Every book by Jeremy Payton, grouped by subject, with what each one covers.
The books that stood in the Bible for centuries, then slipped out of most Protestant editions.
The Apocrypha
Eighteen books that stood in the Bible for centuries and then slipped out of most Protestant editions, brought together in one volume. Here are the stories of Tobit, Judith and Susanna, the wisdom of Solomon and Sirach, the wars of the Maccabees, the visions of Esdras, and the prayers and psalms that travelled with them. Clear translations and the historical and theological context of each text make these hidden narratives readable for anyone.
The fallen angels, their sons and the man who walked with God.
The Books of Enoch
Three books carry Enoch's name, written centuries apart in three languages, and this volume brings them together. 1 Enoch tells of the Watchers who came down to earth, the birth of the giants and the patriarch's journeys through the heavens; 2 Enoch, preserved in Slavonic, follows him through the seven heavens; 3 Enoch, from the Hebrew mystical tradition, turns him into the angel Metatron. The commentary traces how these visions of angels and the end of days shaped early Jewish and Christian thought.
The Book of Giants
The Watchers came down from heaven, took human wives, and their children were the giants: the Nephilim of Genesis, the "men of renown". This book survived only in fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, and grows out of the same tradition as 1 Enoch. Translation and commentary reconstruct the story, read the Aramaic text against its Enochic roots, and follow the legend of a giant who may have outlived the flood.
The Christianity that did not make it into the canon.
The Gnostic Gospels
Fourteen texts from the Christianity that did not make it into the canon, most of them buried in a jar at Nag Hammadi until 1945. Here Thomas collects the sayings of Jesus, Mary Magdalene teaches the disciples, and other voices speak of a hidden knowledge, a divine spark in every person and a world made by a lesser god. Translated and set in their context, they show how many ways there were of being Christian in the first centuries.
The Gospel of Thomas
No story, no miracles, no cross: only a hundred and fourteen sayings of Jesus, "the living Jesus", written down by Thomas and buried at Nag Hammadi until 1945. Some echo the Gospels of the New Testament, others turn them inside out, pointing to a kingdom that is already here and within. This new translation, with a commentary on each saying, sets Thomas beside the canonical Gospels and shows why it still unsettles readers.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
A gospel in which Mary Magdalene is not a penitent but a teacher: after the resurrection she consoles the frightened disciples and passes on what Jesus told her alone, a path of inner knowledge that Peter refuses to accept from a woman. Rediscovered in the late nineteenth century, the text is given here in full, with a commentary on its origins, its teaching and the place of women in the earliest Christian communities.
The last book of the New Testament, vision by vision.
The Book of Revelation
The last book of the New Testament is also the hardest to read: seven seals, seven trumpets, a beast rising from the sea, a woman clothed with the sun, a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. This edition of The Book of Revelation gives the full text with a commentary that follows John's visions in order, explains where they came from and what their symbols meant to the first readers, sets them beside the older apocalyptic writings they answer, and draws out the message underneath the imagery: divine justice, the struggle between good and evil, and the hope of a redeemed creation.