Description
Book SynopsisThe early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups Christians claimed that there was not one God but two, or twelve, or thirty. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine; others that he was divine but not human. Eherman offers an enlightening study of these early forms of Christinaity, and how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten.
Trade Review"An illuminating book." * Noel Rooney, Fortean Times *
Table of ContentsChapter One: Recouping Our Loses ; PART ONE: Forgeries and Discoveries ; Chapter Two: The Ancient Discovery of a Forgery: Serapion and the Gospel of Peter ; Chapter Three: The Ancient Forgery of a Discovery: The Acts of Paul and Thecla ; Chapter Four: The Discovery on an Ancient Forgery: the Coptic Gospel of Thomas ; Chapter Five: The Forgery of an Ancient Discovery? Morton Smith and the Secret Gospel of Mark ; PART TWO: Heresies and Orthodoxies ; Chapter Six: At Polar Ends of the Spectrum: Early Christian Ebionites and Marcionites ; Chapter Seven: Christians "In the Know": The Worlds of Early Christian Gnosticism ; Chapter Eight: On the Road to Nicea: The Broad Swath of Proto-Orthodox Christianity ; PART THREE: Winners and Losers ; Chapter Nine: The Quest for Orthodoxy ; Chapter Ten: The Arsenal of the Conflicts: Polemical Treatises and Personal Slurs ; Chapter Eleven: Additional Weapons in the Proto-Orthodox Arsenal: Forgeries and Falsifications ; Chapter Twelve: The Invention of Scripture: The Formation of the Proto-Orthodox New Testament ; Chapter Thirteen: Winners, Losers, and the Question of Tolerance
