Whereas Lost Christianities focuses on the beliefs of various early Christian groups, the companion volume Lost Scriptures is concerned with the many different Christian scriptures that never made it into the final New Testament canon. Ehrman provides English translations, almost half of which are his own, of 47 texts written by early Christians and considered by one group or another - and sometimes by many - to be at least as authoritative as anything found in the New Testament today.
Each is accompanied by a brief explanation of where and when the first evidence of the text was found and what Ehrman thinks about how it compares and contrasts with those in the New Testament canon. Collected together are more than a dozen gospels, several Acts, more than a dozen epistles, and several apocalypses. Ehrman also includes five different canonical lists that were authoritative at one time or another - canonical lists that look very different from what we have today. One is led to wonder what the history of Christianity and Europe would have been like had a different canon been chosen and different orthodoxy made official.
These two books are very readable and very informative - but to be honest, while Ehrman does raise interesting questions, he is covering territory that has been well-explored already by others. It must be acknowledged, then, that reading them won't lead to any shattering new insights - at least not for those familiar with the other works in the field written for lay readers.
Ehrman's ideas about a vast "proto-orthodox" movement that was fundamentally intolerant of all other forms of Christianity also sounds, at times, like a fantastic conspiracy bent on world domination. I suspect that Ehrman goes a bit too far at times and ends up painting, even if inadvertently, this "proto-orthodoxy" like many-tentacled evil force.
If you look beyond some of the negative language, though, there is a book that is well worth reading. Even if Ehrman doesn't cover dramatic new ground, he does do a great job at explaining the various factions and debates that occupied early Christians - and by providing translations of many of the "lost" scriptures used by suppressed groups, he allows readers to form their own judgments about the Christianities that died out.
Gnostics and Ebionites, Marconites and Montanistsm, Essenes and Jewish Christians are all given new life by Ehrman, helping us better understand where Christianity originally came from. Ehrmans' prose is clear and easy to understand, and his research is painstaking and detailed. The books are engaging to read and well worth the time for those who have an interest in this subject.
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