L. Michael White

The path from Jesus to Christianity is not as straight as we might think. Now, for the first time, L. Michael White, one of the world's foremost scholars on the origins of Christianity, provides the complete, astonishing story of how Christianity grew from the personal vision of a humble Jewish peasant living in a remote province of the Roman Empire into the largest organized religion in the world. Many take for granted that the New Testament is a single book representing God's coherent, unwavering word on Jesus and his church. A closer reading reveals not one story, but many. The New Testament is a collection of books -- the result of a variety of influences on a number of faithful but very human visionaries, preachers, and storytellers. The texts contain a wealth of biographies, histories, novels, letters, sermons, hymns, church manuals, and apocalypses, providing a spectrum of views of Jesus, his message, and his movement. Given this diversity of people, stories, and drastically different points of view, how did Christianity ever become what we know it as today? White draws on the most current scholarship to bring alive these ancient people and their debates, showing in depth how their stories were formed into what the world has come to know as the New Testament. Rather than reading the New Testament straight through in its traditional order -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and so on -- White takes a historical approach, looking at the individual books in the sequence in which they were actually written. He explores what these books divulge about the disagreements, shared values, and unifying mission of the earliest Christian communities. White digs through layers of archaeological excavations, sifts through buried fragments of largely unknown texts, and examines historical sources to discover what we can know of Jesus and his early followers. It is this early, hidden history that shaped Christianity as it grew from an errant, messianic movement to a state religion and then into a world religion that has lasted for over two thousand years. White shows how the early debates spurred the evolution of Christianity as we know it. He delves into the arguments over how to understand Jesus as both human and divine, the role of women in the church, the diversity of beliefs among Christian communities, the Gnostic influences, and the political disputes that raged over which books would ultimately be included in the New Testament. Complete with illustrations, photos, charts, and maps, From Jesus to Christianity presents the fullest picture yet of the beginnings of what became the most popular religion on earth.

In Scripting Jesus , Michael White, famed scholar of early Christian history, reveals how the gospel stories of Jesus were never meant to be straightforward historical accounts, but rather were scripted and honed as performance pieces for four different audiences with four different theological agendas. As he did as a featured presenter in two award-winning PBS Frontline documentaries (“From Jesus to Christ” and “Apocalypse!”), White engagingly explains the significance of some lesser-known aspects of The New Testament; in this case, the development of the stories of Jesus—including how the gospel writers differed from one another on facts, points of view, and goals. Readers of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Bart Ehrman will find much to ponder in Scripting Jesus .

The second volume of a two-volume set assembles important archaeological, documentary, and literary sources for the development of early Christian architecture in the first three centuries. The first two sections relate Christian and non-Christian literary sources to the place and setting of Christian assembly, and present all the early archaeological sites for Christian buildings together with the earliest documentary records in a geographical catalogue. The third section assembles comparable archaeological and documentary data for Diaspora Judaism and Mithraism. Supplemented with site and building plans; archaeological, historical, and geographical appendices; and substantial bibliographical references and archaeological reports. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Hardcover with dust jacket. VG/VG. Blind-stamp on ffep, small ink note on bfep.

The articles in this volume arose from the research program of the Social History of Early Christianity Group (now called the Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism Section) of the Society of Biblical Literature. The interest in networks began with some preliminary suggestions of future avenues of research in the social history of the early Christian movement. This idea led to a session on the topic, but other papers in subsequent years have continued to pursue the issue. These studies are brought together in this volume of "Semeia" for two primary first, in order to introduce network theory and analysis; second, to show direct application of this approach to social history research on early Christianity and its Hellenistic-Roman environment. All the studies presented here are careful historical studies informed by sociological and anthropological methods. The volume has been organized as follows. The Prolegomena presents two studies by L. M. White to introduce the topic of networks. The three studies in Part II take the methods of network analysis into the historical arena in order to "map out" specific cases in detail. The three studies in Part III then attempt to show how an awareness of network theory and analysis provides new insights into the intellectual and religious environment. [From the Editor's Preface]

The first Greek text of the Epistle of Aristeas published in more than a century The Greek text Epistle of Aristeas is a Jewish work of the late Hellenistic period that recounts the origins of the Septuagint. Long recognized as a literary fiction, the Epistle of Aristeas has been variously dated from the third century BCE to the first century CE. As a result, its epistolary features, and especially those in which the putative author, Aristeas, addresses his brother and correspondent, Philocrates, have largely been ignored. In light of more recent scholarship on epistolary literature in the Greco-Roman world, however, this volume presents for the first time a complete Greek text and English Translation with introduction, notes, and commentary of the Epistle of Aristeas with key testimonia from Philo, Josephus, and Eusebius, as well as other related examples of Jewish fictional letters from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Features

Timothy Ruger has special gifts. He can talk to people across the country with a simple thought. He can project an image for them to see. He just has one problem, his father. Timothy s dad is quite gifted himself and he his determined to keep Timothy s gifts a secret. He is so determined that he has kept Timothy locked in a small room his entire life. It is the forever room and Timothy is sure that he will die in this room unless he can get help. He uses his gifts to call nine strangers to the farm house where his father has imprisoned him. Nine strangers travel from places across the country to find the little boy. They have come to save him from his sadistic father, but they haven t come alone. The father has called on a killer to stop them. To save the boy they will have to stop the killer and face the very gates of Hell.

It goes without saying that Jesus Christ stands at the center of Christian tradition. But who, exactly, is Jesus? In this volume, L. Michael White explores how different communities, at different times, have taken the Jesus traditions and shaped an image of Christ appropriate to their own perspectives and needs. White addresses the problem of the differing images of Jesus (which are even reflected in the Gospels) that stand in constant tension with one another. White does so by examining the way the diverse images of Jesus arose within the development of early Christian tradition.