The apocryphal gospels.(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: I refer to Chris Thomson's review of the book And, Behold, the Burning Bush by Bill Priest (November 2003). The oft-made assertion that apocryphal gospels and writings are just as authoritative as those contained in the New Testament, a view apparently held by Mr Priest, and uncritically repeated by Mr Thomson, is nowadays all but discredited--adhered to only by cranks such as the media-savvy "Jesus Seminar" in California.

The four canonical gospels in the New Testament were all written, it is now settled, between thirty and sixty years after the events they describe. To put matters in perspective, they are the equivalent of histories of the Second World War being published between the 1970s and the present day. The gospel authors either knew Jesus personally or had access to his surviving disciples. There is no reason, for instance, to doubt the tradition that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome based on the reminiscences of the apostle Peter, roughly between 60 and 70 AD.

Generally speaking, you have to wait a further century for any of the apocryphal gospels to be produced, by which time any remaining oral tradition about Jesus is second or third hand.

As M.R. James said in The Apocryphal New Testament of the common view that these works are just as authentic as the canonical four gospels:

 
   The best answer to such loose 
   talk has always been, and is 
   now, to produce the writings 
   ...