Jesus' birth in a cave, his childhood, escapades, his secret sayings, and his descent to the underworld; the torments in Hell; Saint Paul baptizing a lion; the death of Pontius Pilate and Saint Peter being crucified upside down. These are among the fascinating stories found in this present selection. They all come from early Christian legends which did not get into the Bible, yet have had a profound influence on art, literature, and theology from the second century through the Middle Ages and even modern times. Some of the stories included here, especially those involoving the Virgin Mary, have affected matters of doctrine; others have influenced the church's teaching on the after life - whilst from the apocryphal Acts there are some of the best examples of accounts of the lives of Christianity's earliest saints. In this book Dr Elliott provides introductions to each of the most important and significant of these remarkable and often bizarre apocryphal texts.

Wonderfully readable and ... untendentious, accurate, and often literarily clever ... an important, reliable, attractive, and enduring contribution to the study of early Christian literature * Novum Testamentum *
Attractively produced, with a short general introduction and comments on each of the groups of extracts, this offers a splendid insight into some of the stories which Christians in the second and third centuries read. * The Expository Times *
Provides a splendid way of giving students as well as the general reader access to texts that are so important for an appreciation of the breadth of religious practice and imagination in the early Christian period ... Highly recommended for scholarly as well as general libraries. * Religious Studies Review *