Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never KnewOxford University Press, 2005 - 294 pagini The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human. In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, and as Ehrman shows, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners. Ehrman's discussion ranges from considerations of various "lost scriptures"--including forged gospels supposedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus's alleged twin brother--to the disparate beliefs of such groups as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various "Gnostic" sects. Ehrman examines in depth the battles that raged between "proto-orthodox Christians"--those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief--and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame. Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, Lost Christianities is an eye-opening account of politics, power, and the clash of ideas among Christians in the decades before one group came to see its views prevail. |
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... religion , determining for ages to come what Christians would believe , prac- tice , and read as sacred Scripture . Unless otherwise indicated , translations of texts are my own . I would like to thank a number of people who have ...
... religion and the Old Testmant is a Christian book Containing a pastiche of Pauline phrases , evidently inspired by a reference in Col. 4:16 to a letter to the Laodiceans , possibly made to counter a Marcionite forgery Early 3rd c ...
... religious phenomenon more diverse than modern- day Christianity . There are Roman Catholic missionaries in developing coun- tries who devote themselves to voluntary poverty for the sake of others , and evangelical televangelists who run ...
... religion , it was even more sig- nificant for the effect and impact that this religion had externally , on the his- tory of civilization itself . It is conceivable that if the form of Christianity that established itself as dominant had ...
... religion toward the middle of the third century . Since , from the distance of a later perspective , this group ( or groups ) may be considered the forebears of Christian orthodoxy , we will call them the " proto - orthodox . " This ...
Alte ediții - Afișează-le pe toate
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Bart D. Ehrman Previzualizare limitată - 2005 |
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Bart D. Ehrman Previzualizare limitată - 2005 |
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Bart D. Ehrman Previzualizare limitată - 2003 |