Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea

Front Cover
Yale University Press, Mar 26, 2013 - Religion - 289 pages
The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding.Through a forensic, brilliant reexamination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was—a prophet recognizable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament—to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion. As Jesus's teachings spread across the eastern Mediterranean, hammered into place by Paul, John, and their successors, they were transformed in the space of three centuries into a centralized, state-backed creed worlds away from its humble origins. Christian Beginnings tells the captivating story of how a man came to be hailed as the Son consubstantial with God, and of how a revolutionary, anticonformist Jewish subsect became the official state religion of the Roman Empire.
 

Contents

List of Abbreviations
IOUUlbOONA Charismatic Judaism from Moses to Jesus
Polycarp Hermas and Diognetus
Justin
Tertullian Clement of Alexandria
Eusebius of Caesarea Arius and Constantine
From Charisma to Dogma A Birds Eye View
Postscript
Index
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2013)

Geza Vermes was one of the world's greatest experts on early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Bibliographic information