The Heresy of Orthodoxy, ch. 1

This chapter sets the stage of the problem it will seek to address: the thesis proposed by Bauer and Ehrman that the New Testament is largely unreliable. The essential hypothesis is that diversity was more commonplace in early Christianity than orthodoxy. The authors carefully trace the historical development of this thinking bringing us to the current understanding of those who would adopt this view, contemporarily Pagels and Ehrman, though Bauer seems to be the scholar behind it all. Toward the end of this chapter, the authors seek to establish that this view is largely rooted in post-modernism rather than in scholarship.