Description: Rex Gloriae is an account of the way in which the New Testament representation of Christ in royal categories lived on during the pre-Constantinian period; how it became enriched by its confrontation with Hellenistic culture; and how this development, in the course of the doctrinal disputes of the fourth century, gave rise to the conception of Christ as King that dominated the theology of the Byzantine period and the Middle Ages in the West.

Nathan Soderblom (1866 - 1931), the Swedish scholar, churchman, and winner of the 1930 Nobel Peace Prize, was one of the early twentieth century's most influential Protestant thinkers. Christianity, he was convinced, had nothing to fear from close historical examination. For him, the religious ideal and the scientific ideal were one, and "truth" was something revealed in the historical process, inseparable from the conditions governing historical experience.
Originally published in 1990.
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Clears the ground for students who are setting out to understand, rather than just to practice, religion. It discusses, among other things, the relationship between commitment to a particular tradition and the quest for intellectual understanding of religion "in the round," "holiness" as an identifying aspect of religion, functional "modes" of religion, and finally some questions connected with the secularization process. Assuming throughout that theology and religious studies ought not to be seen as competing approaches, but as sources for complementary insights, it offers the student a fundamental introduction to an important area of inquiry.

Here in one volume are two of Birger Gerhardsson's much-debated works on the transmission of tradition in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. In Memory and Manuscript (1961), Gerhardsson explores the way in which Jewish rabbis during the first Christian centuries preserved and passed on their sacred tradition, and he shows how early Christianity is better understood in light of how that tradition developed in Rabbinic Judaism. In Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (1964), Gerhardsson further clarifies the discussion and answers criticism of his earlier book. This Biblical Resource Series combined edition corrects and expands Gerhardsson's original works and includes a new preface by the author and a lengthy new foreword by Jacob Neusner that summarizes these works' importance and subsequent influence.