Nag Hammadi Fictions...

A very engaging novel that weaves the circumstances surrounding the unlikely discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1948 together with humans recovering from the trauma of WWII air attacks, the loss of limbs, set in the scenario of ominously increasing hostilities between Jews, Arabs, and British expats in Egypt, is "Resurrection" by Tucker Malarkey. It combines a good, engaging story of lost souls yearning for connection with their search for a more open, encompassing, wholistic expression of Christianity that may have gotten lost with the suppression of texts only recovered in the 20th Century. Dump Dan Brown's tome for this one, a 'thinking person's Davinci Code'! Encouraging to see novels that understand that our quest for love, truth and the sacred are intricately entwined. Though the novel's characters may overestimate the revolutionary quality of the texts (just as Dan Brown's writings), the questions are right on: What did happen to women's presence in the early church? Were there female apostles? Thankfully, we also have evidence from elsewhere to suggest this, not only in gnosticizing documents. See for example some new scholarly texts on this topic: Patricia Cox Miller's Women in Early Christianity, Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek eds. The Ordination of Women in the Early Church or A Woman's Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity, with Margaret MacDonald and Janet Tulloch.