Originally Posted by ezay
I think the consistent accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are far more credible than this document. Many people in that time despised Jesus for his teaching and tried to spread false rumors about him. Interesting topic though.
They aren't reliable at all. They differ on several very important accounts. Whoever wrote this book didn't despise Jesus anyway, obviously. And I really don't think anyone hated him enough at that time to write anything about him, forget a text to throw people off.
The question is whether this comes from the same time as the gospels. Incredibly hard to prove, since we don't even have original copies of those. So I'm sure we'll never know.
One more clarification- this is not the first time books not included, but are from the same time and genre, have been found. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran are the same thing. Gospels of other disciples, along with various other Gnostic texts, were found there side by side with books included in the Bible (which was great, because we could see how the books have changed throughout time- ended out not being that much).