In 2023 the Society of Biblical Literature released a print edition of the newest scholarly translation of the Bible: the “updated edition” of the New Revised Standard Version, or NRSVue. This new version introduced minor alterations to the NRSV, which was itself a revision of the Revised Standard Version first published in 1952. New translations and critical editions of the Bible are nothing new in biblical studies; the field is grounded in new discoveries and developments in textual criticism. The unending series of new texts and translations of the Bible is a testament to the endless ingenuity of modern biblical studies. It is also, however, a constant reminder of the vulnerability of the modern Bible.
By “vulnerability” I mean the way the persistent revisability of the Bible exposes this venerable book to the possibility of unseen manipulation and mischief. New versions remind readers that the authoritative and timeless Bible is also vulnerable. When the RSV was released, some readers sensed an anti-Christian agenda. A 1960 Air Force Reserve Manual warned of “Communist” infiltration of “our churches” and held up the RSV as one such example of this covert attack. The Cold War era was rife with conspiracy theories about godless Communist plots against the Christian U.S.; it is little surprise the Bible was one more site of ideological vulnerability.
Biblical vulnerability has not always been understood as part of a Communist plot. It inspired varied conspiratorial thinking among a U.S. public that, regardless of religious affiliation, understands the Bible as a deeply meaningful U.S. symbol. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s ignited the hope for, and fear of, new revelations about Jesus and Christian origins. When no bombshell discovery emerged from the desert, disappointment (or relief) turned to conspiracy: what were Israeli archaeologists at Hebrew University hiding? What shocking new truth was being suppressed by Roman Catholic overseers of the “Scrollery”? Every new headline-generating manuscript discovery, from the Secret Gospel of Mark to the Gospel of Judas to the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, has revived anxiety and anticipation. Would the totemic truth of the Bible at last succumb to some new text (real or forged)? Would the vulnerable Bible at last topple?
Since the 1960s, these fantasies and fears have inspired a little-noticed genre of novel that I explore in my newest book, Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible. In these novels a (fictional) new gospel has been discovered that strikes at the heart of the vulnerable Bible. These Gospels of John, Matthias, Mary, Judas, and even Jesus reveal that the Christian messiah was a charlatan, or power-mad; he was a Jewish revolutionary, or a preacher of universalist peace; he was an opponent of organized religion or even, in one novel, a woman. This new gospel’s secrets are dangerous; conspirators scramble in the shadows to suppress the truth that the protagonists have stumbled into. These dozens of novels, appearing year after year, exaggerate fears and hopes circulating the vulnerable Bible. Some themes are familiar from popular “Secrets of the Bible”-style documentaries: hidden truths, religious conspiracies, political alliances, hocking secrets that could change the world. (Many of these themes appeared also in the mega-popular novel The Da Vinci Code and its movie adaptation, apart from the key element of a newly discovered first-century text.) The novels, which I call “gospel thrillers,” amplify the stakes in biblical discovery by introducing all the formulaic tools of thrillers: assassins (sometimes sent from the Vatican), conspiracies, double-crosses, and an international race against time for the truth.
These novels also draw attention to the experts responsible securing biblical knowledge: academics (ranging from harmless to adventurous to devious), “native” informants in the Middle East, anachronistic monks at Mount Athos, scheming cardinals at the Vatican “Secret Archives.” From the archaeological “discovery” to the moment of shocking revelation, these novels question the motives and agendas of those knowledge brokers responsible for producing “the Bible,” whose motives are rarely under consideration in the semi-scientific and objective world of modern biblical studies.
Gospel thrillers traffic in hyperbole and distortion: I have yet to meet an archaeologist who is also a Vatican assassin or a paleographer attempting to extort the church for millions (at least as far as I know). But behind these outlandish conspiratorial plotlines lies a real undercurrent of anxiety about biblical vulnerability. In many ways, these outrageous stories make more palatable the real truth about the modern Bible: precisely because it is not one stable “thing,” but an amalgam and reconstruction undergoing endless revision and reinterpretation, it will always remain anxiously, but perhaps productively, vulnerable.
by Andrew S. Jacobs, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of World Religions