ANNE HAMERSKY FOR TIME

Neo Magdalenes celebrate Mary on her day in San Jose, California with a ritual washing

The Lost Gospels
	Dozens of Christian Scriptures were Holy Writ, then heresy, then forgotten. Why are we looking at them again?
	By David Van Biema

Posted Sunday, December 14, 2003
The Cross talked. And walked. Jesus had died the day before, uttering his last words: "My power, O power, you have left me behind!" His body was taken down and placed in the tomb. But now, as the Sabbath dawned, a great voice came from the sky, and two men descended. The stone blocking the tomb rolled away of its own accord, and while Roman soldiers gaped, "three men emerge(d) from the tomb, two of them supporting the other, with a Cross following behind. The heads of the two reached up to the sky, but the head of the one they were leading went up above the skies. And they heard a voice, 'Have you preached to those who are sleeping?' And a reply came from the Cross, 'Yes.'"

It is a surreal Resurrection: the all-important Christian instant, but garbled, like a favorite song issuing from the bottom of a deep well. And yet according to the new book Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, by Bart Ehrman, it was Holy Writ for several centuries to some early Christian communities in the Middle East. The passage comes from something called the Gospel of Peter. You probably haven't heard of Peter because by A.D. 350 church fathers had tarred it as heresy, along with dozens of other early Scriptures with names like the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of John, the Homilies of Clement and the Gospel of Truth. Thus Peter and the others languished in ignominy, more or less forgotten.

Until now. Recently these texts—you might think of them as lost Christianities if you're a religious liberal or as early heresies if you're a conservative—have been experiencing a resurrection of their own. Their renaissance is unlikely to reinstate them in the exalted company of the canonical New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But it fills a perceived need for alternative views of the Christ story on the part of New Age seekers and of mainline believers uncomfortable with some of their faith's theological restrictions. This yearning is transforming the once obscure texts into objects of popular discourse. Their rising cultural profile can be seen in:

· The Da Vinci Code. A key plot point in Dan Brown's best-selling novel, with 4.3 million copies in print, is that the Roman Catholic Church suppressed 80 alternative Gospels, several describing a physical relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

· Other reinterpretations of Mary Magdalene. Feminist biblical scholars like Harvard's Karen King use some of these texts to argue that far from being a wanton prostitute, Magdalene was seen by some as a disciple whose standing rivaled that of the Apostle Peter .

· The Matrix trilogy. The movies' premise that the world we know is neither good nor real but the creation of a malign power echoes early texts that are now known as Gnostic. Similar themes mark the work of science-fiction patriarch Philip K. Dick, whose stories have been turned into movies like Blade Runner, Minority Report and John Woo's Paycheck, opening on Christmas.

· Church study groups. Princeton professor Elaine Pagels won a National Book Award for her 1979 essay The Gnostic Gospels, which explored those alternative interpretations of the Christ story. The book was a surprise best seller, and three titles later, study groups at churches around the country are using Pagels' works to supplement more traditional Bible studies.

· New-Age rituals. More and more people are turning to ancient Christian texts to develop their own religious rites.

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