Why Are There Four Gospels?

Bart Ehrman explains how early Christianity used dozens of gospels before four became canonical, and how binding Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together shaped how each is read.

Key takeaways

The word "canon" comes from a Greek term for a straight edge or measuring stick, and it names the collection of books Christians treat as sacred. Technically the canon has never been fully fixed, since some Christian groups still use different or fewer books, though the standard count is 27.
Christianity was unusual in the Roman world for stressing written texts as authoritative. Only Judaism had comparable scriptures, and even the Torah did not function for Jews the way the New Testament came to function for Christians. Within the New Testament itself, 2 Peter calls Paul's letters "scripture" and 1 Timothy quotes a saying of Jesus as scripture.
The full 27-book list appears first in a letter by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in the year 367, roughly 300 years after the books were written. Conservative claims that the canon was settled by around 200 are not accurate, though the four-gospel core was recognized earlier.
Around 185 to 190, two sources insist on exactly four gospels: the anonymous Muratorian Fragment and Irenaeus, who wrote five volumes against heresies. Irenaeus argued there must be four because the gospel spread to the four corners of the earth by the four winds of heaven, and he claimed heretical groups each clung to just one gospel.
The four won out because they are the oldest surviving gospels, had more time to circulate, and supported or could be combined to support proto-orthodox theology. Proto-orthodox refers to the group that later became dominant and then claimed it had always been the majority. Putting Mark's very human Jesus beside John's openly divine Jesus produced a figure who is both.
Excluded gospels usually claimed apostolic authors, unlike the anonymous canonical four. The Gospel of Peter was read as scripture in a church near Antioch until Bishop Serapion actually read it, found passages supporting a docetic view that Jesus only seemed human, and banned it. Ehrman notes that fixing four gospels between two covers restricted interpretation, and only after the Enlightenment did scholars insist on reading each gospel on its own terms.

Notable moments

Ehrman says his view of religion has softened with age: many who leave the faith turn bitter, but he has grown "increasingly appreciative" of aspects of Christianity and other religions, which can do great harm and great good.
The Gospel of Luke opens by admitting "many others" had already written accounts of Jesus, yet Luke used Mark, and "Mark is not many," proof that lost gospels existed from the start.
Ehrman and a colleague assembled a volume of 40 gospels surviving in Greek, Latin, and Coptic, most of them only fragments.
His conference talk covers the Apocalypse of Peter, the first Christian guided tour of heaven and hell led by Jesus, a book that "almost made it in" while the debated Apocalypse of John did.
The Gospel of Peter narrates the resurrection itself, with giant angels, Jesus emerging from the tomb, and a walking, talking cross that answers a voice from heaven, whereas the New Testament never describes Jesus leaving the tomb.
On "authority is based on authors," Ehrman traces the logic: God sent Jesus, Jesus called disciples, disciples wrote books, so the right books give a direct line to what God thinks.
If Marcion's churches had won, the New Testament would hold only an edited Luke and ten Paul letters, with no Old Testament at all.
Bonus segment: Ehrman floats an unpublished idea that Paul, an educated day laborer, may once have been a slave, since slaves were commonly educated as stewards, scribes, and tutors.
On "Get behind me, Satan" in Mark 8:33, Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah, then rejects the crucifixion, showing he holds "the satanic view" of what the Messiah should be.
On the Shroud of Turin, Ehrman calls it a medieval forgery backed by carbon-14 testing, cites Mark Goodacre's point that the arms are too long for a human, and adds that a first-century cloth still could not be tied to Jesus among thousands crucified.

Time saved: 39 minutes.

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