Rating: 
Summary: Interesting theory
Review: Considering the mass of this work, this is a fundamentallyintriguing book. I found it a rich read rather than dry. Having abackground in New Testament text critical methods such as the Claremont Profile Method and geneological methods, I found the theories very much a commercial ploy to become famous. With the mass of NT manusrcipts with an essentially identical theological core, there is no reason the believe the text as it stands in critical editions today is anything but a very good proximity to the original writers, or is it? Well, that's the problem that makes it all enjoyable for textual critics. Objectively, I suppose books such as these only make it harder for true scholars to do their work.
Rating: 
Summary: Bais
Review: Ehrman goes on a investigative journey into the heart of the biblical texts to unearth evidence of quite extensive manipulation of the original text of the New Testament. Although much of this work is very detailed argumentation and goes far beyond the textual knowledge of the typical layperson it remains accessible. It's a compelling account of the textual history.The finest chapter is that which deals with the initial environment of Christianity, the diversity of faiths present, and the struggle over an emerging orthodoxy not solidified until the fourth century. Explicating this, Ehrman provides an informative account of a particular portion of the early history of the church. He reviews the various church fathers, their writings, and their polemical attacks against their opponents. It should come as no surprise that the evidence of who these opponents actually were does not agree with the orthodox interpretation of them as sensual, deviant deceivers and idolaters. In many cases, there were honest differences of opinion and each group sought its own way of accommodating the writings of the new church and the Old Testament. Each succeeding chapter deals with a different controversy. The lengthiest discussion is related to orthodox changes made to scripture regarding whether Jesus was the adopted Son of God, a very righteous man or the pre-existent image of God. A straight reading of the earliest gospel of Mark leads to the adoptionist conclusion. Especially troublesome was John's baptism of Jesus and the subsequent arrival of the spirit of God in bodily form and God's pronouncement of Jesus' son-ship. Besides this appearing in all three synoptic gospels, with the addition of Matthew's clever manipulation to ensure proper interpretation of the event, there are many instances where the mention of Jesus' earthly father Joseph has been changed to align with more orthodox beliefs. Ehrman provides an extensive discussion and defense of his conclusion that Luke's baptism pericope originally had the voice of God state "today I have begotten you", not simply "whom I have begotten" as currently appears in all bibles. The remaining chapters deal with separationist, docetic, and patripassianist heresies. Separationists believe that Jesus and the Christ were separate beings, docetists that Jesus lacked a material body, and patripassianists that Jesus was the Father God Himself who had suffered, died, and risen. All are very interesting. This may not be a good book for a layperson, unless you are highly interested in the textual history of the New Testament. For some, this may be too much parsing, and textual analysis. But, if you can get through it, it is extremely helpful and interesting knowledge.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting early textual history; not for everyone
Review: Ehrman goes on a investigative journey into the heart of the biblical texts to unearth evidence of quite extensive manipulation of the original text of the New Testament. Although much of this work is very detailed argumentation and goes far beyond the textual knowledge of the typical layperson it remains accessible. It's a compelling account of the textual history. The finest chapter is that which deals with the initial environment of Christianity, the diversity of faiths present, and the struggle over an emerging orthodoxy not solidified until the fourth century. Explicating this, Ehrman provides an informative account of a particular portion of the early history of the church. He reviews the various church fathers, their writings, and their polemical attacks against their opponents. It should come as no surprise that the evidence of who these opponents actually were does not agree with the orthodox interpretation of them as sensual, deviant deceivers and idolaters. In many cases, there were honest differences of opinion and each group sought its own way of accommodating the writings of the new church and the Old Testament. Each succeeding chapter deals with a different controversy. The lengthiest discussion is related to orthodox changes made to scripture regarding whether Jesus was the adopted Son of God, a very righteous man or the pre-existent image of God. A straight reading of the earliest gospel of Mark leads to the adoptionist conclusion. Especially troublesome was John's baptism of Jesus and the subsequent arrival of the spirit of God in bodily form and God's pronouncement of Jesus' son-ship. Besides this appearing in all three synoptic gospels, with the addition of Matthew's clever manipulation to ensure proper interpretation of the event, there are many instances where the mention of Jesus' earthly father Joseph has been changed to align with more orthodox beliefs. Ehrman provides an extensive discussion and defense of his conclusion that Luke's baptism pericope originally had the voice of God state "today I have begotten you", not simply "whom I have begotten" as currently appears in all bibles. The remaining chapters deal with separationist, docetic, and patripassianist heresies. Separationists believe that Jesus and the Christ were separate beings, docetists that Jesus lacked a material body, and patripassianists that Jesus was the Father God Himself who had suffered, died, and risen. All are very interesting. This may not be a good book for a layperson, unless you are highly interested in the textual history of the New Testament. For some, this may be too much parsing, and textual analysis. But, if you can get through it, it is extremely helpful and interesting knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: a necessary challenge to fundamentalism
Review: Ehrman is doing for the New Testament what scholars long ago did for the Old Testament: he shows how the books we have in the bible have been edited and re-edited, arranged and rearranged for a variety of reasons many times in the days before the 'canon' was fixed. Fundamentalists will not like this because they regard the Bible and its divine inspiration having come down, as it were, on a cloud from heaven. A more sophisticated view of inspiration believes that men are inspired as well as misled by a variety of factors, God being only one among many. I don't know whether fundamentalists will even take this book seriously. One could also wish that Muslims would finally get off their butts and begin to view the Koran as something similarly re-edited and re-arranged in the early days and not something that the Angel Gabriel dictated to Mohammed. Religion has always gotten a bad name from its most devoted followers.
Rating:
Summary: a necessary challenge to fundamentalism
Review: Ehrman is doing for the New Testament what scholars long ago did for the Old Testament: he shows how the books we have in the bible have been edited and re-edited, arranged and rearranged for a variety of reasons many times in the days before the 'canon' was fixed. Fundamentalists will not like this because they regard the Bible and its divine inspiration having come down, as it were, on a cloud from heaven. A more sophisticated view of inspiration believes that men are inspired as well as misled by a variety of factors, God being only one among many. I don't know whether fundamentalists will even take this book seriously. One could also wish that Muslims would finally get off their butts and begin to view the Koran as something similarly re-edited and re-arranged in the early days and not something that the Angel Gabriel dictated to Mohammed. Religion has always gotten a bad name from its most devoted followers.
Rating:
Summary: A very readable exploration of a potentially arcane subject:
Review: Ehrman lays out with admirable clarity and directness his thesis: that scribes of the faction of early Christianity which eventually became the dominant one (which has in hindsight been dubbed "orthodox") in the course of its conflicts with the other factions (now called the "heretics") massaged particular scriptural passages as they copied them to either: 1) provide proof-texts for orthodox Christology; or 2) neutralize potential proof-texts for the heretics. My acquaintance with the mechanics of "textual criticism" was only slight before reading this book, but the reasoning and method are so lucid that I've had no difficulty learning a great deal simply by watching Ehrman work. I've found it a surprisingly enjoyable read. It's probably a bit dry for most people's taste -- but if you didn't enjoy "dry" you probably wouldn't be looking at a book with this title anyway, would you?
Rating:
Summary: The palest ink shouts louder than the strongest memory
Review: Many books have been written about the search for the historical Jesus, and most attempt to use non-biblical data to cast doubt on the literal truth of the scriptures. Having thus established that the Bible is largely symbolic, the authors can then speculate about their own theories about who Jesus really was. However, this approach is heavily criticized by the orthodoxy which claims that noncanonical works are inherently suspect as having been written by doubters wishing to subvert Jesus' claims. Bart Ehrman takes the novel approach in this fine, dense work of taking the orthodoxy's own hallowed texts and pointing out, word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, where those texts have been altered, edited, harmonized and elided with official sanction. He makes a very powerful case that the bible was written by men--many men, and continuously revised by men--many men. This leaves the field open to content analysts who try to decypher what was originally meant, and what the later editors decided needed updating or elision. It is an exciting approach, one that is reviled to the point of apoplexy by the rigidly orthodox.
Rating:
Summary: The palest ink shouts louder than the strongest memory
Review: Many books have been written about the search for the historical Jesus, and most attempt to use non-biblical data to cast doubt on the literal truth of the scriptures. Having thus established that the Bible is largely symbolic, the authors can then speculate about their own theories about who Jesus really was. However, this approach is heavily criticized by the orthodoxy which claims that noncanonical works are inherently suspect as having been written by doubters wishing to subvert Jesus' claims. Bart Ehrman takes the novel approach in this fine, dense work of taking the orthodoxy's own hallowed texts and pointing out, word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, where those texts have been altered, edited, harmonized and elided with official sanction. He makes a very powerful case that the bible was written by men--many men, and continuously revised by men--many men. This leaves the field open to content analysts who try to decypher what was originally meant, and what the later editors decided needed updating or elision. It is an exciting approach, one that is reviled to the point of apoplexy by the rigidly orthodox.
Rating: 
Summary: To Go A Step Beyond
Review: Nearly all knowledgeable Biblical scholars realize there have been a wide range of writings attributed to Jesus and his Apostles..... and that some of these were selected for compilation into the book that became known as the Bible.....and that some books have been removed from some versions of the Bible and others have been re-discovered in modern times.
The attention focused on Gnosticism by Dan Brown's DaVinci Code may be debatable, but the fact is that increased attention on academics tends to be predominately positive.
This is great......I seldom quote other reviewers, but there is one reviewer of Pagels' books who confided that he had been a Jesuit candidate and had been required to study a wide range of texts but was never was told about the Nag Hamadi texts. He said:
"Now I know why. The Gospel of Thomas lays waste to the notion that Jesus was `the only begotten Son of God' and obviates the need for a formalized church when he says, `When your leaders tell you that God is in heaven, say rather, God is within you, and without you.' No wonder they suppressed this stuff! The Roman Catholic Church hasn't maintained itself as the oldest institution in the world by allowing individuals to have a clear channel to see the divinity within all of us: they need to put God in a bottle, label the bottle, put that bottle on an altar, build a church around that altar, put a sign over the door, and create rubricks and rituals to keep out the dis-believing riff-raff. Real `Us' versus `them' stuff, the polar opposite from `God is within You.' `My God is bigger than your God' the church(s)seem to say. And you can only get there through "my" door/denomination. But Jesus according to Thomas had it right: just keep it simple, and discover the indwelling Divinity `within you and without you.'"
Here are quickie reviews of what is being bought these days on the Gnostic Gospels and the lost books of the Bible in general:
The Lost Books of the Bible (0517277956) includes 26 apocryphal books from the first 400 years that were not included in the New Testament.
Marvin Meyers' The Secret Teachings of Jesus : Four Gnostic Gospels (0394744330 ) is a new translation without commentary of The Secret Book of James, The Gospel of Thomas, The Book of Thomas, and The Secret Book of John.
James M. Robinson's The Nag Hammadi Library in English : Revised Edition (0060669357) has been around 25 years now and is in 2nd edition. It has introductions to each of the 13 Nag Hammadi Codices and the Papyrus Berioinensis 8502.
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (0140278079) by Geza Vermes has selected works....a complete work is more difficult to achieve than the publisher's marketing concept indicates. His commentary generates strong reactions.
Elaine Pagels has 2 books (The Gnostic Gospels 0679724532 and Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas 0375501568) that have received considerable attention lately. For many, her work is controversial in that it is written for popular consumption and there is a strong modern interpretation. She does attempt to reinterpret ancient gender relationships in the light of modern feminist thinking. While this is a useful (and entertaining) aspect of college women's studies programs, it is not as unethical as some critics claim. As hard as they may try, all historians interpret the past in the context of the present. Obviously there is value in our attempts to re-interpret the past in the light of our own time.
If you want the full scholarly work it is W. Schneemelcher's 2 volume New Testament Apocrypha.
Also, to understand the Cathars......try Barbara Tuckman's Distant Mirror for an incredible historical commentary on how the Christian Church has handled other points of view
Rating:
Summary: Exegetical Excess
Review: The author argues that the parties which triumphed in defining Christianity at Nicea and Chalcedon (the proto-orthodox) "improved" the not-yet-stabilized canon of the New Testament in the second and third centuries A.D. to counter those Christians whom they considered heretics. Using the proto-orthodox views of Separationist, Docetic, Adoptionist and Patripassianist beliefs, the author studies the earliest existing copies of what became the New Testament for clues to the controversies and their effect on what was actually written in these copies. Christology is the center of this study. What the heretics believed in opposition to what the proto-orthodox believed about the nature of Christ are the only parts of the developing canon which are scrutinized. Scrutinized is perhaps too broad a word. The author puts the various extant texts under an electron microscope of scholarly inquiry. Textual variants, external attestations, transcriptional probabilities, and intrinsic probabilities of what parts were "original" and what parts are "improvements" are culled with a fine toothed comb. Have a good Greek grammar handy because many of the arguments hinge on a verb tense, word substitutions, genders, possessives and antecedents. I have no Greek so many of the proofs of these arguments were beyond me. Did second and third century scribes change what became the New Testament as a result of Christological controversies within the early Church? It would appear so based on the evidence presented in this book. The author is throughout charitable to these individual scholars of long ago, recognizing that he can only guess at the motivations of these anonymous men of the pen. The evidence that they made what was written in the developing canon "say" what they already knew the words to "mean" is compelling. Besides giving insight into how these texts were transmitted to us, the book also provides a potted history of the various heretical controversies of these early centuries. I found it to be a hard read on a fascinating topic.
| 
