Читать книгу Gospel harmony - Valeriy Sterkh - Страница 8

In addition to the generally accepted four Gospels, there is a large corpus of gospel texts that were not included in the New Testament canon. These are usually called Apocrypha (from the Greek ἀπόκρῠφος, «hidden», «mysterious», «secret»). This name was originally given only to the heretical books that were kept in secret. Later, all the works of Jewish and Christian origin that were not part of the Bible came to be called apocryphal. More than fifty apocryphal gospels have survived to this day in varying degrees of preservation.

In the process of forming the Gospel canon, the first books to be rejected were those with heretical content that contradicted Holy Tradition. The same thing happened to the books that contained lacunae or had not been preserved in a complete form. Later, the Pseudepigrapha, attributed to some famous authors, were rejected too because of insufficient evidence for their authenticity.