- An Ecstasy of Folly
- Laura Salah Nasrallah
- Who is a true prophet? Who has real access to divine realms of knowledge? Early Christian communities accused each other's prophets of madness and of making false claims to divine knowledge. This book argues that early Christians did not seek to answer questions about true prophecy or to define madness and rationality, but rather used this discourse in order to control knowledge, to establish their own authority, and to define Christian identity.
- Paperback 2004
- Beyond Essence
- Lori K. Pearson
- This book demonstrates the intimate connection between Troeltsch's philosophical writings on the essence of Christianity and his historical investigations of Christianity's past. Pearson argues that as a result of his historical work, Troeltsch moved beyond the category of essence and sought new ways of theorizing Christian identity in the context of modernity's pluralistic yet fragmented society.
- Paperback 2008
- Christianity and Ecology
- Edited by Dieter T. Hessel
- Edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether
- What can Christianity as a tradition contribute to the struggle to secure the future well-being of the earth community? This collaborative volume, the third in the series on religions of the world and the environment, explores problematic themes that contribute to ecological neglect or abuse and offer constructive insight into and responsive imperatives for ecologically just and socially responsible living.
- Paperback 2000 / Hardcover 2000
- Demons and the Making of the Monk
- David Brakke
- In this finely written study of demonology and Christian spirituality in fourth- and fifth-century Egypt, David Brakke examines how the conception of the monk as a holy and virtuous being was shaped by the combative encounter with demons. Drawing on biographies of exceptional monks, collections of monastic sayings and stories, letters from ascetic teachers to their disciples, sermons, and community rules, Brakke crafts a compelling picture of the embattled religious celibate.
- Hardcover 2006
- Four Cultures of the West
- John W. O'Malley
- The workings of Western intelligence in our day--whether in politics or the arts, in the humanities or the church--are as troubling as they are mysterious, leading to the questions: Where are we going? What in the world were we thinking? By exploring the history of four "cultures" so deeply embedded in Western history that we rarely see their instrumental role in politics, religion, education, and the arts, this timely book provides a broad framework for addressing these questions in a fresh way.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2006
- History of Vardan and the Armenian War
- Elishe
- Translated with commentary by Robert W. Thomson
- Elishē's History of Vardan and the Armenian War expresses in more general terms his attitude as a Christian Armenian to the problems of cultural survival and patriotism in a hostile environment. His history profoundly influenced Armenian writers from classical times to the present; its hero, Vardan, remains the ideal figure of a patriot even in Soviet Armenia.
- Hardcover 1982
- Homosexuality and Civilization
- Louis Crompton
- How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
- Inventing Superstition
- Dale B. Martin
- Martin provides the first detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the fourth century C.E. With illuminating reference to the writings of philosophers, historians, and medical teachers he demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs, especially the belief that gods or other superhuman beings would harm people or cause disease. Tracing the social, political, and cultural influences that informed classical thinking about piety and superstition, nature and the divine, Inventing Superstition exposes the manipulation of the label of superstition in arguments between Greek and Roman intellectuals on the one hand and Christians on the other, and the purposeful alteration of the idea by Neoplatonic philosophers and Christian apologists in late antiquity.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007
- Jesus among Her Children
- Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre
- This book explores how scholarly constructions of Christian origins participate in contemporary efforts to confirm or challenge particular understandings of the essence of Christianity. Johnson-DeBaufre offers alternative readings to key Q texts, readings that place an interest in the community that shaped Jesus at the center of inquiry.
- Paperback 2006
- The Muslim Jesus
- Edited and translated by Tarif Khalidi
- This work presents in English translation the largest collection ever assembled of the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic Islamic literature. The 300 sayings and stories, arranged in chronological order, show us how the image of this Jesus evolved throughout a millennium of Islamic history.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2003
- Rebecca's Revival
- Jon F. Sensbach
- This is the remarkable story of a Caribbean woman--a slave turned evangelist--who helped inspire the rise of black Christianity in the Atlantic world. All but unknown today, Rebecca Protten left an enduring influence on African-American religion and society.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2006
- The Religions of the People in Sixteenth-Century Champagne
- A. N. Galpern
- This study in religious anthropology explores the social history of popular belief. In addition to the historical geography and quantitative material that are hallmarks of the French tradition, the author studies the rich artistic evidence that still graces the provincial churches. He charts the paths of antipathy that converged in civil war, and concludes with a discussion of the late-sixteenth-century atmosphere of revivalism, which mimicked the earlier spiritual climate.
- Hardcover 1976
- Religious Enthusiasm in the New World
- David S. Lovejoy
- In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and America, established society branded as "enthusiasts" those unconventional but religiously devout extremists who stepped across orthodox lines and claimed an intimate, emotional relationship with God. This book is a study of the enthusiasts who migrated to the American colonies as well as those who emerged there. It provides essential historical perspective to the current interest in popular religion.
- Hardcover 1985
- Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity
- George W. E. Nickelsburg
- In this groundbreaking publication, originally published in 1972, George Nickelsburg places ideas in their historical circumstances as he probes biblical and postbiblical texts and challenges widely accepted scholarship. This book provides a window into aspects of the ancient apocalyptic worldview whose dynamics and functions are often misunderstood.
- Paperback 2007
- Rewiewing Liberty
- Joan S. Bennett
- Hardcover 1988
- Sayings Traditions in the Apocryphon of James
- Ron Cameron
- The discovery and publication of the Apocryphon of James has significantly expanded the spectrum of early Christian literature about Jesus. Cameron provides a form-critical analysis which aims to clarify the ways in which the sayings of Jesus were used and transformed in early Christian communities. By recognizing the importance of this particular document, scholars will no longer be able to regard the synoptic gospels of the New Testament as unique or sufficient for understanding the trajectory of the Jesus tradition.
- Paperback 2005
- The Secret Revelation of John
- Karen L. King
- Karen L. King offers an illuminating reading of this ancient text, said to be Christ's revelation to his disciple John. In her analysis, the Revelation becomes a comprehensible religious vision--and a window on the religious culture of the Roman Empire. A translation of the complete Secret Revelation of John is included.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
- Tradition and Composition in the Epistula Apostolorum
- Julian V. Hills
- In the first major study in English of the Epistle of the Apostles (Epistula Apostolorum), Julian V. Hills probes its remarkable witness to the traditions that circulated in Jesus' name in the second century. Hills tackles the document's literary framework, collecting and assessing signals to its composition. In detailed analyses of passages, Hills shows how older traditions were reshaped and interpreted according to the distinctive communal situation and theological vision of the author. This expanded edition of the out-of-print original, published in 1990, includes a new preface and bibliography.
- Paperback
- What Is Gnosticism?
- Karen L. King
- A distinctive Christian heresy? A competitor of burgeoning Christianity? A pre-Christian folk religion traceable to "Oriental syncretism"? How do we account for the disparate ideas, writings, and practices that have been placed under the Gnostic rubric? King's book is both a thorough and innovative introduction to the twentieth-century study of Gnosticism and a revealing exploration of the concept of heresy as a tool in forming religious identity.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005