Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060677015
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
This "fresh, blunt, and highly persuasive account of how the West was won—for Jesus" (Newsweek) is now available in paperback. Stark's provocative report challenges conventional wisdom and finds that Christianity's astounding dominance of the Western world arose from its offer of a better, more secure way of life. "Compelling reading" (Library Journal) that is sure to "generate spirited argument" (Publishers Weekly), this account of Christianity's remarkable growth within the Roman Empire is the subject of much fanfare. "Anyone who has puzzled over Christianity's rise to dominance...must read it." says Yale University's Wayne A. Meeks, for The Rise of Christianity makes a compelling case for startling conclusions. Combining his expertise in social science with historical evidence, and his insight into contemporary religion's appeal, Stark finds that early Christianity attracted the privileged rather than the poor, that most early converts were women or marginalized Jews—and ultimately "that Christianity was a success because it proved those who joined it with a more appealing, more assuring, happier, and perhaps longer life" (Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago).
Author: Paul Barnett
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 9780830826995
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
Paul Barnett not only places the New Testament within the world of caesars and Herods, proconsuls and Pharisees, Sadducee and revolutionaries, but argues that the mainspring and driving force of early Christian history is the historical Jesus.
Author: Joel Carmichael
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
This challenging study reassesses the roles of Jesus and Paul as the founders of Christianity, in light of the contemporary Kingdom of God agitations against Rome.
Author: Paul Barnett
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802827814
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Barnett's work is not so much a narrative of the "birth" and early years of Christianity as an argument that this birth can be documented by the usual methods of historical inquiry.
Author: Bernard Green
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567032507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
of the Pope." --Book Jacket.
Author: John Dominic Crossan
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780567086686
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 692
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Book Description
John Dominic Crossan explores the lost years of earliest Christianity, the years immediately following Jesus' execution. He establishes the contextual setting through a combination of literary, anthropological, historical and archaeological approaches. He challenges the assumptions about the role of Paul and the meaning of resurrection, and forges a new understanding of the birth of the Christian church. Here is a vivid account of early Christianity's interaction with the world around it, and of the new traditions and communities established as Jesus' companions continued their movement after his death.
Author: Charles Freeman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030012581X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
"Tracing the astonishing transformation that the early Christian church underwent - from sporadic niches of Christian communities surviving in the wake of a horrific crucifixion to sanctioned alliance with the state - Charles Freeman shows how freedom of thought was curtailed by the development of the concept of faith. The imposition of 'correct belief' and an institutional framework that enforced orthodoxy were both consolidating and stifling. Uncovering the church's relationships with Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman society, Freeman offers dramatic new accounts of Paul, the resurrection, and the church fathers and emperors."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: P.D. James
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 0857861077
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 93
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Book Description
Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James
Author: Odd Magne Bakke
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451415308
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
Bakke paints a fascinating picture of children's first real emergence as people against a backdrop of the ancient world.Using theological and social history research, Bakke compares Greco-Roman and Christian attitudes toward abortion and child prostitution, pedagogy and moral upbringing, and the involvement of children in liturgy and church life. He also assesses Christian attitudes toward children in the church's developing doctrinal commitments.Today, growing numbers of children are impoverished, exploited, abandoned, orphaned, or killed. Bakke's insightful work begins to untangle the roots of their complex plight.
Author: Morgan Rempel
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
This volume attempts to bring order to Nietzsche's scattered reflections on Jesus, St Paul and the birth of Christianity by tracing the development of his ideas and examining the intellectual reality behind his deliberately confrontational remarks concerning early Christianity's key players.
