Christianity in Ancient Rome

Christianity in Ancient Rome PDF 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.

Christianity in Ancient Rome

Christianity in Ancient Rome PDF 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.

Christianity and the Roman Empire

Christianity and the Roman Empire PDF Author: Ralph Martin Novak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567018407
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
The rise of Christianity during the first four centuries of the common era was the pivotal development in Western history and profoundly influenced the later direction of all world history. Yet, for all that has been written on early Christian history, the primary sources for this history are widely scattered, difficult to find, and generally unknown to lay persons and to historians not specially trained in the field. In Christianity and the Roman Empire Ralph Novak interweaves these primary sources with a narrative text and constructs a single continuous account of these crucial centuries. The primary sources are selected to emphasize the manner in which the government and the people of the Roman Empire perceived Christians socially and politically; the ways in which these perceptions influenced the treatment of Christians within the Roman Empire; and the manner in which Christians established their political and religious dominance of the Roman Empire after Constantine the Great came to power in the early fourth century CE. Ralph Martin Novak holds a Masters Degree in Roman History from the University of Chicago. For: Undergraduates; seminarians; general audiences

Creating Christ

Creating Christ PDF Author: James S. Valliant
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Exhaustively annotated and illustrated, this explosive work of history unearths clues that finally demonstrate the truth about one of the world’s great religions: that it was born out of the conflict between the Romans and messianic Jews who fought a bitter war with each other during the 1st Century. The Romans employed a tactic they routinely used to conquer and absorb other nations: they grafted their imperial rule onto the religion of the conquered. After 30 years of research, authors James S. Valliant and C.W. Fahy present irrefutable archeological and textual evidence that proves Christianity was created by Roman Caesars in this book that breaks new ground in Christian scholarship and is destined to change the way the world looks at ancient religions forever. Inherited from a long-past era of tyranny, war and deliberate religious fraud, could Christianity have been created for an entirely different purpose than we have been lead to believe? Praised by scholars like Dead Sea Scrolls translator Robert Eisenman (James the Brother of Jesus), this exhaustive synthesis of historical detective work integrates all of the ancient sources about the earliest Christians and reveals new archeological evidence for the first time. And, despite the fable presented in current bestsellers like Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, the evidence presented in Creating Christ is irrefutable: Christianity was invented by Roman Emperors. I have rarely encountered a book so original, exciting, accessible and informed on subjects that are of obvious importance to the world and to which I have myself devoted such a large part of my scholarly career studying. In this book they have rendered a startling new understanding of Christianity with a controversial theory of its Roman provenance that is accessible to the layman in a very powerful way. In the process, they present new and comprehensive archeological and iconographic evidence, as well as utilizing the widest and most cutting edge work of other recent scholars, including myself. This is a work of outstanding and original scholarship. Its arguments are a brilliant, profound and thorough integration of the relevant evidence. When they are done, the conclusion is inescapable and obviously profound. Robert Eisenman, Author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code "A fascinating and provocative investigative history of ideas, boldly exploring a problem that previous scholarship has not clearly or credibly addressed: how (and why!) the Flavian dynasty wove Christianity into the very fabric of Western civilization." -Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler

Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire

Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire PDF Author: Marianne Sághy
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633862566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Do the terms 'pagan' and 'Christian,' 'transition from paganism to Christianity' still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting 'pagans' and 'Christians' in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between 'pagans' and 'Christians' replaced the old 'conflict model' with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christian relations over a broad territory and time-span, the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century. A set of papers argues that if 'paganism' had never been fully extirpated or denied by the multiethnic educated elite that managed the Roman Empire, 'Christianity' came to be presented by the same elite as providing a way for a wider group of people to combine true philosophy and right religion. The speed with which this happened is just as remarkable as the long persistence of paganism after the sea-change of the fourth century that made Christianity the official religion of the State. For a long time afterwards, 'pagans' and 'Christians' lived 'in between' polytheistic and monotheist traditions and disputed Classical and non-Classical legacies.

Christianizing the Roman Empire

Christianizing the Roman Empire PDF Author: Ramsay MacMullen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300036428
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Offers a secular perspective on the growth of the Christian Church in ancient Rome, identifies nonreligious factors in conversion, and examines the influence of Constantine

Christianity and the Roman Empire from Nero to Theodosius

Christianity and the Roman Empire from Nero to Theodosius PDF Author: Paul Allard
Publisher: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press
ISBN: 9780881415629
Category : Christianity and culture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Several emperors persecuted the Christians: Nero, Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, Sulpicius, Decius, Valerian, and especially Diocletian, who unleashed "the great prosecution" from 303 to 312. Diocletian's Persecution Edict stated that all churches throughout the empire were to be destroyed and all sacred books burned. Many Christians lost their social rank and privileges, while Christian slaves could not be freed. In some places, the Christians were tortured, beheaded, exiled, or sent to the beasts. But the Church found defenders in the second-century apologists, such as Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and Tertullian, who argued that the persecutions were illegal and unjust. Tertulllian's statement became axiomatic: "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians." When Constantine converted from "sun worship" to Christianity in 310, he prepared the ground for the Byzantine state. Christianity was recognized as a lawful religion in 313. But much more lay in store for the early Church, including the tumultuous years of Emperor Julian, who sought to return the empire to the worship of the old gods, and initiated repressive measures against Christians. Only in 380 did Theodosius I make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The history of the persecutions reminds us that the spread of Christianity took place against considerable opposition. In our own day, Christians face another kind of test in a world that is increasingly seclarized. Allard's book offers timely reminders of how early Christians maintained their identity as a minority in the midst of official suspicion. -- from back cover.

Constantine

Constantine PDF Author: Paul Stephenson
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468303007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This “knowledgeable account” of the emperor who brought Christianity to Rome “provides valuable insight into Constantine’s era” (Kirkus Reviews). “By this sign conquer.” So began the reign of Constantine. In 312 A.D. a cross appeared in the sky above his army as he marched on Rome. In answer, Constantine bade his soldiers to inscribe the cross on their shield, and so fortified, they drove their rivals into the Tiber and claimed Rome for themselves. Constantine led Christianity and its adherents out of the shadow of persecution. He united the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire, raising a new city center in the east. When barbarian hordes consumed Rome itself, Constantinople remained as a beacon of Roman Christianity. Constantine is a fascinating survey of the life and enduring legacy of perhaps the greatest and most unjustly ignored of the Roman emperors—written by a richly gifted historian. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the idea of a unified Christian Europe underpinned by a commitment to religious tolerance. “Successfully combines historical documents, examples of Roman art, sculpture, and coinage with the lessons of geopolitics to produce a complex biography of the Emperor Constantine.” —Publishers Weekly

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them PDF Author: Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300098396
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity PDF Author: Karl Galinsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198744765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
What and how do people remember? Who controls the process of what we call cultural or social memory? What is forgotten and why? People's memories are not the same as history written in retrospect; they are malleable and an ongoing process of construction and reconstruction. Ancient Rome provided much of the cultural framework for early Christianity, and in both the role of memory was pervasive. Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity presents perspectives from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors on the literature, history, archaeology, and religion of a major world civilization, based on an informed engagement with important concepts and issues in memory studies. Moving beyond terms such as 'collective', 'social', and 'cultural memory' as standard tropes, the volume offers a selective exploration of the wealth of topics which comprise memory studies, and also features a contribution from a leading neuroscientist on the actual workings of the human memory. It is an importamt resource for anyone interested in Roman antiquity, the beginnings of Christianity, and the role of memory in history.

Apologetics in the Roman Empire

Apologetics in the Roman Empire PDF Author: Mark J. Edwards
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 019154437X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This book is the first to tackle the origins and purpose of literary religious apologetic in the first centuries of the Christian era by discussing, on their own terms, texts composed by pagan and Jewish authors as well as Christians. Previous studies of apologetic have focused primarily on the Christian apologists of the second century. These, and other Christian authors, are represented also in this volume but, in addition, experts in the religious history of the pagan world, in Judaism, and in late antique philosophy examine very different literary traditions to see to what extent techniques and motifs were shared across the religious divide. Each contributor has investigated the probable audience, the literary milieu, and the specific social, political, and cultural circumstances which elicited each apologetic text. In many cases these questions lead on to the further issue of the relation between the readers addressed by the author and the actual readers, and the extent to which a defined literary genre of apologetic developed. These studies, ranging in time from the New Testament to the early fourth century, and including novel contributions by specialists in ancient history, Jewish history, ancient philosophy, the New Testament, and patristics, will put the study of ancient religious apologetic on to a new footing.