The Rise of Christianity

The Rise of Christianity
Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1997-05-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0060677015

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).

Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism

Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism
Author: Annette Yoshiko Reed
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2018-07-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3161544765

"Jewish-Christianity" is a contested category in current research. But for precisely this reason, it may offer a powerful lens through which to rethink the history of Jewish/Christian relations. Traditionally, Jewish-Christianity has been studied as part of the origins and early diversity of Christianity. Collecting revised versions of previously published articles together with new materials, Annette Yoshiko Reed reconsiders Jewish-Christianity in the context of Late Antiquity and in conversation with Jewish studies. She brings further attention to understudied texts and traditions from Late Antiquity that do not fit neatly into present day notions of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. In the process, she uses these materials to probe the power and limits of our modern assumptions about religion and identity.

Ancient Judaism

Ancient Judaism
Author: Max Weber
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 143911918X

Weber’s classic study which deals specifically with: Types of Asceticism and the Significance of Ancient Judaism, History and Social Organization of Ancient Palestine, Political Organization and Religious Ideas in the Time of the Confederacy and the Early Kings, Political Decline, Religious Conflict and Biblical Prophecy.

The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism

The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism
Author: Marianne Dacy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781604977004

There exists a plethora of literature on the relationship between early Christianity and Judaism, but these studies focus on one or two issues. In the tradition of James Parkes, whose 1930 study of the break between the Church and the Synagogue remains a classic, this book takes on the larger relationship and shows how the separation evolved over time. Rather than pinpointing a specific date for the break, the study broadens the context and looks at the wider issues, showing that separation took several centuries. In the wake of the Holocaust and in seeking to understand how the relationship between Judaism and Christianity deteriorated over the course of two millennia, this book examines the origins of the conflict. In seeking to cast new light on the separation of early Christianity from Judaism, a number of documented areas that are often treated separately by authors have been examined in order to uncover evidence for the separation. This book covers an enormous amount of material on the relationship between early Christianity and Judaism, but presents this in a highly accessible manner, clearly showing how the separation between the two emerged over time. It also reveals the ways they continued to be related. The author pinpoints two pervasive issues that impelled the separation: the relationship of the early church to Jewish law and the increasing divinization of Jesus. The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism is essential for the shelves of academic institutions and public libraries, and it will also be a helpful supplement to the libraries both of scholars and Christian and Jewish religious leaders.

When Christians Were Jews

When Christians Were Jews
Author: Paula Fredriksen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300240740

A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religion How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

Early Christian Thought in Its Jewish Context

Early Christian Thought in Its Jewish Context
Author: John M. G. Barclay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1996-06-28
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 0521462851

Examines the continuity between early Christianity and Judaism - the focus of much controversy.

Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity

Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
Author: Pieter W. van der Horst
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2014-03-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004271112

Over the past 45 years Professor Pieter W. van der Horst contributed extensively to the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. The 24 papers in this volume, written since his early retirement in 2006, cover a wide range of topics, all of them concerning the religious world of Judaism and Christianity in the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Byzantine era. They reflect his research interests in Jewish epigraphy, Jewish interpretation of the Bible, Jewish prayer culture, the diaspora in Asia Minor, exegetical problems in the writings of Philo and Josephus, Samaritan history, texts from ancient Christianity which have received little attention (the poems of Cyrus of Panopolis, the Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati, the Letter of Mara bar Sarapion), and miscellanea such as the pagan myth of Jewish cannibalism, the meaning of the Greek expression ‘without God,’ the religious significance of sneezing in pagan antiquity, and the variety of stories about pious long-sleepers in the ancient world (pagan, Jewish, Christian).

Judaism and Christianity in First-century Rome

Judaism and Christianity in First-century Rome
Author: Karl P. Donfried
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802842657

Rome, as the center of the first-century world, was home to numerous ethnic groups, among which were both Jews and Christians. The dealings of the Roman government with these two groups, and their dealings with each other, are the focus of this book.t

Judaism and the Origins of Christianity

Judaism and the Origins of Christianity
Author: David Flusser
Publisher: Hebrew University Magnes Press
Total Pages: 770
Release: 1988
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

For more than three decades, Professor David Flusser of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has pioneered new understandings of the Jewish background of early Christianity. Many have been fascinated by his unique monograph on Jesus, translated into several languages. Most of his scholarly articles in English, including some new contributions as well as many published in not easily accessible journals, have been collected in this one volume. A must for New Testament scholars, and students of early Judaism, it will also be welcomed by the many lay persons for whom Professor Flusser has provided illumination on the origins of Christian faith.

The Jewish Jesus

The Jewish Jesus
Author: Peter Schäfer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2014-02-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691160953

How the rise of Christianity profoundly influenced the development of Judaism in late antiquity In late antiquity, as Christianity emerged from Judaism, it was not only the new religion that was being influenced by the old. The rise and revolutionary challenge of Christianity also had a profound influence on rabbinic Judaism, which was itself just emerging and, like Christianity, trying to shape its own identity. In The Jewish Jesus, Peter Schäfer reveals the crucial ways in which various Jewish heresies, including Christianity, affected the development of rabbinic Judaism. He even shows that some of the ideas that the rabbis appropriated from Christianity were actually reappropriated Jewish ideas. The result is a demonstration of the deep mutual influence between the sister religions, one that calls into question hard and fast distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, and even Judaism and Christianity, during the first centuries CE.