What Is a Gospel?

By Francis Watson

When Christians speak of “the gospels” they’re usually referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Other ancient writings about the life of Jesus are generally considered noncanonical or heretical. But what if these other gospel writings—including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, and the Protevangelium of James—aren’t fundamentally different from the four canonical gospels? 

In this follow-up to Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective, noted biblical scholar Francis Watson makes the case that viewing early gospel literature as a unified genre—sharing significant similarities in sources, content, and goals—allows us to discern important interrelated aspects that are lost amid the usual categories. Watson’s critical approach enables modern readers of the Bible to break free of fraught scholarly assumptions in order to better understand early Christian identity formation and beliefs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781467464895

Francis Watson

 Francis Watson holds a research chair in biblical interpretation at Durham University, England. Well known for his work in both theological interpretation and Pauline studies, he is also the author of Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

What Is a Gospel?

Attempts to explain why the term gospel was applied to written texts assume a continuity with the Pauline understanding of gospel as oral proclamation and focus primarily or exclusively on the four canonical instances of the gospel genre. In contrast, this chapter highlights discontinuities between Pauline usage and the canonical evangelists, who—if they use the term gospel at all—never apply it to their own texts. There is no smooth linear development from an oral to a written gospel, but rather a contingent decision to use the word εὐαγγέλιον in a new way, the origin and rationale for which cannot now be traced. Beyond the canonical boundary there are a number of texts with close affinities to canonical gospels, whether or not they are designated as gospels by their authors and users, and a definition of the gospel genre must also accommodate gospel-like texts whose traditional titles relate them to other genres (thus there can be a gospel-like apocalypse). Characteristic of all gospels and gospel-like texts is (1) a focus on the human, earthly Jesus in his interactions with other humans; (2) an emphasis on his supreme and unsurpassable authority; and (3) direct or indirect attribution to an apostolic or quasi-apostolic source.

What is a gospel? This is a simple question to which we might expect a simple answer. The New Testament contains four texts universally known as gospels, and in spite of their well-known differences they have a great deal in common. All four canonical gospels present their readers with a narrative account of the ministry and teaching of Jesus, culminating in his death and resurrection. They may or may not contain stories about Jesus’s birth (as Matthew and Luke do) or his post-resurrection appearances (as Mark does not, at least in the earliest extant version), but otherwise it is essentially the same story that they tell in their different ways. In all four cases Jesus’s death is not just the end of his career as teacher and miracle worker but its goal. Long ago Martin Kähler could claim that the gospels are passion narratives with an extended introduction.¹ In support of this provocative and admittedly exaggerated claim, we might look to the Gospel of Mark, where Peter’s recognition of Jesus’s identity as the Christ is accompanied by the disclosure that as the Christ his divinely appointed destiny is to suffer, die, and be raised (GMk 8:27–31). Later gospels—Matthew, Luke, and John—retain this emphasis on Jesus’s cross and resurrection as the key both to his identity and to the gospel story as a whole.

Yet Kähler’s well-known statement answers a different question to the one we are asking here. To claim that the gospels are passion narratives with extended introductions is to describe what the four New Testament texts known as gospels have in common, but it is not yet clear why precisely this term gospel is applied to them, or why it should be applied to these four texts alone. The question, What is a gospel? is concerned with the literary genre known as gospel in contrast to, say, epistle or apocalypse. The New Testament contains a number of epistles and a single apocalypse, but texts within these literary genres are not found only in the New Testament. We would not define the genre known as apocalypse purely on the basis of the book of Revelation. While for most Christian communities a canonical boundary separates Revelation from the noncanonical 1 Enoch or 4 Ezra, all three works remain apocalypses—disclosures through superhuman agencies of heavenly secrets about the past, present, and/or future—in spite of a number of significant differences.² That same canonical boundary separates GJohn from GThomas, but both works have been handed down as gospels.³ Genre categories are unaffected by canonical status. If John is a narrative culminating in an account of the passion, that is not the case with GThomas, a collection of sayings or sayings-clusters introduced by the formula, Jesus said … or by a question from his disciples, and with minimal narrative content. A gospel may take narrative form, but narrative form is not inherent to the gospel genre as understood by those who attached the generic label gospel to texts of a certain type. GThomas was not excluded from the canon because it failed to feature a passion narrative with an extended introduction. Those who transmitted and used this text did not regard its lack of a narrative framework as disqualifying it from the designation gospel. Many early Christian readers valued their gospel literature precisely because it preserved the Lord’s sayings, and in that respect GThomas belongs to the mainstream.

If a gospel genre exists at all, it should be defined in such a way as to include GThomas and its extracanonical companions.⁴ That does not rule out additional generic affinities, however. Genres overlap, and no genre is exclusively itself.⁵ Without ceasing to be gospels, one gospel may share major formal and structural features with Greco-Roman βίοι whereas another may more closely resemble sayings collections or apocalypses. If secondary generic characteristics are one cause of diversity within a genre, diachronic development is another: genre is a dynamic process in which later works build on or react against their predecessors.⁶ In view of these complicating factors, a decision about which characteristics are salient to a genre definition and which are not is ultimately the responsibility of the interpreter.

After considering how the term gospel came to be attached to certain texts, I shall attempt a definition of the gospel genre that covers early gospels on both sides of the canonical boundary. The definition is intended to be pragmatically useful in identifying a group of early Christian texts that share—to a greater or lesser extent—a set of protagonists, themes, motifs, and lexical items that differentiate them from other early Christian texts, at least in combination. While it is true that all early Christian writings participate in a single intertextual network with no sharply defined boundaries, there are specific areas where the connections are more densely clustered. One of these areas of intertextual concentration is identified by the generic use of the term gospel, a usage established more by tradents and readers of this type of literature than by its authors. Yet key characteristics of literature designated as gospel are also evident in texts handed down under other designations (apocryphon, apocalypse, epistle, testament), and such texts may be described as gospel-like whatever the additional associations suggested by their titles. Titles of early Christian texts are valuable as initial indicators of generic affinities, but they are not necessarily decisive.⁷ The main reason why some gospel-like texts were not transmitted under the title gospel is that this primarily Pauline term was not universally regarded as the obvious and natural label to attach to the texts in question. As we shall see, there was no smooth and inevitable process whereby the proclaimed gospel was converted into a written version of the same thing.

The Gospel Proclaimed and Written

The term εὐαγγέλιον occurs sixty times in the Pauline corpus, with between six and nine occurrences in each of the authentic letters with the exception of Philemon, but with a notable falling off in the deutero-Pauline texts (twelve times in all) and in Acts (two times). In non-Pauline epistolary literature, εὐαγγέλιον occurs eight times in Ignatius but only once in the seven-letter Catholic epistles collection (1 Pet 4:17), once in Barnabas (5:9), and not at all in 1 Clement in spite of its great length. The evidence suggests that, with the exception of Paul, early Christian letter writers were familiar with the term εὐαγγέλιον but did not regard it as especially important as a designation of the core Christian message. Even in the case of Ignatius, six of his eight uses of εὐαγγέλιον occur in a single letter and may be a response to his opponent’s slogan, If I do not find it in the archives [ἐν τοῖς ἀρχείοις, i.e., in the scriptures], in the gospel I do not believe (Ign. Phld. 8.2).⁸ In the non-Pauline as well as Pauline contexts, εὐαγγέλιον always refers to the message as preached, not as written.⁹

Among the canonical evangelists, it is only Mark who shares Paul’s enthusiasm for the term εὐαγγέλιον, using it to introduce his gospel (The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ … , GMk 1:1), and to refer to the preaching of both Jesus (1:14, 15) and his followers (13:10; 14:9; [16:15]; cf. 8:35; 10:29). Matthew takes over just two of Mark’s uses of εὐαγγέλιον (GMt 24:14 // GMk 13:10; GMt 26:13 // GMk 14:9), although the Matthean Jesus is twice said to preach the gospel of the kingdom (GMt 4:23; 9:35). Neither Luke nor John uses the term at all. Designating these four texts as gospels, or collectively as gospel, has no basis within the texts themselves. No evangelist claims to be writing a gospel.¹⁰ Even in Mark, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ … should be connected to the scriptural citation that follows (… as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger before your face, GMk 1:2). The beginning in question is the beginning of the preaching of the gospel, through John the Baptizer, as foretold in prophetic scripture. John already proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ when he announces the coming of the One who will baptize in the Holy Spirit (GMk 1:7–8). The phrase the beginning of the gospel also occurs in Paul and in exactly the same sense. Writing to the Philippians, Paul recalls his departure from Macedonia in the beginning of the gospel [ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου] (Phil 4:15)—that is, when the gospel was first preached among them. Similarly, Mark’s beginning of the gospel refers to the beginning of gospel preaching by the Isaianic voice crying in the wilderness (GMk 1:3).¹¹ No canonical gospel originally presented itself as εὐαγγέλιον, and in the two that use the term it always refers to the preached message (as in Paul and Ignatius) and not to a written text.

The Pauline gospel can be summarized as the message that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve … (1 Cor 15:3–5). For Ignatius similarly, the gospel message announces the coming [παρουσία] of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, his passion, and the resurrection, in agreement with the beloved prophets who proclaimed him beforehand [κατήγγειλαν εἰς αὐτόν] (Ign. Phld. 9.2). Much of the same ground is covered by the four canonical gospels. They all speak of Jesus’s coming, of his death, burial, and resurrection on the third day, and—if we take the Longer Ending of Mark into account—his post-resurrection appearances. On the other hand, the gospel Easter stories are only loosely related to Paul’s list of appearances. The one point at which the canonical stories basically agree—the discovery of the empty tomb—is absent in Paul. That the death of Christ for our sins and his third day rising took place according to the scriptures is not a prominent theme in the canonical gospels.¹² Even Matthew takes far more trouble to find scriptural fulfillments at the beginning of Jesus’s life and ministry than at its end.¹³ And of course the canonical gospels contain a preponderance of material to which Paul hardly ever refers, the traditions of Jesus’s ministry of teaching and healing, Kähler’s extended introductions.¹⁴

The relationship between Paul’s preached gospel and the written narrative gospel becomes still more problematic in a second Pauline summary of the message he preached. Writing to his Thessalonian congregation, Paul reminds them how, in response to his preaching, you turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven, Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming (1 Thess 1:9–10). Idols and idolaters are never mentioned in the gospels, and a turning to the true God from idols is not envisaged in references to repentance (μετάνοια) that occur frequently in Matthew and especially Luke, occasionally in Mark, and not at all in John. Paul’s reference to Jesus as deliverer from the wrath that is coming [ἐκ τῆς ὀργῆς τῆς ἐρχομένης] recalls the synoptic John the Baptist, who questions his audience’s motives in fleeing from the coming wrath [ἀπὸ τῆς μελλούσης ὀργῆς] (GMt 3:7 = GLk 3:7), but the exclusively eschatological orientation of this version of the Pauline gospel seems alien to the canonical gospels, with their primary focus on what has already happened in the life of Jesus. In the gospels, eschatology is one theme among many. In Paul’s summary of his gospel to the Thessalonians, it is everything.

While it is easy to point to differences between Paul’s preached gospel and the canonical gospels, it is more important to note that the differences arise because these texts were not written as gospel or gospels. The term εὐαγγέλιον was attached to them by their early users, and this results in significant changes to its meaning. The term gospel is now extended to cover all the diverse materials concerned with Jesus’s human existence, whether traditional or newly composed: not just his birth, death, and resurrection but also his teaching about mission and church order, his interpretations of the Jewish Law, his parables, his relations with disciples and family, his exorcisms and healings. All of that is now included within the expanded scope of the term εὐαγγέλιον. When this term is transferred from its original Pauline sense and used to name an emergent literary genre, the discontinuities are at least as evident as the continuities and analogies. There is no direct route from the single preached εὐαγγέλιον to the many written εὐαγγέλια.

Negative evidence for this may be seen in excerpts from Papias of Hierapolis preserved by Eusebius, which suggest that gospel texts continued to circulate without identifying themselves or being identified as gospel. In these excerpts, traditions about authorship are passed on or invented, but the word gospel is not used. Introducing the Papias passage referring to Mark, Eusebius speaks of a tradition about Mark, who wrote the gospel (παράδοσιν ἣν περὶ Μάρκου τοῦ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον γεγραφότος); but Papias himself says that Mark wrote the things said or done by the Lord (τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ κυρίου ἢ λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα). Similarly, Papias does not say that Matthew wrote a gospel but that he "arranged the logia in the Hebrew language" (Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο).¹⁵ His work in five books is entitled Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεως, On the Interpretation of the Lord’s Sayings,¹⁶ and he mentions Mark and Matthew in the Preface to his first book because he views them as his own predecessors in the work of recording and interpreting the teaching of Jesus. Papias does not have a high opinion of these predecessors’ achievement. Mark’s work is said to be poorly organized, reflecting the informal nature of Peter’s preaching, on which it is dependent.¹⁷ Matthew’s collection of logia is available only in potentially unreliable translations; originally written in the Hebrew language, each person translated them as far as he was able [ὡς ἦν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος].¹⁸ Papias’s prefatory remarks may indicate that he actually wishes to surpass Mark and Matthew with his own literary work. It seems unlikely that he associates his predecessors with the term εὐαγγέλιον, since he does not include it in his own title. His concern is with the Lord’s sayings (τὰ κυριακὰ λόγια) and their transmission, and this enables him to align himself with Mark, Peter, and Matthew as part of his strategy of authenticating his work by citing prestigious apostolic or postapostolic names. Assuming that the texts Papias refers to are the ones known to us as the Gospel according to Mark and the Gospel according to Matthew, his copies may have lacked the title Εὐαγγέλιον.

Probable references to a written gospel occur first in the Didache, where the Matthean form of the Lord’s Prayer is introduced with the words Do not pray like the hypocrites but as the Lord commanded in his gospel [ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ αὐτοῦ] (Did. 8.3; cf. 11.3; 15.3, 4). Here and elsewhere, the Didache appears to show extensive knowledge of Matthew, identified anonymously as the gospel without reference to an evangelist’s name.¹⁹ With minor variations, the phrase ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ is established as part of a citation formula introducing a saying of Jesus or some other element of the gospel tradition. In the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I 4), the addressee will be persuaded of the truth of the resurrection "if you remember reading in the Gospel [

ϩ

ⲙ ⲡⲉⲩⲁⲅⲅⲉⲗⲓⲟⲛ = ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ] that Elijah appeared and Moses with him" (48,6–10; cf. GMk 9:4, καὶ ὤφθη αὐτοῖς Ἠλίας σὺν Μωυσεῖ). In Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, Trypho states his view that the requirements in the so-called ‘Gospel’ [ἐν τῷ λεγομένῳ εὐαγγελίῳ παραγγέλματα] lie beyond the capacity of human nature, adding that I have carefully read them [ἐμοὶ γὰρ ἐμέλησεν ἐντυχεῖν αὐτοῖς] (Dial. 10.2). In these passages the Gospel is being read, not just heard. A term that originally referred to a message (the Christian proclamation of salvation) has now been transferred to a text that records the life and teaching of Jesus. Justin also attests the use of gospel in the plural, explaining that his own preferred terminology (the memoirs [ἀπομνημονεύματα] of the apostles) refers to texts that are generally known as gospels (ἃ καλεῖται εὐαγγέλια).²⁰

According to Justin, these gospels or memoirs were composed by his apostles and those who followed them [τῶν ἐκείνοις παρακολουθησάντων συντετάχθαι].²¹ It is unlikely that Justin already has in mind the four-gospel collection, attributed by Irenaeus to two apostles (Matthew and John) and two followers of apostles (Mark, the disciple of Peter, and Luke, the companion of Paul).²² The gospel passage introduced by the reference to those who followed them is from Luke,²³ and Justin’s phrase τῶν ἐκείνοις παρακολουθησάντων seems to echo Luke’s prologue, with its distinction between the apostolic eyewitnesses and the evangelist as one who has followed all these matters for a long time [παρηκολουθηκότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν] (GLk 1:3).²⁴ Justin’s gospel citations are taken almost exclusively from Matthew and Luke, but he never differentiates the two texts or shows any interest in individual authorship, tracing the texts back to collective testimony of the apostles. It is possible that gospel books known to Justin already bore the titles εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ματθαίον or εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Λουκᾶν, but if so he does not mention this, preserving a traditional singular usage (ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ) or an equally anonymous plural (εὐαγγέλια). Either way, the gospel or gospels are supposed to preserve apostolic testimony as a whole, not the discrete and distinctive perspectives of individual authors.

The use of the formula ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ to introduce references to or citations from a gospel suggests that Εὐαγγέλιον may have appeared as a title on early gospel manuscripts, before the authorship formula κατά + evangelist’s name was added. According to Tertullian, Marcion placed the anonymous title Εὐαγγέλιον at the head of his reduced edition of Luke: "Marcion assigns no author to the Gospel, that is, his version of it [euaggelio scilicet suo nullum adscribit auctorem]—as though he were prohibited from attaching a title while free to destroy the text itself!"²⁵ But Marcion may here reflect a more widespread practice: gospel books that would later circulate under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John may earlier have been provided with the same anonymous heading, Εὐαγγέλιον. This would account for the usage of both gospel in the singular and gospels in the plural. Texts headed Εὐαγγέλιον are generically gospel (singular), but they are also gospels (plural) by virtue of their differences from one another.²⁶

The formulation Εὐαγγέλιον κατά … , followed by an evangelist’s name, occurs in the superscriptions or subscriptions of early gospel papyri (𝔓 ⁶⁶, GJn; 𝔓⁷⁵, GLk + GJn, though not 𝔓¹, GMt) and with minor variations in Irenaeus²⁷ and Clement.²⁸ In the case of Clement, the κατά + author formulation always occurs as an expansion of the more frequent ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ, which becomes ἐν τῷ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγελίῳ or ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τῷ κατὰ Λουκᾶν. Similar formulations can be used to introduce citations from noncanonical gospels: ἐν τῷ καθ’ Ἑβραίους εὐαγγελίῳ and ἐν τῷ κατ’ Αἰγυπτίους εὐαγγελίῳ, though here the κατά formulation seems to refer not to authorship but to the reading community.²⁹

Other noncanonical gospels are associated with followers of Jesus who feature prominently within the text, as the anonymous beloved disciple does in GJohn both as a character and as author (GJn 21:24). Peter and Thomas are both explicitly identified as the authors of the gospels attributed to them. In GPeter, Peter speaks in the first-person singular (7:26–27; 14:60). Unlike the canonical gospels, this text must have circulated under its supposed author’s name from the first. The same is true of GMary (entitled ⲡⲉⲩⲁⲅⲅⲉⲗⲓⲟⲛ ⲕⲁⲧⲁ ⲙⲁⲣⲓϩⲁⲙⲙ) and GJudas (ⲡⲉⲩⲁⲅⲅⲉⲗⲓⲟⲛ

ⲛ

ⲓⲟⲩⲇⲁⲥ) where Mary and Judas, respectively, are the central characters. In the prologue of GThomas, Jesus’s secret words are said to have been written by Didymus Judas Thomas (Coptic) or [Judas who is] also Thomas (Greek, reconstructed). Thomas also features in a beloved disciple role in Saying 13, where his greater spiritual insight is rewarded by secret instruction from Jesus that he refuses to communicate to his fellow apostles. As in the case of GMary, the κατά + author formulation (ⲡⲉⲩⲁⲅⲅⲉⲗⲓⲟⲛ ⲡⲕⲁⲧⲁ ⲑⲱⲙⲁⲥ) corresponds to the work’s contents.

There was nothing inevitable about the transfer of the term εὐαγγέλιον from the preached message to the written text. Other terminology might have been selected, as Justin’s preference for ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων indicates. Once the transfer had been made, however, it was possible for early Christian theologians to try to make retrospective sense of it. Thus Origen proposes a general definition of εὐαγγέλιον that purports to cover both the earlier Pauline and the later textual usage. The term εὐαγγέλιον refers to speech conveying an announcement of events that, rightly and because of the benefits they bring, give joy to the hearer on receiving the announcement.³⁰ For Origen as for Paul, εὐαγγέλιον refers to an act of communication involving a speaker, a message, and an addressee, and particular emphasis is placed on the fit between the contents of the message and the well-being of the addressee. As applied by Origen to gospel texts, this definition represents a hermeneutical program rather than a straightforward summary of their contents. The interpreter may choose to highlight the texts’ positive impact on their hearer or reader, but that impact is not necessarily the central theme of texts concerned with figures and events of the past rather than directly addressed to their readers. While it is true that a concern for salvation through the person of Jesus is a common characteristic of all gospel literature,³¹ this concern is not in itself distinctive to the gospel genre—as Origen rightly recognized.³²

This survey of early usage of the term εὐαγγέλιον has brought to light three points that will prove relevant to the attempt at an adequate definition that follows. (1) The transfer from the preached message to the written text cannot be explained as a logical development of the original Pauline sense. (2) In its secondary, transferred sense, εὐαγγέλιον functions as an indicator of genre, referring to any text that records teaching attributed to Jesus and/or events in his life. (3) Use of the generic term is accompanied by an increasing tendency to individualize, whether by attaching apostolic or subapostolic names to previously anonymous works or by composing new works in which a named individual takes on the role of a uniquely privileged disciple.

Defining the Gospel Genre

Texts labeled as gospels are conventionally divided between two categories, canonical and apocryphal. From around the time of Irenaeus, most Christian communities have accorded a different and higher status to the gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John than to the ones attributed to Peter, Thomas, Mary, Judas, or anyone else. The question that arises is whether the gospels of Matthew and Peter or Mark and Thomas belong to a single genre, or whether the difference of status corresponds to a difference of genre.

An influential definition of gospel focused on the canonical four claims that the gospels are biographies, standing within the Greco-Roman tradition of literary works recounting the life and exploits of some historically significant figure.³³ Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would then stand alongside Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Philostratus as authors of works in the βίος or vita genre. These affinities are significant and undeniable. Since there is no clear boundary between biography and history, gospel literature in biographical form is also historiographical literature—of a kind.³⁴ Yet the unqualified claim that the gospels are biographies tends to overlook the dynamic nature of genre as a literary phenomenon. A text that deploys conventions derived from one or more preexisting genres may transform those conventions and thereby establish the possibility of an emergent genre (or subgenre) if later writers follow its lead and if the distinctiveness of the new text group is registered by reading communities. Early users of Christian gospels understood them not as βίοι, further instances of an existing genre, but as εὐαγγέλια, instances of a new genre, its newness corresponding to the newness of the good news it announces. Some εὐαγγέλια take the form of continuous biographical narratives, including GPeter and the Marcionite Euangelion as well as the canonical four, but GThomas and GTruth show that it is not narrative form that makes a text a gospel. The claim that the gospels are biographies is only possible if noncanonical gospels are overlooked and if the dynamic nature of genre reconfiguration is ignored.

So-called apocryphal gospels have been seen as supplements to the canonical four, filling in gaps in the canonical depictions.³⁵ At first sight, this seems a plausible suggestion. After recounting Jesus’s birth, Luke tells us almost nothing about his childhood until he reaches the age of twelve, when he is found debating the interpretation of the law in the temple (GLk 2:41–52). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas fills in this gap with a series of stories featuring the miraculous and sometimes destructive activities of the growing child. Luke provides little background information on the figure of Mary, despite her starring role in his first chapter; the Protevangelium of James fills the gap by recounting her unique birth, childhood, and adolescence. No canonical gospel directly narrates Jesus’s rising from the tomb: however early Mary Magdalene and her companions set out on Easter morning, they always arrive after the event. That narrative gap is filled by GPeter, where the guards at the tomb see the resurrected and already exalted Jesus being escorted from the tomb by two angels, with a speaking cross following close behind (GPet 10:39, 42). Yet supplementary narration is not peculiar to noncanonical gospels. Matthew already supplements the work of his predecessor Mark by adding a genealogy, a birth story, sayings material, and post-resurrection appearances. Luke supplements Matthew by narrating the birth of John the Baptist in parallel with the birth of Jesus, and in bridging the gap between Jesus’s infancy and his adult ministry with the story of the twelve-year-old in the temple. John supplements all three synoptists by highlighting Jesus’s activity in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and not just in Galilee. In passing from GMark to PrJames, we do not move from one literary genre to another; we encounter only a different narrative content within a single developing genre. One text focuses on events that culminate in Jesus’s crucifixion, the other on events that culminate in his birth. Neither text aspires to completeness.

It may be true that the four canonical gospels have features in common that are lacking in most if not all noncanonical gospels. Yet it is a mistake to suppose that the distinction between the two categories is based on differences internal to the texts. Canonical status is the creation of the user communities in which gospel literature was produced and circulated. Correspondingly, its opposite, noncanonical status, is the outcome of a collective decision to limit canonical status to four specific gospel texts and to deny it in principle to all others.³⁶ The term apocryphal suggests that such texts are somehow different in kind from their canonical counterparts: fictional, false, superfluous, misleading, dangerous, promoting the very opposite of the divinely inspired truths embodied in the canonical four. While the majority Christian community has a right to decide which texts it will read and trust and which it will not, its decision could only be justified on theological grounds and is not objectively verifiable. An attempt to define the characteristics of the gospel genre must take all available early gospel literature into account.

Some texts that include the word Εὐαγγέλιον in their titles are very similar to others that do not. The text that has come to be known as the Protevangelium of James is presented under the double title Γένεσις Μαρίας, Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰακώβ in the oldest extant manuscript (Bodmer 5). A number of texts feature a post-resurrection dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, either as individuals or as a group. Only one of these presents itself as a gospel (GMary 19,3–5),³⁷ a text that also retains the older usage of the term gospel as preached message: the disciples are commissioned by Jesus to go and preach the gospel of the kingdom (GMary 8,21–22; cf. 18,18–19; GMk 16:15). Post-resurrection dialogues can take the form of letters, whether from an individual apostle (the so-called Apocryphon of James, NHC I 2) or from the apostles as a group (the Epistula Apostolorum).³⁸ Similar texts identify themselves as an apocalypse (the First and Second Apocalypse of James, NHC V 3, 4), or are attested under that title in patristic sources (the Apocalypse of Peter).³⁹ If we choose not to describe these texts as gospels, they are at least gospel-like both in their narrative content and in their pseudonymous attribution to apostles or other prestigious figures. In a number of cases patristic attestation, Greek fragments, or internal evidence suggest relatively early dates.⁴⁰

We come now to the proposed definition, answering the question, What is a gospel? (1) Gospels or gospel-like texts are characterized by a common focus on the human Jesus in his interactions with other humans (family, followers, beneficiaries, opponents, crowds). (2) In these texts Jesus is always understood as the supremely authoritative figure who finally and definitively mediates the human relationship to the divine, as they present selected episodes or aspects of his human existence. (3) These texts are ascribed to apostles (individually or collectively) or to those closely associated with them, and they are thus authenticated by the claim that their authors or their authors’ informants participated in the events of which they speak, bearing witness to what they have seen and heard.

(1) Gospels or gospel-like texts are characterized, first, by a common focus on the human Jesus in his interactions with other humans. His humanity is normally represented by way of those interactions, that is, in social rather than physical terms, although exceptions occur in GJohn 1:14, where the human existence of the Logos is constituted by its participation in flesh, and in post-resurrection contexts where Jesus invites confirmation of his physicality by touch (GLk 24:40; GJn 20:27; EpAp 11:7). In the period between his resurrection and his ascension, Jesus’s interactions are always with his disciples. Thus in the Apocalypse of Peter the post-resurrection setting on the Mount of Olives and the holy mountain from which Jesus ascends (ApocPeteth 1:1; 15:1) brings this text into closer proximity to the gospel genre than to the canonical Apocalypse of John, where Jesus appears to John from his state of heavenly exaltation (Rev 1:10–20).⁴¹ The post-resurrection and pre-ascension Jesus remains a human and earthly figure, and his earthly humanity is also present in texts that might seem to show docetic tendencies (Marcionite Gospel, GJudas). Indeed the polemical concept of docetism is of little use for our purposes. Most if not all early gospels are docetic in the sense that they present Jesus as one who appears in human form although in reality he is the divine Son of God—a reality that may shine through its human disguise at moments such as the transfiguration.⁴² His human form conceals his true being, but it also enables him to interact with his fellow humans. Users of the Marcionite Gospel may have believed that Jesus appeared only in the likeness or form of humanity (cf. Phil 2:7), but he lives a no less human and earthly life in this text than in the closely related GLuke.⁴³

In the canonical gospels, the range of Jesus’s interactions with his fellow humans is broader than in some of their noncanonical counterparts, which are often briefer and focused on specific aspects of his career. Jesus interacts at different points with:

his family: his mother Mary, his brothers, his more distant relative John the Baptist;

his male and female disciples, collectively or individually;

the beneficiaries of his activity as exorcist, healer, and miracle worker: the possessed, the sick, the paralyzed, the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the dead;

his opponents: Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, the Johannine Jews, the inhabitants of Nazareth and other Galilean towns, Caiaphas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate;

the crowds that he teaches, heals, or feeds.

A broad range of interactions may have been attested in GEgerton, the extant fragments of which have Jesus engaging with hostile lawyers and rulers of the people but also with a leper, whom he heals (GEger fr. 1v 2, 4; 1r 11). In GThomas as in the post-resurrection dialogues, Jesus interacts exclusively with his disciples, including women (Mary, GTh 21, 114; Salome, GTh 61). An interest in Jesus’s female disciples is also evident in GPhilip (59,6–11; 63,30–64,9). This is an anomalous text that contains a few passages of Jesus tradition or critical commentary on it among its miscellaneous theological reflections. The title Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Φίλιππον may have been attached to its Greek original on the basis of a single tradition ascribed to Philip, which tells how Joseph the carpenter planted the tree from whose wood his own son was to hang (GPhil 73,8–19).⁴⁴

If it is characteristic of gospels and gospel-like texts to present Jesus as interacting humanly with others, the same cannot be said of the Jesus of the Pauline gospel. At the beginning of his earthly existence Jesus is born of woman (Gal 4:4), at its end he is killed by the Jews (1 Thess 2:14–15) and appears to his own in risen and exalted form (1 Cor 1:5–8); but between that beginning and end he seems to pass through the world in complete solitude (cf. Phil 2:5–11).

(2) The second element in our definition is that gospels or gospel-like texts always understand Jesus as the supremely authoritative figure who finally and definitively mediates the human relationship to the divine, as they present selected episodes or aspects of his human existence. It is at this point that a more positive relationship to the Pauline gospel comes to light.

The gospel Paul preaches is above all a message of salvation, concerned with Jesus’s death, resurrection, and future coming in their significance for us (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, pro nobis). This gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes (Rom 1:16). Jesus is the one who delivers us [τὸν ῥυομένον ἡμᾶς] from the fearful prospect of divine judgment that awaits the rest of humanity (1 Thess 1:10). Several written gospels state explicitly at their beginning or conclusion that their concern is to enable their readers to gain salvation. In an early conclusion to GJohn (and perhaps of an earlier Signs Source) it is stated that these [signs] have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name (GJn 20:31). The Johannine signs are intended not just to impress the reader but to point the way to salvation. Similarly, Jesus’s words are the words of eternal life (GJn 6:68), and whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings shall not taste death (GTh 1 [Coptic] = P.Oxy. 654.3–5 [Greek]). The salvation promised by these texts is eternal life and immunity from death, and it is also knowledge of the Father. The Gospel of Truth (NHC I 3) opens with the announcement that the gospel of truth is joy for those who have received grace from the Father of truth, that they may know him in the power of the Word that has come forth from the Pleroma (GTr 16,31–35). This text is sharply criticized by Irenaeus on the grounds that it is quite different from the four canonical gospels (in nihilo conveniens apostolorum evangeliis).⁴⁵ The main difference is that GTruth remains unusually close to the understanding of gospel as a message of salvation, deriving from Paul and echoed in Ignatius.

All gospels present Jesus as opening the way to final eschatological salvation. His name, Jesus, means that he will save his people from their sins (GMt 1:21), and he can therefore be referred to as the Savior (P.Oxy. 840 12, [21], 30). In no gospel is Jesus anything other than unique and definitive in his significance. That uniqueness is highlighted in the synoptic episode of Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi, where the view that Jesus is one of the prophets is rejected: Jesus cannot be seen as one among others, for he alone is the Christ, Son of the living God (GMt 16:14–16 + parr.). As such, he alone mediates the knowledge of the Father: No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son wills to reveal him (GMt 11:27 // GLk 10:22). This saying is also attested in the Marcionite Euangelion, in the form: No one knows who the Father is except the Son and who the Son is except the Father, and the one to whom the Son reveals him (E 10:22).⁴⁶ For users of this text, the Father was absolutely unknown until revealed by Jesus; Moses and the prophets worshipped another deity. In GJohn too, no one comes to the Father except through Jesus, while whoever has seen him has seen the Father (GJn 14:6, 9). When Isaiah received his vision of the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, it was the exalted Jesus that he saw (GJn 12:41; Is 6:1).

Gospel eschatologies differ, but Jesus is always the key figure. As the Danielic Son of Man he will come on clouds with power and glory, sending his angels to gather his elect (GMt 24:30–31). Preceded by the sign of the cross, he will appear like the rising sun but shining seven times brighter and come down to the earth to judge the living and the dead (EpAp 16:3–5). Alternatively, Jesus is the one who reveals and enables the Soul’s perilous postmortem ascent to the world of the Father through the realms of hostile spiritual powers (GTh 50; GMary 15,1–17,9). Even now, partial anticipations of that journey may be possible, as James and Peter find when they ascend in the spirit with the departing Jesus, before being recalled to their earthly existence (ApocrJas 14,5–34). While the elect are saved, however, the universe perishes. Heaven and earth will pass away … (GMt 24:35), All things are being dissolved whether on earth or in heaven (GMary 15,20–16,1).⁴⁷ Jesus has already cast fire upon the world, and he is guarding it until it blazes (GTh 10). His parousia will be heralded by cosmic collapse: The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken (GMt 24:29). Jesus is not just the Savior of the elect. He is alpha and omega, the beginning and end of the entire created order.

Jesus’s cosmic significance was manifested even at his birth. In PrJames 13:2, Joseph tells how he hurried off to find a midwife after leaving Mary in labor in a cave near Bethlehem. Suddenly all motion ceases:

And I Joseph was walking and not walking. And I looked up [ἀνέβλεψα] into the vault of heaven, and I saw it standing still [ἑστῶτα], and into the air, and I saw it stupefied [ἕκθαμβον] and the birds of heaven transfixed [ἠρεμοῦντα]. I looked at the earth, and I saw a bowl lying there and workmen reclining. And their hands were in the bowl, and those who chewed did not chew, and those who took did not take, and those who brought to their mouths did not bring, but all their faces were looking upward [πάντων ἦν τὰ πρόσωπα ἄνω βλέποντα].

Heaven and earth stand still to mark the moment when the Word becomes flesh. All faces are turned upward to acknowledge the descent of the master of the universe.⁴⁸

Whether they are speaking of Jesus’s birth, his ministry of teaching and healing, his death and resurrection, or his parousia, early gospel writers underline Jesus’s unique and definitive significance at every point. Whatever their differences of conceptuality or vocabulary, they all endorse the absolutism of the primitive Christian confession that Jesus is Lord—a confession that will ultimately be echoed willingly or unwillingly by every tongue (Phil 2:11). Written gospels presuppose the claim of the preached gospel, that the eternal destiny of every human is determined by their response to Jesus: The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who disbelieves will be condemned (GMk 16:16).

(3) According to the third and final part of our definition, gospels or gospel-like texts are ascribed to apostles (individually or collectively) or to those closely associated with them. They are thus authenticated by the claim that their authors or their authors’ informants participated in the events of which they speak, bearing witness to what they have seen and heard.

As we