Larry Hurtado
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Destroyer Of The Gods Early Christian Distinctiveness In The Roman World
$24.99Add to cart“Silly,” “stupid,” “irrational,” “simple.” “Wicked,” “hateful,” “obstinate,” “anti-social.” “Extravagant,” “perverse.” The Roman world rendered harsh judgments upon early Christianity–including branding Christianity “new.” Novelty was no Roman religious virtue.
Nevertheless, as Larry W. Hurtado shows in Destroyer of the gods, Christianity thrived despite its new and distinctive features and opposition to them. Unlike nearly all other religious groups, Christianity utterly rejected the traditional gods of the Roman world. Christianity also offered a new and different kind of religious identity, one not based on ethnicity. Christianity was distinctively a “bookish” religion, with the production, copying, distribution, and reading of texts as central to its faith, even preferring a distinctive book-form, the codex. Christianity insisted that its adherents behave differently: unlike the simple ritual observances characteristic of the pagan religious environment, embracing Christian faith meant a behavioral transformation, with particular and novel ethical demands for men. Unquestionably, to the Roman world, Christianity was both new and different, and, to a good many, it threatened social and religious conventions of the day.
In the rejection of the gods and in the centrality of texts, early Christianity obviously reflected commitments inherited from its Jewish origins. But these particular features were no longer identified with Jewish ethnicity and early Christianity quickly became aggressively trans-ethnic–a novel kind of religious movement. Its ethical teaching, too, bore some resemblance to the philosophers of the day, yet in contrast with these great teachers and their small circles of dedicated students, early Christianity laid its hard demands upon all adherents from the moment of conversion, producing a novel social project.
Christianity’s novelty was no badge of honor. Called atheists and suspected of political subversion, Christians earned Roman disdain and suspicion in equal amounts. Yet, as Destroyer of the gods demonstrates, in an irony of history the very features of early Christianity that rendered it distinctive and objectionable in Roman eyes have now become so commonplace in Western culture as to go unnoticed. Christianity helped destroy one world and create another. -
Peter In Early Christianity
$42.99Add to cartAfter playing second fiddle to the apostle Paul for a long, long time, Peter has received increased scholarly attention of late. This book builds on the recent resurgence of interest in the apostle Peter.
Nineteen internationally prominent scholars of early Christian history here examine and reassess the historical Peter and his significance in Christian texts from the first three centuries. Giving due attention to archaeological data and recent scholarship, the contributors offer a comprehensive view of Peter through analysis of both New Testament texts and later, noncanonical literature. Markus Bockmuehl concludes the volume by considering present-day questions about the role of Peter, popes, and church leadership.
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How On Earth Did Jesus Become A God
$29.99Add to cartIn How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Larry Hurtado investigates the intense devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus’ significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. This book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject deserves serious historical consideration.
Mapping out the lively current debate about Jesus, Hurtado explains the evidence, issues, and positions at stake. He goes on to treat the opposition to – and severe costs of – worshiping Jesus, the history of incorporating such devotion into Jewish monotheism, and the role of religious experience in Christianity’s development out of Judaism. The follow-up to Hurtado’s award-winning Lord Jesus Christ (2003), this book provides compelling answers to queries about the development of the church’s belief in the divinity of Jesus.
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Lord Jesus Christ
$70.99Add to cartThis outstanding book provides an in-depth historical study of the place of Jesus in the religious life, beliefs, and worship of Christians from the beginnings of the Christian movement down to the late second century.
Lord Jesus Christ is a monumental work on earliest Christian devotion to Jesus, sure to replace Wilhelm Bousset’s Kyrios Christos (1913) as the standard work on the subject. Larry Hurtado, widely respected for his previous contributions to the study of the New Testament and Christian origins, offers the best view to date of how the first Christians saw and reverenced Jesus as divine. In assembling this compelling picture, Hurtado draws on a wide body of ancient sources, from Scripture and the writings of such figures as Ignatius of Antioch and Justin to apocryphal texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth.
Hurtado considers such themes as early beliefs about Jesus’ divine status and significance, but he also explores telling devotional practices of the time, including prayer and worship, the use of Jesus’ name in exorcism, baptism and healing, ritual invocation of Jesus as “Lord,” martyrdom, and lesser-known phenomena such as prayer postures and the curious scribal practice known today as the nomina sacra.
The revealing portrait that emerges from Hurtado’s comprehensive study yields definitive answers to questions like these: How important was this formative period to later Christian tradition? When did the divinization of Jesus first occur? Was early Christianity influenced by neighboring religions? How did the idea of Jesus’ divinity change old views of God? And why did the powerful dynamics of early beliefs and practices encourage people to make the costly move of becoming a Christian?
Boasting an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage – the book speaks authoritatively on everything from early Christian history to themes in biblical studies to New Testament Christology – Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ is at once significant enough that a wide range of scholars will want to read it and accessible enough that general readers interested at all in Christian origins will also profit greatly from it.
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At The Origins Of Christian Worship
$39.50Add to cartWhat distinguished early Christian worship from its ancient Jewish roots? Did Christianity take on any of the elements of the mystery religions? What would a typical Sunday service have been like? Hurtado condenses enormous research, then explains the implications for the modern church.
