Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (review)

In his list of "lost scriptures" Ehrman provides forty-seven selections of which twenty-six are complete (at least as is) while the others are variously abridged or are mere fragments of known texts. These include five normally identified as being among the Apostolic Fathers for which the author has recently published the new Loeb Classical Library edition (2004). He has also included ten from extant titles found among the thirteen codices obtained from Nag Hammadi in 1945. Five were provided from Robinson's Nag Hammadi Library in English (3rd ed. [1988]); the others are from either Nag Hammadi Codex I (= NHS 22 [1985]: the Gospel of Truth and the Treatise on Resurrection) or Nag Hammadi Codex VII (= NHS 30 [1996]: Coptic Apocalypse of Peter and Second Great Seth), with the final example, the Gospel of Philip, from Cartlidge and Dungan's Documents for the Study of the Gospels (2nd ed. 1994). In addition, as a document related to these Gnosticizing materials, Ehrman has borrowed Ptolemaeus' Letter to Flora from Layton's collection (1981).

For two items usually considered late among ante-Nicene writers (an abridgement of Clementine Homilies plus the introductory correspondence of "Peter to James" together with its "reception") and for two others (Epistle of the Apostles and Pseudo-Titus), Ehrman has dipped into the vast assortment of New Testament Apocrypha from the most recently revised English edition (1991) of Hennecke-Schneemelcher. Ten more traditional examples of "Apocryphal New Testament," are borrowed in whole or part from Elliott's preferred collection (1993), which replaced James' edition of 1924.

Ehrman has translated separately fourteen of his remaining selections though these include some real scraps, e.g., "four" gospels so denominated in antiquity but quite confusingly since they can no longer be differentiated (Nazareans, Ebionites, Hebrews as well as the probably separable Egyptians). The latter is known only from minimal citations by various patristic authors. To these Ehrman has added Morton Smith's quirky Secret Mark on which readers of this journal should see the author's comments in JECS 11 (2003): 155–63.

Thus, we are left from Ehrman's own hand retranslations made between first (1998) and second (2004) editions of his New Testament and other Early Christian Writers: A Reader, which included sixteen of the present forty-seven. The sixten include the Egerton Papyrus fragments and the conclusion of what is supposedly the Gospel of Peter though both documents are presented without acknowledgement of David Wright's useful hypothesis that they might belong together (cf. Second Century 5 (1985/86): 129–50). Also in this number are the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Protevangelion of James, the older known portion of the Acts of Paul, and the epistolary exchange between Corinth and Paul. Regrettably, with respect to these latter Ehrman fails to clarify what the total Acts of Paul contained.

In a concluding portion of the volume the author provides snippets relative to "canonical" listings to which he has added brief texts from Eusebius as well as Origen's observations and a portion of Athanasius' "39th Letter."

The problem is not Ehrman's selecting what he wants incorporated within this "sampler" nor his extensive dependence upon others' translations even though he had both a similar objective in his Reader and an even more generous selection of thirty-five of these same titles drawn mainly from the same sources in his After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (1999). The prob-lem is the absence of substantial supplementary interpretative material. Each selection receives a page, but beyond this there are only ten pages of introductory statements. Five of these are general in tone, and one page is give for the author's individual categories, i.e., traditional "gospels," "acts," "epistles (and related writings)," "apocalypses and revelatory treatises." Into this procrustean bed the author has fitted vastly diverse genres of ancient (albeit Christian in some sense) literature.

One possible explanation for the...