Ancient Religion History

In a book that took eight years to research and write, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman explores 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. 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.

Two and a half decades ago, Ascended Master Teachers Arten and Pursah appeared to Gary Renard and held a series of conversations with him that elaborated on the teachings of two spiritual classics, The Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. Gary immortalized what he learned in the books of his best-selling series. This fourth book, a companion to the original trilogy, explores six of the lifetimes in which the incarnations of Jesus and Buddha lived together, beginning in 700 BC when they were known as Saka and Hiroji.

A study of the substantial evidence for a former race of giants in North America and its 150-year suppression by the Smithsonian Institution.

Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture—the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.

Rudolf Steiner uses the history of Atlantis and Lemuria to discuss the esoteric evolution of man. He covers in more detail what is suggested in An Outline of Occult Science. There was a time when a continent called Atlantis still lay between Europe and America. This portion of the worlds surface was at one time land; this land now forms the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Plato alluded to the last remaining remnant of that lost continent when he spoke of the Island of Poseidon.

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life.

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme.

Dan Brown's immensely popular New York Times best-selling The Da Vinci Code is one of the most successful books of recent history. It has captivated millions the world over with its enthralling suspense and its provocative questions about the true nature of Jesus' life.

Eons before the birth of the Roman Empire, there was a civilization dedicated to the sciences of Earth, sea, and sky. In the City of Light lived people who made dark plans to lay waste to their uncivilized neighbors using the very power of the planet itself. As the great science of their time was brought to bear on the invading hordes, hell was set loose on Earth. And the civilization of Atlantis disappeared in a suicidal storm of fire and water.… Now history threatens to repeat itself.

Lost for nearly 1,700 years, newly restored and authenticated, the Gospel of Judas presents a very different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas. Rather than paint Judas as a traitor, it portrays him as acting at Jesus' request.

In Love Wins, Rob Bell confronted the troubling questions that many people of faith are afraid to ask about heaven, hell, fate, and faith. Using the same inspired, inquisitive approach, he now turns to our most sacred book: the Bible. What Is the Bible? provides insights and answers that make clear why the Bible is so revered and what makes it truly inspiring and essential to our lives. Rob takes us deep into actual passages to reveal the humanity behind the Scriptures.

Christ in the Psalms takes the listener on a thought-provoking and enlightening pilgrimage through this beloved prayer book of the Church. Lively and highly devotional, this audiobook holds a wealth of insight into the beloved Scriptures, the world of the Early Church, and the Apostles themselves.

Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible - the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire - reflect the world of the later authors.

Based on a careful analysis of the earliest Christian documents and recent archaeological discoveries, The Jesus Dynasty offers a bold new interpretation of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity. The story is surprising, controversial, and exciting as only a long-lost history can be when it is at last recovered.

How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read or listen to the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’ freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God - which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.

In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation.

This book begins with King Solomon's reign and ends just before Jesus' birth, but don't expect to hear an historical record as in a textbook. This is history read as God's master plan, and He knows exactly what He's doing.

Prophets and Kings is volume two of a five-volume set that covers human history from the beginning of our time and on into the future.

Forty years after the publication of Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods, Philip Coppens revisits the question of whether "ancient aliens" contributed to the birth of human civilization.

While this new faith was widely spread by word of mouth, the primary tool for the new religion was the Bible. Even now, nearly 2,000 years later the Bible continues to influence lives all over the world. How can this ancient document continue to have such a profound influence on the world? How has it survived the changing times and the feeble whims of mankind?