English Bible History

Over the past 70 years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote.

Historians know virtually nothing about the two decades following the crucifixion of Jesus, when his followers regrouped and began to spread his message. During this time the man we know as the apostle Paul joined the movement and began to preach to the gentiles. Using the oldest Christian documents that we have - the letters of Paul - as well as other early Christian sources, historian and scholar James Tabor reconstructs the origins of Christianity.

How do art and faith intersect? How does art help us see our own lives more clearly? What can we understand about God and humanity by looking at the lives of artists? Striving for beauty, art also reveals what is broken. It presents us with the tremendous struggles and longings common to the...

Does your knowledge of the Old Testament feel like a grab bag of people, books, events, and ideas? How many times have you resolved to really understand the OT? To finally make sense of it? Perhaps you are suffering from what Sandra Richter calls the "dysfunctional closet syndrome". If so, she has a solution. Like a home-organizing expert, she comes in and helps you straighten up your cluttered closet. Whether you are a frustrated do-it-yourselfer or a beginning student enrolled in a course, The Epic of Eden will organize your understanding of the Old Testament.

Women were there. For centuries, discussions of early Christianity have focused on male leaders in the church. But there is ample evidence right in the New Testament that women were actively involved in ministry, at the frontier of the gospel mission, and as respected leaders. Nijay Gupta calls us to bring these women out of the shadows by shining light on their many inspiring contributions to the planting, growth, and health of the first Christian churches.

From bestselling author Tamera Alexander comes an exquisite historical novel set against the real history of Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville, Tennessee, that explores the struggles of real people of the post-war South and the journeys of a man and a woman scarred by betrayal. Olivia Aberdeen...

In this third volume of The Masks of God - Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology - the preeminent mythologist looks at the pagan religions of Greece, Rome, and the Celts, as well as the Abrahamic religions - Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Exploring the West’s shift from female-centered to male-centered mythology, Campbell examines the distinguishing characteristics and the shared root concepts of these mythologies. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks.

Did you know that the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang Di, went mad searching for the elixir of eternal life? Did you know his tomb is connected to the Tower of Babel in the Bible? You’ll learn about all these and more hidden facts about ancient China and its connection to the Bible in this booklet that provides the research to the biblical background of the novel Qin: Dragon Emperor of China.

Historians have extensively studied the Old and New Testaments and used the scriptures to trace the rise of one of the world's earliest civilisations. Although it's difficult to confirm the stories in the Bible from a historical perspective, it's possible that myths originated from real events. This is why geologists are investigating the truth about the Flood and Noah's Ark, meteorologists and biologists are trying to understand the ten plagues that affected Egypt, and biblical scholars are searching for evidence of catastrophes that might have destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Simon Peter, Andrew, James the son of Zebedee, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Jude, Simon, Judas, and Matthias - what happened to the men who answered Jesus' call to follow him? What impact did they have on the world? Where did they go and what did they do after Jesus' resurrection and ascension? In these fascinating profiles, Dr. McBirnie offers listeners a snapshot of the lives of each apostle.

“A guide for those who dare to challenge the status quo and create spaces of equity and opportunity.” —Serena Williams Leadership insights from one of history’s most influential voices. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated more than 55 years ago, yet his words continue to inspire...

In this classic of comparative religion, Manly Hall marshals his considerable familiarity with world religious traditions to argue that sound biblical interpretation requires cross-referencing all the great schools of ancient religion and considering them as one composite structure.

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.

Today the Quran is used by some to justify war and acts of terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The significance of scripture may not be immediately obvious in our secular world, but its...

* A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * The acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts introduces us to the extraordinary keepers and companions of medieval manuscripts over a thousand years of history The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest...

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.

The Bible teaches us the real story of Christmas. The problem is people have taken this story and added onto it. Cultures have added on to it. It’s passed through countries, and they’ve tacked on their little spin. We have thousands of years of a Christmas that is built around legends and myths. The Christmas we know is, in places, more a fairy-tale. It’s an inspiring one for sure. But a fairy-tale, nonetheless. This book helps us slow down and unpack the layers so we can see just how beautiful this gift really is.

In Hitler, God, and the Bible, international evangelist and bestselling author Ray Comfort exposes Adolf Hitler's theology and abuse of religion as a means to seize political power and ultimately instigate World War II and genocide.

This fascinating study mines the depths of Hitler's beliefs and convincingly argues that without Hitler's misuse of Christianity the Third Reich would not have had its legendary rise, resulting in the deaths of more than six million Jews.

Childhood for Evan Roberts was defined by outings to the old Shea Stadium with his father, always with a scorebook in hand. What began as a gameday ritual replete with misspelled player names and scrawled symbols turned into an obsession with scoring every game he watched, one which persisted as Roberts rose through the ranks at WFAN. Taken together, those scorebooks form a living, breathing Mets diary spanning 30 years of thrilling—and, at times, tortured—fandom. My Mets Bible is an exercise in memory and nostalgia, and a meditation on the things that stick with us as sports fans.

Although most people acknowledge that Jesus was a first-century Jew, interpreters of the Gospels often present him as opposed to Jewish law and customs—especially when considering his numerous encounters with the ritually impure. Matthew Thiessen corrects this popular misconception by placing Jesus within the Judaism of his day. Thiessen demonstrates that the Gospel writers depict Jesus opposing ritual impurity itself, not the Jewish ritual purity system or the Jewish law.