Historical background of the New Testament that the Temple would not be rebuilt in their lifetimes, Christianity reflected the acknowledgment of early Christians that the Second Coming of Christ and the establishment of God's kingdom on earth was not to happen in their lifetimes. The critical analysis of the Gospels involves, at least in part, a consideration of how these concerns affected the Gospels' accounts of Jesus. According to historian Paula Fredriksen (1988: 5), critical scholars rely on four basic criteria for extrapolating an "authentic" historical account of Jesus out of the New Testament sources: As Fredriksen observes, these criteria do not guarantee an accurate historical
Jewish–Christian gospels gospels as follows: The Jewish–Christian gospels are known through quotations in the works of the early Church Fathers Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome and probably Didymus the Blind. These all assumed that only one Jewish Christian gospel existed, although in various versions and languages, which they attributed to well-known sects such as the Ebionites and Nazarenes. The majority of critical scholars have rejected this view and identify at least two and possibly three separate Jewish–Christian gospels. The standard collection of the Jewish–Christian gospels is found in Schneemelcher's "New Testament Apocrypha"; Schneemelcher, following Hans Waitz, groups the extant sayings