Christians In Asia Minor During The Decade Of The Sixties

After the close of the New Testament era AD 70, Christianity entered a literary dark age which lasted until the middle of the second century. This period is filled with Christian pseudepigrapha, pious fiction, misleading forgeries, and genuine writings which have been misdated. The Peter Myth shines a ray of light into the darkness. The most explosive issue confronting the young church was whether gentiles needed to be circumcised and keep the Law. The apostles struggled with the terms of admission for twenty years and, in Acts 15, finally reached a consensus. We are saved by faith in Christ. There was a handful of believing Pharisees who refused to accept their decision, and insisted that gentiles were also bound by Torah. These men won over the churches of Galatia, where a hybrid form of Christianity began to unfold. They wrote their own Scriptures--which are still extant--and in an unrecorded schism, separated from the apostles. The Peter Myth connects the Galatian heresy with those Scriptures--the earliest writings of historic Christianity--to reconstruct an authentic history of the first and second century church.

During the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire, the ethnic tensions between the minority populations within the empire led to the administration carrying out a systematic destruction of the Armenian people. This not only brought 2,000 years of Armenian civilisation within Anatolia to an end but was accompanied by the mass murder of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians. Containing a selection of papers presented at The Genocide of the Christian Populations of the Ottoman Empire and Its Aftermath (1908–1923) international conference, hosted by the Chair for Pontic Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, this book draws on unpublished archival material and an innovative historiographical approach to analyze events and their legacy in comparative perspective. In order to understand the historical context of the Ottoman Genocide, it is important to study, apart from the Armenian case, the fate of the Greek and Assyrian peoples, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of the situation. This volume is primarily a research contribution but should also be valued as a supplementary text that would provide secondary reading for undergraduates and postgraduate students.

First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.

Uses extra English words to fully capture the meaning behind the original Greek and Hebrew words Unique system of punctuation, italics, references, and synonyms to unlock subtle shades of meaning as found in the original languages Footnotes Concordance Book introductions and outlines 8 pages of color maps Bible-reading plan 1,728 pp.

This book deals with issues relating to the formation of early Christian identity in the city of Ephesus, one of the major centres of the early Christian movement towards the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century CE. How diverse was the early Christian movement in Ephesus? What were its main characteristics? What held this movement together? Taking these questions as a starting point, Mikael Tellbe focuses on the social and theological diversity of this early Christian movement, the process of the parting of the ways - i.e. issues of ethnicity -, the influence of deviating groups and the quest for authority and legitimacy, as well as issues of commonality and theological unity. The author argues for a textual approach and the impact of various textual prototypes in the task of analyzing the process of early Christian identity formation in Ephesus.

Identifying the theme of 1 Peter as how the church is to witness responsibly in a non-Christian world, Boring emphasizes the necessity of a sympathetic historical understanding of those parts of the letter that collide with modern cultural values and understandings of what Christian commitment and theology require. He gives special attention, as well, to the narrative world within which this ancient writer operated, and to the strong affirmation of ecumenism implicit in the letter's amalgamation of traditions stemming from Peter and Paul, respectively. "Through the years, Professor Boring has shown himself to be a master of technical exegesis and theology wedded to great pastoral concern. These twin talents are fittingly brought to bear on a New Testament document that shows the same union of rich theology and pastoral care. Indeed, the sober, centrist, yet moving commentary squares perfectly with the sober, centrist, yet moving document that is 1 Peter. If this commentary is a popularization, then it is a popularization of very high caliber; a tremendous amount of research and insight is made available and intelligible to a wide public. This commentary is not just a rehash of what everyone else has said on 1 Peter. The innovative appendix detailing the narrative world of 1 Peter is alone worth the price of admission. All in all, an excellent contribution to present-day literature on an often neglected book of the New Testament." --John P. Meier, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

A user-friendly introduction to the New Testament for beginning students