Testament · Sola Exemplum
Sola Exemplum
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Sola Exemplum

Sola Exemplum: Testament

The ancient texts, reworked and curated — the signal before the institution got to it.

The Testament is the canon of Sola Exemplum: the ancient documents considered authoritative to the project, freshly translated from the earliest available Greek and Coptic sources, and stripped of two thousand years of theological accretion.

These are not new texts. They are old texts, read again as they were written — before the church turned them into sacraments, and before the academy turned them into museum pieces.

This book is a work in progress. Several of the texts below are already complete; others are still being translated and introduced. The full list of what belongs in the Testament is here so you can see what the shape of the finished volume will be.

Questions answered

  • What did Jesus actually say — before the church edited it?
  • What survived underneath the creed?
  • What have you never been allowed to read?
  • Is there a version of the gospel the institution didn't want you to have?
  • What does early Christianity look like without the dogma?

Opening

An ancient earthenware jar with a loosened stopper and a rolled scroll emerging.

These are the texts that survived.

Some were canonical — long since captured by the institution and read through lenses that obscure what they actually say. Some were buried in jars in the desert to escape the book-burners. All of them preserve, in their own ways, a signal older than the institution that eventually claimed them — a signal the Testament tries to let speak again.

The shape of the book

  1. Part I — Prologue of the Revealer

  2. Thunder, Perfect Mind

    A paradoxical summons to recognition. A voice speaking in first-person contradictions — 'I am the first and the last… I am the whore and the holy one' — presented in full as the opening text of the Testament.

  3. Part II — Story & Sayings (the Signal Inside the System)

  4. The Gospel of Mark

    The liberator in conflict with the powers. The earliest surviving gospel, translated to recover what it said before its theological editors got hold of it.

  5. The Gospel of Thomas

    Hidden sayings that awaken. The Coptic sayings gospel, in full — 114 sayings plus the prologue.

  6. The Sayings Source (Q)

    Ethic, prayer, and readiness. The reconstructed sayings source behind Matthew and Luke — among the earliest available layers of what the teacher actually said.

  7. Part III — Advanced Teachings of the Revealer

  8. Dialogue of the RevealerIn progress

    How to exit — the place of rest, and the passing of the rulers. The Nag Hammadi text also featured in Sola Exemplum: Revealer, here presented as a bare text for the Testament canon.

  9. The Hidden Book of JamesIn progress

    Courage, fullness, vigilance after awakening. The Nag Hammadi text also featured in Sola Exemplum: Hidden James, presented here without the commentary.

  10. Part IV — Witness & Practice

  11. Earliest Creeds of the Pauline CommunitiesIn progress

    Bare communal memory. The shortest, earliest creedal formulas preserved in Paul's letters — read as the community's own words before Paul's elaborations around them.

  12. The DidacheIn progress

    Rhythms for an awakened community. An early-Christian training manual: two ways, prayer, eucharist, wandering teachers, church order.

  13. Appendices — Context & Parallels

  14. 1 ClementIn progress

    A first-century letter from Rome to Corinth. Included as a parallel for the shape of early-Christian communal instruction.

  15. Odes of SolomonIn progress

    A collection of early Christian hymns — ecstatic, mystical, unlike anything that survived into the canonical worship.

  16. The Shepherd of HermasIn progress

    A second-century apocalypse, popular enough in the early church to sit on the edge of the canon before being left out.

  17. Dead Sea Scrolls: Community Rule & HymnsIn progress

    Selections from the Qumran library — the sectarian literature of a Jewish community that predated and partially shaped the movement around Jesus.

Coming to Amazon

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