New Testament

Week 30: Post-New Testament Christianity and the Great Apostasy

Walter Bauer, “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.” Dr. Bauer’s 1934 book revolutionized the study of early Christianity. Everything written on it since then has been a reaction to his thesis, which was that what came to be known as “orthodoxy” was just one of numerous forms of Christianity in the early centuries.
Noel B. Reynolds, ed., Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy (Provo, Utah: BYU Press and FARMS, 2005). This book, which is available for free online, is probably the best book on the Great Apostasy for Latter-day Saint readers.
Stephen E. Robinson, “Nephi’s ‘Great and Abominable Church’,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 32–39. Robinson, a religion professor at BYU, evaluates the Book of Mormon’s statements on the “great and abominable church” and identifies what organization Nephi₁ was referring to.