Download or read book Believing History written by Richard Lyman Bushman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eminent historian Richard Bushman here reflects on his faith and the history of his religion. By describing his own struggle to find a basis for belief in a skeptical world, Bushman poses the question of how scholars are to write about subjects in which they are personally invested. Does personal commitment make objectivity impossible? Bushman explicitly, and at points confessionally, explains his own commitments and then explores Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from the standpoint of belief. Joseph Smith cannot be dismissed as a colorful fraud, Bushman argues, nor seen only as a restorer of religious truth. Entangled in nineteenth-century Yankee culture—including the skeptical Enlightenment—Smith was nevertheless an original who cut his own path. And while there are multiple contexts from which to draw an understanding of Joseph Smith (including magic, seekers, the Second Great Awakening, communitarianism, restorationism, and more), Bushman suggests that Smith stood at the cusp of modernity and presented the possibility of belief in a time of growing skepticism. When examined carefully, the Book of Mormon is found to have intricate subplots and peculiar cultural twists. Bushman discusses the book's ambivalence toward republican government, explores the culture of the Lamanites (the enemies of the favored people), and traces the book's fascination with records, translation, and history. Yet Believing History also sheds light on the meaning of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon today. How do we situate Mormonism in American history? Is Mormonism relevant in the modern world? Believing History offers many surprises. Believers will learn that Joseph Smith is more than an icon, and non-believers will find that Mormonism cannot be summed up with a simple label. But wherever readers stand on Bushman's arguments, he provides us with a provocative and open look at a believing historian studying his own faith.
Download or read book The History of Make Believe written by Holly Haynes and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-12-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In The History of Make-Believe, Holly Haynes acutely queries the relationship of historiography, historical reality, and symbolic representations of lived historical processes. This is a serious book, informed by wide reading, and full of startlingly original insights on some of the most prominent and significant themes in Tacitus’s works. Indeed, it deserves close attention by anyone interested in the political and social strategies of high Imperial Rome."—T. Corey Brennan, author of The Praetorship in the Roman Republic "In Tacitus the historical truth is conveyed in literary truth-telling. Instead of leaving the two separated as we do, Holly Haynes shows that Tacitus put them together in what she calls the combination ‘make-believe.’ Her book shines with originality and intelligence while opening the way to Tacitus’s canny wisdom."—Harvey Mansfield, author of Machiavelli's Virtue
Download or read book An Atheist s History of Belief written by Matthew Kneale and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What first prompted prehistoric man, sheltering in the shadows of deep caves, to call upon the realm of the spirits? And why has belief thrived since, shaping thousands of generations of shamans, pharaohs, Aztec priests and Mayan rulers, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Nazis, and Scientologists? As our dreams and nightmares have changed over the millennia, so have our beliefs. The gods we created have evolved and mutated with us through a narrative fraught with human sacrifice, political upheaval and bloody wars. Belief was man's most epic labor of invention. It has been our closest companion, and has followed mankind across the continents and through history.
Download or read book I Believe in Heaven written by Cecil Murphey and published by Revell. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is heaven like? When I die, will I go immediately to heaven? Will I see my loved ones there? Have you ever asked these questions? Maybe you can only imagine the answers, but now you can better know what to expect. I Believe in Heaven contains inspirational, true stories from the Bible, history and today that will give you hope, comfort and assurance about the place that awaits you. You'll read . . . • Firsthand accounts of people who died and returned to tell their stories • Biblical and historical evidence of life beyond this life • Consistent reports of overwhelming peace, love and joy in another realm • Insights into what happens in our final days and hours here on earth • Trustworthy answers to questions people have about the after-life
Download or read book Annabelle Aiden written by Becker J.r. and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did our earliest beliefs form? What were they, and what do they say about us? Tardigrade Tom takes our characters on a historical journey of world religions! From the earliest humans who believed everything around them (trees, rocks, skies) could think and feel - like they could. To deep inside dark caves, where early humans draw animal spirits on the walls, and watch shamans sway, illuminated by nearby fires. Watch us build amazing temples and tombs, and give offerings and praise, as we learn ideas of reciprocity and trade. Explore world religions & cultures chronologically, such as: Animism Shamanism Mesopotamia The Egyptians Indo-European & Greek Gods Zoroastrianism Hinduism & Buddhism Judaism, then Christianity, then Islam. But most uniquely, this book explains how and why our beliefs emerged and evolved, and what they say about who we are.
Download or read book Christianity written by Matt Stefon Assistant Editor, Religion and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the basic doctrines, history, and religious practices of Christianity, including Christian concepts of human nature, and profiles famous Christian figures throughout history.
Download or read book History and Belief written by Robert Eric Frykenberg and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of the relationship between history and belief, the author shows how our underlying commitments--whether religious or ideological--determine which events we find significant enough to remember as "history", yet how those same beliefs distort our understandings of events, leaving them incomplete and contingent.
Download or read book Scottish Fairy Belief written by Lizanne Henderson and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2001 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authorities told folk what they ought to believe, but what did they really believe? Throughout Scottish history, people have believed in fairies. They were a part of everyday life, as real as the sunrise, and as incontrovertible as the existence of God. While fairy belief was only a fragment of a much larger complex, the implications of studying this belief tradition are potentially vast, revealing some understanding of the worldview of the people of past centuries. This book, the first modern study of the subject, examines the history and nature of fairy belief, the major themes and motifs, the demonising attack upon the tradition, and the attempted reinstatement of the reality of fairies at the end of the seventeenth century, as well as their place in ballads and in Scottish literature.
Download or read book When Time Shall Be No More written by Paul Boyer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of Americans take the Bible at its word and turn to like-minded local ministers and TV preachers, periodicals and paperbacks for help in finding their place in God’s prophetic plan for mankind. And yet, influential as this phenomenon is in the worldview of so many, the belief in biblical prophecy remains a popular mystery, largely unstudied and little understood. When Time Shall Be No More offers for the first time an in-depth look at the subtle, pervasive ways in which prophecy belief shapes contemporary American thought and culture. Belief in prophecy dates back to antiquity, and there Paul Boyer begins, seeking out the origins of this particular brand of faith in early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings, then tracing its development over time. Against this broad historical overview, the effect of prophecy belief on the events and themes of recent decades emerges in clear and striking detail. Nuclear war, the Soviet Union, Israel and the Middle East, the destiny of the United States, the rise of a computerized global economic order—Boyer shows how impressive feats of exegesis have incorporated all of these in the popular imagination in terms of the Bible’s apocalyptic works. Reflecting finally on the tenacity of prophecy belief in our supposedly secular age, Boyer considers the direction such popular conviction might take—and the forms it might assume—in the post–Cold War era. The product of a four-year immersion in the literature and culture of prophecy belief, When Time Shall Be No More serves as a pathbreaking guide to this vast terra incognita of contemporary American popular thought—a thorough and thoroughly fascinating index to its sources, its implications, and its enduring appeal.
Download or read book Believing written by Anita Hill and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An elegant, impassioned demand that America see gender-based violence as a cultural and structural problem that hurts everyone, not just victims and survivors… It's at times downright virtuosic in the threads it weaves together.”—NPR Winner of the 2022 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Books From the woman who gave the landmark testimony against Clarence Thomas as a sexual menace, a new manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a powerful call to arms from one of our most prominent and poised survivors. In 1991, Anita Hill began something that's still unfinished work. The issues of gender violence, touching on sex, race, age, and power, are as urgent today as they were when she first testified. Believing is a story of America's three decades long reckoning with gender violence, one that offers insights into its roots, and paths to creating dialogue and substantive change. It is a call to action that offers guidance based on what this brave, committed fighter has learned from a lifetime of advocacy and her search for solutions to a problem that is still tearing America apart. We once thought gender-based violence--from casual harassment to rape and murder--was an individual problem that affected a few; we now know it's cultural and endemic, and happens to our acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family members, and it can be physical, emotional and verbal. Women of color experience sexual harassment at higher rates than White women. Street harassment is ubiquitous and can escalate to violence. Transgender and nonbinary people are particularly vulnerable. Anita Hill draws on her years as a teacher, legal scholar, and advocate, and on the experiences of the thousands of individuals who have told her their stories, to trace the pipeline of behavior that follows individuals from place to place: from home to school to work and back home. In measured, clear, blunt terms, she demonstrates the impact it has on every aspect of our lives, including our physical and mental wellbeing, housing stability, political participation, economy and community safety, and how our descriptive language undermines progress toward solutions. And she is uncompromising in her demands that our laws and our leaders must address the issue concretely and immediately.
Download or read book Called to Believe Teach and Confess written by Steven P. Mueller and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called to Believe, Teach, and Confess offers an overview of the major doctrines of Christianity in a comprehensive, but accessible way. Written from a Lutheran perspective, this book is a helpful resource to those within that tradition and to others who seek a deeper theological understanding. Firmly rooted in Scripture, this book emphasizes the interrelatedness of all Christian teaching, with its central teaching being the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This book is ideal as a text for university students and other educated Christian adults who seek to expand their knowledge of God's revelation and its application in human lives. It introduces and uses classical theological vocabulary and terminology, while offering clear definitions and application. Key terms, study questions, glossary, and sidebars help make this a valuable resource. Suggested readings from Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions and other secondary sources guide the reader into deeper study.
Download or read book A History of Science Magic and Belief written by Steven P. Marrone and published by Red Globe Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Science, Magic and Belief is an exploration of the origins of modern society through the culture of the middle ages and early modern period. By examining the intertwined paths of three different systems for interpreting the world, it seeks to create a narrative which culminates in the birth of modernity. It looks at the tensions and boundaries between science and magic throughout the middle ages and how they were affected by elite efforts to rationalise society, often through religion. The witch-crazes of the sixteenth and seventeenth century are seen as a pivotal point, and the emergence from these into social peace is deemed possible due to the Scientific Revolution and the politics of the early modern state. This book is unique in drawing together the histories of science, magic and religion. It is thus an ideal book for those studying any or all of these topics, and with its broad time frame, it is also suitable for students of the history of Europe or Western civilisation in general.
Download or read book Battling the Gods written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Download or read book American Religious History 3 volumes written by Gary Scott Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 1613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mix of thematic essays, reference entries, and primary source documents covering the role of religion in American history and life from the colonial era to the present. Often controversial, religion has been an important force in shaping American culture. Religious convictions strongly influenced colonial and state governments as well as the United States as a new republic. Religious teachings, values, and practices deeply affected political structures and policies, economic ideology and practice, educational institutions and instruction, social norms and customs, marriage, and family life. By analyzing religion's interaction with American culture and prominent religious leaders and ideologies, this reference helps readers to better understand many fascinating, often controversial, religious leaders, ideas, events, and topics. The work is organized in three volumes devoted to particular periods. Volume one includes a chronology highlighting key events related to religion in American history and an introduction that overviews religion in America during the period covered by the volume, and roughly 10 essays that explore significant themes. These essays are followed by approximately 120 alphabetically arranged reference entries providing objective, fundamental information about topics related to religion in America. Each volume presents nearly 50 primary source documents, each introduced by a contextualizing headnote. A selected, general bibliography closes volume three.
Download or read book Did Moses Exist written by D. M. Murdock and published by Stellar House Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biblical figure of Moses has been the center of fascination for over 2,000 years, but what do we actually know about him? Was he a real person? Did the Exodus truly happen? Or is the story in the Pentateuch a mythical account written centuries after the alleged events? Why does Moses's story resemble that of other, older lawgivers and legendary predecessors? Why are there so many elements of sun and wine god myths in the tale of Moses? What does the focus on the serpent in his story signify? Who were Yahweh and the Elohim? Did Moses Exist? includes: Maps and 126 illustrations Extensive bibliography, table of contents and index Hundreds of footnotes and citations from primary sources in multiple languages Best modern scholarship from credentialed authorities Did Moses Exist? provides a massive amount of information from antiquity about the world's religious traditions and mythology, including how solar myths, wine cultivation and fertility cults have shaped the Bible and Judaism. This book may be the most comprehensive study to date, using the best scholarship and state-of-the-art research methods. "The existence of Moses as well as the veracity of the Exodus story is disputed amongst archaeologists and Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence and related origin myths in Canaanite culture." --"Moses," Wikipedia "There is no historical evidence outside of the Bible, no mention of Moses outside the Bible, and no independent confirmation that Moses ever existed." --Dr. Michael D. Coogan, lecturer on the Old Testament at Harvard Divinity School "We cannot be sure that Moses ever lived because there are no traces of his earthly existence outside of tradition." --Egyptologist Dr. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian "The life of Moses contains elements--canonical and apocryphal--that mark him as a true mythic hero, and certainly he is Judaism's greatest hero and the central figure in Hebrew mythology." --Dr. David Leeming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology "...the stories of the creation, of the flood, of Abraham, of Jacob, of the descent into and the exodus from Egypt, of the career of Moses and the Jews in the desert, of Joshua and his soldiers, of the judges and their clients, are all apocryphal, and were fabricated at a late period of Jewish history." --Dr. Thomas Inman, Ancient Faiths and Modern Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction Who Wrote the Pentateuch? Was Moses an Egyptian Pharaoh or Priest? The Exodus as History? The Exodus in Ancient Literature Hyksos and Lepers Who Were the Israelites? The Exodus as Myth The Lawgiver Archetype The Dionysus Connection The Life of Dionysus The Vine and Wine The Great God Sun Yahweh and the Sun Moses as Solar Hero Conclusion Bibliography Index
Download or read book Nineteenth Century and After written by and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 1104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Birth of Modern Belief written by Ethan H. Shagan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating history of how religious belief lost its uncontested status in the West This landmark book traces the history of belief in the Christian West from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, revealing for the first time how a distinctively modern category of belief came into being. Ethan Shagan focuses not on what people believed, which is the normal concern of Reformation history, but on the more fundamental question of what people took belief to be. Shagan shows how religious belief enjoyed a special prestige in medieval Europe, one that set it apart from judgment, opinion, and the evidence of the senses. But with the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, the question of just what kind of knowledge religious belief was—and how it related to more mundane ways of knowing—was forced into the open. As the warring churches fought over the answer, each claimed belief as their exclusive possession, insisting that their rivals were unbelievers. Shagan challenges the common notion that modern belief was a gift of the Reformation, showing how it was as much a reaction against Luther and Calvin as it was against the Council of Trent. He describes how dissidents on both sides came to regard religious belief as something that needed to be justified by individual judgment, evidence, and argument. Brilliantly illuminating, The Birth of Modern Belief demonstrates how belief came to occupy such an ambivalent place in the modern world, becoming the essential category by which we express our judgments about science, society, and the sacred, but at the expense of the unique status religion once enjoyed.
