Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contour of Canon

The four canonical gospels are long set in established sequence as Matthew Mark Luke and John. This book is about four other gospels the Gospel of Thomas the Secret Gospel of Mark; the Gospel of Peter and Egerton Papyrus 2. These four other gospels have generally been regarded as mere digests or collages of the canonical gospels whereas in fact as Professor Crossan persuasively shows the four others hold within their mutilated fragments independent or earlier traditions than those tradition has canonized. Four Other Gospels proposes a spectrum of relations between the canonical gospels and these others. This spectrum ranges from the Gospel of Thomas which is a parallel and independent tradition to Egerton Papyrus 2 on which both John and Mark are dependent to the Secret Gospel of Mark on which Mark directly and John indirectly are dependent and on to the Gospel of Peter which contains an original Passion-Resurrection source used by all four of the canonical gospels but which submitted to their eventual ascendancy by attempting a harmonization between it and them and placed the new complex under the authority and authorship of Simon Peter. Four Other Gospels does not propose a new or alternative canon. The canon is a fact both of history and of theology. But the thesis of this book is that anyone who takes the four other gospels seriously and thoughtfully will never again be able to read the four canonical gospels in quite the same way. A new light has been shed. ...Simply breathtaking... can hardly fail to convince the open-minded. Gospel studies - and hence studies about Jesus and the origins of Christianity - should never be the same again! --James M. Robinson I found Four Other Gospels fascinating and incisive. . . . Here is a book that splendidly exemplifies the new possibilities for research that integrates canonical and extracanonical sources. --Elaine Pagels ...An important contribution to the ongoing discussion of the relation of non-canonical gospels to the four gospels; written with clarity creativity and an attractive style this is a book of intriguing speculation leading to new insights. --George MacRae SJ John Dominic Crossan is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University Chicago. He has written twenty books on the historical Jesus in the last thirty years four of which have become national religious bestsellers: The Historical Jesus (1991) Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994) Who Killed Jesus? (1995) and The Birth of Christianity (1998). He is a former co-chair of the Jesus Seminar and a former chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature an international scholarly association for biblical study based in the United States.