Words outside the Bible

All the words on this site are attributed to Jesus in the Bible. But more words were circulating. John writes at the end of his Gospel that even the world itself could not contain the books if everything were written down. There is even an example in the Bible itself: it is more blessed to give than to receive, which Paul quotes but which appears in no Gospel.

Outside the Bible a few dozen more such sayings have been preserved, in the church fathers and in old manuscripts. Be approved money changers is the saying the church fathers quote most often: learn to tell the genuine from the false. He who is near me is near the fire appears both in Origen and in the Gospel of Thomas. And in one old manuscript of Luke, Jesus says to a man working on the sabbath: if you know what you are doing, you are blessed.

Whether such words really come from Jesus is uncertain. Some may be old and reliable, others are clearly later. Researchers weigh them one by one, and don't always reach the same verdict.

What is certainly not a word of Jesus: messages people write in his name today, from popular devotionals to chatbots that talk as if they were Jesus. They may be comforting, but they are human words. That is why they are not printed in red here.