The Myth Of Christian Beginnings

Author : Robert L. Wilken
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2009-05-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781725225886

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The Myth of Christian Beginnings by Robert L. Wilken Pdf

In this challenging and vividly written book Dr. Wilken shows that there never was a golden age in the Christian past. Christian hope did not come to fulfillment in the age of apostles, nor in the time of Constantine, nor in the Middle Ages, nor during the Reformation, nor in the revivals of the 19th century, nor in the movements of renewal in our own time. The history of Christianity is a story of imperfection and fragmentation, but also a history of hoping and striving for an end that cannot be seen yet bears on the present. With lively examples from the Christian past Wilken shows that change has been an abiding feature of Christian tradition. Often those who proposed new ways of thinking and acted in unexpected ways turned out to be more faithful than those who repeated the old formulas. As much as the past may give specificity and concreteness to renewal in the present Christian hope is set on things that are yet to be.

Author : Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Christianity
ISBN : 0268013489

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The Myth of Christian Beginnings by Robert Louis Wilken Pdf

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:500409981

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The Myth of Christian Beginnings by Anonim Pdf

Author : Robert L. Wilken
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:476674375

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The Myth of Christian Beginnings by Robert L. Wilken Pdf

Author : Burton L. Mack
Publisher : Burns & Oates
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Religion
ISBN : UOM:39015053530294

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The Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack Pdf

Mack rejects depictions of Jesus that have emerged from the quest for the historical Jesus--peasant teacher, revolutionary leader, mystical visionary or miracle-working prophet--on the grounds that they are based on a priori assumptions about Jesus, and are therefore contradictory. In addition, he argues, these portrayals are untrue to the many images of Jesus produced by the early Christians. Using systematic analysis, Mack seeks to describe and understand the cultural and anthropological influences on the conception and adoption of Christian myths and rituals.

Author : Geza Vermes,Penguin Books LTD
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780300195316

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Christian Beginnings by Geza Vermes,Penguin Books LTD Pdf

DIV The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. Through a forensic, brilliant reexamination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was—a prophet recognizable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament—to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion. As Jesus's teachings spread across the eastern Mediterranean, hammered into place by Paul, John, and their successors, they were transformed in the space of three centuries into a centralized, state-backed creed worlds away from its humble origins. Christian Beginnings tells the captivating story of how a man came to be hailed as the Son consubstantial with God, and of how a revolutionary, anticonformist Jewish subsect became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. /div

Author : Burton L. Mack
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2017-02-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780300227895

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The Rise and Fall of the Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack Pdf

This book is the culmination of a lifelong scholarly inquiry into Christian history, religion as a social institution, and the role of myth in the history of religions. Mack shows that religions are essentially mythological and that Christianity in particular has been an ever-changing mythological engine of social formation, from Roman times to its distinct American expression in our time. The author traces the cultural influence of the Christian myth that has persisted for sixteen hundred years but now should be much less consequential in our social and cultural life, since it runs counter to our democratic ideals. We stand at a critical impasse: badly splintered by conflicting groups pursuing their own social interests, a binding common myth needs to be established by renewing a truly cohesive national and international story rooted in our democratic and egalitarian origins, committed to freedom, equality, and vital human values.

Author : Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : Christianity
ISBN : STANFORD:36105033646014

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The Myth of Christian Beginnings by Robert Louis Wilken Pdf

Author : Candida Moss
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2013-03-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780062104540

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The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss Pdf

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.

Author : Ronald Dean Cameron,Merrill P. Miller
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 557 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004130647

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Redescribing Christian Origins by Ronald Dean Cameron,Merrill P. Miller Pdf

These essays challenge the traditional picture of Christian origins. Making use of social anthropology, they move away from traditional assumptions about the foundations of Christianity to propose that its historical beginnings are best understood as reflexive social experiments.

Author : Jeffrey Burton Russell
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2012-05-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780830866878

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Exposing Myths About Christianity by Jeffrey Burton Russell Pdf

Renowned historian, Jeffrey Burton Russell, famous for his studies of medieval history, sets the record straight against the New Atheists and other cultural critics who charge Christianity with being outdated, destructive, superstitious, unenlightened, racist, colonialist, based on fabrication, and other significant false accusations.

Author : Michael Hollerich
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2021-06-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520295360

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Making Christian History by Michael Hollerich Pdf

Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision. Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.

Author : Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0802808808

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Remembering the Christian Past by Robert Louis Wilken Pdf

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. Prompting readers to reacquaint themselves with forgotten aspects of Christian tradition, this collection of essays points out the importance of remembering the enduring truths of the faith. Robert Wilken touches on a host of topics that are still pertinent today: the role of commitment in the study of religion, religious pluralism, Christian apologetics, the biblical roots of the doctrine of the Trinity, the spiritual interpretation of the Bible, the importance of examples for living a virtuous life, and the place of the passions in our relation to God.

Author : Burton L. Mack
Publisher : Augsburg Fortress Publishing
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0800625498

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A Myth of Innocence by Burton L. Mack Pdf

"This imaginative book is not just a study of the Gospel of Mark, but of primitive Christianity in all its variegated forms, for which it represents a new paradigm ... It deserves serious reflection and discussion at several levels, in a variety of contexts, by quite diversified discussion partners."? James M. Robinson, Professor Emeritus, Claremont Graduate University"This is an epic-making work because it turns scholarship on its head. Mack asks questions not about origins but about social meaning. The entire conception of what we want to know, why we want to know it, and how we shall find it out is new and compelling."? Jacob Neusner, Bard College"A Myth of Innocence is the most penetrating historical work on the origins of Christianity written by an American scholar in this century. Its strikingly innovative feature is the recombination of literary and social histories, and the placement of diverse Jesus movements into their respective social contexts."? Werner H. Kelber, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Author : John G. Jackson
Publisher : Echo Point+ORM
Page : 42 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-12-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781648371110

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Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth by John G. Jackson Pdf

A classic resource that connects the cardinal doctrines of Christianity to their origins in the ancient civilizations that preceded the religion. In Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth, John G. Jackson sources the pagan origins of Christian doctrine with particular focus on the creation and atonement myths. Rooted in historical facts, Jackson’s claims are steeped in research and demonstrate how Christianity synthesizes the rituals, beliefs, and characteristics of savior gods from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Aztec, and Hindu origins. Initially published in 1941, this concise introduction remains an insightful contribution to comparative religion studies.