Have you heard of the Gospel of Thomas? What about the Gospel of Philip or Judas? Although most Christians are only familiar with the four Gospels contained in the Bible, ancient Christians wrote quite a few other Gospels as well. How do we know which Gospels are to be trusted? My guest today is Dr. Simon Gathercole, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Cambridge. His new book, The Gospel and the Gospels, puts forward a commonsense historical methodology to determine which Gospels are most reliable.

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Dr. Gathercole is professor of NT and early Christianity at the University of Cambridge. He's got degrees from Cambridge and Durham university, where he studied under James Dunn. Before we jump into the book, what was that like studying under Dunn?Well, today, we're talking about your book The Gospel in the Gospels. Writing this book must have been a monumental task. It's 576 pages, hundreds of footnotes, published by Eerdmans, how long were you working on this project? Share a little about the process.Many don't know there were other Gospels that didn't make it into the New Testament. Outside of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, what other Gospels are there? What are they like?How can someone access these other Gospels? Would you recommend the Lost Scriptures by Bart Ehrman or The Complete Gospels by Robert Miller? or your own volume?You've done a lot of work on non-canonical Gospels over the years. What drew you to them? What about them makes them worth studying?Some say the four canonical Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--are not special or authoritative, but merely the ones favored by one group of Christians who managed to seize power and suppress all others. How common is this belief in the a