The Gospels are the books of the New Testament that tell about the life of Jesus Christ, his public ministry, crucifixion and burial. For an Orthodox person, the Gospel is one of the most important books in the Bible.
The canonical Gospels are those that are accepted by the entirety of the Orthodox Church. There are four Gospels included in the corpus of the books of the New Testament. The authors of these inspired works were the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In addition to these four Gospels, there are apocryphal works. For example, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Peter. These books were not recognized by the church as canonical, as they had dubious content. Also, the exact authorship of these Gospels has not been established. It is quite possible that the apocryphal Gospels, in contrast to the canonical ones, were written several hundred years after the birth of Jesus Christ, or the authors of the apocryphal were Gnostic heretics.
As mentioned above, by the canonical Gospels, all the fullness of the Church recognizes the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John. From the very beginning of the development of Christian writing, none of the believers questioned the authority of these sacred books. It was these works that were accepted as absolute truth without the admixture of various false teachings.
These four Gospels objectively narrate the life and teachings of Christ, tell about the events of the New Testament history. Already in the first century, these works were quoted by believers. However, the official approval of these four Gospels as canonical was accepted only in the 4th century.
In the history of the Christian Church, 360 can be called the time of the establishment of the canon of the books of the New Testament. This event took place at the local Laodicean Council. The Council Fathers approved all 27 canonical books of the New Testament, which included the Gospels under the authorship of Mark, Matthew, John and Luke. Later, at the VI Ecumenical Council (680), the canon of the books of the New Testament was given an ecumenical character.
