Scriptural Savant

Gospel of Nicodemus 19

Related ancient text — scholarly reference

Extra-canonical text — not LDS scripture and not in the KJV Apocrypha. Provided as scholarly reference for parallel literature of the Second Temple period and the early Christian era. Read with discernment; the Apostle Jude quotes 1 Enoch and Paul knew this material, but inclusion here is for study, not doctrine.

1And when the first created, father Adam, had heard this, that Jesus was baptized in Jordan, he cried out to his son Seth: Tell your sons, the patriarchs and the prophets, all that you heard from Michael the archangel when I sent you to the gates of paradise to implore God that he might send you His angel to give you oil from the tree of mercy, with which to anoint my body when I was sick. Then Seth, coming near to the holy patriarchs and prophets, said: When I, Seth, was praying to the Lord at the gates of paradise, behold Michael, the angel of the Lord, appeared to me, saying, I have been sent to you by the Lord. I am set over the human race. And to you, Seth, I say, do not labour with tears in prayers and supplications on account of the oil of the tree of mercy to anoint your father Adam for the pain of his body, because in no wise shall you receive of it, except in the last days and times, except when five thousand and five hundred years have been fulfilled: then will come upon the earth the most beloved Son of God, to raise up again the body of Adam, and the bodies of the dead; and He, when He comes, will be baptized in Jordan. And when he shall have come out of the water of Jordan, then with the oil of His mercy shall He anoint all that believe in Him; and that oil of mercy shall be for the generation of those who shall be born out of water and the Holy Spirit into life eternal. Then, descending upon earth, Christ Jesus, the most beloved Son of God, will lead our father Adam into paradise to the tree of mercy.

2And when they heard all these things from Seth, all the patriarchs and prophets exulted with great exultation.

Public-domain text (R.H. Charles 1913 and equivalents). These works are not canonical, but several were widely read in antiquity and one (1 Enoch) is quoted by name in Jude 1:14–15. Useful for understanding the doctrinal landscape from which the apostles and earliest saints taught.