The Gospel of Philip says that Jesus loved Mary Magdelene more than the other disciples and that Mary was a “companion” of Jesus and that he kissed her on the (and the rest is missing from the text). The word “companion” does not necessariy mean “spouse” but even if it did, why would we believe that the Gospel of Phiilip was an authentic inspired gospel just like our 4 gospel (Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn)? The Gospel of Mary Magdelene also says that Jesus loved Mary more than the others, but was it an authentic inspired gospel? When were these 2 gospels (Philip and Mary) written? Most scholars think they were written in the laste 2nd century. The Gospel of Philip was in the Coptic Nag Hammadi books found in Egyypt in 1945 and the Gospel of Mary was also found in Egypt in the late 19th century.

They probably were around in the late 2nd century because the church father Irenaeus “fiercely condemned them, along with other Gnostic writings, in his work Against Heresies, arguing they were heretical, illegitimate, and contrary to the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), which he championed as the only true witnesses to Jesus, established by apostolic tradition and reflecting creation’s order. He saw these Gnostic books as undermining the true Church’s faith, promoting secret knowledge, and challenging the apostolic succession, viewing them as dangerous fabrications.” Irenaeus lived in the 2nd century AD.

Now we can’t trust everything Irenaeus said. He believed in chiliasm (that Jesus was going to come set up an earthly kingdom), which I disagree with. Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world (John 13:36) and that some of those he was speaking to would be alive to see Him coming back in His kingdom (Matthew 16:27-28). He also said that Jesus’ ministry lasted 20 years and that he died at age 50. But his comments about the gospels are compelling: “In his central work, Adversus Haereses Irenaeus denounced various Christian groups that used only one gospel…as well as groups that embraced the texts of new revelations.…Irenaeus declared that the four he espoused were the four pillars of the Church: ‘it is not possible that there can be either more or fewer than four’ he stated, presenting as logic the analogy of the four corners of the earth and the four winds (1.11.8).”  

So was this an isolated opinion of just one of the early church fathers? No. The following chart shows how many times the early church father (2nd-4th centuries AD) quoted or cited the gospels (and the rest of the New Testament).

Justin Martyr lived from 100-165 AD; Clement was 150-215 AD; Irenaeus was 125-202 AD; Origen was 185-254 AD; Tertullian was 155-220 AD; and Eusebius was 260-339 AD. So we have almost 19,000 quotes of the 4 gospels by the early church fathers by the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. So around the 2nd century AD (about 100 years after the original gospel were written) we have all the church fathers quoting the 4 gospels as inspired writings of the apostles. I believe that these early church fathers living in the 2nd century knew very well which gospels that had been passed down by the church were authentic inspired writings.

In contrast to that, the early church fathers never quotred from the gospels of Philip, Mary, or Thomas (the gospel of Thomas was another gospel found in the Nag Hammadi books. Irenaeus’ comment about the gospels of Philip and Mary shows that those books were around by the late 2nd century but that they were clearly considered to be uninspired, heretical gospels. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if the gospel of Philip suggested that Jesus was married (his “companion”) to Mary or not. It wasn’t an inspired gospel so it just doesn’t matter what it says. The Dan Brown Da Vinci Code book and movie throws in a comment that the gospel of Philip said that Mary was the wife of Jesus, but, again, that is taken from an uninspired gospel that the early church rejected. A great movie with Tom Hanks, but entirely fiction.

Maybe this article is more about the trustworthiness of the 4 gospels (Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn) that we do have in our Bibles than it is about the gospels of Philip and Mary. The early church father quotes should give us confidence that we can trust the 4 gospels as being written early and written by those 4 men. If we can’t trust our 4 gospels, then we can’t trust the miracles and resurrection of Jesus that they record.

AI: “Bart Ehrman says the four Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) were written anonymously, with names added later, but generally dates them as: Mark (c. 70 CE), Matthew & Luke (c. 80-85 CE), and John (c. 90-95 CE), acknowledging the consensus among critical scholars that they weren’t eyewitness accounts but emerged decades after Jesus, long after the apostles’ deaths, to gain authority.” I believe that all the gospels were written before 70 AD. How do we know that? Because all 4 gospels quote Jesus predicting the destruction of Jerusalem that he said would happen within the generation of those he was speaking to (Matthew 24:34) and yet none of the 4 state that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD had already happened at the time of writing. What if we found an old, old book about persecution of the Jews in history but we didn’t know when it was written? What if that book told about many events where the Jews were persecuted but stopped without mentioning the holocaust? When would you say that book was written, before or after the holocaust? It was written before the holocaust. It is the same with the 4 gospels and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. If that event had already happened at the time of writing the gospels then the gospel writers would surely have used that fulfilled prediction to show that Jesus was truly a Prophet. If the gospels were written before 70 AD, then early Chrisitans would have been able to verify that the writers really were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Also, if the gospels were written before 70 AD, then that would be within about 30 years of the resurrection of Jesus and people could be able to check out the veracity of the gospel claims. If someone claimed a resurrection from a local cemetary 30 years ago, then we are living close enough in time to check out that claim. The early church rejected many spurious gospels and other books, so they knew which books were authentic that had been passed down to the early church.

I hope this article has been beneficial.