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Hi, Colleen —
In the first two centuries, a lot
of people tried to cash in on the
popularity of Jesus by writing false
gospels in the name of Apostles.
Many of these were dated long after
the original gospels, which, in and
of itself, says they were not authentic.
The Church, who knew the word of
truth and knew from whom She received
Her Tradition, could easily tell
apart the false gospels from the
true ones. In the case of the later
false gospels, she knew which gospels
were vouched for throughout the history
of the Church; in the case of the
earlier ones, she knew which agreed
with Apostolic Tradition and which
were off or suspicious-sounding (like
the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus kills
a playmate [if I recall out of rage]
and then raises him to life).
Imagine
if today somebody tried to circulate
a document falsely attributed to
JFK to lend credence to their politics.
- The fact that the politics didn't
match anyone's recollection of his
politics might be a tip-off, or
- the fact that one wrote about a document
that claims to be so important, or
- the fact that no one was familiar
with him having written it, or
- the fact that there is simply no evidence
that he wrote it, might all be reasons
for labeling the document false.
Ultimately, only the first century
Christians know the reasons why they
rejected the other gospels, so we
just have to trust them on that.
Hope this helps,
Eric
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