Early Religions

For more than three decades, Dr. Thomas Horn was a proficient Bible scholar and pioneer who addressed with perceptive wisdom and discernment serious and controversial questions most religious scholars wouldn’t touch. Now back in circulation for the first time since 1998, this book is a republication of two of Tom's earliest works. In Spiritual Warfare: The Invisible Invasion and Gods Who Walk Among Us, Horn brings insight to our troubling times and assurance of God's eventual victory over darkness.

This book welcomes listeners to appreciate the origins of Christianity within the Roman world in which early Christianity got its first foothold. It does that by immersing listeners in the life and culture of two thriving first-century towns—Pompeii and Herculaneum. Those towns (destroyed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE) act as showpieces of the world into which the early Christian movement was spreading.

A rip roaring, hair raising, edge-of-your-chair saga of the first-century believers. From the day of Pentecost, on through the first seventeen years, every historical figure of that age is there: alive, vivid, believable.

This book is about Paul, the apostle who had an amazing revelation of the love of God the Father expressed through Jesus Christ, his beloved Son. The revelation of the God who was in Christ. How did Paul receive such an incredible revelation? How was this legalistic Jewish pharisee who persecuted the early church transform into the man who has this profound revelation? Who was the man behind the words? What was the back story? Paul’s story unfolds in the pages of the New Testament.

What do we call each other? It’s a deceptively simple question, because how we refer to one another is how we understand our relationships. Not recognizing the power of our words makes it harder for us to trust and serve one another―to love one another. In More than Christians, Norman Hubbard explores how the early church used common words in uncommon ways to make sense of their relationships with God and with one another. His research and contextualization of the cultural background to the New Testament is as practical for today as it is urgent.

In Firstlight, best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd offers readers an intimate glimpse into the early years of her journey as both writer and spiritual seeker. Drawn from the author's early writings for Guideposts and, to a lesser extent, other publications, this selection of personal reflections and essays is organized around 13 spiritual motifs and interwoven to create a compelling narrative about the author's spiritual awakening.

Early Scenes in Church History, is the eighth in a series of 17 books called The Faith-Promoting Series. Published between 1879 and 1915, this series of books was published by the Juvenile Instructors Office for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints. It was George Q. Cannon's inspiration that produced the series, however. In 1866, Cannon, then a member of the Quorum of the 12, began publication of a magazine for youth and young adults called The Juvenile Instructor, which he owned and published until his death in 1901, when his family sold the magazine to the LDS Church's Sunday School organization. Thus, in 1882 when the present work, Early Scenes in Church History, was published, it was a work undertaken under the direction of Cannon, with the blessing of the Church's governing leadership.

Who was Priscilla? Readers of the Bible may know her as the wife of Aquila, Paul's coworker, or someone who explained baptism to Apollos. Biblical references to Priscilla spark questions: Why is she mentioned before her husband? Does the mention of her instruction of Apollos mean that women taught in the church? What is her story?

The Dīghanikāya or Long Discourses of the Buddha is one of the four major collections of teachings from the early period of Buddhism. Its 34 suttas (in Sanskrit, sutras) demonstrate remarkable breadth in both content and style, forming a comprehensive collection. The Art of Listening gives an introduction to the Dīghanikāya and demonstrates the historical, cultural, and spiritual insights that emerge when we view the Buddhist suttas as oral literature.

When people think about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), they tend to think of flying discs piloted by gray beings with large heads and enormous eyes. They also might believe that these sightings only started relatively recently and that belief in UFOs is some sort of modern phenomenon brought on, perhaps, by the very justifiable fears of a nuclear age. But a study of UFOs quickly reveals that people have been reporting the existence of unidentified flying objects since the beginning of recorded history, and perhaps a lot longer than that.

That Jesus of Nazareth was crucified is the closest to a historical fact anyone can say about him. Biblical scholars have spent centuries debating the details of what Jesus did and said, but this crude fact—that Jesus suffered capital punishment at the hands of the Roman authority by crucifixion—is accepted by the overwhelming majority of scholars. That there once was a cross where Jesus suffered and died is, therefore, the sequential logical affirmation.

How did Muslims across time and place define the line between themselves and their neighbors? Youshaa Patel explores why the Prophet Muhammad first advised his followers to emulate Christians and Jews, but then allegedly reversed course, urging them to "be different!" He details how subsequent generations of Muslim scholars canonized the Prophet's admonition into an influential doctrine against imitation that enjoined ordinary believers to embody and display their religious difference in public life.

When Jesus sent 70 disciples on ahead of him, part of their mission was to heal the sick. In fact, they were supposed to heal the sick before they preached the Gospel. Best-selling author Mike Aquilina calls this command the healing imperative. And it's an imperative that ushered in the world of modern medicine. In The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It, Aquilina reconstructs the fascinating history of a uniquely Christian institution: the hospital.

In Faithful Witness, Phil Baker explains the theology of martyrdom that developed over the first 300 years of Christianity, and why that theology proved so powerful in the early years of the faith. Why did they choose faithfulness over fear? Why did they choose dying over killing? Why did they choose self-sacrifice over revenge? Why did they have such peace and joy in the midst of unimaginable torture? By AD 313, why had roughly 10 percent of the Roman Empire’s population embraced Christianity, when it was both illegal and incredibly dangerous to do so?

Many pastors feel isolated and helpless, especially those beginning pastoral ministry. Phil Newton and Rich Shadden know what this road is like, and they want to share what they have gained from pastoral mentoring—Rich, a young pastor receiving support and guidance from Phil, an older, more experienced shepherd.

You've probably heard of St. Raphael Hawaweeny, St. Alexander Hotovitsky, liturgical translator Isabel Hapgood, and other righteous men and women who made their mark on the early development of Orthodoxy in America. But what about the notorious itinerant Bulgarian Monk? Or Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America? Or Vera Johnston, who served the Orthodox Church without renouncing her Theosophist roots?

This remarkable collection of 73 verses contained in the 'Khuddaka Nikaya' section of the Pali Canon dates from the BC 6th century. It is said to be the earliest voices of women in recorded history. The verses, some brief, some more extended, are the utterances of the bhikkhunis, the nuns at the time of the Buddha, concerning their life and their ‘awakening’.

The Foundations of Social Order was, and remains, the most unique book ever written in the history of Christendom. Nothing like it has been written before, and nothing like it has been written since.

Studying the views and lifestyles of your forerunners in the faith can provide incredible guidance for how you live out your spiritual convictions today. In Wisdom from the Ancients, author and scholar Bryan Litfin paints a vivid portrait of the first five centuries of the Christian church, packed with fascinating history and applicable insights for modern believers.

The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled “lost tribes of Israel” - Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE - took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America.