A Political History of Early Christianity

A Political History of Early Christianity
Author: Allen Brent
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567606058

Allen Brent tells the story of the triumph of Early Christianity in the political context of the Roman Empire.

A New History of Early Christianity

A New History of Early Christianity
Author: Charles Freeman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 030012581X

"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.

Christianity and Politics

Christianity and Politics
Author: C. C. Pecknold
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2010-08-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621892204

It is not simply for rhetorical flourish that politicians so regularly invoke God's blessings on the country. It is because the relatively new form of power we call the nation-state arose out of a Western political imagination steeped in Christianity. In this brief guide to the history of Christianity and politics, Pecknold shows how early Christianity reshaped the Western political imagination with its new theological claims about eschatological time, participation, and communion with God and neighbor. The ancient view of the Church as the "mystical body of Christ" is singled out in particular as the author traces shifts in its use and meaning throughout the early, medieval, and modern periods-shifts in how we understand the nature of the person, community and the moral conscience that would give birth to a new relationship between Christianity and politics. While we have many accounts of this narrative from either political or ecclesiastical history, we have few that avoid the artificial separation of the two. This book fills that gap and presents a readable, concise, and thought-provoking introduction to what is at stake in the contentious relationship between Christianity and politics.

Backgrounds of Early Christianity

Backgrounds of Early Christianity
Author: Everett Ferguson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802822215

New to this expanded & updated edition are revisions of Ferguson's original material, updated bibliographies, & a fresh dicussion of first century social life, the Dead Sea Scrolls & much else.

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo
Author: Henry Chadwick
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191615331

The life and works of Augustine of Hippo (354-430) have shaped the development of the Christian Church, sparking controversy and influencing the ideas of theologians through subsequent centuries. His words are still frequently quoted in devotions throughout the global Church today. His key themes retain a striking contemporary relevance - what is the place of the Church in the world? What is the relation between nature and grace? Augustine's intellectual development is recounted with clarity and warmth in this newly rediscovered biography of Augustine, as interpreted by the acclaimed church historian, the late Professor Henry Chadwick. Augustine's intellectual journey from schoolboy and student to Bishop and champion of Western Christendom in a period of intense political upheaval, is narrated in Chadwick's characteristically rigorous yet sympathetic style. With a foreword by Peter Brown reflecting on Chadwick's distinctive approach to Augustine.

The Early Christian World

The Early Christian World
Author: Philip F. Esler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1369
Release: 2002-09-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134549199

Early Christian World presents an exhaustive, erudite and lavishly illustrated treatment of how the small movement which formed around Jesus in Galilee became the pre-eminent religion of the ancient world. The work begins by firmly situating early Christianity within its Mediterranean social, political and religious contexts, before charting the history of the first Christian centuries. The creation and perpetuation of Christian communities through various means, including mission and monasticism, is explored, as is the everyday experience of early Christians, through discussion of gender and sexuality, religious practice, communication and social structures. The intellectual (particularly theological) and artistic heritage of the period is fully considered, and a vivid picture painted of the internal and external challenges faced by early Christianity. The book concludes with profiles of the most notable figures of the age. Comprehensive and accessible, Early Christian World provides up-to-date coverage of the most important topics in the study of early Christianity, together with an invaluable collection of visual material. It will be an indispensable resource for anyone studying this period

A History of Political Thought

A History of Political Thought
Author: Janet Coleman
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2000-06-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780631186533

This volume continues the story of European political theorising by focusing on medieval and Renaissance thinkers. It includes extensive discussion of the practices that underpinned medieval political theories and which continued to play crucial roles in the eventual development of early-modern political institutions and debates. The author strikes a balance between trying to understand the philosophical cogency of medieval and Renaissance arguments on the one hand, elucidating why historically-suited medieval and Renaissance thinkers thought the ways they did about politics; and why we often think otherwise.

Making Christian History

Making Christian History
Author: Michael Hollerich
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520295366

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.

Josephus, Paul, and the Fate of Early Christianity

Josephus, Paul, and the Fate of Early Christianity
Author: F. B. A. Asiedu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978701330

Flavius Josephus, the priest from Jerusalem who was affiliated with the Pharisees, is our most important source for Jewish life in the first century. His notice about the death of James the brother of Jesus suggests that Josephus knew about the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and in Judaea. In Rome, where he lived for the remainder of his life after the Jewish War, a group of Christians appear to have flourished, if 1 Clement is any indication. Josephus, however, says extremely little about the Christians in Judaea and nothing about those in Rome. He also does not reference Paul the apostle, a former Pharisee, who was a contemporary of Josephus’s father in Jerusalem, even though, according to Acts, Paul and his activities were known to two successive Roman governors (procurators) of Judaea, Marcus Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, and to King Herod Agrippa II and his sisters Berenice and Drusilla. The knowledge of the Herodians, in particular, puts Josephus’s silence about Paul in an interesting light, suggesting that it may have been deliberate. In addition, Josephus’s writings bear very little witness to other contemporaries in Rome, so much so that if we were dependent on Josephus alone we might conclude that many of those historical characters either did not exist or had little or no impact in the first century. Asiedu comments on the state of life in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Domitian and how both Josephus and the Christians who produced 1 Clement coped with the regime as other contemporaries, among whom he considers Martial, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and others, did. He argues that most of Josephus’s contemporaries practiced different kinds of silences in bearing witness to the world around them. Consequently, the absence of references to Jews or Christians in Roman writers of the last three decades of the first century, including Josephus, should not be taken as proof of their non-existence in Flavian Rome.

The First Thousand Years

The First Thousand Years
Author: Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2012-11-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300118848

Describes the first 1,000 years of Christian history, from the early practices and beliefs through the conversion of Constantine as well as documenting its growth to communities in Ethiopia, Armenia, Central Asia, India and China.