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You're listening to episode five of Jimmy Aiken's mysterious world where we look at mysteries

both supernatural and natural, anything that's strange odd and makes you wonder. The claims and

counterclaims from the perspectives of both faith and reason. In this episode, we're talking about

the lost gospels. I'm Don Bettenelli and joining me today is of course Jimmy Aiken. Hi Jimmy.

Howdy Don. So Jimmy, what are the lost gospels? Of course, we know the four gospels,

so most of us should know Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But how can there be lost gospels or more

gospels? Well, basically in the early church, there was a lot of literary activity. Christians

have been writing since the very beginning, since the very first generation of Christians,

and that didn't stop with the composition of the books of the New Testament. People kept writing

various documents. We know many of them as the writings of the church fathers, and they don't

make any pretense of modeling themselves, most of them after the books of the New Testament. But

some of them do. There are some works that in various ways try to fill out what we find in the

canonical gospels or even replace the canonical gospels. And most of these were lost during the

course of history. Some of them are still lost, but some have been rediscovered, particularly in

the 20th century or the 19th and the 20th centuries. And so we hear various people today saying that,

well, the four canonical gospels are just a few of the gospels that we're circulating in the

early church. And some go farther and say, well, really the four gospels don't have any special

claim. People on telling us the truth about Jesus, and we ought to take these other gospels

seriously. And various people naturally have an interest in the exotic and the strange and the

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