In 2005, a disgruntled archivist at the Vatican Library made contact with revisionist historians Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, claiming that the Vatican was secretly housing a number of unpublished “heretical” Gnostic Christian texts. He presented Freke and Gandy with a facsimile copy of an ancient manuscript, which is presented to the public for the first time in this book. This gospel will shock academics and Christians alike. It makes the extraordinary claim that the long-awaited “Second Coming of Christ” has already happened; and it also explores the intimate relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, his “Beloved Disciple.”       And, perhaps most controversial of all, it reveals Jesus as a Gnostic master with a zany sense of humor and an upbeat message. As Jesus says himself in the text: “Death is coming. Life is foreplay.”