Other early writings

Ancient writings outside the Bibles most churches use. They are here to read beside the Bible, for what they show of their times and of the people who kept them.

• 1 EnochThe Book of Enoch · 108 chapters1 Enoch is an ancient Jewish writing told in the voice of Enoch, the ancestor of Noah who “walked with God” (Genesis 5:21–24).Scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (and its sister church in Eritrea); not in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant Bibles.
• JubileesThe Book of Jubilees · 50 chaptersJubilees is an ancient Jewish retelling of Genesis and the start of Exodus, from the creation to the exodus from Egypt, given as what an angel of the presence dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai.Scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (and its sister church in Eritrea); not in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant Bibles.
• The Gospel of MaryThe Good News According to Mary · Translated for this siteThe Gospel of Mary is an early Christian writing in which the risen Savior answers his disciples’ questions and leaves them, and Mary, most likely Mary Magdalene, comforts them and tells them what he showed her in a vision: how the soul rises past the powers that try to hold it.In no church’s Bible. No ancient writer is known to mention it, and it was unknown until a copy came to light in 1896.

1 Enoch and Jubilees are R. H. Charles’s translations, published in 1917 and in the public domain in the United States; each keeps his chapter and verse numbers and the marks he uses to show where the ancient copies differ. The Gospel of Mary is the site’s own translation, from the Coptic and the Greek.