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Previous commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas have tended mainly to make this intriguing text less understandable to the general reader, not less. Choking on their authors' methodology, these commentaries are more about them than the text. Robert M. Price brings striking clarity to a fascinating text, bridging the dusty centuries. Price draws on the learning of his predecessors while providing many new interpretations. Does Thomas use the canonical gospels? Or was it written earlier? Why was it excluded from the canon? Is it Gnostic? Watch out! Thomas may become your favorite gospel!

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Secret Scrolls is the very first examination of some forty novels in which someone discovers a new gospel. Sometimes it turns out to be a hoax; will it be debunked before it can work its mischief? If it proves genuine, will it be brought to light? Or will corrupt church officials manage to prevent it? The book evaluates what each author has to say about historical Jesus scholarship or New Testament research in general. Sometimes the authors have done their homework; other times they haven't bothered, and they wind up dishing up crazy rewrites of history and outlandish theories. These novels deal with abiding issues of faith, even without some new discovery. As soon as one engages in biblical apologetics, one has stepped onto the marshy ground of probabilistic arguments, an entirely different epistemology that automatically replaces simple faith. And so one comes to hold one's religious convictions more tentatively, having become genuinely vulnerable to new evidence. One may not remain a believer for long. On the other hand, one invites fanaticism if one's faith is dangerously predicated on the assurance that no new discovery will send one back to the drawing board. Secret Scrolls assesses what each author imagines it would take to derail and debunk Christianity. How mighty a blow must be dealt before the religion would fall? Dan Brown's notion that a married Jesus would debunk the Nicene Creed is laughable. As Wilbert Francis Howard once argued in his brief and fascinating history of New Testament research, there is a genuine «romance of New Testament scholarship,» and many of us are delighted to have the adventure continue in the speculative imaginations of capable novelists. These books can both entertain and educate, and so will Secret Scrolls.

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Liberal Protestants have produced a whole raft of "inclusive language" Bibles. But these scriptures don't come near to making the Bible acceptable to the leftist sensibilities of Liberal Christians. What would the Bible have to be like if it were to suit Liberals? How drastically would it have to be rewritten? And how ridiculous would the result look? Maybe like this.

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The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi Dowling is surely the most detailed, intricate, compelling and impressive of all the modern gospels written to update scripture and to reveal spiritual truth for a new era. Though it claims to be a channeled revelation, it is obvious that Leo (&quot;Levi&quot;) Dowling expended stupendous effort not only on content (with numerous fascinating tales, parables, and sayings) but also on form (the entire, massive work being set in iambic pentameter and hexameter). <br><br>New Testament scholar Robert M. Price (Ph.D. in Systematic Theology; Ph.D. in New Testament, Drew University), having long been intrigued with the Dowling gospel, has undertaken to study it with the tools of modern biblical research. As with the Bible, the Aquarian Gospel yields new riches of understanding once one applies the methods that traditionalist believers most fear. For there are certainly believers in The Aquarian Gospel who are as stubbornly fundamentalist as any Baptist. Price&#39;s book aims at opening up a wider vista of interpretation to these people as well as demonstrating to outsiders that the Aquarian Gospel deserves serious intention. He is friendly to the text under study and pays it due respect by scrutinizing it unflinchingly.

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Have you ever wondered what the Apostle Paul might have said about some vital topic not mentioned in his letters? Have you wished he had clarified his views on this or that? Suppose someone discovered a cache of &quot;new&quot; Pauline epistles&ndash;how exciting it would be!<br><br>Join New Testament scholar Robert M. Price as he presents a new collection of fourteen hitherto-unknown letters of Paul, plus a visionary apocalypse. Scholars will discover here an imaginative new approach to doing Pauline theology, and all readers will feel a thrill as they re-experience the charm of their first encounter with the now too-familiar Pauline texts of the canon.

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Medieval Churchmen heard the legend of Prince Siddhartha (the &quot;Bodhisattva,&quot; or &quot;Buddha-to-be&quot;) renouncing his wealth and seeking salvation as a monk, but they mistook it for the history of some Christian monk named &quot;Iodasaph&quot; (a corruption of &quot;Bodhisattva&quot;). Iodasaph was canonized as an official saint. The ironic result was that Gautama Buddha is a Roman Catholic saint! <br><br>What if such a remarkable religious hybrid actually lived? The brief pieces collected in this book depict what he might have taught, proclaiming Buddhism from the Bible! Amazingly, it turns out not to be much of a stretch! Saint Iodasaph will have you reading familiar texts with new (third?) eyes!<br><br>These vignettes originally appeared in The Christian*New Age Quarterly. One reader asked if they were genuine channeled revelations! That&#39;s high praise.

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Though the Rock Opera &quot;Jesus Christ Superstar&quot; has become a religious and musical phenomenon, beloved around the world among Christians and non-believers alike, no one has ever delved into the lyrics with the practiced eye of a professional biblical critic until now. Robert M. Price here shows in surprising detail the astonishing insight and creativity of Tim Rice&#39;s sifting and rewriting of the gospels, producing in effect a fifth, genuine gospel! The result is a complete line-by-line commentary on this Superstar Gospel.

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This book is a series of papers presented mainly at the Book of Mormon Round Table. It lays out a case for considering the Mormon scripture as the work of Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century, not an ancient document written by various Israelites in ancient America. But, author Robert M. Price argues, this is merely another case of &quot;pseudepigraphy,&quot; the genre of fictive &quot;as if&quot; authorship common to the Bible as well. Price urges readers to a new appreciation of the intricate redaction and rewriting of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, and to a positive theological estimate of this approach by Latter-day Saint Christians. Critical studies of several passages in the Book of Mormon are included.

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C.S. Lewis&#39; classic The Screwtape Letters is full of keen wit and wise counsel&ndash;if one is a Christian believer. Such a reader will find much to ponder in its pages. But suppose one begins to question whether it is the voice of mature reason that Lewis portrays as the wiles of Satan? The Needletoe Letters takes the other side, depicting the letters of advice and guidance from a veteran angel to his inexperienced nephew. Their common task? To keep Christian believers hoodwinked and flummoxed! Read this book, and see if you don&#39;t begin to have second thoughts about your faith!