Early Christianity
Gnostics, teachers and heretics, about 100 – 400 CE · lessons and gamebooks · B1–B2
In the first centuries of Christianity there was no single Church with one set of beliefs. Teachers in Alexandria, Rome and Lyon argued about who made the world, which books were scripture and who Jesus was, and the winners decided which views would be called orthodox and which heresy. Each part tells one part of the story, practises a grammar point, labels every claim as agreed, debated or reported only by opponents, and comes with a gamebook in which you play an ordinary person caught up in the argument.
The Gnostics and their critics
What Was Gnosis?Free
A hidden God, a foolish creator and a spark of light; Irenaeus and the heresy-hunters; the jar at Nag Hammadi; and the debate over the word “Gnosticism”. Reporting verbs. Gamebook: The Copyist’s Two Books
Teachers of AlexandriaPremium
Philo and allegory, Basilides and his contradictory reports, Valentinus, the Gospel of Truth, and Clement’s “true gnostic”. The passive for reporting. Gamebook: The Student’s Letter
Marcion and the First CanonPremium
Two gods, one gospel and ten letters; the break with Rome in 144; and how the New Testament took shape. Contrast. Gamebook: The Two Books of Rome
The books speak for themselves
The Jar at Nag HammadiPremium
The find of 1945 and the doubts about its story, who might have buried the books, the Gospel of Thomas and its 114 sayings, and the debate over the historical Jesus. Modals of deduction about the past. Gamebook: The Books in the Jar
Other StrandsPremium
Docetists, Ebionites and Montanists: the questions they asked, why they lost, and the debate over which came first, orthodoxy or heresy. The third conditional. Gamebook: The Gospel of Peter
The making of orthodoxy
Arius and NicaeaPremium
Arius and Bishop Alexander, Constantine and Hosius of Córdoba, one Greek word and the Nicene Creed, what the council did and did not decide, and the Goths of Spain until 589. Cause and result. Gamebook: The Secretary at Nicaea