Pseudepigrapha
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Basic Information

The term Pseudepigrapha, ("false writing") refers to works attributed to someone other than the true author, and so strictly speaking, a number of books of the Bible can be considered pseudepigraphic; but historically, the term has been fixed to Jewish religious works written between 200 BC and AD 200.

I am going to stretch the term further and use it as a grab-bag for all sorts of works that fall outside the biblical canon. Some of these are considered heretical by most mainstream Christian churches; some were considered orthodox enough by the early Church Fathers, but just not divinely-inspired; some are actually accepted by certain branches of Christianity and some have recently been rediscovered by the public. Some have been lost, and only exist as fragments quoted in other sources. At least one of the following is purely hypothetical and may have never existed.

Here are a few.

  • Acts of Thomas
  • Book of Enoch
  • Book of Jubilees
  • Gnostic Gospels
  • Gospel of Nicodemus
  • Gospel of Thomas
  • Life of Adam and Eve
  • Q Document
  • Protoevangelium of James
  • Shepherd of Hermas
  • The Da Vinci Code

Sources

Game and Story Use

  • These works are less-known than the canonical books of the Bible, and so you can crib from them without your players spotting it.
  • A newly-discovered Lost Book of the Bible that had been suppressed by the early Church could make a possible McGuffin
  • One way to help define a fictional sect and give them a more exotic flavor is to have them revere non-canonical texts such as the Gnostic Gospels.
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