Author: Alexander J. Burke Publisher: Franciscan Media ISBN: 9780867167375 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
For the first time in nearly 50 years, a casual yet informative method to learn about John the Baptist… "Why did each of the four evangelists make John the gateway to the Gospel, the first preacher of Good News? What were the reasons for the early Church's intense interest in a desert hermit whose public ministry lasted two years or less? Why in early Christian tradition was John the Baptist accorded an exalted religious stature, almost equal to that of Mary? The irony is that most modern scholarship on John has missed the true sources of his religious significance…in his links to Christ and to the very earliest beginnings of the Christian religion."—from the Introduction Alexander Burke pieces together the mystery of this well-known disciple of Jesus one chapter at a time, covering John's preaching, arrest and execution, his role in Eastern and Western Christian Tradition, and the many paradoxes surrounding him. An excellent resource for group or individual study, John the Baptist offers questions for reflection at the end of each chapter. Discover a fresh perspective of John the Baptist. Let him rise to the top of the beadroll of Christian heroes where Jesus believed he belonged. Step back and see the beautiful mosaic of mysteries that made up this fascinating saint's life.
Author: Robert L. Webb Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1725217716 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 444
Book Description
This volume, a revised version of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Sheffield in 1990, places John the Baptist within his first-century Jewish context by exploring his public roles and activities as a baptizer and a prophet as they would have been understood within the sociohistorical context of Second Temple Judaism. After surveying the relevant traditions concerning John the Baptist (in particular, Josephus, canonical Gospels, and extracanonical sources), the volume turns to the use of ablutions and immersions in the Hebrew Bible, in Second Temple Jewish literature, and especially in the Qumran literature. In light of this context, several functions of John's baptism are proposed both in continuity with his context and in distinction from it. Then, Webb explores John's role as a prophet in two respects. First, after surveying the expectation of eschatological figures of judgment and restoration in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Jewish literature, John's own proclamation of a coming one is understood as describing Yahweh's coming to judge and restore, but through an unspecified human agent. Second, in light of the varieties of prophetic figures in the Second Temple period, John is best understood as a popular prophet who uses the symbolic event of the people's baptism in the Jordan River and their return home to symbolize not only their entrance into the true remnant Israel but also their entrance into the Promised Land. When this symbolic activity is placed alongside John's prophetic critique of Herod Antipas and of Herod's marriage, the social and political implications of this critique become evident. The symbolic activity and strong critique led to the Baptist's death under Herod Antipas.
Author: Publisher: Canongate U.S. ISBN: 9780802136169 Category : Bibles Languages : en Pages : 100
Book Description
The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.
Author: Charles G. Häberl Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110487861 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 476
Book Description
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.
Author: Joel Marcus Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN: 1611179017 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
An analysis that challenges the conventional Christian hierarchy of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth While the Christian tradition has subordinated John the Baptist to Jesus of Nazareth, John himself would likely have disagreed with that ranking. In this eye-opening new book, John the Baptist in History and Theology, Joel Marcus makes a powerful case that John saw himself, not Jesus, as the proclaimer and initiator of the kingdom of God and his own ministry as the center of God's saving action in history. Although the Fourth Gospel has the Baptist saying, "He must increase, but I must decrease," Marcus contends that this and other biblical and extrabiblical evidence reveal a continuing competition between the two men that early Christians sought to muffle. Like Jesus, John was an apocalyptic prophet who looked forward to the imminent end of the world and the establishment of God's rule on earth. Originally a member of the Dead Sea Sect, an apocalyptic community within Judaism, John broke with the group over his growing conviction that he himself was Elijah, the end-time prophet who would inaugurate God's kingdom on earth. Through his ministry of baptism, he ushered all who came to him—Jews and non-Jews alike—into this dawning new age. Jesus began his career as a follower of the Baptist, but, like other successor figures in religious history, he parted ways from his predecessor as he became convinced of his own centrality in God's purposes. Meanwhile John's mass following and apocalyptic message became political threats to Herod Antipas, who had John executed to abort any revolutionary movement. Based on close critical-historical readings of early texts—including the accounts of John in the Gospels and in Josephus's Antiquities—as well as parallels from later religious movements, John the Baptist in History and Theology situates the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism and compares him to other apocalyptic thinkers from ancient and modern times. It concludes with thoughtful reflections on how its revisionist interpretations might be incorporated into the Christian faith.
Author: Carl R. Kazmierski Publisher: Liturgical Press ISBN: 9780814658512 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
John the Baptist is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood characters in the Bible. A prophet of two worlds, he calls out to the Israel of his own generation and to Christian believers of today to heed the most radical demands of conversion and newness of life. Kazmierski reflects on the rich and colorful portrait of John found in the New Testament, and invites readers to respond to John's message and to hear the "voice crying in the wilderness".
Author: George Howard Publisher: Mercer University Press ISBN: 9780865549890 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
For centuries the Jewish community in Europe possessed a copy of Matthew in the Hebrew language. The Jews' use of this document during the Middle Ages is imperfectly known. Occasionally excerpts from it appeared in polemical writings against Christianity.
Author: James D. Tabor Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439134987 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
In this “compulsively readable exploration of the tangled world of Christian origins” (Publishers Weekly), religious historian James Tabor illuminates the earliest years of Jesus’ teachings before Paul shaped them into the religion we know today. This fascinating examination of the earliest years of Christianity reveals how the man we call St. Paul shaped Christianity as we know it today. Historians know almost nothing about the two decades following the crucifixion of Jesus, when his followers regrouped and began to spread his message. During this time Paul joined the movement and began to preach to the gentiles. Using the oldest Christian documents that we have—the letters of Paul—as well as other early Christian sources, historian and scholar James Tabor reconstructs the origins of Christianity. Tabor shows how Paul separated himself from Peter and James to introduce his own version of Christianity, which would continue to develop independently of the message that Jesus, James, and Peter preached. Paul and Jesus illuminates the fascinating period of history when Christianity was born out of Judaism.
Author: John F. MacArthur Publisher: Thomas Nelson ISBN: 1418508055 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
The pieces are in place. The curtain rises for the final act. God is about to die. An unprecedented conspiracy of injustice, cruelty, and religious and political interests sentenced a man guilty of no crimes to the most barbaric method of execution ever devised. The victim was no mere man. Jesus was God in the flesh. The Creator of life died. How did such a thing come to be? Who were the onlookers, the players, the fakes, frauds, and heroes? What was it like in the Upper Room that night, in the shadows of Gethsemane, or in the Praetorium awaiting Pilate's verdict? What is the meaning of the last words Jesus uttered as He gasped for breath on the cross? What if all the facts you now so well could come alive in your ind and heart as a living story, rather than as a 2000-year-old ancient account? By piecing together the narrative from the perspective of the participants, John MacArthur invites you to relive the most awesome injustice in the history of man, the unparalleled triumph of the sovereignty of God, and the passion of Christ.
Author: Alexander J. Burke
Author: Robert L. Webb
Author: 
Author: Charles G. Häberl
Author: Joel Marcus
Author: Carl R. Kazmierski
Author: Flavius Josephus
Author: George Howard
Author: James D. Tabor
Author: John F. MacArthur