Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

Although not a theist in any manner of speaking, I have an extensive library of books on various religions and sects. This book was an Amazon recommendation based on my purchasing history and was one of the most interesting and informative books that I have ever read. Needless to say, it supported and confirmed many of the things I already knew but in addition, it gave thoughts and explanations on many of the facets of Christianity that had been a bit muddy in my mind. One of the interesting speculations contained in this book is what the effect on the world of different "winners" amongst the many and varied interpretations by the plethora of Christian sects in the first few centuries might have been. It has taken me a number of days to read this book, not because it is a difficult read - far from it - but because it has been so thought-provoking and necessitated further corroboration from elsewhere in my library and occasionally, reference to my Oxford dictionary. A truly exceptional book!

This book takes a broad look at the "canon" of the New Testament (i.e. the process whereby books were gradually and then finally established by the 5th Century as the ones to be included therein) and forms a study of the works that were left out and the various early Christian sects that supported them.His research details an early Christian world of confusion, with the words of the disciples who were with Jesus, and the apostles who preached and wrote about him, being taken and subjectively interpreted by a multitude of contemporary groups. As well as disparate beliefs on how much of their indigenous Jewish heritage, beliefs and practices these new Christians should retain, many groups were also influenced by things like Gnosticism and existing contemporary Greek thinking and philosophy, such as that of the neo-Pythagoreans and the Stoics.Thus, while we are yet to have "Christians" - a word not yet in use at the time of many of these groups - we are introduced to the Nazareans, Carpocratians, Docetics, Ebionites, Marcosians, Marcionites, Montanists, various types of Gnostics and those with the set of beliefs that the author terms "proto-Orthodoxy" which eventually evolved to become Roman Catholicism.Many of these groups used the gospels that were available to them, and many of these have either not survived at all, or not survived as part of the modern Christian canon, only being rediscovered with archaeological finds hundreds of years later, such as the Nag Hammadi scrolls.Many of the Christian sects and groups used the names of Jesus' disciples or the apostles as the author of their texts in order that they might get a wider circulation - technically a forgery - while still being genuine texts of that particular Christian sect. In other cases the author gives examples of clear forgeries - for example the senior churchman who was caught red-handed writing a third book of Corinthians, and was disciplined henceforth.The sheer variety of beliefs in early Christianity is fascinating, though given the circumstances it's easy to see how a Jewish teacher such as Jesus provides new teachings to his Jewish followers, and after his death there spring up so many groups believing slightly different things about what he meant by his teachings and what his death meant. With only the Old Testament to go by as their holy book there were various opinions on whether Jesus was the Messiah or not, and if so what type; whether his followers were now a new religion that no longer needed to practice circumcision, and could they now eat pork? Was Jesus God as well as his Son? - and all the questions pertaining to the mystery of the concept of Father Son and Holy Spirit, long before a standard concept of the Holy Trinity had been established, and so on.A very enjoyable read and a fascinating insight into the beliefs of the early Christians before the Church finally decided what should and shouldn't be kept out of the New Testament (various early regional churches had their own canon processes and as a result many ended up with different texts altogether in their New Testaments, ranging from 11 to 22 books); and before the religion became "regulated" into one coherent belief system, the others being subsumed and vanishing into history.

The constant assertion that these were actually viable and genuinely 'Christianities' is a bit much.

A great research book, for putting the past into what really happened and not what man thinks that happened as we are very mislead these days by many things. What is written is not necessarily correct.. You have to read and find out for yourself.

A very good book that has a wealth of useful information. The book is well presented and the thesis is excellent, covering the many documents that were not chosen as books of the New Testament. I recommend this book to the enquiring mind.