[00:00:01] Gospel thrillers part two by Andrew Jacobs, read by John Paul Middlesworth introduction by Bart Ehrman. Gospel thrillers who would have thought? Many of us knew books like this but never realized they were a coherent subgenre and certainly never thought much about how to understand them? Here now is Andrew Jacobs'second post on his new book, Gospel thrillers can conspiracy fiction and the vulnerable Bible, which you can get at your favorite book buying spot, including Amazon.com.
[00:00:33] Inside the gospel thrillers in my first post, I described what gospel thrillers are and their role in U. S. Culture. They magnify, probe, and contain popular fears and desires about the vulnerability of the Bible by imagining a conspiracy surrounding a newly discovered first century gospel. In this second post, I describe in more detail some of the bombshell secrets these novels invent and the specific fantasies and anxieties about the Bible they illuminate.
[00:01:02] Desert fantasies many of the books imagine new discoveries emerging from the Middle east. Some of these are supposedly part of the Dead Sea Scrolls suppressed by the israeli government, the Vatican, or both in concert, as in Glenn Mead's the Second Messiah or Lewis Roca's the Pope's assassin. Ever since the 1960s, there have been various conspiracy theories surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, perhaps most famously spun out in Michael Bajant and Richard Lee's the Dead Sea Scrolls deception. These authors had earlier collaborated with Henry Lincoln on Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the quote unquote non fiction inspiration for Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code.
[00:01:45] In several gospel thrillers, the New Dead Sea scroll foregrounds the uneasy relationship between the foreignness of the Middle east and the familiar western Bible that it produced.
[00:01:56] Some novels, like Daniel Eastman's the Judas Testament, lean into this sense of estrangement. A new discovery about or by Jesus emerging from the dangerous lands of biblical origins, portrays the Messiah as a first century jewish fanatic, far removed from the meek and mild savior of protestant hymns. Other novels, like Rachel and Richard Heller's the 13th Apostle or Alan Gold's the Lost Testament Temper and ameliorate this biblical otherness. The new discovery transforms Jesus into a more ecumenical figure, departing from his jewish roots to preach salvation to all mankind. These novels give readers an opportunity to imagine various ways of coming to terms with the jewishness of a christian savior, heretical Jesus.
[00:02:44] Other novels plunge their readers into a world of heresy and orthodoxy. They invite us to ponder the possibility that the real teachings of Jesus have actually been suppressed for thousands of years by mainstream churches. The publication of the so called gnostic gospels in the 1970s and then the unveiling of a new gospel of Judas in the 2000s often inspire earnest religious seekers to push back against what they believe to be misogynist or xenophobic intolerance perpetuated by age old christian institutions.
[00:03:16] In the keepers of the secret, for instance, the real Messiah born of the Virgin Mary was a girl named Lael. Jesus was her foster brother. A lost scroll written by the apostle John reveals Lael to be a preacher of gnostic wisdom, working miracles through Jesus and staging his resurrection before being assassinated by those who would go on to found, quote the christian church, unquote. J. G. Sandham's Gospel truth also imagines long hidden teachings of Jesus that sound more like gnostic wisdom or eastern philosophy, personal liberation that does not require church or scriptures.
[00:03:55] This message, too was suppressed long ago and continues to be squelched by greedy forces operating within the margins of the roman catholic hierarchy. In these novels and others like them, a desire for gender equality or spiritual liberation are projected back into the past and explained as progressive truths squashed by the church. The opposition of institutional religions, particularly Roman Catholicism, which becomes a stand in in these novels for clerical abarice, self interest, and intolerance to the true liberating message of Jesus in gospel thrillers amplifies this modern unease with, quote unquote, the church roiling through us society since the 1960s. In some novels, this unease is projected onto distorted quote unquote heresies that have survived underground from antiquity and that seek to hide a lost gospel that would reveal their existence.
[00:04:48] The Manicheans in Jonathan Rabb's the Book of Q have secret cells spread throughout the globe, indoctrinating their followers in their maniacal quest for world domination. In Adam Blake's the Dead Sea Deception, followers of Judas have lived for thousands of years literally underground, speaking Aramaic and living by a community rule. Embedded in a fuller version of the Gospel of Judas, published in 2007, they emerge into our world to protect their secrecy while they too await their chance for world domination.
[00:05:22] Another fuller version of the Gospel of Judas is brought to light and then stolen by the, quote, scythian brotherhood, unquote. In Leslie Winfield Williams'the Judas conspiracy. An all male enclave dedicated to moral depravity and spiritual elitism, the Brotherhood has worked behind the scenes to bring chaos and disunity to the world stage for centuries. Their string of brutal assassinations culminates in a thwarted attempt to blow up the national cathedral on Thanksgiving Day.
[00:05:53] Some gospel thrillers imagine a liberating gospel revealing the true spiritual message of Jesus suppressed by the Orthodox Bible. Others depict a perverted group of heretics out to undermine or destroy followers of the Orthodox Bible. At work in both narratives is deep ambivalence around the Bible and truth that exists in U. S. Culture. Readers eager for a new progressive quote unquote truth can delight in a Bible exposed as a fraud. At the same time, they might be apprehensive about what the new truth might bring. It is unsurprising, then, that so many of these novels that toy with the possibilities of secret text and underground sects return their readers at the end of the novel to a comforting status quo, where orthodoxy and the Bible remain as they were at the outset.
[00:06:44] Gospel thrillers is available at a discount in e format
[email protected] and Barnes and Noble, and will be available in the United States in hardback on February eigth. For more about the novels and their context, check out Andrew Jacobs companion website with summaries, reviews, and more information about the Bible and conspiracy. For more about Andrew Jacobs, visit his academic website. The links are all on the online blog.
