A new gospel from Mary Magdalene was found in 1896
Let’s look at the ‘Gospel of Mary’—as more of it surfaces
Published in
10 min readMar 22, 2024
In 1896, a German scholar named Carl Reinhardt was at a marketplace in Cairo and noticed an old book in the Coptic language. He found in it four early Christian texts—with one totally unknown to history.
Though pages were missing, more scenes from the life of Jesus were told by a female follower, Mary Magdalene herself. It was all pretty shocking.
I’m thinking about The Gospel According to Mary as two ‘new’ fragments have just been reported.
Delayed by two world wars, the text was published in 1955.
By then, two more fragments of the work had been found, both in Greek and from the 3rd century. The book found in the Cairo marketplace seemed to be from the 5th century. Otherwise, no dating was possible.
Christian history had no references to the text, even on the lists of ‘banned’ books. Yet it seemed to have circulated widely, in at least two languages.
It was all just a mystery.
