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The Gospel of Thomas is frequently described in popular culture as a suppressed secret gospel that preserves an alternative Christianity based on hidden knowledge. This article argues that such descriptions flatten a far more complicated text and scholarly debate. Thomas is a collection…
Exorcism was one of the practices through which early Christians publicly distinguished their religious claims from surrounding ritual cultures. This article surveys Christian exorcistic discourse before Constantine, concentrating on Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. It argues that exorcism functioned simultaneously as pastoral…
This article asks when Christian theology can properly be said to have begun. Rather than locating its origins primarily in the second-century Apologists, the major patristic theologians, or the conciliar period, it argues that theological reasoning was already present within the earliest Christian…
This article examines Christian political allegiance under the authority of Scripture in an age in which political identity can become a rival source of belonging, moral certainty, and quasi-religious devotion. It argues that the Bible neither authorises political withdrawal nor permits the Church…
Christian theology confesses simultaneously that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, remains fully human, and is eternally the divine Son. Yet these affirmations generate a question that is often acknowledged only indirectly: where, and in what sense, is the…
When Christians call a gathering or movement a revival, they do more than report heightened religious activity. They attribute unusual agency to God, claim that this agency can be known, participate in shaping the movement through the act of naming it, and distribute…
The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, sometimes called the Gospel of the Egyptians, is one of the most complex surviving texts associated with ancient Gnostic tradition. Preserved in two Coptic witnesses in Nag Hammadi Codices III and IV, the work combines…
Christian influence is commonly measured by reach, access, authority, or institutional success. Scripture subjects it to a more demanding judgment. Jesus places authority beneath the cross, the pastoral epistles test leadership through observable character, and the fruit of the Spirit reveals whether public…
This article examines the contrasting styles and theological meanings of baptism in the Books of Jeu and in contemporary Christian practice. Preserved in the Coptic Bruce Codex, the Books of Jeu present a distinctive late ancient Christian ritual system in which Jesus directs…
The Books of Jeu, preserved in the Coptic Bruce Codex, present one of the most unusual ritual worlds to survive from late ancient Christianity. Rather than offering a narrative gospel or a collection of moral teachings, these texts depict the risen Jesus as…
The discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices is often presented in popular media as evidence that alternative Christian writings preserve a more authentic form of Christianity than the New Testament. This article challenges that conclusion by distinguishing between the physical antiquity of a…
The palimpsests preserved at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai contain an important body of erased Christian Palestinian Aramaic Gospel material. Recovered through modern multispectral imaging, these fragments provide evidence for both the history of biblical translation and the Christological memory of Palestinian…