Book Review of The Lost Christianities

During the summer I read The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart Ehrman. It was an intriguing read and exploration of the various Christian groups that formed after Jesus. As the publisher writes, “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.” Every group believed they had the Truth.

Have you ever been to a sports game where you and your friend saw the same events play out in the field and yet when you hear your friend retell the story later to someone else you wonder if they were at the same game you were at? Two people can witness and hear the same thing and come out with two completely different points of views and beliefs. It’s no surprise then that from the beginning of Jesus’ time people had various interpretations and ideas of who Jesus was, what he stood for and how people should follow his ideas. Christian denominations and various different takes on what it is to be a Christian that we experience today are not much different than the ones two thousand years ago. Who’s a heretic depends on who’s got the power.

While I liked this book a great deal, I’m probably going to have to reread it sometime for deeper details. If you want to start off with a good book on early Christian and Jesus issues, I suggest you read Ehrman’s other book, Misquoting Jesus. It’s an easy read – flows wonderfully – and is still highly informative and intriguing. High schoolers could read it with very little difficulty.

For those who’d like a gentle nudge or discussion group to go along with reading this book, attend the next few weeks of adult education class Sunday mornings at 9:15 in the parish hall as this book is on the reading list; the subject at hand: the first four hundred years of early Christianities.

My current book is Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I read this book at the suggestion of Father Richard back when I was a high school camp counselor for our little Episcopal summer camp called Camp Living Waters. (You may have seen me wearing my ratty old blue shirt from there.) Ft Richard was the first priest who showed me what it is to be an intellectual Christian.