Conspiracies and Secret Gospels
What's in the series?
(1) Did Paul re-invent Jesus?
Have we been lied to about how Christianity began? In this video, Dr. David Wenham of Trinity College, Bristol, responds to the claim that the origins of the Christian faith are a lie: that the apostle Paul re-invented Jesus, turning him from a simple Jewish teacher into the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose again.
(2) What did Paul know about Jesus?
According to one popular conspiracy theory, Jesus was just a teacher or prophet, until the apostle Paul re-invented him as the Son of God who rose from the dead. To support this idea, people sometimes claim that Paul didn’t know much about the historical Jesus. In this video, Professor Craig Blomberg and Dr David Wenham respond to this question.
(3) Alternative Christianities?
Dr David Wenham responds to the claim that there were many different kinds of Christianity. The kind we have today triumphed by force.
(4) The Gnostics
As soon as you start exploring conspiracy theories about the origins of Christianity, you come across the Gnostics, and their secret Gospels. In this video, professor Craig Evans explains who the Gnostics were and what they believed.
(5) Alternative Gospels?
In this video, professors Craig Evans and Charles Hill respond to the claim that there were up to eighty different Gospels, all giving us different pictures of Jesus, and the four Gospels in the Bible were chosen for political reasons.
(6) Did Constantine choose the Gospels?
Did the Roman Emperor Constantine choose the Gospels? Dr Peter Williams, of Tyndale House, Cambridge, response to the conspiracy theory that the Gospels that made it into the Bible were chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century after Christ.
(7) The Secret Gospel of Mark
The 'Secret Gospel of Mark' describes a strange night-time encounter between Jesus and a youth. Professor Craig Evans discusses whether it is an ancient text or a modern forgery.
(8) The Gospel of Judas
It has been claimed that the Gospel of Judas changes everything we know about Jesus. According to this gospel, the most famous traitor in the world was not really a traitor at all: he was Jesus’s closest friend, and Jesus told Judas to hand him over to the authorities. Professor Craig Evans was on the committee that published the Gospel of Judas. He discusses it in this video.
(9) The Gospel of Thomas
The best known Gospel that did not make it into the Bible is the Gospel of Thomas. Some people claim that this represents an earlier form of Christianity, but the facts point to the Gospel of Thomas being written in the second century, by someone who already knew the Gospels in the Bible. This video features Professor Craig Evans, Professor Larry Hurtado, and Dr. Peter Williams, talking about the Gospel of Thomas.
(10) Who chose the Gospels?
People sometimes claim that the Gospels in the Bible were chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century. But Professor Charles Hill points out that church leaders in widely separated places were quoting from the four Gospels in the Bible – and only these four – by the end of the first century. The church accepted these Gospels because they were earlier than any others, and gave a more authentic testimony about the historical Jesus.
(11) How many copies of the Secret Gospels?
How many hand-written copies are there of the Secret Gospels? In this video professor Dan Wallace talks about how the number of copies of the secret Gospels stacks up against the number of copies of the Gospels in the Bible, and Dr Peter Williams talks about how the use of names in the secret Gospels compares with the use of authentic names in the Gospels in the Bible.
(12) Why take the Gospels seriously?
In this series, we have asked whether we have been lied to about how Christianity began? We have explored conspiracy theories about Jesus, and the secret Gospels that did not make it into the Bible. But why should we take seriously the Gospels that are in the Bible? In this video professor Craig Evans of Acadia University explains that they are there because they are early and are based on reliable testimony about Jesus.
