Let’s move to the New Testament and look at concerns people have had over the years. Here’s a quick overview of the gospels, which have come under attack recently. For example,  Dan Brown, in his highly successful book The Da Vinci Code, says there were many other gospels, but the winners in a theological struggle outlawed some of them. By the way, Brown got sooooo much wrong in his book. You can see some of these if you go to my audio and video files on this site.

The only reason I mention this is that Dan Brown’s theories were not peculiar to him alone; other people share his ideas, which have gained traction in our cynical, suspicious era. He and others point especially to Gnostic gospels found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Perhaps the most famous of these other gospels is the Gospel of Thomas, which anyone can access via the internet.

However, all these other challengers to the traditional four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) have been dated much later. The four traditional gospels are actually the best records that we have of the life of Jesus and the only ones mentioned by early Church Fathers from the second century on.  This is not just the opinion of religious leaders but even by skeptics like Bart Ehrman, noted scholar and best-selling author of New Testament studies.