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Although I only read the introduction, I can already tell this book is going to be extremely problematic. There’s no shortage of incest, physical violence, rape, torture, and other morally wrong sorts of crime. It was extremely gross to have to read the graphic descriptions of the body parts of these characters, especially the older characters. There are a lot of aspects of this book that I don’t understand, especially the decision to include people who are either way too young or way too old to be normal. This book really isn’t something to be read while eating. I wish I had read more of it (to get it over with,) but I was busy with other homework and honestly lost track of time.

From the get-go, the Gospel mentions that Jesus does not present himself in front of his disciples as himself, but rather as a child. That’s really strange to think about, but I don’t have much experience with religious texts, so I can’t really compare it to any other works. The lack of verb usage is also pretty odd, and I imagine it would be very hard to read if not for the addition of the words in brackets. This text portrays the other disciples as weaker when compared to Judas, and like the Gospel of Mary, highlights the relationship between Jesus and one specific disciple. It’s also worth noting that in this text, Jesus is very carefree and lenient with his disciples. There’s a lot of [ … ] sections that make the text very confusing to read. The disciples have a troubling vision and Jesus simply tells them, in essence, to get over it because bad things happen all the time and there’s nothing we can do to stop them from happening. Judas then also has a vision where he is stoned to death by the twelve disciples, and Jesus responds to this vision by telling him his “star has led you astray.” He’s told that, as the 13th disciple, he will “be cursed by the other generations.” Jesus teaches Judas about cosmology, among other things. The Gospel ends with Judas betraying Jesus. This was really hard to read, especially with certain lines being omitted. It was like listening to a radio broadcast that was frequently interrupted with static.

For a text that’s as dated and as inconsistently available as The Gospel of Mary, it introduces a lot of radical ideas, especially considering the age it originates from. Ideas such as the concept that there is no sin, that Jesus held Mary (a woman) in a higher regard than men, etc. It differs from previous texts massively, making the introduction of the texts to Christianity at its time of discovery revolutionary (especially when noted that, at the time, most of Christianity was spread orally.) According to the introduction, over 85% of known Christian literature from the first two centuries has been lost. It’s practically impossible to grasp the “truth” of Christianity, so all one can do is collect the few pieces of literature that remain and make hardly-educated guesses on the contents of said lost literature. As a result, churches varied massively in perspectives of Christianity. There was no “commonly established church order or chain of authority,” A lot of well known hallmarks of Christianity, at the time, weren’t present. Early documents around this period showed great strife in matters such as circumcision, Jewish food laws, etc. Although the publication was a rocky process, it was ready by 1955. Since then, many new fragments have been added and edited. It’s possible that the lack of copies of the Gospel of Mary in the first place was due to active suppression, but it will never be known if that is the case.

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