What Did Early Christians Think of Non-canonical Texts?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

What did early Christians think of non-canonical texts? This is a loaded and surprisingly complex question. 

In fact, it’s a bit like asking, “What do Americans think about politics, religion, or morality?” The answer, of course, depends on which Americans we mean, in what period, in what region, and in what social or ideological setting. 

The same is true of early Christianity. We are not dealing with one uniform religious movement whose members all agreed about which books mattered, which books were dangerous, and which books belonged in Scripture. 

We are entering a diverse and contested world in which different Christian teachers, churches, scribes, bishops, ascetics, and intellectuals argue about authority, tradition, doctrine, and sacred texts. 

As Bart D. Ehrman has emphasized, early Christianity was marked by a “contest for authority,” a struggle among different groups to define what counted as true teaching, authentic tradition, and legitimate Scripture.

Out of this complex world, only gradually (and certainly not evenly everywhere at once) emerged the form of Christianity that later came to be identified as “orthodox.” 

That means we should be cautious from the beginning: early Christians didn’t have one single view of apocryphal writings. Some texts later called “apocrypha” were read, quoted, copied, and valued by Christians. 

Others were treated with suspicion, rejected as false, or condemned as heretical. Still others occupied a middle ground: useful for instruction or devotion, but not placed on the same level as Scripture. 

In this article, we’ll first clarify what we mean by “non-canonical texts.” It’s a phrase that sounds straightforward but becomes complicated once we remember that the boundaries of the Christian Bible were not fixed everywhere from the beginning.

We’ll then look at two broad categories of writings: Jewish texts that some Christians received as Scripture, even though other later traditions would classify them differently, and early Christian writings about Jesus, Mary, the apostles, and the afterlife that remained outside the New Testament. 

By looking at several examples, we’ll see why the answer isn’t simple, and why that complexity is precisely what makes the question historically interesting.

But before we move into the world of apocryphal documents and the literary diversity of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, I must mention Bart D. Ehrman’s 8-lecture course, Earliest Christian Heresies. 

In this course, Bart uncovers the lost beliefs, rival gospels, and intense battles that shaped early Christianity, challenging common assumptions about its true origins. If you want to understand why questions of canon, orthodoxy, and “heresy” mattered so deeply to ancient Christians, this course is an ideal place to start.

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What Did Early Christians Think of Non-Canonical Texts? The Canonization Process

Before we can answer the question, “What did early Christians think of non-canonical texts?” we need to set our terms straight. 

What exactly does it mean to call a text “non-canonical”? The word only makes sense in relation to another word: “canon.” 

A canonical text is a writing that belongs to an officially recognized collection of sacred writings. A non-canonical text, therefore, is a writing that stands outside of that recognized collection.

But this definition, simple as it may sound, immediately raises several historical problems. Which canon are we talking about? The Jewish canon? The Protestant Old Testament? The Catholic Old Testament? The Orthodox Old Testament? The New Testament? 

And at what point in history? These questions matter because ancient Jews and Christians didn’t inherit a single, leather-bound Bible with a table of contents already printed at the front.

In his important study The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon, Lee M. McDonald writes:

This observation is useful because it reminds us that canon was never merely a matter of literary preference. 

To define a canon was to define the sacred memory, theological boundaries, and communal identity of a religious tradition. A canon tells a community not only which books it reads, but also which story it inhabits, which God it worships, and which forms of teaching count as authoritative.

The course of biblical canonization took a distinct route in Judaism and Christianity, corresponding to the way the two traditions themselves developed.

In Judaism, evidence from Second Temple literature suggests that by the 1st century C.E., there was already a general sense of a sacred collection in three parts: Law, Prophets, and other writings. 

At the same time, there was also considerable fluidity. 

Authors such as Philo, as well as the literature associated with the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls, show deep reverence for the Torah and other ancestral writings, but they also reveal that the precise boundaries of Scripture were not always identical from one Jewish group to another.

In other words, there was a strong scriptural consciousness before there was a universally fixed list.

The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. was a critical turning point. 

Shaye J. D. Cohen explains the historical, religious, and social importance of this event:

So, with the loss of the sacrificial system, Judaism became even more centered on texts, interpretation, prayer, and communal practice. 

At roughly the same time, the disappearance or marginalization of competing Jewish groups such as the Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots meant that the Pharisaic and scribal tradition increasingly shaped the future of Judaism. 

The rise of Christianity, especially as it spread among Gentiles, also encouraged a clearer definition of the boundaries that marked normative Judaism. 

Between 70 and 135 C.E., the fundamental decisions concerning the Jewish canon appear to have taken shape. By the end of the 2nd century, the threefold division of the TaNaK was in place. It had either 22 or 24 books, depending on how they were counted: the five books of Moses, eight books of the Prophets, and 11 writings.

Canonization in the Christian tradition was both more rapid and more conflict-filled. The earliest stages were natural and organic. 

Bart Ehrman, and Hugo Mendez, in their book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, explain:

Moreover, after Jesus’ death, Christian communities preserved, exchanged, copied, and read letters, gospels, prophetic writings, and apostolic traditions.

For instance, Paul’s letters were collected; stories and teachings of Jesus circulated; eventually, written gospels became central to Christian worship and instruction. 

But by the middle of the 2nd century, debates over Christian identity forced sharper decisions. Figures such as Marcion sought to contract Christian authorities by rejecting the Jewish Scriptures and accepting only a sharply edited collection of Christian writings.

Other teachers, including some associated with what later polemicists called “Gnostic” Christianity, appealed to additional revelations, secret teachings, and texts that modern readers often associate with Gnostic gospels.

In both directions, the issue was the identity of the Christian God, the status of the creator, the goodness of the material world, the interpretation of Jesus, and the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

In response to these debates, writers such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Tertullian argued for clearer boundaries of authoritative Christian teaching. 

By the end of the 2nd century, there was broad agreement in many churches on the fourfold Gospel collection and on a collection of Pauline letters. But the process wasn’t complete. Books such as Revelation, Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, Jude, and others continued to be disputed in some circles for centuries. 

This means that “non-canonical text” isn’t a timeless or self-evident label. It’s a historical designation that depends on the gradual formation of canon. 

With that in mind, we can now turn to the more specific question: how did early Christians actually respond to writings that stood near, beside, or outside the emerging boundaries of Scripture?

What Did Early Christians Think of Non-Canonical Texts? Old Testament Examples

In his book Old Testament Apocrypha: Introduction, Otto Kaiser notes:

This summary immediately shows why the category of “non-canonical texts” is historically complicated. These writings weren’t simply “outside the Bible” in any universal sense.

Some Christian traditions eventually received them as canonical; others placed them in a secondary category; still others excluded them from the canon while continuing to value them as useful reading. 

The same texts could therefore be called “deuterocanonical” in one tradition, “Apocrypha” in another, and “non-canonical” from the perspective of a later Protestant canon. 

This is why we have to be careful: when we speak about Jewish writings outside the Hebrew Bible, we aren’t dealing with a fixed category that meant the same thing to all ancient Jews or all early Christians.

These documents also open a window into the rich literary and religious world of Judaism in the centuries before and around the rise of Christianity. 

In an increasingly Hellenized environment, Jewish authors in Palestine, Egypt, and the wider eastern Mediterranean diaspora reflected on what it meant to belong to the people chosen by God.

They defended Israel’s election, praised divine wisdom, retold ancestral stories, interpreted suffering, imagined judgment and resurrection, and emphasized the continuing duty of obedience to the Torah. 

Some of these writings were anonymous; others were associated with revered figures from Israel’s past, which is why the broader landscape of early Jewish literature also includes works often called pseudepigrapha.

Unlike anonymous works, pseudepigrapha are writings attributed to famous figures from the distant past, such as Enoch, Moses, Ezra, or Baruch, even though they were actually composed long after those figures would have lived.

Together, these texts show that Judaism in this period wasn’t intellectually static, but creatively engaged with Greek language, imperial power, philosophical traditions, persecution, martyrdom, and the problem of covenant faithfulness.

It would be impossible here to survey all of the Jewish writings that stood near, beside, or outside the later boundaries of the Old Testament.

Instead, we’ll focus on two especially useful examples: the Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees. 

These two texts allow us to see different aspects of the problem. Wisdom of Solomon is a particularly good case because it’s included in the Catholic Old Testament, but not in the Protestant canon, while also containing themes that early Christians could easily read in light of Christ. 

2 Maccabees, by contrast, gives us a powerful example of martyrdom, resurrection hope, and fidelity under persecution: themes that would become deeply important for early Christian identity. 

These two books therefore help us ask the question more concretely: how did early Christians respond to Jewish writings that were inherited, read, debated, and classified differently across Christian traditions?

Wisdom of Solomon

In his Commentary, Mark Giszczak writes:

This setting is crucial. The Wisdom of Solomon is a product of Hellenistic Judaism: Greek in language, Jewish in conviction, and deeply engaged with questions of wisdom, righteousness, idolatry, suffering, and immortality.

The book itself can be described as a meditation on divine wisdom and the destiny of the righteous.It contrasts the apparent success of the wicked with the ultimate vindication of those who remain faithful to God. 

It attacks idolatry, praises wisdom as a divine gift, and retells Israel’s story in a way that shows God’s providential guidance of his people. 

For later Christian readers, several themes would have been especially attractive: the suffering of the righteous, the immortality of the soul, divine judgment, and the language of wisdom as something that comes from God and mediates God’s action in the world.

But what did early Christians actually think of this book? Here we must remember the larger methodological problem behind the question, “What did early Christians think of non-canonical texts?” 

It’s impossible to know what most early Christians thought about the status of any particular writing. 

Most Christians didn’t leave us treatises on canon, and even among those who did write, their opinions were shaped by language, geography, theology, and ecclesiastical context. 

What we have, therefore, aren’t the views of “early Christianity” in the abstract, but the surviving voices of particular authors and (in a sense) their communities. 

The New Testament itself already gives us a first clue that the Wisdom of Solomon circulated in the intellectual world from which Christianity emerged. 

As Edmon L. Gallagher notes in The Apocrypha Through History:

The later Christian evidence is similarly revealing, but not uniform. Origen knew and used the Wisdom of Solomon, yet he was also aware of distinctions between books found in the Hebrew canon and books read in the churches. 

Jerome went further in making that distinction explicit. In his Preface to the Books of Solomon, he wrote:

Jerome’s position is important because it shows that rejection of full canonical status didn’t necessarily mean rejection of the book’s value. For him, such writings could still be read by the church and used for moral and spiritual edification, even if they were not to serve as the decisive foundation for doctrine.

Other Christian voices evaluated the book differently. Augustine, unlike Jerome, strongly defended the canonical status of the books that later Western Christianity would call deuterocanonical, including the Wisdom of Solomon. 

Even earlier, the Wisdom of Solomon appears in the Muratorian Fragment, which is probably from the late 2nd century. It is the oldest surviving list of New Testament writings, and the Wisdom of Solomon is mentioned favorably even though it obviously belongs to the Jewish scriptural world rather than to the apostolic writings. 

The result is a perfect illustration of the complexity of our question. The same book could be echoed by New Testament authors, valued by Origen, read but canonically qualified by Jerome, and canonically affirmed by Augustine. 

With Wisdom of Solomon, then, we see that a text later considered non-canonical by some Christian traditions could nevertheless stand very close to the heart of early Christian reading, theology, and worship. 

We can see a similar complexity, though with different emphases, when we turn to our second example: 2 Maccabees.

2 Maccabees

In his Commentary, Daniel R. Schwartz notes:

In other words, 2 Maccabees is a theological history of crisis, persecution, fidelity, divine judgment, and deliverance. It tells how Jewish identity was threatened under Seleucid rule and how loyalty to God, the temple, and the ancestral law could become a matter of life and death.

For early Christians, several features of the book were especially significant. 2 Maccabees contains one of the most powerful ancient Jewish accounts of martyrdom, especially in the stories of Eleazar and of the mother and her seven sons.

It also contains one of the clearest Second Temple Jewish articulations of bodily resurrection: the martyrs die trusting that God, the creator of the world, can restore life and vindicate the righteous. 

These themes (persecution, martyrdom, resurrection, and divine justice) would become deeply important for Christians who interpreted Jesus’ death and resurrection as the center of God’s saving action and who, in some circumstances, faced persecution themselves.

As was the case with the Wisdom of Solomon, however, 2 Maccabees’ canonical status hides a complex and uneven history. 

As Tomas Bokedal, in his book The Formation and Significance of the Christian Biblical Canon, notes:

This means that many important early Christian writers, especially in the Greek East, were cautious about including 2 Maccabees in the Old Testament canon if the standard of comparison was the Hebrew Jewish canon. 

Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome all knew that some books used by Christians weren’t part of the Hebrew collection, and they could therefore distinguish between books that were fully canonical and books that were read in the churches for instruction.

Jerome’s position was especially clear: such writings could be useful for edification without being used as a final basis for doctrine. 

Yet this was never the only Christian view. Augustine, by contrast, defended a broader Old Testament canon that included the books of Maccabees, and Western councils, such as Hippo and Carthage moved in the same direction. 

So, even within what later Christians would call “orthodoxy,” there was no single early Christian answer to the question of 2 Maccabees’ scriptural status.

But canonical status is only part of the story.

 Even where the book’s place in the canon was debated, the Maccabean martyr traditions could be deeply meaningful for Christian authors. Origen is a particularly revealing example.

In his Exhortation to Martyrdom, written in the context of 3rd-century persecution, he appealed to the story of the seven brothers from the Books of Maccabees as a powerful example for Christians preparing to suffer.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Origen treated 2 Maccabees as canonical Scripture in the same sense as Genesis or Gospel of Matthew.

It does show, however, that he regarded the Maccabean martyrs as morally and spiritually authoritative examples. When he needed to teach Christians how to face torture and death faithfully, he found in these Jewish martyr stories a language of courage, endurance, and hope.

Recent scholarship has made this point even more interesting.

Anna-Liisa Rafael has argued that Origen’s use of the mother and her seven sons may reflect not only a bookish encounter with 2 Maccabees or 4 Maccabees, but also a broader living tradition in 3rd-century Palestine.

The story may have circulated not merely as a written text but as a shared narrative of martyrdom, remembered, retold, and adapted in Jewish and Christian settings.

This helps us see why 2 Maccabees is such a valuable example for our larger question. Some Christians counted it as Scripture; others placed it in a secondary category; still others treated its stories as models of piety without settling the question of canon in the same way.

In every case, 2 Maccabees shows that a text could stand near, beside, or even outside the formal canon and still profoundly shape early Christian imagination.

We now turn from Jewish writings associated with the Old Testament to two examples from what scholars usually call New Testament apocrypha: early Christian writings about Jesus, Mary, the apostles, and the world beyond death.

What Did Early Christians Think of Non-Canonical Texts? New Testament Apocrypha

When we turn to the world of early Christian non-canonical texts, we enter a highly complex yet profoundly important literary environment.

Scholars often refer to this broad body of literature as the New Testament Apocrypha: early Christian writings related in some way to New Testament figures, genres, or themes, but not included in the New Testament itself.

These writings include gospels, acts, letters, apocalypses, infancy narratives, dialogues, and revelatory discourses that weren’t eventually included in the New Testament canon.

Many of them sought to expand, interpret, supplement, or even challenge traditions about Jesus, Mary, the apostles, salvation, martyrdom, resurrection, and the world beyond death. 

Some texts filled narrative gaps left by the canonical Gospels: What was Mary’s childhood like? What did Jesus do as a child? What happened to the apostles after the resurrection?

Others claimed to preserve secret teachings, heavenly revelations, or alternative interpretations of Jesus’ identity and mission. In this sense, these writings are not merely “failed Scriptures.” 

They are witnesses to the rich diversity of early Christian imagination, devotion, theology, and controversy.

It’s also a world well studied by scholars. In his book The Apocryphal New Testament, J. K. Elliott notes:

Elliott’s observation is important because it reminds us that New Testament apocrypha aren’t a small appendix to early Christian history. They are part of the evidence through which historians reconstruct the debates, hopes, anxieties, and theological creativity of early Christianity.

Since this early Christian non-canonical literary tradition is so vast and complex, it would be impossible (and, for our purposes, unnecessary) to analyze every single text.

Instead, we’ll focus on two examples that illustrate different ways such writings could function in early Christian communities. More concretely, we’ll ask what early Christians thought about their status, value, and importance. 

Were such texts treated as Scripture, rejected as false, read as edifying literature, or absorbed into Christian devotion without ever becoming canonical?

Proto-Gospel of James

In her article Les apocryphes et l'histoire (The Apocrypha and History), Muriel Debié notes:

This fluid transmission and adaptation helps explain both the widespread influence and the varied reception of texts like the Proto-Gospel of James in early Christianity.

The Proto-Gospel of James is usually dated to the 2nd century, probably sometime around the middle or later part of that century. 

Despite its title, it’s not primarily a “gospel” in the same sense as Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. 

It doesn’t narrate Jesus’ public ministry, death, or resurrection. Instead, it focuses on the events before and around Jesus’ birth: the miraculous birth of Mary to Joachim and Anna, Mary’s childhood in the temple, her betrothal to Joseph, Joseph’s role as an elderly guardian, the birth of Jesus, and the preservation of Mary’s virginity before, during, and after childbirth.

In this sense, the text answers questions that the canonical Gospels leave largely untouched, especially questions about Mary’s origins, purity, and role in the story of salvation.

What did early Christians think about this text? The answer, again, isn’t simple. The Proto-Gospel of James wasn’t received into the New Testament canon, and no major stream of early Christianity treated it as a fifth Gospel alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

Yet it was known, used, and influential. Origen is one of the most important early witnesses. In his discussion of Jesus’ “brothers,” Origen refers to a “Book of James” and to the Gospel of Peter as sources for the idea that these brothers were sons of Joseph from a previous marriage. 

This tradition helped defend the view that Mary remained perpetually virginal. Origen’s use is revealing: he doesn’t make the text canonical, but he does treat its tradition as useful for solving an exegetical and theological problem.

Later Christian writers and communities continued to receive the traditions associated with this text, even when they did not necessarily cite the book by name.

The image of Joseph as an elderly widower, the names Joachim and Anna, Mary’s special holiness from childhood, and her presentation in the temple all became central elements in Christian devotion, preaching, liturgy, and art.

Epiphanius of Salamis, for example, strongly defended the view that Jesus’ brothers were Joseph’s children from an earlier marriage, a position that fits closely with the world of the Proto-Gospel of James.

In the Eastern Christian traditions especially, these stories didn’t remain marginal curiosities. They became part of the imaginative and devotional world through which Christians thought about Mary, Jesus’ family, and the holiness surrounding the incarnation.

At the same time, the text’s popularity didn’t translate into canonical acceptance.

In the Latin West, especially, apocryphal infancy traditions were often viewed with suspicion. The so-called Gelasian Decree rejected writings associated with the name of James, and later Western tradition tended to receive these stories indirectly, especially through reworked infancy narratives such as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. 

The Proto-Gospel of James therefore gives us one of the clearest examples of the difference between canonicity and influence. Early Christians didn’t place it in the New Testament, but many of them absorbed its stories, repeated its traditions, and allowed it to shape Christian teaching and devotion about Mary. 

It was non-canonical, but it was far from unimportant. 

Our next example, the Gospel of Peter, shows a rather different pattern of reception: not devotional influence, but suspicion, controversy, and doctrinal concern—at least among those that will later triumph and become known as the “orthodoxy.”

The Gospel of Peter

Our next example is known by the title The Gospel of Peter, a document that was probably written around the middle of the 2nd century and stirred up controversy in at least one Christian community. 

Unlike the Proto-Gospel of James, whose traditions became deeply embedded in Christian devotion, the Gospel of Peter came to be remembered primarily as a suspicious and eventually rejected text. 

Yet its story is especially revealing, because it shows us that early Christian leaders didn’t always reject non-canonical writings automatically. Sometimes they had to investigate them, read them, compare them with accepted teaching, and decide whether they could safely be used in the churches.

The surviving fragment of the Gospel of Peter mainly narrates the passion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. 

It overlaps in broad outline with the canonical passion narratives, but it also contains striking differences: Herod plays a prominent role, Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ death is emphasized strongly, Pilate appears less guilty, and the resurrection scene is narrated in unusually dramatic fashion. 

For many centuries, however, this gospel was known only through references in early Christian writers. No manuscript preserving its words was available until the late 19th century, when a Greek fragment was discovered in Egypt, at Akhmim.

That discovery allowed scholars to compare the ancient testimonies with an actual surviving text, even though what we possess is still only a fragment, not the complete gospel.

The most famous early Christian discussion of the Gospel of Peter comes from Serapion, bishop of Antioch, near the end of the 2nd century. 

According to Eusebius, Serapion learned that Christians in Rhossus were reading a text called the Gospel according to Peter. At first, he permitted them to read it, apparently because he assumed that their faith was “orthodox” and that the text posed no danger. 

Later, however, he discovered that the gospel was being used by people he identified with docetic teaching, that is, the view that Christ only seemed to suffer in a fully human way. Serapion then obtained a copy, examined it, and changed his judgment. 

His verdict wasn’t that everything in the book was false. Rather, he concluded that most of it agreed with the true teaching of the Savior, but that some things had been added which supported problematic doctrine.

This episode is extremely important for understanding early Christian attitudes toward non-canonical texts. Serapion didn’t reject the Gospel of Peter merely because it stood outside the fourfold Gospel collection. Nor did he accept it simply because it claimed association with Peter. Apostolic names mattered, but they were not enough. 

A writing also had to be connected with trustworthy transmission, recognized church use, and what “proto-orthodox” church leaders regarded as sound doctrine. 

Later Christian writers continued this trajectory of suspicion. Eusebius classified the Gospel of Peter among writings not received in the churches. Origen appears to have known a tradition associated with it, especially concerning Jesus’ “brothers,” but he didn’t treat it as canonical Scripture.

Didymus the Blind listed gospels attributed to Peter and Thomas as falsely ascribed writings not to be read by Christians. Jerome largely repeated the information preserved by Eusebius, while Theodoret later associated the text with the Nazoraeans. 

Finally, the Gelasian Decree listed a “Gospel under the name of the apostle Peter” among writings to be rejected.

This makes the Gospel of Peter a particularly clear example of a non-canonical text whose reception moved from local use to suspicion and finally to condemnation. 

As Timothy P. Henderson concludes in The Gospel of Peter and Early Christian Apologetics:

In that sense, the Gospel of Peter illustrates a different pattern from the Proto-Gospel of James: not long-term devotional absorption, but ecclesiastical testing, doctrinal anxiety, and eventual exclusion.

Conclusion

Thomas Bokedal rightly points out:

This is precisely why the question of non-canonical texts is so historically revealing. The canon didn’t fall from heaven as a finished table of contents.

It emerged through use, debate, copying, worship, teaching, controversy, institutional authority, and theological judgment. Some writings became Scripture; others remained useful but secondary; still others were rejected as misleading, falsely attributed, or doctrinally dangerous. 

But in every case, the boundary between “canonical” and “non-canonical” was shaped by living communities trying to define their identity, memory, and faith.

So, what did early Christians think of non-canonical texts? The answer is that they thought many different things.

Some texts, such as the Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees, were read by many Christians as part of the broader scriptural world, even when their precise canonical status remained disputed. 

Others, such as the Proto-Gospel of James, never became part of the New Testament but profoundly shaped Christian devotion, especially traditions about Mary, Joseph, and Jesus’ family.

Still others, such as the Gospel of Peter, were locally read but eventually tested, suspected, and rejected by “proto-orthodox” leaders because of concerns about apostolic authenticity, ecclesial transmission, and doctrinal content.

The early Christian response to non-canonical texts, then, wasn’t simple acceptance or simple rejection. It was a spectrum: Scripture, useful reading, inherited tradition, devotional expansion, theological resource, suspicious forgery, and heretical danger.

That complexity isn’t a problem to be solved away. It’s one of the clearest windows we have into how early Christians argued over what Christianity itself was to become.