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Letter Of Benan




The Letter of Benan was a forgery issued by Ernst Edler von der Planitz in 1910, allegedly originally composed in Greek in 83 CE, then translated into Coptic; von der Planitz's work is allegedly a translation from a fifth century Coptic papyrus containing a translation of the same; however, there is no evidence any of these works ever existed. It consists of a letter purporting to be of an Egyptian physician describing his encounters with Jesus and the apostles. However, clear internal evidence, historical inconsistencies and the absence of the purported original manuscripts clearly indicate this work to be a fake. It is counted thus among the Modern Apocrypha .

Source: Edgar J. Goodspeed, Strange New Gospels, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1931), pp. 73f.