The Gospel They Smuggled Out of the Pope’s Library

One book claims to be the eyewitness account Rome buried for fifteen centuries. Millions believe it. The manuscripts have other ideas.

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There’s a Gospel that isn’t in the Bible. According to the supporters of this gospel, it’s the one account of Jesus the church couldn’t allow you to read, because it tells you who he really was and what he came to say. A monk is said to have lifted it from the private library of a sleeping pope, read it, and converted. Since then it’s been printed in dozens of languages, handed out at mosques, quoted by presidents, and treated by a huge slice of the planet as the single most dangerous book Christianity ever tried to make disappear.

And if even half of what the gospel’s defenders claim were true, it would do more damage to orthodox Christian belief than every other lost gospel combined.