Introduction
The Lost Apostles
(Sequel to The Stolen Gospels)
This novel is the second half of an epic story that my wife Jan and I originally conceived in the mid-1990s, a tale that became so large in the writing process that it eventually had to be divided into two novels—The Stolen Gospels and The Lost Apostles.
As I have said in the introduction to The Stolen Gospels, this project has a long and checkered history, and the story has never before been published in traditional form. In part, this has to do with the story’s radical nature—both from a feminist and religious standpoint—and the fact that most of the submissions my literary agents made involved publishing it as one huge book. In addition, it spanned several literary genres—containing elements of a religious thriller, combined with science fiction and fantasy. Most publishers prefer to stay within one genre or another.
Eventually a publisher did offer me a contract—a contract that was never signed. So, this epic story was never published. Until now.
At long last, sixteen years after Jan and I began brainstorming this far-reaching, heroic story, I am pleased to finally make both novels available in e-book form.
Brian Herbert
September 10, 2011
Brief summary of the events in The Stolen Gospels
Teenager Lori Vale and her mother attend a goddess circle meeting in a Seattle suburb, unaware of a bitter rivalry between the event organizers (United Women of the World) and their archenemies the male-supremacy Bureau of Ideology. During the meeting, the BOI launches a violent commando attack against the group, hoping to kill the UWW’s second in command (Dixie Lou Jackson), who is making a guest appearance. In an attempt to save Lori’s seriously injured mother, Dixie Lou connects her to a life support system on an escape aircraft, taking Lori along as well. Lori’s mother dies. Dixie Lou—sensing that she has known Lori Vale before, and that it is important—takes her into custody and flies her to the UWW headquarters in Greece, effectively kidnapping her.
At the secret headquarters, a heavily guarded fortress in an ancient Greek monastery, a group of radical women is creating an earthshaking religious text, the Holy Women’s Bible. The new sacred book will include the Old Testament and the New Testament, edited to alter gospels that are detrimental to the interests of women, such as passages asserting that they should obey their husbands, remain silent in churches, and suffer the burden of Eve’s sins.
The teenager learns that a third section of the Holy Women’s Bible is even more of a bombshell, the Testament of the She-Apostles. It asserts that Jesus Christ had 24
apostles, not 12, and that half of them were women called “she-apostles.” Eleven she-apostles have been reincarnated in modern times as female children, and are revealing new female-oriented gospels about the life of Jesus, stories that were omitted from the Bible by male church authorities who decided what to include in the Bible and what to leave out of it, in order to assert the power and dominance of men over women. According to evidence in the hands of the radical women, the ancient gospels of the she-apostles were stolen by such men and relegated to the rubbish heaps of history.
At the monastery, Lori develops a paranormal relationship with one of the reincarnated children (eliciting a valuable scriptural story from the child)—and Lori soon begins to suspect that she may have been connected to the female apostles of Jesus in ancient times, when the Son of God walked the earth and preached to the people of the Holy Land.
While information about Lori’s past is unfolding, she finds herself caught in a BOI-UWW war, a violent conflict that has immense historical repercussions. Powerful, brutal men want to suppress the emerging gospels of the she-apostles, men who are hell-bent on destroying United Women of the World and their heretical texts. The women race to get their material completed and published before they are annihilated, but they have another big problem: the twelfth she-apostle—Martha of Galilee—has not been found yet, and the other she-apostles say she holds a dark secret that could do enormous damage to the cause of women, and to the entire planet.
Lori is given some freedom to move around the monastery, but not to leave. She finds herself falling in love with Alex Jackson (the son of Dixie Lou), a young man who dislikes his own mother. Alex brings Lori into a conspiracy to rescue the she-apostles, who are being abused by the UWW in their obsession to extract new gospels from them. The rescue attempt fails, and the two of them (along with their co-conspirators) are imprisoned. Before their capture, Lori and Alex witness a murder committed by Dixie Lou.
Soon afterward, the monastery is attacked by the Bureau of Ideology. Lori, Alex, Dixie Lou, the eleven she-apostles, and a handful of others escape in four small aircraft, and fly north across the Mediterranean Sea. . . .