Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene
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So, I have read several books like this, which talk about christian figures and what we can know about them from the Bible and non canonical christian writings from biblical times ... and this touches upon all the points. The author writes with some sense of humor, which is nice, but there are word for word repetitions from chapter to chapter that make you wonder if he was being lazy. The material requires that he introduce several sects of Christianity found heretical by the later church, which he describes well enough, but, for instance, with the Gnostics he repeats several times that they felt this world to have been the result of some "cosmic catastrophe" which seems a strange way to describe what some (most) Gnostics believed - then again, this is not a book about gnosticism ... just that the nag hammadi texts were mostly gnostic and here we find a lot of material where Mary and Peter represent two differing world views .... anyway ...
This is a very interesting topic, and a decent book. I enjoyed it a lot. The only problem I had with it was that it was very repetitious. Even within the three main parts (Peter, Paul, and Mary) some of the same points are stated and restated multiple times, and then if those same points included one of the other people, they would be recounted again in that person's section. That got to be fairly boring. But overall, this is a very good book, and I am interested in reading others of Ehrman's work.
I rented this to learn more about other early Christian literature outside the Bible. I would have preferred a discussion about what each source contains and perhaps commentary on its reliability. I found this book to be long, and the organization confusing. Beyond that, the author seems to have an agenda to discredit the Bible. He allows for no alternative understandings/interpretations when it suits his purpose, but then allows for alternative understandings when it helps his argument. As a Christian, I found this one-sided and disturbing.