The library · Edition and sources
The Secret Book of James
Mark M. Mattison · Translated text
Outside the canon. The Secret Book of James is not in the Bible of any tradition on the Scriptures shelf. It is hosted here as a historical record. The Scriptures shelf →
Reading appearance
Accessibility options
Saved in this browser and shared between texts. Labels and line patterns remain in every theme.
About this reading layout
Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.
These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.
Prologue
Since you asked me to send you a secret book revealed to Peter and me by the Lord, and I could neither turn you down nor talk to you (directly), [I’ve written] it in Hebrew letters and have sent it to you – and to you alone. But as a minister of the salvation of the saints, take care not to tell too many people about this book, which the Savior didn’t want to tell all twelve of us, the disciples. But blessed are those who will be saved through the faith of this message.
Ten months ago, I sent you another secret book that the Savior revealed to me. But think of that one as revealed 2 to me, James. And this one […]