Author: Annie Besant
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3752374160
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original: Esoteric Christianity by Annie Besant

Author:
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 0857861018
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Author: Elaine Pagels
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110157707X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
A startling exploration of the history of the most controversial book of the Bible, by the bestselling author of Beyond Belief. Through the bestselling books of Elaine Pagels, thousands of readers have come to know and treasure the suppressed biblical texts known as the Gnostic Gospels. As one of the world's foremost religion scholars, she has been a pioneer in interpreting these books and illuminating their place in the early history of Christianity. Her new book, however, tackles a text that is firmly, dramatically within the New Testament canon: The Book of Revelation, the surreal apocalyptic vision of the end of the world . . . or is it? In this startling and timely book, Pagels returns The Book of Revelation to its historical origin, written as its author John of Patmos took aim at the Roman Empire after what is now known as "the Jewish War," in 66 CE. Militant Jews in Jerusalem, fired with religious fervor, waged an all-out war against Rome's occupation of Judea and their defeat resulted in the desecration of Jerusalem and its Great Temple. Pagels persuasively interprets Revelation as a scathing attack on the decadence of Rome. Soon after, however, a new sect known as "Christians" seized on John's text as a weapon against heresy and infidels of all kinds-Jews, even Christians who dissented from their increasingly rigid doctrines and hierarchies. In a time when global religious violence surges, Revelations explores how often those in power throughout history have sought to force "God's enemies" to submit or be killed. It is sure to appeal to Pagels's committed readers and bring her a whole new audience who want to understand the roots of dissent, violence, and division in the world's religions, and to appreciate the lasting appeal of this extraordinary text.

Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062252194
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus’s divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church. The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the evolution of a belief that looked very different in the fourth century than it did in the first. A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman reveals how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty, Creator of all things. But how did he move from being a Jewish prophet to being God? In a book that took eight years to research and write, Ehrman sketches Jesus’s transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus’s followers had visions of him after his death—alive again—did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God. And what they meant by that was not at all what people mean today. Written for secular historians of religion and believers alike, How Jesus Became God will engage anyone interested in the historical developments that led to the affirmation at the heart of Christianity: Jesus was, and is, God.

Author: Caroline Vander Stichele
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1628370130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Examine a rich history of spiritual interpretations from antiquity to the present Since the sixteenth century CE, the field of biblical studies has focused on the literal meaning of texts. This collection seeks to rectify this oversight by integrating the study of esoteric readings into academic discourse. Case studies focusing on the first three chapters of Genesis cover different periods and methods from early Christian discourse through zoharic, kabbalistic and alchemical literature to modern and post-postmodern approaches. Features: Discussions, comparisons, and analyses of esoteric appropriations of Genesis 1–3 Essays on creation myths, gender, fate and free will, the concepts of knowledge, wisdom, and gnosis Repsonses to papers that provide a range of view points

Author: Elaine Pagels
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588364178
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time The Gnostic Gospels is a landmark study of the long-buried roots of Christianity, a work of luminous scholarship and wide popular appeal. First published in 1979 to critical acclaim, winning the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Gnostic Gospels has continued to grow in reputation and influence over the past two decades. It is now widely recognized as one of the most brilliant and accessible histories of early Christian spirituality published in our time. In 1945 an Egyptian peasant unearthed what proved to be the Gnostic Gospels, thirteen papyrus volumes that expounded a radically different view of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ from that of the New Testament. In this spellbinding book, renowned religious scholar Elaine Pagels elucidates the mysteries and meanings of these sacred texts both in the world of the first Christians and in the context of Christianity today. With insight and passion, Pagels explores a remarkable range of recently discovered gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, to show how a variety of “Christianities” emerged at a time of extraordinary spiritual upheaval. Some Christians questioned the need for clergy and church doctrine, and taught that the divine could be discovered through spiritual search. Many others, like Buddhists and Hindus, sought enlightenment—and access to God—within. Such explorations raised questions: Was the resurrection to be understood symbolically and not literally? Was God to be envisioned only in masculine form, or feminine as well? Was martyrdom a necessary—or worthy—expression of faith? These early Christians dared to ask questions that orthodox Christians later suppressed—and their explorations led to profoundly different visions of Jesus and his message. Brilliant, provocative, and stunning in its implications, The Gnostic Gospels is a radical, eloquent reconsideration of the origins of the Christian faith.

Author: April D DeConick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134935994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent and strong tradition of a God who actively hides. The two traditions have led to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible to humanity and yet inaccessible, a God who is both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. He becomes the hallmark of the mystics, Gnostics, sages, and artists who attempt to make accessible to humans the God who is secreted away. 'Histories of the Hidden God' explores this tradition from antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God.

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: North Vancouver : Steiner Book Centre
ISBN: 9780919924208
Category : Anthroposophy
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Book Description
Exoteric Christianity is to be found in the Gospels and as they have been interpreted through history; esoteric, inner Christianity is the living teaching of the Risen Christ: resurrection. Today it lies in the resurrection of thinking: how dead thoughts can be awakened to life in the form of moral impulses.

Author: Simon P. Loynes
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004452974
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
In Revelation in the Qur’an Simon P. Loynes presents a semantic study of the Arabic roots n-z-l and w-ḥ-y, which sheds new light on the modalities of revelation in the Qur’an.

Author: Clive Prince
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473512255
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
In the course of their investigations into Leonardo da Vinci and the Turin Shroud, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince found clues in the work of the great Renaissance artist that pointed to the existence of a secret underground religion. More clues were found in a twentieth-century London church. These were the beginnings of a quest through time and space that led the authors into the mysterious world of secret societies and such bodies as the Freemasons, the Knights Templar and the Cathars and finally back to the ideas and beliefs of the first century AD and a devastating new view of the real character and motives of the founder of Christianity and the roles of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. They reveal nothing less than a secret history, preserved through the centuries but encoded in works of art and even in the great Gothic cathedrals, whose revelation could shake the foundations of the Chruch.