Historical reliability of the Gospels Historical reliability of the Gospels The historical reliability of the Gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. Some believe that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability; and others say that little in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable. Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts of Jesus, and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and
New Testament apocrypha the Gospel of Thomas is heavily gnostic and likely not written by orthodox Christians. In any case, both of these documents offer insight into what the theoretical Q document might have looked like. A number of gospels are concerned specifically with the "Passion" (from Greek "pathos" (suffering) i.e.: the arrest, execution and resurrection) of Jesus: Although three texts take Bartholomew's name, it may be that one of the "Questions of Bartholomew" or the "Resurrection of Jesus Christ" is in fact the unknown "Gospel of Bartholomew". A number of texts aim to provide a single harmonization of the canonical gospels, that