Judas will not ascend to the holy generation; National Geographic acknowledged the emendation. Marvin Meyer, a translator, replied that the edition's notes discussed these points and that the text's positive statements about Judas deserve weight.¹⁸ On either reading, the work is no earlier than the second century and tells us nothing new about the historical Judas.

How the early Church judged these books

The evidence shows no council choosing from a pile, but second-century teachers asking three questions of any book that claimed to be a Gospel.

Was it handed down from the apostles?

Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, who had seen Polycarp of Smyrna in his youth, wrote Against Heresies about 180. He insists that the apostles first preached publicly and then "handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith," and he names Matthew, Mark (Peter's interpreter), Luke (Paul's companion) and John.¹⁹ Against teachers who claimed secret traditions, his answer was that the apostles taught in public, in churches whose bishops could be named.

Toward the end of the second century Serapion, bishop of Antioch, at first let the congregation at Rhossus read the Gospel of Peter, unread by him; told that it was breeding heresy, he examined a copy and wrote: "we, brethren, receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ; but we reject intelligently the writings falsely ascribed to them, knowing that such were not handed down to us." He found in it "many things in accordance with the true doctrine of the Saviour, but some things added to that doctrine."²⁰ An apostle's name on the title was not enough.

Did it agree with the faith the churches had received?

Irenaeus summarised the faith that the Church "has received from the apostles and their disciples": one God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth; one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, "who became incarnate for our salvation"; and the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets his virgin birth, passion, resurrection and "the ascension into heaven in the flesh."²¹ A gospel teaching that the world was made by a lesser god, or that Christ only seemed to have a body, contradicted this rule of faith. The apostolic writings had used the same test: "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God" (1 John 4:2, NKJV). Irenaeus said the Valentinians' Gospel of Truth "agrees in nothing with the Gospels of the Apostles."²² Whether it is the Gospel of Truth found at Nag Hammadi is debated.²³

Was it read in the churches?

The Muratorian Fragment, an early Latin list of New Testament books, accepts four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul and several others, rejects letters forged in Paul's name for Marcion's cause because "it is not fitting that gall be mixed with honey," and says, "we accept nothing whatever of Arsinous or Valentinus or Miltiades."²⁴ It even keeps the Shepherd of Hermas out of public reading because it was written "very recently, in our times."²⁵

The Fragment's own date is disputed. It survives in one seventh- or eighth-century manuscript, published by Ludovico Muratori in 1740, and because it calls the time of Pius, bishop of Rome in the mid-second century, recent, it has usually been placed in the late second century. Albert Sundberg (1973) and Geoffrey Hahneman (1992) argued for the fourth century; Everett Ferguson replied to Sundberg in 1982, and Peter Head observed that the heretics it names all belong to the second century.²⁶ Hurtado described two camps, Sundberg and Hahneman on one side and Michael Kruger "with many others" placing it in the early third century on the other.²⁷ {{debated: The Muratorian Fragment was written in the late second or early third century.}} Nothing here depends on it: Irenaeus's four-Gospel position is securely dated about 180.

Irenaeus and the four Gospels

Irenaeus's best-known passage sounds strange today: "It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are." He compares them to the four zones of the world, the four winds and the four living creatures of Revelation 4, and concludes that the Word "has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit."²⁸ He faults both Marcion, "cutting himself off from the Gospel," and the Valentinians, who "boast that they possess more Gospels than there really are."²⁹ See our articles on Irenaeus of Lyons and Marcion.

Fourth-century writers stated the same judgments plainly. Eusebius set apart books "cited by the heretics under the name of the apostles," naming "the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias," as "the fictions of heretics," though his "Thomas" may be the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.³⁰ Cyril of Jerusalem told catechumens about 350, "Let none read the Gospel according to Thomas," though, if he meant this sayings gospel, he wrongly blamed it on a disciple of Mani, who was born about 216, after the earliest Greek copy.³¹ St Athanasius's Festal Letter of 367 listed the twenty-seven books and said: "In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these."³²

What the manuscripts add

Hurtado observed that the early copies of non-canonical gospels such as Mary and Thomas "suggest that they were mainly prepared for individual usage, not for liturgical reading." He also reported Charles Hill's count of some thirty-six manuscripts of the four Gospels from the first three centuries against ten of all other gospels, and noted that a number of non-canonical copies are rolls rather than the codex form Christians preferred for Scripture.³³ {{strong: In the second and third centuries the four Gospels were copied more often, and more often for public reading, than any other gospels.}}

What leading scholars argue

Elaine Pagels wrote that "early Christianity is far more diverse than nearly anyone expected before the Nag Hammadi discoveries," and that the canon, the creed and the Church's institutional structure each "emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century."³⁴ On diversity she is right; the New Testament itself records disputes from the start. The question is whether diversity gave every group an equal claim to the apostles.

Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities (2003) calls the eventual winners "proto-orthodox," in the jacket's words "those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief," and presents the period as a contest among many Christianities.³⁵ The Catholic scholar Daniel Harrington, reviewing it, said Ehrman's proto-orthodoxy "appears as some vast and amorphous conspiracy that is everywhere and can include and explain almost everything."³⁶

Larry Hurtado granted that "there was considerable diversity in early Christianity," but argued that Walter Bauer's thesis, that what was later called "heresy" was in several regions the earlier form, had been persuasively challenged, and that there was "an emerging early “mainstream” of Christian circles," visible in the fourfold Gospel collection.³⁷ Some groups, he wrote, never seem to have been more than "a “niche” form of Christian “spirituality”."³⁸

The Orthodox understanding of the canon

The Orthodox Church does not teach that the New Testament was created by a decree. No ecumenical council drew up its own list of books; as our article Did the Council of Nicaea Decide the Biblical Canon? shows, the Council in Trullo (692), in its second canon, ratified earlier collections containing lists (the Apostolic Canons, the local councils of Laodicea and of Carthage, whose code of 419 repeats the African lists of 393 and 397, and Athanasius), and these lists differ, especially over Revelation.³⁹ The canon was received, not invented: the churches recognised in these books the apostolic preaching they already lived by (see also How Was the Biblical Canon Actually Formed?).

Fr Thomas Hopko's catechism for the Orthodox Church in America says that Holy Tradition "is the very life of the Church itself as it is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit," and that the Gospels and apostolic writings "form the heart of the Christian tradition."⁴⁰ St Paul told the Thessalonians to "hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15, NKJV); Scripture is the Church's book, read within the faith that produced it.

The clearest sign is the liturgy. Hopko notes that "only the book of the four gospels is enthroned on the altars of our churches and not the entire Bible." At every Divine Liturgy the Small Entrance is "the solemn procession of the clergy to the altar led by the Book of the Gospels," and the reading that follows is "a sacramental act."⁴¹ The four Gospels Irenaeus defended are the ones carried in procession today. St Luke describes the Gospel as what "those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered" (Luke 1:2, NKJV). The Gnostic gospels offer instead a hidden teaching given privately. The Church's answer, from Irenaeus on, is that the apostles had nothing to hide, and what they delivered publicly is what the churches kept.

Objections and replies

"The winners wrote the history and destroyed the evidence."

Much older knowledge of these groups came from opponents, and, as Pagels notes, after Constantine possessing books denounced as heretical became an offence. But the decisive judgments were made in the second century, by a persecuted minority with no power to suppress anything. The Nag Hammadi texts now let us test Irenaeus: he drew on a source shared with the Apocryphon of John found there, and the Coptic Gospel of Judas fits his description of a book in which Judas alone knows the truth. King and others argue that he painted his opponents too darkly, but he did not invent the books he attacked.

"Thomas is as early as Mark."

Some respected scholars hold that parts of Thomas are early (see above). But no manuscript or citation predates about 200, many scholars, Ehrman among them, place the book itself in the second century, and there is no evidence that it was read in the public worship of any church whose writers we have.

"Irenaeus's argument from four winds is arbitrary."

As a proof it would be. But he was not deriving the number of Gospels from the winds; he was explaining, in the symbolic language of his day, why the four that churches already read belonged together. His historical claim, that these four came from the apostles, carries the weight.

"Orthodoxy was defined by the canon, so the reasoning is circular."

The order was the reverse. Irenaeus could state the rule of faith without appeal to any list, and the Gospels and Paul's letters were the earliest written form of that same preaching. The Church judged later books by the faith she had received from the apostles.

What we can say confidently

• The Nag Hammadi codices are Coptic copies, mostly of Greek works, made in the fourth century or a little later and found in Upper Egypt in December 1945.
• The Gospel of Thomas existed in Greek by about 200 and circulated in more than one form.
• Irenaeus, about 180, held that there were exactly four Gospels and named the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Judas as heretical works.
• Second-century bishops judged gospels by apostolic origin, agreement with the received faith and use in the churches, not by a council's vote.
• Surviving early copies suggest that non-canonical gospels were mostly private reading, while the four Gospels were copied far more often.
• No ecumenical council drew up its own list of New Testament books; the Orthodox canon was received through the Church's life and worship.

What remains disputed

• Whether the Gospel of Thomas, or an earlier form of it, goes back to the first century, and whether it depends on the Synoptic Gospels.
• The date and place of the Muratorian Fragment.
• Who owned the Nag Hammadi codices and why they were buried.
• Whether "Gnosticism" is a useful category at all.
• How the Gospel of Judas should be translated and whether its Judas is a hero or a demonic figure.
• How large and how unified the "mainstream" of second-century Christianity was.

Conclusion

The Gnostic gospels are real ancient texts, and they repay study. But they were not a lost first-century Bible. They came later, claimed a hidden teaching the apostles never preached in the churches, and described a Christ who did not truly come in the flesh, die and rise.

The Church did not need a council to recognise this. She heard in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the voice she had heard since Pentecost, and she has carried that book to the altar ever since. For an Orthodox Christian the canon is not a fence built by bishops but a gift handed down, like the faith of the Creed: one God the Father, one Lord Jesus Christ who became flesh for our salvation, and one Holy Spirit who spoke by the prophets.

Notes

1. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979), introduction, pp. xiii-xxiii, as reprinted by PBS Frontline, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/pagels.html.
2. Pagels counts "fifty-two texts"; Harvard University Press's description of Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism?, speaks of "the forty-six texts found at Nag Hammadi." The difference reflects duplicate copies.
3. Pagels, introduction (c. 350-400); on the cartonnage date of 348, Nicola Denzey Lewis, review of Lundhaug and Jenott, Theologische Literaturzeitung (2018), https://www.thlz.com/artikel/20282/.
4. Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), publisher's description; Denzey Lewis, review.
5. Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); King, What Is Gnosticism? (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), publisher's description.
6. Gospel of Thomas, prologue, trans. Thomas O. Lambdin, in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990), online at https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/thomas-lambdin.html.
7. Gospel of Thomas 77 and 114, trans. Lambdin.
8. Peter Kirby, "Gospel of Thomas," Early Christian Writings, https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas.html, quoting Ron Cameron, Anchor Bible Dictionary 6:535.
9. Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20 (ANF numbering Book V, ch. 2), trans. J. H. MacMahon, ANF vol. 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050105.htm. On the date and the testimony, Cameron as quoted by Kirby.
10. Gospel of Thomas 4, trans. Lambdin.
11. Pagels, introduction, reporting Helmut Koester.
12. Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1993), 18, as quoted by Kirby.
13. Larry Hurtado, "Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Gospels," 21 March 2012, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/gospel-of-thomas-and-the-synoptic-gospels/, on Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2012).
14. Hurtado, "Gathercole's Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas," 4 June 2015, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/gathercoles-commentary-on-the-gospel-of-thomas/, on Simon Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
15. Bart D. Ehrman, "Could the Gospel of Thomas Be Q?" Ehrman Blog daily post, 11 November 2023 (audio reading of an excerpt from his textbook The New Testament; quoted from the published transcript), https://the-bart-ehrman-blog.castos.com/episodes/could-the-gospel-of-thomas-be-q-could-it-be-older-than-the-new-testament-gospels.
16. Brian Handwerk, "Gospel of Judas Pages Endured Long, Strange Journey," National Geographic News, 6 April 2006, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/gospel-judas-pages-long-strange-journey; "Gospel of Judas," Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gospel-of-Judas.
17. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.31.1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103131.htm.
18. April D. DeConick, "Gospel Truth," New York Times, 1 December 2007 (op-ed; consulted through extended quotation at GetReligion, https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2007/12/betrayed-with-a-translation); Marvin Meyer, letter to the editor, New York Times, 7 December 2007, as reproduced by the History News Network, https://www.hnn.us/article/45359.
19. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103301.htm; on Polycarp, "whom I also saw in my early youth," 3.3.4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm.
20. Serapion, quoted by Eusebius, Church History 6.12.3-6, trans. A. C. McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250106.htm; date "towards the end of the second century" per Francis Schaefer, "The Church of Antioch," Catholic Encyclopedia 1 (1907), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01567a.htm.
21. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10.1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103110.htm.
22. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103311.htm.
23. Pagels, introduction, reporting the first editors' identification and a critic's objection.
24. Muratorian Fragment, lines 63-67 and 81-82, trans. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 305-307, online at https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/muratorian-metzger.html.
25. Muratorian Fragment, lines 73-80, trans. Metzger.
26. Editor's introduction (signed "M.D.M.") to Metzger's translation at Early Christian Writings (seventh-century manuscript, 1740, Pius); J. P. Kirsch, "Muratorian Canon," Catholic Encyclopedia 10 (1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10642a.htm (eighth-century manuscript); Albert C. Sundberg Jr., "Canon Muratori: A Fourth-Century List," Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 1-41; Geoffrey Mark Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Peter M. Head, review of Hahneman, Themelios 21.3, citing E. Ferguson, "Canon Muratori: Date and Provenance," Studia Patristica 17.2 (1982): 677-683.
27. Hurtado, "How Early are Lists of NT Writings?" 18 December 2014, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/how-early-are-lists-of-nt-writings/.
28. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8.
29. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9.
30. Eusebius, Church History 3.25.6-7, trans. McGiffert, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm; on the possible confusion with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Cameron as quoted by Kirby.
31. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 6.31 and 4.36, trans. E. H. Gifford, NPNF2 vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310106.htm; on Mani's birth (215-216), J. P. Arendzen, "Manichæism," Catholic Encyclopedia 9 (1910), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm.
32. Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.6, trans. R. Payne-Smith, NPNF2 vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm.
33. Hurtado, "Early Christian Gospels: A New Study," 10 April 2017, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/early-christian-gospels-a-new-study/; Hurtado, "An Early Emergent 'Canonical Consciousness'?" 10 June 2016, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/an-early-emergent-canonical-consciousness/, summarising Charles E. Hill, "A Four-Gospel Canon in the Second Century? Artifact and Arti-fiction," Early Christianity 4 (2013): 310-334.
34. Pagels, introduction.
35. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), jacket description as recorded in the San Diego State University humanities catalogue, https://humanitieshub.sdsu.edu/omeka/items/show/1129.
36. Daniel J. Harrington, "A Clash of Ideas and Beliefs," America, 22 December 2003, https://www.americamagazine.org/books/2003/12/22/clash-ideas-and-beliefs/.
37. Hurtado, "Early Christian Diversity," 8 October 2015, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/early-christian-diversity/; Hurtado, "Diversity and the Emergence of 'Orthodoxy' in Early Christianity," 4 August 2015, https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/diversity-and-the-emergence-of-orthodoxy-in-early-christianity/.
38. Hurtado, "Early Christian Diversity."
39. Council in Trullo, canon 2, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm; Synod of Laodicea, canon 60 (a list without Revelation, which NPNF marks "of most questionable genuineness"), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm; Apostolic Canon 85 (which includes two Epistles of Clement), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm; Council of Carthage (419), canon 24, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3816.htm; on Hippo 393 and Carthage 397, George Reid, "Canon of the New Testament," Catholic Encyclopedia 3 (1908), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm.
40. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, "Tradition," Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/doctrine-scripture/sources-of-christian-doctrine/tradition.
41. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, "Bible," https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/doctrine-scripture/sources-of-christian-doctrine/bible1; vol. 2, "Small Entrance" and "Gospel," https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-divine-liturgy/small-entrance and https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-divine-liturgy/gospel.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Ante-Nicene Fathers. Ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co. Vol. 1 (1885): Irenaeus, Against Heresies, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Vol. 5 (1886): Refutation of All Heresies (attributed to Hippolytus), trans. J. H. MacMahon. Online at New Advent.
• Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series. Ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co. Vol. 1 (1890): Eusebius, Church History, trans. A. C. McGiffert. Vol. 4 (1892): Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, trans. R. Payne-Smith. Vol. 7 (1894): Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, trans. E. H. Gifford. Vol. 14 (1900): Council in Trullo, Synod of Laodicea, Apostolic Canons, trans. Henry Percival. Online at New Advent.
• The Muratorian Fragment. Trans. Bruce M. Metzger, in The Canon of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
• The Gospel of Thomas. Trans. Thomas O. Lambdin, in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, rev. ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990.
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, Doctrine and Scripture, and vol. 2, Worship. Orthodox Church in America, oca.org.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
• Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Harrington, Daniel J. "A Clash of Ideas and Beliefs." America, 22 December 2003.
• Hurtado, Larry W. Blog essays, 2012-2017, cited in the notes. larryhurtado.wordpress.com.
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