Ancient Magic 8 Ball Discovered

…in the form of a document called the “Gospel of the Lots of Mary“.

The key word in the title is “lots” not “Mary”:

The text would have been used for divination, Luijendijk said. A person seeking an answer to a question could have sought out the owner of this book, asked a question, and gone through a process that would randomly select one of the 37 oracles to help find a solution to the person’s problem. The owner of the book could have acted as a diviner, helping to interpret the written oracles, she said.

This is not even a gospel in the sense of a gnostic gospel, which it least propose a somewhat murky body of hidden doctrine.  And it is certainly not a gospel in the Christian sense best defined by a German theologian about a century ago as a passion narrative with a long introduction.  This is, very literally a collection of lots and called that by the author.  Sure, he attributes it to Mary just as a 19th century snake oil salesman attributed his wares to a secret formula stolen from the Czar of all the Russias, but at the end of the day, it’s a fortune-telling gimmick.