“Should it bother anyone that those who stress so loudly that the winners wrote the histories are the ones now writing the histories?”

Why just Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Haven’t other ancient "gospels” been found, providing accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching very different than the biblical account?

Charles E. Hill says that a growing number of people, at least in the West, think they know the reason. It’s because of a well-organized ecclesiastical conspiracy.

It has been told in recent best-selling books, novels, and in theaters. Recently, I heard it from a man on a plane and my son heard it in a university classroom. Here is the basic story line.

Gospels about Jesus once flourished. As one scholar has recently put it, they were "breeding like rabbits." Each of the varied Christian sects pushed its own version(s) and competition was lively. This "free market" for Jesus literature meant that, for many years and in many places, some now-forgotten Gospels were at least as popular as the ones that now headline the Christian New Testament. Gradually, however, one of the competing sects was able to gain the upper hand over its rivals. And when it finally declared victory in the fourth century, fully 300 years after Jesus walked the earth, it decreed that its four Gospels were, and had always been, the standard for the church Jesus founded. The "winners," supported by the powerful emperor Constantine the Great, then got to write the histories -- and make the Bibles.

The familiar story doesn’t get the actual history quite right, though. Hill has a caution:

Should it bother anyone that those who stress so loudly that the winners wrote the histories are the ones now writing the histories? Let the reader judge ... but also be aware of conspiracies.

I have Charles E. Hill’s new book, Who Chose the Gospels?, on my to-read list.