The Forgotten History of Mary’s Gospels
Philip Jenkins for Time writes about the history of the Catholic Church and women, particularly Jesus’ mother Mary. Early Christians developed alternative scriptures around the stories of Mary, which scholars later called the Protevangelium. Jenkins writes, “From a scholar’s point of view, what makes these current arguments [about women and the church] so ironic is that for much of the church’s history, it had at its heart a body of texts that together constitute almost a fifth gospel, and one devoted to a woman of near-divine status.”