Jesus: The Unauthorized Version

by Mian Ridge (Introduction)

Chronicles the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus Christ, based on the texts of the Gnostic gospels and other early Christian writings that were not included in the authorized version of the New Testament. Original. 40,000 first printing.

Genres: Religion, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2007

Reviews

[Jamie]

A good summary if you want only the gnostic snippets pertaining to Jesus’s birth, life, and death, presented chronologically. Not much in the way of context or in-depth study, though. The best yikes moments: 14-year-old Mary; baby Jesus being a dick.

[Jehiel]

Nice starter pack for a wild adventure into the pre~roman Christianity

[Garrett Dawson]

The summaries are more interesting than the old language texts but an interesting read nonetheless. Worth it if you are interested in religious history.

[Erika Holderness]

Good read, interesting.

[Wulfgar's Papa]

I was expecting a lot more background information on the origins of the stories about Jesus. The stories were very cryptic and pretty boring for the most part.
I was hoping it would answer my question:
Who wrote the stories?
Who decided which stories got included in the bible?
Are they original or have they been edited to fit better with the rest of the bible?
It did bring up some new questions though.
Why is so little written about Jesus?
Why did they wait so long after Jesus's passing before starting to write about him?
Is what we think about Jesus today the same as it was in the first 3 centuries AD?

[Robert]

This book is adifferent perspective on the non-canonical books of the Biblr. Mian Ridge sliced Jesus life into 10 sections based on the age of Jesus and quoted sections of non-canonical books (The Nag Hammadi Library, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mary [Magdalene:], etc.) that were appropriate to the age-section she defined. It's OK, but hardly exhaustive. She only has a couple of pages of each section with *her* perspective, which I found interesting, but short. It's an OK book. It's an acceptable way of stepping lightly into the non-canonical Gospels.

[Jon]

Kind of an annoying format, but a provocative read. Leaves anyone with a Christian upbringing much to chew on, and many questions to further explore about the life of Jesus and what to make of the canonized Bible.

[George]

Quit a different view of Jesus.
But it does help explain some of the happenings to the early Christians.