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Title: Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Ehrman ISBN: 0-19-514183-0 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The mysteries of Christian variety, 3.5 stars
Comment: This is fundamentally a popular treatment of the topic that doesn't tell us that much new about the subject. But it is not a bad introduction. Indeed, if you are not aware that the Christian New Testament was not agreed upon until more than three centuries after the death of Jesus, that there is a whole host of other "Christian" literature some of which has as good (or bad) a claim to holy inspiration as the canon, that there were a whole host of Christian sects which radically deviated from the eventual orthodoxy, that in many areas these Christian sects were the original representatives of Christianity, and that what we now know to be Orthodoxy won its battles by, among other things, altering the text of holy scripture, then you should read this book.
Ehrman's book is divided into three parts. The first looks at four Christian works that failed to enter the New Testament. Ehrman first looks at the remainder of "The Gospel of Peter," which survives to this day as an account of the crucifixion. Interestingly, Ehrman suggests we have about as many copies and references to it from this time as we do with the Gospel of Mark. We also learn about "the Apocalypse of Peter," which gives a guided tour of hell (women who braided their hair are especially miserable.) Ehrman then discusses the Acts of Thecla, a supposed apostle of Paul. We then get a discussion of the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of supposed sayings of Jesus. Some scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas may go back to the mid-first century, but Ehrman is rather sceptical. Then we look at the Secret Gospel of Mark. According to leading Biblical scholar Morton Smith there is a seventeenth/eighteenth century copy of a letter of Clement of Alexandria (2nd century) which quotes from the supposed secret gospel. It tells of Jesus raising a man from the dead, and then insinuates a homosexual encounter between the two. Unfortunately, we have only photographs Smith took of the letter, and no-one has been able to find it in the Israeli monastery where Smith supposedly discovered it. Indeed, we cannot rule out the idea that Smith forged the letter himself.
Ehrman then discusses the many groups whom emerging proto-orthodoxy eventually condemned as heretics. There were the Ebionites, who saw Christianity as part of Judaism, and viewed Jesus as fully human. There were the Marcionites, after their founder Marcion who viewed the God of the Old Testament as fundamentally flawed, and viewed Jesus as an emissary from the true God who would liberate humanity. They were the producers of the first Christian canon: ten Pauline epistles and an edited Gospel of Luke. Then there are Gnostics who promoted a variety of views about Jesus, usually denying his humanity. Some, the Docetists, thought that Jesus's suffering was illusory since the real Jesus did not have a real body. Others, known as Adaptionists, thought that Jesus was only adapted to receive the power of the Christ at the time of his baptism, and that it left him on the cross. Ehrman provides interesting reasons why these groups were not successful. Ebionites were too Jewish, the Gnostics were too spiritually elitist, while Marcion's religion was too new to fit the conservative religious prejudices of the day. We also learn that one of the pillars of Orthodoxy had to become an antipope, because the properly elected pope believed in "heresy": the idea that Jesus was not God the son, but God altogether. The majority of the Roman church had come to this view because they believed a) Jesus was God and b) there is clearly only one God in the Bible. The antipope Hippolytus argued correctly that Jesus and God are clearly two separate people in the New Testament, and then argued, not so correctly, that Jesus must therefore be divine in a separate sense from his father.
Ehrman then discusses Orthodoxy's response. By the third century there was consensus about most of the books of the New Testament, though there were heated debates over books such as Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and the Apocalypse of John. Opponents correctly realized that the apostles did not write these books. (Over the past two centuries scholars would realize that seven Pauline letters are the only books in the New Testament correctly attributed to their author.) We read about the Epistle of Barnabas, an early Christian letter that almost made it into the Bible. It would have been extremely embarrassing had it done so, since it claims that weasels conceive through their mouths, that hyenas change their sex every year, and that rabbits grow a new orifice every year. The most interesting part is Ehrman's discussion of the corruption of the New Testament text. We know that "heretics" altered biblical texts. The Ebionites changed a couple of letters and turned John the Baptist into a vegetarian. Ehrman also discusses Orthodox "corrections." We know about some of them because enough alternate texts survive to see the manipulation. For example the Proto-Orthodox altered passages in Luke where Mary refers to Joseph as Jesus' father. Other Christians tried to alter Jesus' final statements in Mark ("why have you forsaken me,") because it fit too well with the adoptionist heresy mentioned above. But other manipulations are harder to track. It appears that Luke's reference to Jesus "sweating blood" may have been an addition to counter Docetist beliefs. While the addition of "by the Grace of God," to a passage in Hebrews may have countered another heresy. As we do not have the original texts, we cannot tell how much of the New Testament was altered to fit the desires of Orthodoxy.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent contribution to Christian history
Comment: If you like mysteries, true detective stories, and historical controversies, Professor Ehrman's newest book is just right for you. It is about early Christianity, or more accurately, early "Christianities." Why the plural? Simply because in the first centuries after Christ, there was no one single group which could be called the authentic "Christian" religion. There was, instead, a diversity of Christian groups, each with its own beliefs, practices, and sacred texts. There was no New Testament. There were many other books, gospels, epistles, and so forth, other than those that would eventually become the New Testament as we know it today. These other books were widely read and fervently followed by various groups of early Christians.
Some of these early Christian groups held beliefs that today would be considered bizarre. Some of them believed there were two Gods, not one, and some believed there might be twelve, or as many as thirty gods. Some believed that a malicious deity, rather than one true God, created the world. Some taught that Jesus' death and resurrection had nothing to do with salvation. Still others insisted that Jesus never really died at all. If such beliefs were once common, why do they no longer exist? What were these other books which were considered as Christian "Scriptures"? What did these other Scriptures say? Do they still exist?
Ehrman's book is about the struggle for orthodoxy, or "right belief," in early Christianity. You will see the process by which certain Christian beliefs gained legitimacy, while others were relegated to be mere footnotes to history. You will see how Christianity developed in those early years, hear about the early Christian writings, many lost to history but some newly discovered, and you will witness the development of the New Testament into an approved canon of Scripture. But how did this take place? Who decided which books should be included in the today's Canon? Since there were so many books available at the time, who decided, and on what grounds, which should be included? How do we know they got it right? Many of the early writings were known to be forgeries. How can we sure that forgeries weren't included in the New Testament?
Along the way in this adventure story you'll meet the Ebionites who kept Jewish customs and strictly followed the Jewish laws. They thought that Jesus was the most righteous man on earth and because of this was "adopted" by God to be his son when he was baptized by John the Baptist. They denied that Jesus was himself divine, but insisted that he was fully human and the result of a sexual union between Joseph and Mary. They did not hold to the doctrine of the virgin birth.
You'll meet the Marcionites, whose founder, Marcion, argued that the Christian God of love could not have also been the Creator God of the Old Testament. He believed that the gospel of Jesus Christ is entirely a gospel of love to the exclusion of the Mosaic Law. He believed that the original gospel of Jesus had been corrupted by Judaizing tendencies among the earliest disciples and that the Old Testament had no validity for Christians.
And you'll meet the Gnostic Christians. They believed in a pervasive dualism. Good and evil, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, spirit and matter were opposed to one another in human experience as being and nonbeing. The created universe and human experience were characterized by a radical disjunction between the spiritual, which was real, and the physical, which was illusory. This disjunction resulted from a cosmic tragedy, described in a variety of ways by gnostic mythology, as a consequence of which sparks of deity became entrapped in the physical world. Ehrman discusses the Nag Hammadi documents, a group of gnostic writings which were found in 1945 and now constitute the only significant body of gnostic works known to modern scholars.
For those who want a mystery with controversial overtones, an entire chapter is devoted to the Morton Smith affair and the alleged Secret Gospel of Mark. Smith was a renowned professor of ancient history at Columbia University. Some years ago he spent time in scholarly research at Mar Saba, a famous Orthodox monastery, some twelve miles from Jerusalem. There he claimed to have discovered a previously unknown letter by Clement of Alexandria, an important early church father of the third century. In this letter, Clement goes on to quote two passages from a Secret Gospel of Mark, both dealing with activities in which Jesus was involved. The story involves Jesus becoming "acquainted with a young man who loves him and comes to him wearing nothing but a linen cloth over his naked body. Jesus then spends the night with him, teaching him about the mystery of the Kingdom." Smith's interpretation of this story, including his suggestion regarding homoerotic overtones, created a furor in the academic community. The question is, as Ehrman notes: "Is this an authentic letter of Clement, or was it forged? And if it was forged, forged by whom?"
In summary, Ehrman's book considers the varieties of belief and practice in the early days of Christianity, before the church had decided what was theologically acceptable and determined which books should be included in its canon of Scripture. Part of the struggle over belief and practice in the early church was over what could be legitimately accepted as "Christian" and what should be condemned as "heresy." It considers the struggle for "orthodoxy," that is, what beliefs are "right" or "true," and the attempt to label, spurn, and overthrow "heresy," that is, what beliefs are "wrong" or "false." Christians today typically think of the New Testament as the basis for a correct understanding of the faith. But what was Christianity like before there was a New Testament? Read Professor Ehrman's book and you may discover some clues.
Rating: 5
Summary: Belief System Soul Candy
Comment: Anyone: send a copy to Mel Gibson.
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Title: Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament by Bart D. Ehrman ISBN: 0195141822 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels ISBN: 0375501568 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament by Bart D. Ehrman, Brad D. Ehrman ISBN: 0195102797 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bart D. Ehrman ISBN: 019512474X Publisher: Oxford University Press List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels ISBN: 0679724532 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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