I was quite excited when I heard about the publication of this book. Still it took quite a while before I got myself a copy. It is a 1170 page book, printed on thin paper (and thus only 5cm thick) and however Jacob Slavenburg is on the cover as editor, he did not make any of the translations. Slavenburg has published quite extensively about early Christianity and Gnosticism and this monster work completes his publication of translated texts together with his massive Nag Hammadi publication. Most of the early Christian (gnostic) texts are now available in Dutch. I have found no English counterpart to this new “great book of apocryphal texts, secret early Christian texts”. The massive amount of texts are grouped under the headers “saying of Jesus”, “Fragments of gospels”, “Gospels”, “Youth stories”, “Early Christian lectures and letters”, “Acts of apostels”, “Revelations of visions”, “Oracles”, “Early histories of the church”, “Early texts from Edessa” and “Gnostic texts”. The texts are from the first to the fourth centuries and them being apocryphal means that they did not make it into the Holy Scripture. That is not to say that most of them are not very Christian texts, but probably there was something with them when the Bible was put together. The stories of Jesus’ youth, for example, portray Jesus as somewhat of a hothead. Many texts read like you are reading the Bible and I must say, a large part of this book is rather dull, especially when you compare them to the compilation of mostly Gnostic from the Nag Hammadi library. The texts do sometimes give a nice peak in the history of Christianity that the fourth century Church fathers did not want us to see. Sometimes amusing, sometimes slightly surprising, but I must way that I was relieved when I finally came to the short closing part with Gnostic texts which have more of my interest. The book is not cheap, but how could it be with 1170 pages, but Dutch-speaking people who want to expand their view on early Christianity are highly recommended to get this wonderfull publication.
2009 Ankh Hermes, isbn 9789020203578