Novelist Wilton Barnhardt on Lost Sacred Texts

Religion scholar Elaine Pagels lost her young son to terminal illness and her husband a year later in an accident. She spoke to Fresh Air in November 2018 about loss and faith.

He's the Bowman and Gordon Gray professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His new book, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, chronicles the second and third centuries before Christianity as we know it came to be. Ehrman has also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ called Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make it Into The New Testament.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's new book centers on Frank Bascombe, a 68-year-old man dealing with his aging body, a dying friend and his ex-wife, who has Parkinson's.