The Complete Gospels

Before it released its provocative The Five Gospels through a commercial publisher (Macmillan) last year, The Jesus Seminar in 1992 published through its own house, Polebridge Press, The Complete Gospels, a more encompassing, collaborative effort providing fresh translations of the canonical Gospels, the non-canonical Gospels and the Sayings sources. This new revised and commercially published edition of The Complete Gospels moves this prior effort out of the academy and into the hands of a general readership interested in the ancient texts that have motivated the recent quests of scholars like Meier (A Marginal Jew), Crossan (The Historical Jesus) and Sanders (The Historical Figure of Jesus). In addition to the canonical Gospels, this work contains translations of Sayings Gospels like Q, the Gospel of Mary, the infancy Gospels of Thomas and James, fragmentary Gospels like the Egerton and the Secret Gospel of Mark. Here, accompanying the lively translations of each text, are incisive introductions and notes that provide glimpses of the social, historical and literary world occupied by Jesus and the early Christian writers. The dependence of one text upon another is demonstrated through the numerous cross-references. An in-depth glossary and brief essays elaborating key issues of scholarship, e.g., synoptic puzzles, etc., round out the collection. Combining an engaging commentary, lucid and energetic translation and accessible scholarship, this Complete Gospels equips any interested reader to join Meier, Crossan and Sanders in their quest for the historical Jesus. (Jan.)