The Mysteries Around Us
A collection of Atlantic weekend reads on the enigmas in our midst
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
A Columbia historian said he’d discovered evidence of a lost sacred text with scandalous implications about the life of Jesus. Was it a fake? In a new Atlantic feature, the writer Ariel Sabar reports on the bitter ongoing debate—and the largely unexamined early life of the man who found it.
The story is the latest of Sabar’s numerous explorations of the mysterious, the illusive, and the hard to believe. He’s written about the billion-dollar Ponzi scheme that hooked Warren Buffett and the U.S. Treasury, probed a biblical mystery at Oxford, and introduced readers to the tomb raiders of the Upper East Side.
Today’s newsletter is a collection of long reads from Sabar and others about the enigmas in our midst and in places you may have never thought to look. Some are wondrous; others are chilling. I recommend settling in with a cup of coffee and getting lost.
The Mysteries Around Us
The ‘Secret’ Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus
By Ariel Sabar
A Columbia historian said he’d discovered a sacred text with clues to Jesus’s sexuality. Was it real?
The Tree With Matchmaking Powers
By Jeff Maysh
For nearly a century, an oak in a German forest has helped lonely people find love—including the mailman who delivers its letters.
What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane
By William Langewiesche
Ten years ago, the flight vanished into the Indian Ocean, and we still don’t know why. The explanation may lie not in the sea but on land—in Malaysia, where officials know more than they dare to say. (From 2019)
Still Curious?
- The perfect man who wasn’t: For years, he used fake identities to charm women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Rachel Monroe wrote in 2018. Then his victims banded together to take him down.
- Secrets and lies in the school cafeteria: a tale of missing money, heated lunchroom arguments, and flaxseed pizza crusts
Other Diversions
- A subtle shift shaking up sibling relationships
- Everything can be meat.
- A kind of timeless jazz masterpiece
P.S.
If you have only a few minutes and would like to get lost in something beautiful, I’ll leave you with our latest poetry.
— Isabel
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