The Christian Apocrypha burst into the public consciousness in 2003, following the publication of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Interest in the wide assortment of texts not included in the Bible has remained strong ever since. Although much has been written and said on the subject, misunderstandings still abound.
Tony Burke's Secret Scriptures Revealed dismantles the many myths and misconceptions about the Christian Apocrypha and straightforwardly answers common questions like these:

• Where did the apocryphal texts come from and who wrote them?
• Why were...

Synopsis: In 1958, American historian of religion Morton Smith made an astounding discovery in the Mar Saba monastery in Jerusalem. Copied into the back of a seventeenth-century book was a lost letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215 CE) that contained excerpts from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark written by Mark himself and circulating in Alexandria, Egypt. More than fifty years after its discovery, the origins of this Secret Gospel of Mark remain contentious. Some consider it an authentic witness to an early form of Mark, perhaps even predating canonical Mark. Some...

This volume collects the contributions of a group of scholars who started rethinking, in 2004, the traditional category of New Testament Apocrypha according to the new perspectives of a greater continuity not only between early Jewish and Christian scriptural productions, but also between early Christian and late antique apocryphal literatures. This is the result of the confluence of two, so far, alternative approaches: on the one hand, the deconstruction of the customary categories of "Jewish Christianity" and "Gnosticism," and on the other, the new awareness that the production of new...

North American study of the Christian Apocrypha is known principally for its interest in using noncanonical texts to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus, and for its support of Walter Bauer's theory on the development of early Christianity. The papers in this volume, presented in September 2013 at York University in Toronto, challenge that simplistic assessment by demonstrating that U.S. and Canadian scholarship on the Christian Apocrypha is rich and diverse. The topics covered in the papers include new developments in the study of canon formation, the interplay of Christian Apocrypha...

North American study of the Christian Apocrypha is known principally for its interest in using noncanonical texts to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus, and for its support of Walter Bauer's theory on the development of early Christianity. The papers in this volume, presented in September 2013 at York University in Toronto, challenge that simplistic assessment by demonstrating that U.S. and Canadian scholarship on the Christian Apocrypha is rich and diverse. The topics covered in the papers include new developments in the study of canon formation, the interplay of Christian Apocrypha...