Simon Gathercole: The Gospel and the Gospels

Simon Gathercole
The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022.
Available at Logos, Eerdmans, Koorong, and Amazon.

Many years ago, back in the 1960s, when everyone was starting to make much of the Gospel of Thomas as containing the real story of Jesus, the British scholar F.F. Bruce wrote a great little article called “When is a Gospel Not a Gospel?” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 45.2 (March 1963): 319-339. Bruce set out a criteria for what is a gospel and what is not a gospel. Now, studies of the “other” Gospels have grown a lot since 1963, but I feel like in this book Simon Gathercole is addressing the very same question and coming to a similar conclusion to what Bruce did back in 1963 but is arguing it with more sophistication and verve.

If you don’t already know, Simon Gathercole is an amazing scholar who has spent more than a decade in the study of early Christian Gospels (esp. the non-canonical Gospels). This is a book that is a wealth of learning about early Christian proclamation, the Gospels, the history of early Christianity, and more.

In this book, Gathercole engages in a comparison between the four canonical Gospels and the non-canonical (often called “apocryphal”) Gospels. The point of comparison is the kerygma, the gospel proclamation of Jesus that Paul summarizes in 1 Cor 15:3-5. This leads to the question, just how much “gospel” is in the “Gospels” canonical or otherwise. His point is that there are “sharp differences between the apocryphal Gospels, on the one hand, and the canonical, biblical Gospels, on the other” and the differences are “theological content” over who Jesus is, the significance of his death and resurrection, and how Jesus fulfills OT scriptures (1).

Gathercole’s thesis is that: the four New Testament Gospels share key elements of theological content that mark them out from most of the noncanonical Gospels. The reason why the four New Testament Gospels are theologically similar to one another is that they - unlike most others - follow a preexisting apostolic “creed” or preached gospel (500).

This is an awesome book that does a few things:

(1) It shows that there is “gospel” in the “Gospels” - not just in Romans and Galatians! This is the same topic that I wrote on in the Scot McKnight Festschrift, you can read a summary here.

(2) It offers very good expositions of the four Gospels that are worth the price of the book. Gathercole does a great work looking at things like atonement theology, christology, and how citations of the OT work in each of the Gospels.

(3) It doesn’t dismiss the non-canonical/apocryphal Gospels as “heretical” and “Gnostic,” but treats them individually as Christian literary accomplishments and finds varying degrees of contact with the Christian gospel as per 1 Cor 15:3-5.

(4) Gathercole successfully demonstrates that there really are substantive theological differences between the canonical and non-canonical Gospels. Moreover, he challenges and I think refutes the claims of people like Bart Ehrman that the second century was just a big melting pot of Gospel production and the canonical Gospels only become a distinct item retrospectively after the debates of the third and fourth centuries.

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That said, I did have a few questions and some criticisms about the book and Gathercole’s approach.

(1) Would the book change its method or conclusion if, for instance, Rom 1:2-4 rather than 1 Cor 15:3-5 was the comparator between the Gospels? Both texts are Pauline gospel summaries, so why privilege 1 Cor 15:3-5 over Rom 1:2-4? In addition, while the two texts are similar, they are also different, as Rom 1:2-4 focuses on Jesus’ resurrection and messianic identity, which, if married to 2 Tim 2:8, is perhaps more indicative of Pauline thought.

(2) Gathercole dismisses the genre question as to whether the four Gospels are a specific genre. He’s big on distinguishing form from content. Now I have previously argued that the canonical Gospels are what I call “Kerygmatic Biographies,” a story of Jesus which climaxes in the saving news of his death and resurrection, which is admittedly also similar to Tatian’s Diatessaron, the Gospel of Peter, and Marcion’s Evangelion. But I have argued in the past that if genre is determined by “family literary resemblance,” then the canonical Gospels are a very different genre to some of the other Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Truth. So I’d argue that form does determine something pertaining to contents.

That said, I’m learning from my Ridley colleague Andy Judd that genre is way, way more complicated than I thought. Genre is not just a literary form, but it can indicate a social function. So, maybe “Gospel” indicates any attempt to provide a definitive account of Jesus and marks a type of writing to which “prestige” is attached with respect to how successful that account of Jesus is regarded by readers (I suspect Gathercole would agree on that point). Food for thought, but we need to revisit Gospels, genre, and the sociology of reading. Seriously, watch out for Andy Judd’s forthcoming book, it is a game-changer!

(3) Gathercole struggles to find the gospel in the evangelical speeches in Acts. For me, this rehearses the trope in German scholarship that Luke was a naughty disciple of Paul (because he gives more on Jesus’ exaltation than the crucifixion!). On this score, I think Gathercole needs less Hengel and more Dodd in his account of the parity between the Gospels and Luke’s account of early Christian preaching.

That said, this is easily one of my favourite academic books of the year, it marks a sharp juxtaposition with the work of Francis Watson who wants to treat the non-canonical Gospels with a bit more sympathy as genuine expressions of Christian thought. But that’s for another book review (until then see my “Why the Gnostics Lost!").

Otherwise, you might like to read some of my own works on similar or adjacent topics:

Michael F. Bird, The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014).

Michael F. Bird, “Is There Any ‘Gospel’ in the Gospels?” in Living the King Jesus Gospel: Discipleship and Ministry Then and Now, eds. Nijay K. Gupta, Tara Beth Leach, Matthew W. Bates, and Drew J. Strait (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021), 3-14.

Michael F. Bird and Joel Willitts (eds.), Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts, and Convergences (LNTS 411; London: T&T Clark, 2011).

Michael F. Bird, “Not By Paul Alone: The Importance of the Gospels for Reformed Theology and Discipleship.” Presbyterion 29 (2013): 98-112.