The Lost Gospel

The book examines a manuscript that is a copy of an older one. The original probably was from the 1st century C.E. The authors make a number of points:

The document, Joseph and Asenath, is really about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The names were changed, as Dragnet says, to protect the innocent.

The document says that they Mary was not a Jew and Jesus was. They got married and had 2 sons, one of which was executed later.

There were a variety of forms of Christianity up until the Nicene Creed when these other forms were basically gotten rid of.

There is an emphasis on 'sacred sex.'

There is a very complicated plot involving Romans and the local Jewish readers to kill Jesus, kidnap Mary and kill the two sons.

Asenath was very rich, a pagan princess and lived in a tower.

The character of Mary Magdalene is molded on the goddess Artemis.

Although there is a lot about the bridal chamber and sacred sex there is not a word about those who are lesbians, gays, bisexual or transgendered.

Mary Magdalene may have feared Peter and gone into hiding after the death (and resurrection?) of Jesus.

One of the reasons for killing Jesus was the fear that he was making a move to become a High Priest.

Relatives of Jesus were hunted down the years and killed off.

So, that much is rather interesting. One of the appendices includes the entire Joseph and Massenet story translated and that's where I found a problem. The book up to this point focuses totally on Joseph being Jesus and Massenet being Mary. The problem is that, when you actually read the transcript, you find that there are some things that really, really don't fit.

(The following deals with the transcript itself.)

The story claims that Joseph/Jesus is 'the magistrate of all the land of Egypt, because king Pharaoh put him in charge over all the land.' This part has nothing at all to do with Jesus. He was not a ruler of the land and he didn't have a direct line to the Pharaoh.

It gets more interesting. Massenet apparently knows Joseph/Jesus's background. She refers to him and says 'Who was sold and is not one of our people? Is he not the son of a Shepard from Canaan? He was arrested when he attempted adultery with his mistress, and his lord put him in a dark prison. ' She goes on to say that the pharaoh brought him out of prison to interpret a dream. Let's look at this quote. It says that:

Joseph was a shepherd. The Bible establishes rather well that he was a carpenter.

He was arrested for adultery and put into prison? Where did this come from?

This has nothing at all to do with the Jesus of the Bible. If the manuscript is about Jesus then why would it have these things in it that are totally wrong?

Further, when Joseph/Jesus arrives at the house the manuscript says he was pharaoh's second in command and was riding a chariot made entirely of gold. I may be wrong here but isn't gold considered a 'soft' metal? How could such a metal be used to entirely make a chariot? Wouldn't the chariot collapse once someone was in it or be torn apart when the horses started up?

The story adds that anyone who worships God cannot have sex with any 'foreign' woman who worships other Gods.

The Pharaoh placed crowns on gold on the heads of Joseph and Ethane.

It seems to me that the author cherry-picked what was reasonable from the story and totally ignored all the weird and unacceptable parts (such as Joseph/Jesus ending up in prison.) This lowers my opinion of the book considerably.