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Before there was one Christianity there were many, and every one of them had apostles, scriptures, and a list of heretics. Only one of them got to write the rules.
One Faith, or Many?
Modern Christianity is astonishingly various. Appalachian snake handlers and Russian Orthodox, Mormons and Methodists and Southern Baptists, all convinced they are the true article. That variety is nothing next to what was going on in the second century.
There were Christians who worshipped one God. There were Christians who insisted the God of the Old Testament was a different being entirely from the Father of Jesus: two Gods, not one. There were Christians who counted twelve. Others thirty-six. One group counted three hundred and sixty-five.
They disagreed about Jesus just as sharply. Was he God and not human? Human and not God? Both at once? Two separate beings, a man named Jesus and a divine Christ who moved into him for a while and left before the end? Did his death save anyone? Did he die at all?
Every one of these groups had sacred books, and every one of those books carried an apostle’s name. Every one of them said the others were heretics. In the end one group won, and it was that group that decided which books would be Scripture, which beliefs would be Christian, and how the story of the first two centuries would be told.
Bart Ehrman takes you back before the verdict, to when the outcome was genuinely open. Who were the losers, what did they actually believe, and how sure are we that they lost on the merits?
Format
Recorded, on demand
50 minutes each
8 full lectures
One after lecture 4, one after lecture 8
2 Q&A sessions
15 questions each
2 course quizzes
Access
Lifetime, watch anytime
Prerequisites
None. No Greek needed
The Rival Christianities
These groups did not think of themselves as variations on a theme. Each believed it had the faith the apostles taught, and each could point to written gospels and letters to prove it. The course puts them side by side and asks what actually separated them.
Christ was divine, fully and completely, and therefore could not have been a man. He only appeared to be. Their most famous champion is the figure the church fathers called the arch-heretic, and his argument about the Old Testament God is more coherent than his opponents wanted to admit.
Jesus was the Jewish messiah, sent by the Jewish God to the Jewish people, in fulfilment of the Jewish scriptures. So his followers should keep the Jewish law. And because he was truly human, he was not God. Their surviving letters name one apostle as the enemy of the faith.
This world is a mistake, made by lower and inferior divinities. Trapped inside it are sparks of the divine that belong somewhere else. Christ came down to hand over the knowledge that gets them out. Not his death. The knowledge.
One God, a Christ both human and divine, a death that saves. The group whose descendants wrote the histories, fixed the canon, and gave us the creeds. The interesting question is not what they believed but how they won, and the answer is not the one Eusebius gives.
Bart D. Ehrman · 2026 James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught from 1988 until his retirement in 2025. Recognized internationally for his scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity, Professor Ehrman has written or edited thirty-three books, including six New York Times bestsellers. His college-level textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings has remained the best-selling text in the field for more than twenty-five years. His scholarly works have been published by Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and other premier academic presses, and his books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, reaching millions of readers worldwide.
Beyond the classroom, Professor Ehrman is a widely recognized public scholar. He has produced nine acclaimed courses for The Great Courses, in addition to numerous online courses available through BartEhrman.com. His books and courses have sold more than two million copies.
He also writes for his charitable blog, The Bart Ehrman Blog, which has raised millions for organizations addressing poverty, homelessness, and hunger. In addition, he hosts the weekly podcast Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, where he brings cutting-edge biblical scholarship to a global audience.
What This Course Offers
Eight lectures on the groups that lost, taken as seriously as the group that won, from the scholar whose work on them is the reason most readers have heard of them at all.
For most of history these groups survived only in the quotations their enemies chose to keep. Modern discoveries changed that, and this course reads the recovered texts directly rather than trusting the summaries written to refute them.
Was orthodoxy the original faith, later corrupted by heretics? Or one early option among several that happened to prevail? The course lays out both accounts, names who argued for each, and shows what the evidence does to them.
Some of these fights are not later developments at all. They are already inside the New Testament, and in a few places you can watch scribes adjusting the wording to shut a rival reading down.
The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, the Jewish-Christian gospels that survive only in fragments. What each one actually says, and how we know who wrote it.
Everything is recorded and waiting. Watch a lecture a night for a week, or work through the whole thing in a weekend. Both Q&A sessions and both quizzes are included, and access does not expire.
The last lecture follows the three instruments that ended the argument: a clerical hierarchy, a canon of scripture, and a creed. Then it shows you why the fourth century started arguing all over again.
Common Assumption
The early church was united, and heresy came later.
In fact
The arguing starts inside the New Testament itself, where “false” Christians are attacked by name for what they teach. Paul is already fighting about it. There was never a moment of agreement to fall away from.
Common Assumption
The heretics were fringe cranks with no real books.
In fact
They had gospels, letters, apocalypses and revelations, all of them carrying apostolic names, and in some regions they were the majority. The question of which books were forged and which were authentic is far harder than either side admitted.
Common Assumption
Orthodoxy won because it was obviously right.
In fact
That is one model, and it is the one the winners wrote down. There is another, and the course takes both seriously enough to test them. What decided the outcome was not only doctrine.
All eight lectures and both Q&A sessions are available to watch the moment you enroll. Click any lecture to read its description.
The diversity of Christian belief and practice already visible inside the New Testament, where “false” Christians are regularly attacked for their views, and the heresies attested in the two centuries after it. Then the framing question the whole course turns on: was orthodoxy the oldest form of Christianity, later corrupted by false teachers, or simply one early form that eventually won the battle?
Docetism takes its name from a Greek word meaning “to seem.” Christ was fully divine and therefore could not be human: he only appeared to be. The view is already under attack in 1 John and becomes prominent in the decades after. This lecture takes up its representatives, above all the man the church fathers called the arch-heretic, and how they were answered.
Docetism is not as strange as it sounds. Paul says Christ came in the “likeness” of human flesh, and a figure who walks on water and through closed doors is not human the way we are. Here are the writings that pushed the point: gospels we know only from the fathers who quoted them to condemn them, and surviving texts in which Jesus leaves no footprint in the sand.
From the beginning, some devout followers held that since Jesus was the Jewish messiah sent by the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfilment of the Jewish scriptures, all his followers should become Jewish. Their opponents called them Ebionites. Many of them affirmed that Christ was fully human, and concluded from it that he was not God. This lecture covers their views, why they read one apostle as the enemy of the faith, and how the heresy hunters answered them.
None of the gospels these groups used survives intact, but three of them are quoted at length by the writers who set out to refute them, and one letter attributed to Peter and addressed to James survives to condemn a “false teacher” its author calls “my enemy.” This lecture works through what those quotations let us reconstruct, including what an adoptionist Christology is and where the New Testament could be read to support it.
The best known and most widely misunderstood of the early heresies. Gnosticism is a blanket term for a range of groups rather than a single church, but they shared a story: this world is a wretched place made by inferior divinities, some humans carry a divine spark trapped inside it, and Christ came down to reveal the knowledge that sets it free. Where our information comes from, what the groups shared, and how the church fathers attacked them.
The recovered texts themselves. The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, in which Peter watches the crucifixion and sees a second Christ laughing above the cross. The Gospel of Mary, in which Magdalene reports a vision given to her alone, to the fury of the male disciples. The Gospel of Judas, in which the betrayer is the only one who understands. And the Gospel of Thomas, our oldest non-canonical gospel, whose 114 sayings raise the question of whether it belongs in this company at all.
How one group established itself as dominant and quieted the rest. Three instruments did most of the work: a clerical hierarchy of leaders appointed by leaders appointed by apostles, a canon of scripture said to hold the only apostolic books, and a creed setting out the beliefs the apostles were said to have held. Then the twist: the arguing did not stop. The fourth century opens the Arian controversy and the long fight over the Trinity.
A recorded question-and-answer session covering the first half of the course: orthodoxy and heresy, the docetic writings, Marcion, and the Ebionites.
A recorded question-and-answer session covering the second half: the Jewish-Christian gospels, the Gnostic groups and their scriptures, and the victory of orthodoxy.
The full recordings of both question-and-answer sessions, one after lecture four and one after lecture eight, where Bart takes participant questions and pushes further on the material.
Bart’s bonus lecture from his Spotlight Series, going deeper on the group that produced the Nag Hammadi library.
Every lecture ships its slides in colour and in black and white, plus a slide outline, so you can follow along, print them, or take notes against them.
An MP3 of every lecture and both Q&A sessions, for listening on a commute, a walk, or anywhere away from a screen.
A fifteen-question quiz after lecture four and another after lecture eight, plus written questions for reflection on every lecture if you want to think it through rather than just watch.
Nine books Bart recommends for going further, plus the additional resources gathered for the course, including both quiz PDFs and the whole-course download folders.
A written transcript of the course, for reading, searching, or quoting rather than scrubbing back through the video.
The lectures, the Q&As and the materials are yours to keep. Watch tonight, watch again next year, on any device, as often as you like.
$1 from every registration is donated to charity: water, bringing clean water to people in need.
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Eight lectures of about fifty minutes each, plus the full recordings of both Q&A sessions: one after lecture four, one after lecture eight. Everything is on demand, so you can watch at whatever pace suits you.
No. It was recorded live and is now sold as an on-demand course. The lectures, the Q&A recordings and all of the materials are available the moment you enroll, with no schedule to keep.
After you enroll you will receive login instructions for our online course platform, ThriveCart Learn, where the videos, slides and audio downloads are all posted. If you are a member of Biblical Studies Academy (BSA), your access will also be available inside the community.
Yes. The lectures, the Q&As and every download are yours with lifetime access. Watch them on any device, on your own schedule, as often as you like.
No. Every text is discussed in English, and every group, writer and gospel is introduced as it comes up. No previous study is assumed.
No, though the two sit well together. This course is Bart Ehrman on the specific movements the church fathers condemned: the Docetists and Marcionites, the Ebionites, the Gnostics, and the group that eventually silenced them. Ancient Christianities is Paula Fredriksen’s wider survey of the whole period.
No. It is history. The question the course asks is how a set of beliefs came to count as the right ones, who decided, and on what basis. It takes the arguments of every side seriously, including the side that won.
Our normal price for eight individual lectures with Dr. Bart Ehrman is $199.60. You get all eight lectures, both Q&A sessions and the bonus materials, with lifetime access, for $79.95.
Yes. Viewers of Dr. Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus show on YouTube and listeners of the podcast can find exclusive discount codes, and members of Biblical Studies Academy (BSA) receive 30% off with their member coupon.
We accept PayPal and all major credit cards.
Absolutely. If you don’t love the course, send us an email at support@bartehrman.com within 30 days of purchase and we will refund every penny.
