Hey, remember the Gaskill hoax of 2014?

In short, he published a book called The Lost Teachings of Jesus on the Sacred Place of Women. The basis of the book was a nineteenth-century forgery called the Unknown Life of Jesus. The fact of forgery was glossed over in the book, to say nothing of the sensational and entirely misleading title.

The publisher, Cedar Fort, promoted it for Mother’s Day that year. Here’s part of the ad:

“This extra-biblical text, thought to be the words of Christ, is presented and explained by Alonzo Gaskill where he expounds the divine role of women in the gospel and family.”

On April 10, guest posting at BCC, Taylor Petrey issued a warning about the deception. Local news stories also appeared in Utah. The same day, Gaskill apologized — kind of. And Deseret Book eventually stopped carrying that one of his titles. But on Mother’s Day itself, a book review in the Deseret News took his side:

“There has been some controversy over the use of the manuscript to represent the actual words of Jesus, but it is clear from what Gaskill states that he is representing this message as possible-but-unproven preaching from the Savior. Readers can enjoy the message pertaining to the power and glory of womanhood but should reserve judgment on the veracity of the documents used as the core of the message until more is known.”

Cedar Fort still sells The Lost Teachings of Jesus on the Sacred Place of Women, which continues to get 5-star reviews on Amazon. If that does not depress you, how about this …?

It turns out that back in the 1980s the Unknown Life of Jesus had already been discussed as a fake in the edited volume, Apocryphal Writings and the Latter-day Saints, published by the BYU Religious Studies Center. See Richard Anderson’s chapter in the volume. He refers to this and other texts as “modern frauds [that] have no documentary connection to antiquity.”

Why is it that we as a people seem to be easily misled along these lines, despite repeated warnings? It’s like for some reason we’re locked into a pre-critical understanding of biblical literature and cannot tell the difference between what’s ancient and what’s not. Go figure.