Loading...In 1996 I was struck by the thought that it would be really useful for professors of New Testament to have an anthology of ALL the Christian books written in the first century of the religion, not just a translation of the NT itself. I looked around and couldn’t find one. I told my editor at Oxford Press, and he couldn’t believe it. But lo and behold.
So we agreed I should produce one. I decided that it should be all the surviving books written by Christians during its first hundred years, so 30-130 CE (though the first surviving book was probably not written till 20 years after Jesus’ death), that I would use the NRSV translation for the NT (with permission), and then include all the other books that could be plausibly dated to the period.
The idea is that the New Testament contains *some* of the earliest Christian literature, not all of it. And if anyone is interested in a historical study of the NT, they need to read it in light of other writings produced at about the same time. And so I called the collection, The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; Second edition, 2004).
I wrote an introduction to the volume that discussed such issues as which other books were produced then (the ones that survive) and how it was decided that some would “get in” but others not.
As I’ve been introducing my various non-scholarly books here, it’s time to explain this one at some length. So I’ll excerpt the Introduction, over the course of three posts.
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Love this. Also shocked that this compilation doesn’t exist!
Quick question regarding your deconversion? How do you/did you justify all the “experiences” you had or believed you had while subscribed to Christianity? Surely you had a “come to Jesus” or similar moment? Experienced “the voice of God (or the Holy Spirit.)” Perhaps witnessed people around you doing the same. What did you chalk all these first hand experiences to?
My upbringing had a lot to do with it. My friends who had made a similar commitment. My sense that this was taking the faith seriously (as one who had been raised in the church). And, well, emotional and psychological motivatoins.
So glad to hear that Bart is safe from Hurricane Helene! 🙂
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
Just an FYI: the page you link your book to has a misspelling of the title in it. The title of the book, next to the picture of the book (and not the header of the page) has “Other Early Christian Writing” spelled as “Chistian.” Thought you’d might like to correct 🙂
– Rob
Thanks.
This is really interesting. Thank you so much for this. There are a few more things here for my growing list of “amazing things you never realised are in the Bible“, in this case those additional writings alluded to by Paul which refer to other epistles, and other writings. I never noticed these when growing up as evangelical.
The Christians who believed salvation was meant for the entire world were religious, Greek pretenders, not authentic members of the church, which was Israelite. One of the errors of today’s historians is to assume that the church was a single, linear and uninterrupted entity that began with Jews and later included non-Israelites. That’s false. It began with Jews and included some non-Jews. Paul believed those non-Jews were descendants of the ten northern tribes of Israel, called GK Ethnos because they had stopped being Torah observant and had stopped practicing circumcision.
Only they were guilty of violating the law and were under its curse. Only they needed salvation and redemption. That pre-AD70 group disappeared into obscurity and died like everyone else.
The later Greek, faux church was led and populated by people not under the Law or its curse, people who weren’t in danger of an end of the age judgement and who didn’t really need Jesus and salvation.
My recently published book titled Hidden In Plain Sight: The Bible As Israel Only goes into detail on this.