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A 1,500-year-old book that contains a previously unknown gospel has been deciphered. The ancient manuscript may have been used to provide guidance or encouragement to people seeking help for their problems, according to a researcher who has studied the text.
Written in Coptic, an Egyptian language, the opening reads (in translation):
“The Gospel of the lots of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, she to whom Gabriel the Archangel brought the good news. He who will go forward with his whole heart will obtain what he seeks. Only do not be of two minds.” [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]
Anne Marie Luijendijk, a professor of religion at Princeton University, discovered that this newfound gospel is like no other. “When I began deciphering the manuscript and encountered the word ‘gospel’ in the opening line, I expected to read a narrative about the life and death of Jesus as the canonical gospels present, or a collection of sayings similar to the Gospel of Thomas (a non-canonical text),” she wrote in her book “Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary” (Mohr Siebeck, 2014).
What she found instead was a series of 37 oracles, written vaguely, and with only a few that mention Jesus.
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