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Jesus of Nazareth is a perennial subject of interest, and one of
the most influential people that ever lived. The religious movement
which flowed from him produced the Christian Church in all its
various manifestations. Christian believers have in common a regard
for Jesus as Lord and God, in some way a bodily appearance
revealing the Father of the universe. Christian thinkers down the
centuries have continually tried to define and explain who Jesus
was and is. This book draws together some of the best modern
thinking about the biblical evidence, the beliefs of the first few
centuries when "orthodoxy" was being defined, the past two
centuries when churchmen have responded to the challenge of modern
rationalism, and some of the reactions to Jesus in the world-wide
spread of modern Christianity and in Islam. It concludes with an
attempt at a simple formula which might provoke and sustain faith
in Jesus Christ in the most recent intellectual environment.
A new edition of this well-respected work. "Doctrine and Practice
in the Early Church" is clearly written and carefully organized
with cross-references throughout to its two companion volumes, "A
New Eusebius and Creeds" and "Councils and Controversies" (revised
editions SPCK 1987 and 1989). It is well established as the
standard introduction to the subject for student and general reader
alike. The second edition makes the text easier to understand in
the light of widespread use; provides a fuller and updated
bibliography; and brings thinking up to date on a number of topics
including house churches, Athanasius, Gnostics, Hippolytus,
Constantine, the Creed of Constantinople, and the Monophysites.
The extraordinary success of The Da Vinci Code has dramatically
intensified interest in the mysterious origins of Christianity. But
in fact there has always been huge curiosity about a wide range of
contentious issues concerning Jesus and early Church history. Who
was the 'real' Jesus? How much do we really know about his
disciples? What is written in the 'secret' early Christian
writings, such as the Gnostic Gospels? How did the Church Fathers
decide which beliefs were heretical and which weren't? Who were the
first Popes and how did they take control of the early Church?
Decoding Early Christianity addresses all such questions,
separating truth from legend, and showing how the early Church
Fathers and Popes interpreted competing views and traditions to
produce, over time, an approved and codified view of Jesus and his
followers, and developed an accepted liturgy with which to worship
him. Expertly written by a team of highly distinguished authors, it
is a clear and engaging exploration of fact and fiction for anyone
who wants to be reliably informed on the subject. The authors show
how speculative fancies arise from a mixture of tenuous evidence
and wishful thinking, and bring the issues back to the solid - but
no less extraordinary - evidence in the main canon of the Gospels
and the Acts. After Leslie Houlden's Introduction, which briefly
explores the nature and context of the different issues, nine
chapters, each written by an expert, tackle the evidence: 'What Did
Jesus Do and Teach?' (Leslie Houlden), 'Who Were the Disciples?'
(Stephen Need), 'Who Were the First Popes?' (Graham Gould), 'What
is the Apocryphal New Testament?' (Stuart Hall), 'What was
Gnosticism?' (Stuart Hall), 'What Was the Qumran Sect and Did Jesus
Share their Beliefs?' (Stephen Need), 'How Did the Early Christians
Worship?' (Graham Gould), 'Who Were the Heretics and What Did they
Believe?' (Lionel Wickham) and 'What Did Constantine Do for
Christianity?' (Graham Gould).
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