The Sisters of Sinai Prize for outstanding scholarship in Christian apocrypha is named in honor of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, sisters who are responsible for a number of signific…

Long before Pagels and Ehrman, Enlightenment clergy were unearthing lost gospels and championing ancient heresies. A startlingly modern story.

In the 18th century, a chamber in the ruins of the White Monastery at Sohag in Egypt contained piles of loose leaves of a vast and ancient Coptic library.   In previous posts I have noted how the firs...

The Sisters of Sinai Prize for outstanding scholarship in Christian apocrypha is named in honor of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, sisters who are responsible for a number of signific…

May 27th, 2026 By Mina Monier The ‘Walled-Up’ Library and GA 81 Mina Monier, MF Norwegian School of Theology In October 2017, less than two months before my PhD defence, I travelled back to Egypt i…

By Chance Bonar On May 1–2, 2026, the University of Virginia’s Departments of Religious Studies and Classics hosted NASSCAL’s conference on New Research on Apocryphal Christian Literature. Occurrin…

The Sisters of Sinai Prize for outstanding scholarship in Christian apocrypha is named in honor of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, sisters who are responsible for a number of signific…

Translating hell - Browse and buy the Hardcover edition of Translating hell by Stephen C. E. Hopkins

‘Apocrypha’ means ‘hidden’ in Greek, but it is often used to describe texts that are outside the official biblical canon.

When I heard about The Carpenter’s Son, a film said to be based on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I was excited. This was going to be the culmination of my lif

1. This is the fourth post in a series in which I document identifications associated with the work of early Christian Arabic scribes. You can find the first three posts here (I), here (II), and here ...

Early Christian sources differ on how many Magi visited the infant Jesus, and whether they were kings at all.

This post brings together quite a few of my very long-term interests – in film, alternative Christian scriptures, esoteric religion and its presence in

Legends about Jesus’ early years that circulated in medieval Europe often drew on apocryphal texts.

The SBL Annual Meeting presents an ideal opportunity to check out new books on Christian apocrypha, and at substantial discounts. As you make your way through t

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In the second century, as the canonical Gospels were being copied and circulated throughout the Roman Empire, another text about the life of Jesus was simultaneously

The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature runs from November 22 to 25 in Boston. The following is a list of all the sessions and individual