This essay offers a brief introduction to selected non-canonical gospels as potential evidence for the historical Jesus. I argue (contra N. T. Wright) that many of these texts may be referred to appropriately as gospels, and that historians should approach both canonical and non-canonical gospels in precisely the same way. I then survey six texts to show what this might mean. I conclude that the non-canonical gospels offer little evidence about the historical Jesus, but that reading them can teach New Testament scholars useful lessons about the way in which we approach the canonical gospels.
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Andrew Gregory (2009) studied this question.