Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New

Testament (review)

Clyde Curry Smith

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 13, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp.
249-250 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2005.0029

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/183932

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 BOOK REVIEWS 249

attention to the properly theological dimensions of the process which he

otherwise describes so very compellingly.
Michael Heintz, University of Notre Dame

Bart D. Ehrman
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It
into the New Testament
New York: Oxford University Press, 2003
Pp. vi + 342. $30.

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 abridge-
ment 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
250 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

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 dearth of expository material lies in the fact
that 2003 also saw Ehrman’s spectacular publication of Lost Christianities,
which is called a “companion” to this volume (3) and to which the author
consistently refers readers for further clarification.
In footnotes Ehrman has only partially identified his sources, and with much
less frequency he offers stray explanations which go beyond references to the
companion volume. At a minimum the present work needs a comprehensive
bibliography both for the overall collection and for each particular selection. For
teachers and scholars the author’s earlier work, After the New Testament,
remains a better choice.
Clyde Curry Smith, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, Emeritus

Hamilton Hess
The Early Development of Canon Law
and the Council of Serdica
Oxford Early Christian Studies
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
Pp. xii + 279. $80.

When this book inaugurated the Oxford Theological Monographs series in

1958, its title was The Canons of the Council of Sardica, A.D. 343: A Landmark
in the Early Development of Canon Law. The repositioning of title and subtitle
indicates the primary change in this new edition. Whereas the first edition began