About the book: 2006 / The author of this book is Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, honored scientist, one of the largest domestic researchers of early Christianity. The book is dedicated to the history of the emergence of the first Christian communities and early Christian literature, which included not only the canonized New Testament texts sanctified by tradition, but also numerous apocrypha, subsequently forgotten, which were extremely important. The author works with the originals of ancient monuments, offering their own, deeply meaningful translation, and this makes it possible to better understand the surviving evidence of the era of Christ, including not only precious scraps of papyri with gospel texts, but also short dedicatory inscriptions, as well as ancient graffiti, early Christian tombstones and their symbols; practically unknown to the general reader, they nevertheless give us invaluable knowledge about the spiritual life of the apostolic era.