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  • Lost Christianities

  • The Battles of Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
  • By: Bart D. Ehrman
  • Narrated by: Matthew Kugler
  • Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (20 ratings)

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Lost Christianities

By: Bart D. Ehrman
Narrated by: Matthew Kugler
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Publisher's Summary

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.

©2003 Oxford University Press (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

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recommended

narrator was very good, enjoyed the book, great research, easy to follow with no obvious bias

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fascinating historical aspect of Christianity.

a very fascinating read about the origins of what is the Christian faith today. it's not really a physiological book and doesn't dispute the existence or non-existence of God but certainly gives light to how the Bible we see today was formed.

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I've learned so much

This book was amazing. It answered many of the questions I've had for some time. It filled in the gaps that I felt were present after reading similar books and it helped me to visualise a clearer timeline of how the canon of the New Testament was compiled. Brilliant.

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A Great Read

Bart goes into depth on the lost scriptures and does a fantastic job telling us these lost stories and how they were found. A great read for any bible scholar or lay person.

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