Apocryphon

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"Apocryphon" ("secret writing"), plural apocrypha, was a Greek term for a genre of Jewish and Early Christian writings that were meant to impart "secret teachings" or gnosis (knowledge) that could not be publicly taught. Such private instruction to the apostles figures in the canonical Gospels of the New Testament and furnishes the material of the "sayings" Gospel of Thomas and part of the material of the Gospel of Mary.

Examples that have their own entries include:

• Genesis Apocryphon from the Qumran caves
• Secret Gospel of Mark (Apocryphon of Mark)
• Apocryphon of James, (Secret Book of James) in the Nag Hammadi library.
• Apocryphon of John (Secret Book of John), in the Nag Hammadi library.
• Apocryphon of Ezekiel (Secret Book of Ezekiel)
• Apocryphon of the Ten Tribes

The Gospel of Thomas is the modern name given to a New Testament-era apocryphon completely preserved in a papyrus Coptic manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Unlike the four canonical gospels, which combine narrative accounts of the life of Jesus with sayings, Thomas is a "sayings gospel". It takes the less structured form of a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, brief dialogues with Jesus, and sayings that some of his disciples reported to Didymus Judas Thomas. Thomas does not have a narrative framework, nor is it worked into any overt philosophical or rhetorical context.