Download or read book The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage written by Stephen E. Potthoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage explores how the visionary experiences of early Christian martyrs shaped and informed early Christian ancestor cult and the construction of the cemetery as paradise. Taking the early Christian cemeteries in Carthage as a case study, the volume broadens our understanding of the historical and cultural origins of the early Christian cult of the saints, and highlights the often divergent views about the dead and post-mortem realms expressed by the church fathers, and in graveside ritual and the material culture of the cemetery. This fascinating study is a key resource for students of late antique and early Christian culture.
Download or read book Journeys to Heaven and Hell written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell “[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life’s meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.
Download or read book The Early Church and the Afterlife written by David Rankin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The resurrection of the dead was, as Tertullian says, ‘the chief article of the whole Christian faith’ (De resurrectione 39.3) and one of those beliefs which most distinguished Christian thought from much other contemporary thinking. This book looks at the way in which post-death existence is represented in the work of the early Church Fathers - notably Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Origen - and the Letter to Rheginos, and how these representations compare with its treatment both in Scripture and in contemporary, modern theological reflection. Examining these attitudes to life after death, and putting them into conversation with more modern interpretations, the book asks four main questions. Firstly, whether resurrection happens immediately after death. Secondly, if there is continuity or discontinuity of space and time between death and a resurrection life. Thirdly, it explores whether post-death existence was thought to be embodied or not, and if so how might it be embodied. Finally, it addresses the issue of continuity, or discontinuity, of personal identity after death. This book sheds light on the formation of a key doctrine of Christian faith. As such, it will be of significant interest to scholars and academics working in the History of Religion, Theology and Patristics.
Download or read book The Ransom of the Soul written by Peter Brown and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Tablet Book of the Year Marking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores a revolutionary shift in thinking about the fate of the soul that occurred around the time of Rome’s fall. Peter Brown describes how this shift transformed the Church’s institutional relationship to money and set the stage for its domination of medieval society in the West. “[An] extraordinary new book...Prodigiously original—an astonishing performance for a historian who has already been so prolific and influential...Peter Brown’s subtle and incisive tracking of the role of money in Christian attitudes toward the afterlife not only breaks down traditional geographical and chronological boundaries across more than four centuries. It provides wholly new perspectives on Christianity itself, its evolution, and, above all, its discontinuities. It demonstrates why the Middle Ages, when they finally arrived, were so very different from late antiquity.” —G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books “Peter Brown’s explorations of the mindsets of late antiquity have been educating us for nearly half a century...Brown shows brilliantly in this book how the future life of Christians beyond the grave was influenced in particular by money. —A. N. Wilson, The Spectator
Download or read book Resurrection Hell and the Afterlife written by Mark Finney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book begins by arguing that early Greek reflection on the afterlife and immortality insisted on the importance of the physical body whereas a wealth of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism and early (Pauline) Christianity understood post-mortem existence to be that of the soul alone. Changes begin to appear in the later New Testament where the importance of the afterlife of the physical body became essential, and such thoughts continued into the period of the early Church where the significance of the physical body in post-mortem existence became a point of theological orthodoxy. This book will assert that the influx of Greco-Romans into the early Church changed the direction of Christian thought towards one which included the body. At the same time, the ideological and polemical thrust of an eternal tortuous afterlife for the wicked became essential.
Download or read book Heaven and Hell written by Bart D. Ehrman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over half of Americans believe in a literal heaven, in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. Ehrman shows that eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament, and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught. He recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. Ehrman shows that competing views were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. -- adapted from jacket
Download or read book Sacred Thresholds The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity written by Emilie M. van Opstall and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacred Thresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity offers a far-reaching account of liminal spaces within Christian and pagan sanctuaries, with interdisciplinary and diachronic perspectives on the experience of those who crossed from the worldly to the divine, both physically and symbolically.
Download or read book Orthodox Afterlife written by John Habib and published by St. Mary & St. Moses Abbey. This book was released on 2016-08-22 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Habib came back to the faith of his youth in young adulthood after reading an afterlife story handwritten by an Egyptian Christian monk. This book is the culmination of over fifteen years of research on a quest to arrive at what the Orthodox Christian understanding of the afterlife really is. John is an avid student of Christian history and theology, having written several articles and delivered countless lectures on those subjects.
Download or read book The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage written by Stephen E. Potthoff and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage explores how the visionary experiences of early Christian martyrs shaped and informed early Christian ancestor cult and the construction of the cemetery as paradise. Taking the early Christian cemeteries in Carthage as a case study, the volume broadens our understanding of the historical and cultural origins of the early Christian cult of the saints, and highlights the often divergent views about the dead and post-mortem realms expressed by the church fathers, and in graveside ritual and the material culture of the cemetery. This fascinating study is a key resource for students of late antique and early Christian culture.
Download or read book Crucible of Faith written by Philip Jenkins and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible Era." It was during these years that Judaism grappled with Hellenizing forces and produced new religious ideas that reflected and responded to their changing world. By the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized-and thus passed on to Christianity and later Islam. Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, Creation and the Fall, and the nature of God and Satan.
Download or read book Rethinking Hell written by Christopher Date and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most evangelical Christians believe that those people who are not saved before they die will be punished in hell forever. But is this what the Bible truly teaches? Do Christians need to rethink their understanding of hell? In the late twentieth century, a growing number of evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, and philosophers began to reject the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell in favor of a minority theological perspective called conditional immortality. This view contends that the unsaved are resurrected to face divine judgment, just as Christians have always believed, but due to the fact that immortality is only given to those who are in Christ, the unsaved do not exist forever in hell. Instead, they face the punishment of the "second death"--an end to their conscious existence. This volume brings together excerpts from a variety of well-respected evangelical thinkers, including John Stott, John Wenham, and E. Earl Ellis, as they articulate the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments for conditionalism. These readings will give thoughtful Christians strong evidence that there are indeed compelling reasons for rethinking hell.
Download or read book Death and Afterlife written by Terence Nichols and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people fear dying and are uncertain about life after death. In this engaging book, a Catholic theologian addresses perennial human questions about death and what lies beyond, making a Christian case for an afterlife with God. Nichols begins by examining views of death and the afterlife in Scripture and the Christian tradition. He takes up scientific and philosophical challenges to the afterlife and considers what we can learn about it from near death experiences. Nichols then addresses topics such as the soul, bodily resurrection, salvation, heaven, hell, and purgatory. Finally, he addresses the important issue of preparing for death and dying well.
Download or read book Heaven written by Colleen McDannell and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-11 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In so doing, they shed new light on both the private and public dimensions of western culture. This second edition includes a substantial new preface relating the book to changing views of life after death in the new century."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Life After Life After Death written by N. T. Wright and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the earliest followers of Jesus talk about how God raised him from the dead? How do the Gospels each handle the resurrection differently? What should modern Christians make of these stories? Do they have any relevance today? One of the premier New Testament scholars (and now bishop) addresses these questions and more for the interested reader.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel - the cultures that gave us Christianity - had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.
Download or read book Reasonable Faith written by William Lane Craig and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2008 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition by one of the world's leading apologists presents a systematic, positive case for Christianity that reflects the latest work in the contemporary hard sciences and humanities. Brilliant and accessible.
Download or read book The Ransom of the Soul written by Peter Brown and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Tablet Book of the Year Marking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores a revolutionary shift in thinking about the fate of the soul that occurred around the time of Rome’s fall. Peter Brown describes how this shift transformed the Church’s institutional relationship to money and set the stage for its domination of medieval society in the West. “[An] extraordinary new book...Prodigiously original—an astonishing performance for a historian who has already been so prolific and influential...Peter Brown’s subtle and incisive tracking of the role of money in Christian attitudes toward the afterlife not only breaks down traditional geographical and chronological boundaries across more than four centuries. It provides wholly new perspectives on Christianity itself, its evolution, and, above all, its discontinuities. It demonstrates why the Middle Ages, when they finally arrived, were so very different from late antiquity.” —G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books “Peter Brown’s explorations of the mindsets of late antiquity have been educating us for nearly half a century...Brown shows brilliantly in this book how the future life of Christians beyond the grave was influenced in particular by money. —A. N. Wilson, The Spectator
