The Gospel of the Holy Twelve

About 70 AD St. John corroborated with other Apostles and formulated the life of the Christ while he was imprisoned in Rome. He entrusted these writings to a trusted disciple. It became the document from which the Four Gospels of the Bible were written. For safekeeping it was taken to Tibet by this same disciple and it was left in the care of an unnamed lama. This was necessary because in 325 AD Constantine in union with the newly formulated church began the confiscating and large scale destruction and burning of any text except their own.

In 1870 a friar named Placidus visited the Tibetian monastery and obtained permission to show it to the Church authorities. They rejected it because the works they had canonized did not contain Jesus’ messages regarding kindness and care of animals and the abstaining from eating flesh-foods, and the elimination of bloody sacrifices. So the scroll was hidden away in the archives of the Vatican, where it remains to this day. It is one of the most ancient of fragments. It had to be translated from the Aramaic. It has been referred to as the "Gospel of the Hebrews", "The Gospel of the Nazarites", and "the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles". 

The Rev. Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley translated it from the Aramaic and it is this translation which is offered today. Comparing it to the four Gospels in the Bible one can see numerous passages which were not included in the Bible. It is easy to see why. It was one thing for Constantine to authorize an official Bible at the Council of Nicea but neither he or the priests wanted to have prohibitions against eating the flesh of animals as part of the package. This would have made it unpalatable both to themselves and the masses they were hoping to control.

Below are cited a few passages to be found in this Gospel:

9. Be ye therefore considerate, be tender, be ye pitiful, be ye kind, not to your own kind alone, but to every creature which is within your care, for ye are to them as gods, to whom they look in their need. Be ye slow to anger for many sin in anger which they repented of, when their anger was past.

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8. Blessed are ye who abstain from all things gotten by bloodshed and death, and fulfill all righteousness

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9. And some of the people said, This man careth for all creatures, are they his brothers and sisters that he should love them ? And he said unto them, Verily these are your fellow creatures of the great Household of God, yea, they are your brethren and sisters, having the same breath of life in the Eternal.

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10. And whosoever careth for one of the least of these, and giveth it to eat and drink in its need, the same doeth it unto me, and whoso willingly suffereth one of these to be in want, and defendeth it not when evilly entreated, suffereth the evil as done unto me; for as ye have done in this life, so shall it be done unto you in the life to come.

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6. And whatsoever ye do unto the Cast of these my children, ye do it unto me. For I am in them and they are in me, Yea, I am in all creatures and all creatures are in me. In all their joys I rejoice, in all their afflictions I am afflicted. Wherefore I say unto you: Be ye kind one to another, and to all the creatures of God.

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13. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee ?
14. Then shall he answer them, saying, Behold I manifest myself unto you, in all created forms, and Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not unto me.

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8. And Iesus answered, If I am lifted up on the cross then indeed shall the lamb be slain; but woe unto him by whom it is delivered into the hands of the slayers; it were better of him had he not been born.
9. Verily I say unto you, for this end have I come into the world, that I may put away all blood offerings and the eating of the flesh of the beasts and the birds that are slain by men.
10. In the beginning, God gave to all, the fruits of the trees, and the seeds, and the herbs, for food; but those who loved themselves more than God, or their fellows, corrupted their ways, and brought diseases into their bodies, and filled the earth with lust and violence.
11. Not by shedding innocent blood, therefore, but by living a righteous life, shall ye find the peace of God. Ye call me the Christ of God and ye say well, for I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
12. Walk ye in the Way, and ye shall find God. Seek ye the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free. Live in the Life, and ye shall see no death. All things are alive in God, and the Spirit of God filleth all things.

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Reading this Gospel is a never to be forgotten experience. Much that in the Gospels of the Bible comes to life afresh in a natural way. It is refreshing to read the source text from which the others were afterwards compiled.

You may download this Gospel from this site in either Word or PDF document below:

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