| Description |
xvi, 377 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, facsimile, maps ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Part one: Beginnings. A trial -- The seedbed: Judaism in the first century AD -- Jesus before the Gospels -- Breaking away: the first christianities -- What did Paul achieve? -- The letter to the Hebrews -- Fifty years on: The Gospel writers reflect on Jesus -- John and the Jerusalem christians -- Creating a New Testament -- No second coming: The search for stability -- Part Two: Becoming christian. Toeholds in a wider empire -- Open borders: The overlapping worlds of christians and jews -- Was there a gnostic challenge? -- The idea of a church -- To compromise or reject: Confronting the material world -- The earliest christian art -- Celsus confronts the christians -- The challenge of Greek philosophy -- Origen and early christian scholarship -- New beginnings: The emergence of a Latin christianity -- Victims or volunteers: Christian martyrs -- The spread of christian communities -- Part three: The imperial church. The motives of Constantine -- Debating the nature of God -- The stifling of christian diversity -- The assult on paganism -- 'No one is honoured before him': The rise of the Bishop -- The art of imperial christianity -- An obsession with the flesh -- The end of optimism: Augustine and the consequences of sin -- Divine but human -- The closing of the schools -- A fragile church: Chrisitianity and the collapse of the western empire -- Faith, certainty and the unknown God. |
| Summary |
The relevance of Christianity is as hotly contested today as it has ever been. A New History of Early Christianity shows how our current debates are rooted in the many controversies surrounding the birth of the religion and the earliest attempts to resolve them. Charles Freeman's meticulous historical account of Christianity from its birth in Judaea in the first century A.D. to the emergence of Western and Eastern churches by A.D. 600 reveals that it was a distinctive, vibrant, and incredibly diverse movement brought into order at the cost of intellectual and spiritual vitality. Against the conventional narrative of the inevitable "triumph" of a single distinct Christianity, Freeman shows that there was a host of competing Christianities, many of which had as much claim to authenticity as those that eventually dominated. Looking with fresh eyes at the historical record, Freeman explores the ambiguities and contradictions that underlay Christian theology and the unavoidable compromises enforced in the name of doctrine. |
| Subject |
Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600.
|
| ISBN |
9780300125818 ci alkaline paper |
|
030012581X ci alkaline paper |
|
