Did We Get Jesus Right? Jesus in the Canonical and Apocryphal Gospels

A brief sketch of the message of Jesus in the four canonical Gospels will show that the key focus is on Jesus dying for sins as foretold in Old Testament Scripture. This lecture will compare that message with four well-known rival Gospels: the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas and Philip, which present an alternative route to salvation. These rival Gospels and other writings contending as “true records” of Jesus cannot compete with the accounts in the New Testament. The four New Testament Gospels are the only ones sufficiently close enough in time to the events to be reliable. Comparing the particular cultural features in the New Testament Gospels with the Gospels outside the Bible shows that the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas and Philip come from a cultural environment quite alien from that of the Jesus of history.

Simon Gathercole is a prominent British New Testament scholar, elder at Eden Baptist in Cambridge, and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies and Director of Studies at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He was formerly Senior Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland for seven years. Gathercole received an MA at Cambridge, and later completed a MTh and PhD under James D.G. Dunn at the University of Durham. He is regarded by many as one of the rising stars in New Testament scholarship globally.

September 8, 2012
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Lanier Theological Library
14130 Hargrave
Houston TX 77070 (Please use MapQuest for directions)