The Best Books on the Lost Gospels
Most writing on the lost gospels is either breathless (“the secrets they hid from you”) or dismissive (“late heretical fantasies”). These five avoid both.
Bart Ehrman is a former evangelical and now an agnostic, and he writes as a historian. Elaine Pagels is sympathetic to the texts. Karen King specializes in close study. If you want a conservative counterweight once you have read these, Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is the strongest case for the canonical gospels.
Many of these texts are free online, and our library links them. The value of a book is having a guide alongside.
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Lost Scriptures
Bart D. Ehrman
The texts themselves in one volume, with a page of context for each. If you only buy one book on this list, buy this.
Read it alongside
Lost Christianities
Bart D. Ehrman
The companion to Lost Scriptures. Ehrman tells the story of who wrote these books and what happened to the people who read them.
The whole jar
The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
Marvin Meyer, ed.
Every text from the Nag Hammadi find, in modern English. This is a reference you will keep.
The classic argument
The Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels
Pagels's 1979 book made this a public conversation. Some of it has been refined since, and it remains the most readable case that politics shaped orthodoxy.
Go deep on one
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala
Karen L. King
Karen King's study shows what careful work on a damaged text looks like.
One lost book a week
What it says, why it was cut, and which edition is worth your money. Plus the full reading list today.