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Background to the diversity of Christianities of the early centuries, before the New Testament was compiled and orthodoxy established. Bart D Ehrman is a highly respected academic and well worth subscribing to.
Bart is on his best behaviour here, being interviewed on religious TV - He's not always this restrained :-)
Our friend from Canada, John Hamer is very much leading the way in delivering an academically honest approach to Church leadership, even when it challenges the historical narrative, dogma and traditions of that religion.
As Pastor to a Mormon church in Toronto and a highly qualified historian he has posted hundreds of well informed and academically valid lectures on a range of religious and philosophical subjects and is not afraid to call out BS to any church tradition or dogma that doesn't stand up to contemporary scholastic research.
He is particularly forthright in his criticism of his own Mormon heritage, whilst continuing to lead a thriving Mormon Church community. I highly recommend subscribing to the Centre Place Youtube channel and picking out his lectures from the rest of the church postings.
Short intro to Gnoticism
James Tabor on the Ebionites who are part of the earliest divergence of belief among the early Christians - that between Peter & James vs Paul.
Another of the great 21st Century Biblical scholars, Elaine Pagels on the history of the early church.
Dr David Skrbina : Did Paul invent the "Christian" version of the Jesus story as an anti-roman cult ?
BBC documentary exploring the Kashmiri tradition of Isa, a Palestinian child educated in Buddhist monasteries that returned to India having survived a Crucifixion....
No narrative, just a collection of sayings usually attributed to Jesus but originally to a character simply called " IS" (many are similar to Biblical parables found in the New Testament and most likely preceded them) - Buried at Nag Hamadi in the fourth century and found in 1945 - A fascinating insight into very early, mystical movement, a branch of which ended up as Christianity.
Our good friend Martijn Linssen has given us permission to publish his literal, uninterpreted translation from the original Coptic into English. He also has some compelling theories on how and why the Church banned this gospel from the New Testament, despite its clear contribution to the writers of the synoptic gospels.
A compelling insight into Hellenic cosmology of the fist century AD (and quite possibly earlier in origin) - If you want to understand the theological zeitgeist within which the New Testament was written, particularly Paul and John, the philosophical background of which is far more Greek / Alexandrian than Jewish in its cosmological assumptions.
Reading the Corpus Hermeticum throws light on what the original audience understood by concepts such as The Logos, God the Father and Being born again of the Spirit.
A must read for anyone trying to understand the roots of Christianity and why the theology of the New Testament is so different to that of the Old Testament.
See also our resource page on the Corpus Hermeticum with video links.
The Ethiopian bible contains two important books that were lost to the rest of Christianity. Enoch and Jubilees. This video explores their prophesies concerning a future age which throw a much more hopeful light on our future than traditional Christianity does.
A very modern debate on the relevance of contemporary Christianity in the post-Christian west
The inspirational Fr Richard Rohr explores the mystical aspect that has been largely forgotten by Christianity over the millennia, tying it in effortlessly with modern metaphysical understanding.
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