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| Edgar J. Goodspeed History of early christian literature IntraText CT - Text |
“The church,” said Origen, “has four gospels, the sects very many, one of which is entitled 'According to the Egyptians,' another 'According to the Twelve Apostles.' Basilides dared to write a gospel and give it his name.... I know a gospel that is called 'According to Thomas,' and one 'According to Matthias,' and we have read many others.”
The gospel is Christianity's first contribution to literary types. The primitive oral gospel may have originated the type, but its first written embodiment was the Gospel of Mark, from which every other gospel inside or outside the New Testament was directly or indirectly descended. To lose sight of this is to miss the originality of the gospel as a literary type, which is the most massive literary fact about the whole gospel literature.