Pandora’s Box is the story of Gilbert O’Sullivan; a middle-aged man, stuck in his monotonous existence at Leeds University. After investigating an archaeological dig in Palestine, he is befriended by an Israeli who tells him about another Bible, one slightly different to the one we all know. When Gilbert visits ‘Bugenheim’ he finds him dying on the floor of his apartment. His final words send him on a hunt for a copy of this legendary book. 

Gilbert finds himself in the depths of Africa, scaling a cliff to an ancient monastery. Unbeknownst to him though, an agent of the Church is hot on his heels and engineers a fall which sees Gilbert encased in plaster and confined to a wheel chair with a morphine drip. His experiences, now humorously coloured by the morphine seeping into his veins, allow him to discover things which his academic brain would otherwise struggle to recognise. As the revelations unfold, his pursuer starts to question his own faith as the evidence mounts that someone other than his beloved Jesus is the Messiah.

The interesting thing about this book is that it is a real conspiracy theory. The original Messiah was not Jesus, but a man who lived 150 years before him who few today have heard of. Pandora’s Box is a fictional account of how this might have come to the world’s attention. The information in this book is accurate; the maps are real, the information in Enoch is real, and the quotes from Judas are from the actual Gospel of Judas.

History is not always a reliable witness!