Lost Christianities – Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication

There was no official New Testament in the first centuries after Christ. Many more Scriptures were read by early Christians than we have today.

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Christians relied on these writings to hold their beliefs. Some people thought there were as many as 30 gods. The creation of the world was thought to be caused by a malicious deity. Some people believed that the death and resurrection of Christ had nothing to do with salvation.

What did they say? Do they still exist today? How could they be considered a Christian? Why do these beliefs no longer exist? There are many provocative questions that arise from Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication.

There is a struggle within Christianity.

The editor of Midwest Book Review wrote that this is a highly educational trip into the confusion that existed in the early church and how the church moved from there to the point of a consistent creed. Professor Bart D. Ehrman, who has recorded The Historical Jesus and The New Testament for The Teaching Company, returns to lend his expert guidance as you follow scholars’ efforts to recover knowledge of early Christian groups that lost the struggle for converts.

The course focuses on the fact that many of the struggles of early Christians were against other Christians. Professor Ehrman will show you the groups.

The Jewish Christians who followed Jewish laws accepted Jesus as the Messiah even though they didn’t believe in him.

The God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus were not the same as one another.

The Gnostics believed that there was more than one true God. They thought salvation came from secret knowledge, or gnosis, of who one really was, where one came from, and how one could return to the heavenly home.

A Remarkable Archaeological Find and Surprising Other Gospels.

The Scriptures that were read and considered authoritative by these Christian sects are explored in this course. Many are believed to be forgeries written in the names of famous apostles.

The documents can be seen as lost versions of the New Testament. Little known and sometimes controversial Scriptures can be studied to find out if they became part of the Bible.

Get it immediately. There are lost Christianities and the battles over bibles.

One of the most powerful and moving expositions of the joy of salvation is the Gnostic Gospel of Truth. Its views are very different from those that dominate Christian belief today.

The Proto-Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospels of Thomas were written before Jesus was born. Scholars are unsure if they were meant to be taken seriously or if they were just entertaining fictions about a period of Christ’s life.

The lives and exploits of individual apostles are the focus of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The accounts of the activities of Jesus closest followers are legendary.

There are two Scriptures that have gained a lot of attention. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas has caused the most stir among scholars and the public. 114 secret sayings of Jesus that are the keys to eternal life were written by the twin brother of Jesus.

Is this related to the sources from which the Gospels were written? Is it a Gnostic Scripture that was drafted later? Professor Ehrman weighed in with his best guesses.

The Secret Gospel of Mark is even more intriguing. Morton Smith, a highly respected authority on Christian antiquity, discovered evidence for this document, a possible second Gospel by Mark, written specifically for the spiritual elite.

Smith may have found an amazing find. It might be an amazing feat of forgery. The letter has been locked away in a library in Jerusalem and is not available for analysis by other scholars.

You will hear about the 1945 discovery of a treasure trove of missing Gnostic Scriptures at Nag Hammadi, an Egyptian village near the city of Luxor.

The Nag Hammadi Library consisted of 13 leather-bound volumes unearthed in an ancient grave by Bedouin camel drivers and was a landmark event in the search for lost Christian.

It was an excellent collection of writings by Gnostic Christians. Many of these were only known through written attacks against the Gnostics by church fathers such as Tertullian of Carthage and Hippolytus of Rome. A.D. 200. The library verified a lot of what had been known about Gnosticism.

There may be forgeries in the New Testament.

How was the New Testament approved if all of these Christian Scriptures existed?

Which books should be included? What grounds?

We don’t know how those who selected the final books got it right. How can we be certain that forgeries weren’t included in the New Testament?

The questions that arise from the search for lost Christianities make it such a new and appealing subject to study.