Modern apocrypha are fun! You know the sort of thing – things like the Archko Volume, or the Aquarian Gospel, or any one of a hundred or a thousand similar items. They’re all modern, they’re all fake, and they all proceed by claiming a “Vatican cover-up” or “this will shake the church to its foundations” and so forth, in a thousand predictable conspiracy claims. Almost invariably the supposed ancient text only exists in English. Invariably the supposed manuscript is “lost”.
Here’s the blurb from one example:
DO YOU DARE BELIEVE THAT JESUS DID NOT DIE ON THE CROSS . . . that He was Mary’s illegitimate son and the heir to the Macabees . . . that He married Mary Magdalene, and Barabbas was their son . . . that He wrote His own autobiography . .. that He lived to be 80 years old and died fighting the Romans at Masada . . . that His remains were finally buried in 1969 . . . and that the Russians now have the scroll which proves these disclosures and have so informed the Vatican?
These disquieting revelations are not meant to be accepted on faith. They are backed by documentary evidence!
THE JESUS SCROLL : THE MOST DISTURBING BOOK ABOUT CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY EVER PUBLISHED!
These stirring words belonged to Donovan Joyce, “The Jesus Scroll” (1972). This is a long-forgotten example of the genre. In this case the actual text is cunningly not produced, and the supposed scroll only described on page 178 in what the author says is a fictionalised narrative. You’d better believe it is fictional. I believe that there may have been a film as well. Wikipedia has some of the details of what was clearly just a money-making exercise.
This weekend I came across the twitter feed of somebody named Scott Wolter, who appears to be an American pseudo-science and pseudo-history writer, with no qualifications in either science or history that I could discover.
Text:
The Yeshua Scroll contains a passage that directly challenges the Genesis narrative as compiled by the Council of Nicaea. The text states that Adam and Eve were not the first people, but the first Jews, a distinction that reframes the entire origin story.
It then references the sons of M.F., a term Scott interprets as potentially non-human or extraterrestrial beings, who saw the daughters of men and found them pleasing. These beings came to the land of Nod, where Cain had been sent, and their children lived… (etc)
Ah yes. We’re already in familiar territory here. Eric von Daniken, please call your office.
This “Yeshua Scroll in the Green Jar” is supposedly a find in the USA – the frame has been shifted somewhat. How well it relates to the older story I don’t know, but I have read that it is basically the same idea. Possibly Wolter came across the old publication and felt that there was something to be made of it. The “scroll” is “encrypted”, supposedly.
A look at Wolter’s books page makes it clear what we’re dealing with: fiction. Stories told as entertainment and for profit, and read by the gullible.
In a way, this pseudo-history is a form of storytelling, which has an audience and from which money can be made. Once you have seen one production from this world, you have seen them all. Then you have stuff like this:
I must say that these things always leave me feeling that I need to wash my hands, however.
Will the “Yeshua Scroll” ever matter to any of us? I rather doubt it. But it is quite interesting to see a modern apocryphon being fabricated right here and now!
There is a writer/publisher in Greece named Dimosthenis Liakopoulos who writes and publishes conspiracy theory books of this kind. He also publishes other people’s book of this genre. He rose to prominence because he would buy infomercials on TV and advertise his ware. He claims that we Greeks are human alien hybrids, with the aliens coming from the star Sirius. He has gone into biblical apocrypha too, of similar kind. He is more though into fake prophesies from Fathers of the Church, as opposed to secret biblical books. Every country has this kind of people.
That’s useful to know – thank you! Yes each language group has these people, and the modern apocrypha of one country are not known in another.
Posting this after the 6th of June 2026 is crazy… as if what Scott Wolter was saying is complete nonsense
People are indeed, strange..
I imagine he will claim it’s a translation error.