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The Secrets Of Early Christianity
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Book Synopsis James the Brother of Jesus by : Robert H. Eisenman
Download or read book James the Brother of Jesus written by Robert H. Eisenman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-03-01 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James was a vegetarian, wore only linen clothing, bathed daily at dawn in cold water, and was a life-long Nazirite. In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenman introduces a startling theory about the identity of James—the brother of Jesus, who was almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament. Drawing on long-overlooked early Church texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eisenman reveals in this groundbreaking exploration that James, not Peter, was the real successor to the movement we now call "Christianity." In an argument with enormous implications, Eisenman identifies Paul as deeply compromised by Roman contacts. James is presented as not simply the leader of Christianity of his day, but the popular Jewish leader of his time, whose death triggered the Uprising against Rome—a fact that creative rewriting of early Church documents has obscured. Eisenman reveals that characters such as "Judas Iscariot" and "the Apostle James" did not exist as such. In delineating the deliberate falsifications in New Testament dcouments, Eisenman shows how—as James was written out—anti-Semitism was written in. By rescuing James from the oblivion into which he was cast, the final conclusion of James the Brother of Jesus is, in the words of The Jerusalem Post, "apocalyptic" —who and whatever James was, so was Jesus.
Book Synopsis A Secret History of Christianity by : Mark Vernon
Download or read book A Secret History of Christianity written by Mark Vernon and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2019-08-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity is in crisis in the West. The Inkling friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, analysed why. He developed an account of our spiritual predicament that is radical and illuminating. Barfield realized that the human experience of life shifts fundamentally over periods of cultural time. Our perception of nature, the cosmos and the divine changes dramatically across history. Mark Vernon uses this startling insight to tell the inner story of 3000 years of Christianity, beginning from the earliest Biblical times. Drawing, too, on the latest scholarship and spiritual questions of our day, he presents a gripping account of how Christianity constellated a new perception of what it is to be human. For 1500 years, this sense of things informed many lives, though it fell into crisis with the Reformation, scientific revolution and Enlightenment. But the story does not stop there. Barfield realised that there is meaning in the disenchantment and alienation experienced by many people today. It is part of a process that is remaking our sense of participation in the life of nature, the cosmos and the divine. It's a new stage in the evolution of human consciousness.
Book Synopsis The Secret Roots of Christianity by : David Wray
Download or read book The Secret Roots of Christianity written by David Wray and published by . This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional religious history preserves a rarely acknowledged secret that Christianity developed from at least three ancient roots: a Western structural root derived from Mediterranean Greek culture, an Eastern spiritual root from Anatolia and Persia, and a literary Jewish historical root, which masked the other roots and supported the idea that Christians had taken the place of Jews in relationship with God by entering a new covenant with Jesus. Each root contributed something special to the development of Christianity as follows: Supported by pagan iconography and rhetoric, the Western root imprinted Christianity with Greek spirit in a Hellenistic universe. The Eastern root filled the Greek construct with magic, focused humanity on a divine mission, and infused popular reverence for goddesses into Christian beliefs about the Virgin Mary. The literary Jewish root played two contradictory roles: Jewish scripture served as the reliable witness that proved Jesus to be both God and savior; and double-edged moral lessons in the Old Testament explained catastrophic events in the first century A.D. as divine judgment against Jews, supporting beliefs by early pagan converts to Christianity that Romans were good, Jews were bad, and God abandoned Jews for treacherously murdering Jesus. Two thousand years ago, Mediterranean cults included practices and beliefs that modern Christians associate exclusively with Christianity. People worshipped divine mothers who gave birth to dying and resurrecting gods on December 25. Saviors miraculously healed faithful followers and guided them to lead moral lives. Some cults baptized their followers, some passed their sins and inner demons to pigs, and some waited for a complete destruction of evil during the imminent End of Days. Then, as now, people argued whether the end would come by fire or water and whether many or few souls would be saved. Numerous symbols and beliefs associated in modern times with Christianity already existed in pre-Christian Hellenistic cults: Madonna and child images, angels, God the Father, the cross as a symbol of life after death, and the gift of eternal life through the shedding of immortal blood. On temple walls, wise men offered gifts of incense and gold to newborn gods; and merciful mothers granted salvation to the poor in spirit who confessed, repented, and begged forgiveness for their sins. However, Jews generally rejected all these practices, symbols, and beliefs. Some Jews believed in physical resurrection, and some did not. Some believed in eternal life, and some did not. For most Jews, however, a righteous life required the following of God's laws. If a Jew sinned against another man, no automatic forgiveness from God was possible. Forgiveness required acknowledgement of wrongdoing, restitution, and then forgiveness from the wronged party. Applying Jewish ethics to problems at the Jerusalem Temple meant recognizing the corruption within the priesthood, refusing to tolerate the evil rule of Rome, and giving one's life if necessary to precipitate the Kingdom of God. Just as God always had responded to the prayers of suffering Jews in the Bible, he would do so again. Soon he would send a messiah to deliver Jerusalem from the evil power of Rome and to cleanse Judea from the polluting practices of pagan cults. Drawing from both visible and secret roots, Christians freed themselves from paying for salvation from mystery cults while preserving the ability to worship a virgin-born hero with all the trappings of a pagan solar deity. This book explores the roots of Christianity in seven parts. The first three parts provide an overview of religious beliefs, practices, and iconography in the ancient Greek world that influenced Western culture and religion. The fourth, fifth, and sixth parts describe how the West developed under Roman influence. Then the seventh part focuses on the life of Jesus and the emergence of Christian cults in the first century A.D.
Book Synopsis The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity by : Jeffrey J. Bütz
Download or read book The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity written by Jeffrey J. Bütz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-01-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the true role of James, the brother of Jesus, in early Christianity • Uses evidence from the canonical Gospels, apocryphal texts, and the writings of the Church Fathers to reveal the teachings of Jesus as transmitted to his chosen successor: James • Demonstrates how the core message in the teachings of Jesus is an expansion not a repudiation of the Jewish religion • Shows how James can serve as a bridge between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam James has been a subject of controversy since the founding of the Church. Evidence that Jesus had siblings contradicts Church dogma on the virgin birth, and James is also a symbol of Christian teachings that have been obscured. While Peter is traditionally thought of as the leader of the apostles and the “rock” on which Jesus built his church, Jeffrey Bütz shows that it was James who led the disciples after the crucifixion. It was James, not Peter, who guided them through the Church's first major theological crisis--Paul's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Using the canonical Gospels, writings of the Church Fathers, and apocryphal texts, Bütz argues that James is the most overlooked figure in the history of the Church. He shows how the core teachings of Jesus are firmly rooted in Hebraic tradition; reveals the bitter battles between James and Paul for ideological supremacy in the early Church; and explains how Paul's interpretations, which became the foundation of the Church, are in many ways its betrayal. Bütz reveals a picture of Christianity and the true meaning of Christ's message that are sometimes at odds with established Christian doctrine and concludes that James can serve as a desperately needed missing link between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to heal the wounds of centuries of enmity.
Book Synopsis Trajectories through Early Christianity by : James M. Robinson
Download or read book Trajectories through Early Christianity written by James M. Robinson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-08-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents1 Introduction: The Dismantling and Reassembling of the Categories of New Testament Scholarship2 Kerygma and History in the New Testament3 LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q4 GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity5 One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels6 The Structure and Criteria of Early Christian Beliefs7 The Johannine Trajectory8 Conclusion: The Intention and Scope of Trajectories
Book Synopsis Early Christianity and Its Sacred Literature by : Lee Martin McDonald
Download or read book Early Christianity and Its Sacred Literature written by Lee Martin McDonald and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than sixty color pictures by noted photographer Richard Cleave enhance the more than fifty black and white images, maps, and charts."--BOOK JACKET.
Book Synopsis The Immortality Key by : Brian C. Muraresku
Download or read book The Immortality Key written by Brian C. Muraresku and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience! A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations. The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist – the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And after centuries of debate, to solve history’s greatest puzzle. Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine – the original sacraments of Western civilization – were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have hinted at the enduring use of hallucinogenic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. But the smoking gun remains elusive. If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the Eucharist of the earliest Christians, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist? With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku takes the reader on his twelve-year global hunt for proof. He tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre to show the continuity from pagan to Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth manuscripts never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at UPenn and MIT, he unveils the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity. The Immortality Key reconstructs the suppressed history of women consecrating a forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were then targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is in crisis. Unless it returns to its roots. Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the NYT bestselling author of America Before.
Book Synopsis The Myth of Persecution by : Candida Moss
Download or read book The Myth of Persecution written by Candida Moss and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.
Download or read book Heretics written by Gerd Ludemann and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the commonly held view, early Christianity was a time of great harmony, and heresy emerged only at a later stage. To the contrary, Gerd Ludemann argues that the time from the first Christian communities to the end of the second century was defined by struggle by various groups for doctrinal authority. Drawing on a wealth of data, he asserts that the losers in this struggle actually represented Christianity in its more authentic, original form. Orthodoxy has been defined by the victors in this struggle and it is they who subsequently silenced alternative views and labeled them heretical. Ludemann's findings are important as well as liberating for the understanding of both Christianity and the Bible. Readers will gain a new understanding of Jesus and the early church from this compelling and controversial book.
Book Synopsis Face to Face by : Robin Margaret Jensen
Download or read book Face to Face written by Robin Margaret Jensen and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining how God and eventually Christ are portrayed in early Christian art, Jensen explores questions of the relationship between art and theology, conflicts over idolatry and iconography, and how the Christological controversies affected the portrayals of Christ. Since much of this art comes from ancient Rome, she places her analysis in the context of the history of Roman portraiture. One hundred photographs enhance the discussion.
Book Synopsis Early Christianity According to the Traditions in Acts by : Gerd Lüdemann
Download or read book Early Christianity According to the Traditions in Acts written by Gerd Lüdemann and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Particularly after the standard commentaries by Ernst Haenchen and Hans Cormehnann, the Acts of the Apostles has come to be seen as a work in which the theology of its author has distorted his account of earliest Christianity. Attention has therefore focussed on that theology, in an attempt to give as full a picture ofit as possible and consequently the question 'what actually happened?' has fallen right into the background. Professor Ltidemann does not go back on the work of his German predecessors. But he is very well aware of the question of the historicity of Acts and their failure to deal with it thoroughly. So in his work, which essentially takes the form of a commentary, he goes through Acts from beginning to end, trying to ascertain whether despite all the difficulties it is nevertheless possible to establish a core of reliable historical information in particular sections of the work. The result is an important addition to the literature on Acts, much needed since the Haenchen and Conzelmann commentaries are now dated. A notable feature of the work is its attention to the literature written in English. Account is taken of this up to 1986.
Download or read book Pistis Sophia written by G. R. S. Mead and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pistis Sophia is an important Gnostic text. It relates the Gnostic teachings of the transfigured Jesus to the assembled disciples including his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha. Pisti Sophia recounts that Jesus remained on earth after the resurrection for 11 years. In it the complex structures and hierarchies of heaven familiar in Gnostic teachings are revealed.
Book Synopsis The Early Christian Centuries by : Philip Rousseau
Download or read book The Early Christian Centuries written by Philip Rousseau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charting the first six hundred years of the Christian movement, THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES carries the reader from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities.With a combination of rare tact and acuity, Philip Rousseau takes the measure of a generation of scholarship on early Christianity and the late Roman world. He stresses the importance of shifting historical consciousness, the continuity and development of ideas, and the urge for social respectability. Paying the greatest attention to the 'inner' components of Christian life, the resulting story captures fully the major figures: Paul, the gospel writers, the early 'apologists', and the great figures of the 'patristic' age, including the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine and Gregory the Great.
Book Synopsis James the Brother of Jesus - The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls by : Robert Eisenmann Author
Download or read book James the Brother of Jesus - The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls written by Robert Eisenmann Author and published by Duncan Baird Publishers. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was James - rather than Peter - the true Spiritual heir to Jesus? In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenmann introduces a startling theory about the identity of James - the brother of Jesus, who was almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament. Drawing on suppressed early Church texts and the revelations in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eisenmann propounds in this groundbreaking exploration that James, not Peter, was the real successor to the movement we now call 'Christianity.' In an argument with enormous implications, Eisenmann identifies Paul as deeply compromised by Roman contacts. James is presented as not simply a leader of Christianity of his day, but the popular Jewish leader of his time, whose death triggered the Uprising against Rome - a fact that creative rewriting of early Church documents has obscured.
Book Synopsis Late Ancient Christianity by : Virginia Burrus
Download or read book Late Ancient Christianity written by Virginia Burrus and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The particular excitement of this volume lies in its focus on the everyday realities of Christians' lives in the era of Christian ascendancy and Roman decline. Popular fiction, childrearing and toys, rituals of inclusion, the beginning of veneration of saints and shunning of heretics, the ascetic impulse, food practices—all these and more lend color and texture to the story of a "people's" Christianity in this formative stage.
Book Synopsis In Search of the Early Christians by : Wayne A. Meeks
Download or read book In Search of the Early Christians written by Wayne A. Meeks and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A central figure in the reconception of early Christian history over the last three decades, Wayne A. Meeks offers here a selection of his most influential writings on the New Testament and early Christianity. His essays illustrate recent changes in our thinking about the early Christian movement and pose provocative questions regarding the history of this period. Meeks explores a fascinating range of topics, from the figure of the androgyne in antiquity to the timeless matter of God’s reliability, from Paul’s ethical rhetoric to New Testament pictures of Christianity’s separation from Jewish communities. Meeks’ introduction offers a retrospective on New Testament studies of the past thirty years and explains the intersection of these studies with a variety of exploratory and revisionist movements in the humanities, embracing social theory, history, anthropology, and literature. In an epilogue the author reflects on future directions for New Testament scholarship.
Download or read book Ante Pacem written by Graydon F. Snyder and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Christianity emerged from obscurity to dominate the Roman world: that story, told and retold, continues to fascinate historians and believers. But the religion of ordinary Christians is not so well or easily known; they have left us no literary record of their faith and their hope, their marrying and their dying, their worship and their common life. Before the publication of "Ante Pacem there was no introduction or source-book for early Christian archaeology available in English. With his book Professor Snyder has performed an incalculable service for students of early Christianity and the world of late antiquity. He analyzes in one lavishly illustrated volume every piece of evidence that can, with some degree of assurance, be dated before the triumph of the emperor Constantine at the Milvian Bridge in 312CE thrust the nascent Christian culture "into a universal role as the formal religious expression of the Roman Empire."
