Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Heresy of Orthodoxy

I have picked up a copy of The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture's Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity by Andreas J. Kostenberger and Michael Kruger.  Well, I don't know if I should say "picked up" as I purchased the book via the iTunes store for my iPad book reader.  I am looking forward to reading the book.  


Essentially the book attempts to overturn what it calls the Bauer-Ehrman theory of the development of earliest Christianity.  According to Bauer and Ehrman, earliest Christianity was a bastion of diverse beliefs about Christ, and only in the fourth century was this diversity crushed by the power of Rome which then imposed a rigid orthodoxy.  This theory has been popularized in recent years by scholars such as Ehrman and Pagels, and by writers such as Dan Brown with his wildly popular Da Vinci Code.

I don't know if I will do a full review of the book or not, but I hope to post some comments as I read.  One thing that I already know will be a problem is citation.  In iBook reader, there is no consistent pagination.  Because you can adjust the font size, the pages are constantly in flux.  Right now, at the font setting I have, I am on page 308 of 1540.  Yet if I go one font size bigger I am on page 421 of 2100, and if I go smaller, 170 of 836.  Has anyone come up with a way of citing a book in iBooks e-reader?

No comments:

Post a Comment