Early Religions

Long before the New Testament was a document, it was a sacrament. Jesus called the Eucharist by the name Christians subsequently gave to the latter books of the Holy Bible. It was the "New Covenant," the "New Testament," in his blood. Christians later extended the phrase to cover the books produced by the apostles and their companions; but they did so because these were the books that could be read at Mass.

The Shepherd of Hermas, composed in the late 1st or mid-2nd century AD, is an intriguing early Christian work filled with vivid visions, parables, and teachings. It follows the journey of Hermas, a former slave, who receives divine revelations through a figure known as the Shepherd. The text explores themes of repentance, moral integrity, and the necessity of maintaining a pure and faithful Christian community.

Glory to God for the men of old who endured the persecutions of this world with joy and faith. Much can be learned from those who have looked death in the face and yet remained true to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Athanasius rightly knew that upon one’s view of Christ hung one’s eternal destiny. As he wrote to the bishops of Egypt in 356: “as therefore the struggle that is now set before us concerns all that we are, either to reject or to keep the faith, let us be zealous and resolve to guard what we have received, bearing in mind the confession that was written down at Nicaea.” And, by God’s grace, his victory in that struggle has been of enormous blessing to the church ever since.

Much of the contemporary discussion of the Jesus tradition has focused on aspects of oral performance, storytelling, and social memory, on the premise that the practice of communal reading of written texts was a phenomenon documented no earlier than the second century CE. Brian J. Wright overturns that premise by examining evidence that demonstrates communal reading events in the first century.

Who was Mary Magdalene? A devoted disciple who witnessed the crucifixion? The first person to proclaim Christ's resurrection? A spiritual teacher with profound wisdom? Or the penitent prostitute of medieval imagination? This groundbreaking study peels away centuries of distortion to reveal the remarkable truth about the woman who stood at Christianity's founding moment yet whose voice was repeatedly silenced throughout history.

Your dreams can provide inner guidance filled with life-saving information. Since ancient Egypt and Greece, people have relied on the art of dreaming to diagnose illness and get answers to personal life challenges. Now, dreams are making a grand reappearance in the medical arena as recent scientific research and medical pathology reports validate the diagnostic abilities of precognitive dreams. Are we stepping back into the future as modern medical tests show dreams can be early warning signs of cancer and other diseases?

Few Biblical figures are as intriguing and mysterious as Enoch. He is mentioned only a few times in the canonical Hebrew Bible, but the impact of his story went on to affect the theology of many books written during the Second Temple Era. It also set the foundation for the development of many of the ideas found in the early Christian movement. Enoch’s importance continued beyond the destruction of the Temple and survived in a new form in later rabbinic tradition. Discover the mystery of Enoch, and the fascinating impact it had on the development of Judaism and Christianity.

Lost Apocrypha invites you to explore the sacred texts that were excluded, silenced, or forgotten—yet never truly lost. From the mystical Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene to the powerful Books of Enoch and Meqabyan preserved in Ethiopia, this collection restores voices that once shaped the soul of the early Church.

The Theragatha is one of the most striking texts in the Pali Canon. It is a collection of 264 poems or verses - some short, some long - by monks who, traditionally, lived at the time of the Buddha, and which expressed their experience of insight, the culmination of their spiritual path. In fact, it is generally recognised now that this collection was added to over the years, so that some of the verses date from a later time.

By AD 100, all the original disciples had died and a new generation of preachers, teachers, and scholars had taken on the responsibility to preach, teach, and interpret the Scriptures. These men have become known as the church fathers. But who were they? When and where did they live? And, most importantly, what did they teach about how to read and understand the Bible?

In vivid detail, author Jay Lampart lays out several reasons why the Internet pornography crisis Christian males are facing today is so unique and dire. He then presents five very simple but highly effective weapons that are available to us as Christians to combat it.

A look at many different aspects of how Martin Luther became the Father of the Reformation.

The Jewish sect which ascribed Jesus the title of Messiah was eventually transformed into a non-Jewish movement wholly separated from its Jewish context. The transformation was not instantaneous, and there were deviating or at the least parallel streams of Jesus supporters early on. A critical mistake which has been made, in my opinion, is the assumption that the Jesus movement was uniform even among its early Jewish followers. Analyzing the original movement(s) in the first centuries of the Common Era can reveal how the schism between Judaism and Christianity evolved.

For the hermits and communal monks of antiquity, the desert was a place to flee the cacophony of ordinary life in order to hear and contemplate the voice of God. But these monks discovered something surprising in their harsh desert surroundings: far from empty and silent, the desert is richly reverberant. Sonorous Desert shares the stories and sayings of these ancient spiritual seekers, tracing how the ambient sounds of wind, thunder, water, and animals shaped the emergence and development of early Christian monasticism.

Satan's transformation from opaque functionary to chief antagonist is one of the most striking features of the development of Jewish theology in the Second Temple Period and beyond. Once no more than an "accuser" testing members of the human community, Satan, along with his demons, is presented by Jewish apocalyptic texts and the New Testament as a main source of evil in the world. In Satan and the Problem of Evil, noted scholar Archie Wright explores this dynamic in both its historical and theological trajectories.

The book not only provides a vivid window into the world of early Christianity but also offers spiritual encouragement and inspiration for Christian life today.

Masonic scholar Manly P. Hall offers some well-researched insights into early human philosophy and history that helped solidify the basis of knowledge for what would eventually become Freemasonry, one day. He covers Freemasonry’s origins in biblical fables, the Dionysiac Architects, Solomon and the personification of Universal Wisdom, and lastly, Freemasonry’s priceless heritage.

In this fifth volume of a multi-year translation project by the Davenant Institute, we present key sections from Book V of Hooker’s "Laws," in which Hooker thoroughly yet succinctly lays out the Reformed yet catholic perspective on both Christology and the sacraments. Long regarded as both the theological and rhetorical high point of the "Laws," these chapters provide a survey of the church’s historic teaching on the person of Christ and our union with him, as well as an irenic defense of Reformed distinctives over against the Catholic, Lutheran, and anti-sacramental alternatives.

While many histories of Christian worship exist, this project undertakes a task both more focused and more urgent. Rather than survey the whole history of the Christian church, it focuses on the formative period between the first and fifth centuries CE, when so many of the understandings and patterns of Christian worship came to be. And rather than include such developments as the monastic hours of prayer and the history of ordination, the authors deal primarily with those aspects of worship that recur on a weekly or regular basis: preaching, Eucharist, and baptism.