(September 18, 2014 at 3:18 am)Michael B Wrote: Celestine. Certainly Christians continued to write throughout the life of the Church. Some of those early writings, such as quite a few of the views of Origen, would later be considered heretical. A good introductory text is `Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers' edited by Andrew Louth. A decent book on the history of the church is also useful to put the debates (some of them quite ferocious) into context. Diarmaid McCulloch's brilliant 'A History of Christianity, the first three thousand years' is highly recommended. It's probably the most objective description of the development of the Church and explains in detail what the big debates were, what was the political context (both secular and ecclesial), who were the winners and losers, and what were the consequences. But be warned : it is years, if not a lifetime, of study to develop a decent understanding of the complex history of what we call Christianity.
The Nag Hammadi scriptures get a lot of attention, and should certainly be part of any survey of Christian (or pseudo-Christian, depending on perspective) writings. Remember though, that they probably mostly represent quite a niche view, rather than the widespread disputes (or 'heresies' some would say) of the writings of people like Nestorius or Pelagius (both of whom looked like they might represent the widespread future of Christianity for a while).
Beware those trying to peddle simple accounts, be they Christian or otherwise. There's an awful lot of rubbish on the internet, from Christians and non-Christians alike, so I'd recommend going to decent academic sources and books from reputable publishers much more than polemic and generally tendentious internet sites.
P.S. The Catholic bible has been mentioned, but remember that the Orthodox and Coptic canons are larger again. Checking out those additional books, originally mostly from from the Septuigint, might be a good place to start.
Understand I don't wish to learn about the history of Christianity, I wish to learn about the teachings. Of which I am very skeptical of Paul. The teachings should be consistent.
In my humble opinion, the more heretical something is the more it deserves to be learned of.
