I remember a book in the early 1970's that they made into a tv mini series. Called "The Word". It was about a book publisher that discovers that a conspiracy of people had created another discovered book of the bible. But it was all an elaborate forgery.
Knowing the Satanist tell us everything they do in book and film it leads me to wonder if the Dead Sea Scrolls are fake entirely. Or the Nag Haggami Scrolls. Who knows?
The Word (novel)
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The Word
The Word - Novel Dustcover.jpg
The Word first edition cover.
Author Irving Wallace
Country United States
Language English
Genre Mystery
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication date
March 27, 1972
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 576 pp (first edition)
ISBN 0-6712-1153-6
The Word is a 1972 mystery thriller novel by Irving Wallace, which explores the origin of the New Testament of the Bible.
The plot of the novel is based around the discovery within Roman ruins of a new gospel written by Jesus' younger brother, James in the first century. In the gospel, many facts of Jesus' life, including the years not mentioned in the Bible, are revealed not to be as factual as they were once thought to be. Steven Randall, a divorced public relations executive running his own company in New York City, is the man hired by New Testament International, an alliance of American and European Bible publishers, to give publicity to James' Gospel as published by them. The project has been top-secret for six years, and now it is about to be unveiled to a world long in need of Christian revival. However, as Steven gets more involved in the project he runs into several questionable circumstances, as radical clerics centered in Central Europe oppose the publication of the document, since it would give ammunition for the conservative churches to keep the flow of worship from the top to the bottom, instead of bringing the faith to the masses. A struggle for control of the World Council of Churches, the suspicious absence in the project of archeologist Prof. Agusto Monti, the original discoverer – and whose daughter Angela is a potential love interest for Steve –, and the potential notion that the newly discovered gospel itself is a forgery made in the 20th century instead of a legitimate historical document, all are guaranteed to make Steve question the worth of the new job he's undertaking, and the newly re-found faith in God he acquired along with it.
Locales
New York City, Steve's place of work and regular abode.
Oak City, Wisconsin, Steve's hometown (fictional; may be based on Oak Creek and/or Pleasant Prairie).
London, England, where Steve meets Dr. Bernard Jeffries and Dr. Florian Knight
Amsterdam, Netherlands, headquarters of the New Testament International project, and of Maertin de Vroome's Westerkerk.
Paris, France, home of Henri Aubert's lab at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique
Mainz, Germany home of Karl Hennig's printing press
Simonopetra Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece
Rome, Italy, base of the Monti family, and its former Roman seaport Ostia Antica, place of the discovery of the Gospel According to James
Milan, Italy, where Steve first meets Angela
Topics
Wallace touches on several topics related to the origin of the Bible, and current issues of Christianity, while writing the book:
Histories of several real-life discoveries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, their publications and exhibitions.
The struggle between Christianity's conservatives, who want to keep control of the existing churches by emphasizing hierarchies, and the liberals/radicals, who want to bring Christianity to the masses by loosening control and humanizing the message of the gospel.
The struggle for Christian ecumenism to occur in light of the conservative/liberal struggle mentioned above.
Radiocarbon dating, translation of ancient languages, proofreading, editing and printing – important processes in the making of a Bible. The compilation of the King James Version of the Bible is also touched upon.
The character of Maertin de Vroome, a fictional leader in the Dutch Reformed Church and leader of the radicals, cites Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich as major influences in his thought and personal opposition to the new Bible project.
Commercial Reception
The Word was a New York Times best seller. It spent 31 weeks on the list, two of which were at #1.[1]