Lost Gospels From the Fourth Century

If you've never heard of the Nag Hammadi documents, think Dead Sea Scrolls but less well known. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures contain English-language translations of fourth-century papyrus gospels unearthed in Egypt in 1945. I relied on an earlier compilation of the translations in my research for The Awakening series.

Inside, you'll find many lost texts the official Catholic Church rejected, including the Gospel of Mary, the Apocalypse of Adam (where Adam speaks to his son Seth), the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Thomas, and two I used in the Awakening series, The Trimorphic Protennoia and The Thunder, Perfect Mind. (You'll see reference to the latter in Book 3, The Conflagration, which will be released May 17, 2017.) Both of those texts are poetic and both lend themselves to a focus on the feminine aspects of God. I liked reading them because they interested me even if I hadn't been looking for inspiration for my fiction.

Other texts I found hard to follow, and still others seemed so out of whack (that's a technical term) to my modern-day eyes that I wasn't surprised the Church disregarded them. Whether they made sense at the time and were rejected as contrary to official Church teachings, I don't know.

This edition in particular of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures makes me cheer for Amazon and other platforms for selling books on line. When I first learned about these manuscripts, the compilation of translated versions was only available through academic publishers at a cost of over $700. Later, I bought the edition I still have through Amazon for about $60. As I write this, the price is $12.99 for Kindle and $15.48 for paperback, with many used copies available for less.

If you are interested in the origins of Christianity and how and why some of the earliest texts were excluded from it, this is well worth the read.

God Is Not One

This week's book recommendation.

Since my early twenties when I started seriously questioning my religious beliefs, I've enjoyed reading books about religion. Not books that preach, but books that explore. Questions about when and how the universe was created, whether there is a god, many gods, or no god, and the various ways people rely upon religion to explain and navigate the world fascinate me, as does how religious beliefs affect people's relationships. That last point inspired me to write my Awakening thriller series, where characters with genuine, deeply-held beliefs oppose one another. All of which is why I love the book God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run The World by Stephen Prothero.

Prothero's Reasons For Writing About Differences In Religious Beliefs

Prothero's premise is that while people often say things like "we all worship the same God," we actually "...live in a world where religion seems as likely to detonate a bomb as to defuse one." (See Prothero's Introduction.) No one tries to argue that every political party, type of government, or economic system is the same, as the current U.S. presidential primary races highlight. Yet popular culture and even religious scholars often view different religious as merely varying ways to get to the same place. 

The Eight Religions The Book Discusses

Throughout God Is Not One, Prothero shows the differences among Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba Religion, Judaism, and Daoism. Why these and not others are included in itself raises interesting questions. Prothero organizes his analysis using a four-point structure. For each religion, he examines:

• the problem
• the solution (or religious goal)
• the technique (for reaching/achieving the solution)
• an exemplar who illustrates the path from problem to solution 

A Timely Example Of Differences

As an example of differences in the first two points, Prothero explains how Christianity sees the problem as sin, with salvation as the solution. But in Buddhism, suffering is the problem and awakening is the solution. In contrast to both of those religions, in Judaism, the problem is exile; the solution is returning to God. I find these comparisons particularly timely for the U.S., which is now in the midst of the presidential primary election season. The race includes candidates who normally court the vote of a specific segment of the Christian population, argue the U.S. is a Christian nation, and deplore businesses who attempt to recognize that not all their customers are Christian. Yet because the primaries are hotly contested this year in New York, those same candidates have needed to attempt to broaden their appeal to non-Christian voters. I confess to not following every single thing politicians say (shocking, I know), but I feel safe in guessing that one way politicians attempt to deal with such conundrums is to assert that we all worship the same God and hold the same values.

Who Shouldn't Read This Book 

If you're uninterested in religion or philosophy, God Is Not One won't appeal to you. But if you are curious about what, how, and why cultures and individuals profess certain religious beliefs, I think you'll find this fascinating. Also, while the book is well-researched, the tone is fairly conversation, so you won't feel like you're reading a textbook.

If you read God Is Not One and have thoughts about it or can suggest other similar books, please share below.

Sin, Sex and the Art of Persuasive Writing

My parents used to subscribe to a Catholic magazine with a column for young adults. When I was in high school, I read one of the columns that advised teenagers that the Bible clearly showed pre-marital sex was wrong - just look at the Sixth and Ninth commandments. I didn't remember anything in the Ten Commandments about pre-marital sex. I checked my parents' Bible (no Internet at that time, so I used the index - remember those?). The Sixth Commandment prohibits adultery. The Ninth prohibits coveting "thy neighbor's wife" and his goods (which raises a whole other issue of women being considered possessions, but that's for another post). I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that the Bible didn't say anything about sex before marriage or the author would have quoted it, not fudged. I also viewed every article in that magazine from then on with great skepticism.

That experience illustrates two important facets of persuading people. One is well-known to most lawyers -- that of putting your best argument first. If your first argument is weak, your reader or listener may never get beyond it. The second is credibility. Because I checked the source material and found it didn't say what the article's author claimed it did, I no longer found that author, or the publication, credible. Both lost the opportunity to persuade me not only of that one point, but of anything.

These principles apply to fiction, too. Novelists all are attempting to persuade readers. To do what? To believe in the fictional world the author created and to care about the characters as if they were real people. That's a big part of what's happening, or not, when customers in a bookstore or on-line read the first paragraph or two of a book. That first page either pulls the reader in or it doesn't. While a lot of authors feel frustrated that potential buyers judge a book by reading no more than the first page (assuming they've liked the cover in the first place), most of us do exactly that when we browse books. That's why I rewrite the first page of my novels close to a hundred times before publication.

Credibility also matters. This morning I revised a scene where a woman exits the River City high rise complex and hurries through Chicago's South Loop after dark. A stranger starts to follow her. What I want the reader to wonder at that point is "Who is the stranger? What does he want? Will Sophia reach her office safely?" But if I'd said she was walking through Lincoln Park instead, someone who knows Chicago's neighborhoods well would forget about the story and wonder: "Isn't River City in the South Loop? Does this author know Chicago at all? Doesn't she check Google maps?" With that one error, my reader is no longer persuaded that the scene or the character is real. If I've otherwise done a good job, the reader might forgive me and read on. But if too many errors break the narrative, it becomes more likely the reader won't return to the book.

So there you have it - sin, sex, and persuasive writing. And you thought it was just a catchy title.

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Lisa M. Lilly is the author of Amazon occult best seller The Awakening. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in numerous print and on-line magazines, including Parade of Phantoms, Strong Coffee, and Hair Trigger, and a short film of the title story of her collection The Tower Formerly Known as Sears and Two Other Tales of Urban Horror was recently produced under the title Willis Tower. She is currently working on The Awakening, Book II: The Unbelievers.

The Awakening for Kindle: http://amzn.to/pFCcN6

For Nook: http://bit.ly/15bViBm

For Kobo: http://bit.ly/1gTrxdW

Visit Lisa's website:  www.lisalilly.com