Mark Mattison's Gospels.net

I am grateful to Andrew Bernhard for sending over news of a change in his website Gospels.net. He posted the following message on Labor Day:

Thank you to all who have visited my site during the past twenty years. I am humbled by the attention it has received and grateful for the opportunities it has provided me to connect with interesting people around the world. I am now pleased to pass gospels.net on to Mark Mattison. I have been impressed by his dedication, as an independent scholar, to preparing public domain translations of ancient gospels not included in the New Testament. I regard Mark's work in making these gospels available online and usable by all as invaluable. I wish Mark only the best in continuing his work of making these texts easily accessible (without either sensationalizing or denigrating them). Gospels.net is his website now.

Andrew's website has been online since the early days, and I have happy memories of finding it, enthusing about it, and linking to it on the NT Gateway. I've just taken a look at the NT Gateway from seventeen years ago, and there it is on the Non-canonicals page, then titled "Jesus of Nazareth in Early Christian Gospels". I must admit that I do miss those simpler times when it was possible to be almost exhaustive in one's coverage of the area, and I miss the fun of hand-coding my web pages.

Going back a little further, it's a "Featured Link" in July 1999, with the comment "This fine web resource by Andrew Bernhard is the new version of the web site formerly known as The Quest of the Historical Jesus. This is a first class resource, featuring introductions, fresh translations, bibliography and links on canonical, non-canonical and hypothetical gospels. Its most notable new feature is The Greek Fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, an on-line edition of the Oxyrhynchus fragments of Thomas with translation."

But that is quite enough reminiscing. Andrew has now handed on his site to Mark Mattison, who is well known for his The Paul Page. The new gospels.net includes Mark's translations of The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Judas, and other ancient gospels.

When I asked Andrew why he decided to transfer gospels.net to Mark, he replied:

Over the last five years or so, there have been a lot of changes in my life. As a result, my interests have changed pretty drastically, and I just realized that I personally wasn’t going to be devoting much more time or energy to the study of ‘lost gospels.’ I actually retired the site back in January, but then I changed my mind and decided it would be better to pass it on to somebody else. Mark seemed like the perfect fit, and I have no doubt he’ll make great use of the site. He’ll probably make it better than I ever did! Regardless, as far as my own scholarship on early Christianity is concerned, I am done.”

So this post is in part to say a big thank you to Andrew for his fine website, and the work he has put into it over the last two decades, and in part to thank Mark Mattison for taking it on and taking it forward.