The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities

Using the same "detective seeking the truth" approach that made Breaking the Da Vinci Code a bestseller, Bock takes a critical look at claims about "secret" Gospel accounts and examines sources related to early church history. His easy-to-understand writing style enables lay readers to adeptly compare extrabiblical materials with Scripture---then form their own judgments. 256 pages, hardcover from Nelson.

What others are saying about The Missing Gospels

"Darrell Bock has written a timely and valuable study for anyone curious about the question of lost or missing gospels. The Missing Gospels is a breath of sanity!"
-Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies, Penn State

"Those who don’t want their prejudices disturbed will want to avoid this book. Those with an open mind and readiness to learn from scholarship . . . read with profit."
-Larry Hurtado, Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

"Darrell Bock patiently, and accessibly, sifts through all the relevant issues and offers much-needed guidance to those who want to discern fact from fiction. If you read only one book on this issue, this is it!"
-Andreas J. Kostenberger, PhD, Professor of New Testament and Greek, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

"The Missing Gospels is a unique resource for those who wish to respond to the ’new school’ with accuracy and confidence."
-Frederica Mathewes-Green, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition Commentator

"A necessary book that corrects many still fashionable but even more questionable hypotheses about the origin of the Gospels, the Nag Hammadi texts, and the development of Christian theology in the first two centuries AD."
-Prof. Dr. Martin Hengel, Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Ancient Judaism, University of Tubingen, Germany
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For a brief overview from Dr. Bock on the contents of the Gospel of Judas along with other materials, please visit www.thomasnelson.com/missinggospels.

The wild success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has spawned a thriving cottage industry of both supporters and critics. One of Brown's more controversial assertions is that the emergence of Christian orthodoxy was based not on its merit but on the politics of the winning side. Here, Bock sums up the evangelical perspective as he challenges the idea that orthodoxy "emerged" at all. Rather, he argues, it survived its many challenges in the early centuries of the Christian church because it best reflected the thoughts and teachings of Jesus and the apostles. The author, who teaches New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, considers the idea that Christianity needs to be "reimagined"-reformed in the image of recent archeological and literary discoveries-to be an ill-advised attempt to rewrite history. He takes on those scholars who want to reinterpret Christianity in light of early Gnostic teachings that denied the oneness of the Father and the Son and spiritualized the gospel stories into myths. Bock recognizes this is pretty sophisticated stuff, and offers the reader a helpful chapter outlining times, names and ideas, providing a useful framework for the rest of his book. While not conclusively proving his thesis, Bock does provide a lively and readable survey of competing beliefs in Christianity's earliest days. (Aug. 8) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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Reviewed by Jordan (Wheaton, IL), July 27, 2006

Darrell Bock has written an excellent followup book to his "Breaking The Da Vinci Code" (2004). Bock notes in the preface that "for more than ten years I have wanted to write this book for a popular audience... I would do this not primarily for those who study this material as a vocation, but for those who were hearing about it." Thus, the targeted audience makes this book as readable as it could be, yet coming from a top-notch scholar like Darrell Bock, it is also full of great information regarding such topics as Gnosticism, early Christian diversity, and orthodoxy in the early church (specifically the first two centuries). While dealing indirectly with some of the claims from The Da Vinci Code, this book deals more directly with the claims of Walter Bauer and the New School as well as the claims of Bart Ehrman's "Lost Christianities" (2003) and "Lost Scriptures" (2003) and others. The table of contents are as follows: 1) Making a scorecard: The Periods and Players of Early Christianity 2) Discussion fo a Key Alternative View: About Gnosticism and Its Definition 3) Dating the Origin of Gnosticism 4) Early Christianity's Diversity and Historical Judgments 5) The Claims of Walter Bauer and the Roots of the New School 6) The Nature of God and Creation, Part 1 7) The Nature of God and Creation, Part 2 8) Jesus: Divine and/or Human? Part 1 9) Jesus: Divine and/or Human? Part 2 10) The Nature of Humanity's Redemption: Spiritual or Also Physical? Part 1 11) The Nature of Humanity's Redemption: Spiritual or Also Physical? Part 2 12) Jesus' Death: Knowledge, Sin, and Salvation, Part 1 13) Jesus' Death: Knowledge, Sin, and Salvation, Part 2 14) Conclusion: The New School, the Missing Gospels, Alternative Christianities, and Orthodoxy Each chapter ends with a Summary and 3-4 Study Questions to help the reader make sure reader make sure they understood the key points in the chapter. Highly recommended!

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