Ancient Religion

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life.

The practice of magic played an enormous role in ancient Egyptian civilization. By studying how magic was viewed by those who practiced it at that time, you can uncover the secrets to practicing their magic in modern times.

Maya Mythology: Discover the Fascinating Myths and Beliefs of an Ancient World Ball games in the underworld, gods struggling to create people, and a magical canoe that sails across the cosmos—Maya mythology is full of excitement and surprises! This book offers a fun and easy-to-read journey into the world of the Maya. Explore their fascinating stories, their beliefs about gods and the underworld, and how their calendar and cities reflected their sacred traditions. Packed with incredible facts and intriguing questions, this book is perfect for teenage readers curious about one of ...

From the pyramids in the north to the temples in the south, ancient artisans left their marks all over Egypt, unique marks that reveal craftsmanship we would be hard pressed to duplicate today. Drawing together the results of more than 30 years of research and nine field study journeys to Egypt, Christopher Dunn presents a stunning stone-by-stone analysis of key Egyptian monuments, including the statue of Ramses II at Luxor and the fallen crowns that lay at its feet.

Bringing to life the world of the Old and New Testaments, the acclaimed creator of the bestselling Don’t Know Much About® series transforms dry, difficult reading into colorful and realistic accounts. Relying on new research and improved translations, Kenneth C. Davis uncovers some amazing questions and contradictions about what the Bible really says: Jericho’s walls may have tumbled down because the city lies on a fault line; Moses never parted the Red Sea; There was a Jesus, but he wasn’t born on Christmas and he probably wasn't an only child....

In The Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life, Toltec shaman and master storyteller Don Jose Ruiz shares some of the most popular stories from his family's oral tradition and offers corresponding lessons that illustrate the larger ideas within each story. According to Ruiz, their teachings are not primitive or reserved for a chosen few initiates but are instead a powerful series of lessons on love and life that are available us all.

Best-selling author Kyle Gray offers a close look at the Ascended Masters and explains how they can bring healing to the Earth, the cosmos, and your life. Discover new tools and wisdom to connect with the enlightened Ascended Masters, and receive their guidance, healing, protection, and support on your spiritual path.

“Education is the art of making men ethical”—Georg F. W. Hegel, Philosophy of Right Both reason and unreason exist in this world. The sublime and the ridiculous are inseparable. The enigmatic force called “daemonism” by Goethe can erupt and overturn all our calculations. Mikhail Lifshitz argued that the dualistic worldview of ancient and primitive mythologies splendidly reflects this realistic picture of the universe. We associate myth with wild and entirely improbable stories, but a kernel of universal truth resides within them. That truth can serve as our guide toward becoming ...

This book is the continuation of the book Atlantis and the Garden of Eden. The research presented here points to the deeper reality of ancient extraterrestrial visitation and the existence of the pre-flood global civilizations we call "Atlantis" or "Lemuria". Within this audiobook you will discover gems of untold history that have not been published anywhere before.

Young Samson, his birth foretold by an Angel of God. Lives his life as a devout Nazirite and is blessed with immense strength. Samson navigates life through his devotion to God and his fight against Philistine injustice against the Israelites. The Lord sets Samson on a path to help deliver his people from their oppressors. With the power of God in his arms he terrorizes the Philistine Army until he is betrayed by the seductive Delilah.

Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company, in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial best-seller in its various available formats. Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.

Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods is a work of monumental importance---the first book to introduce the shocking theory that ancient Earth was visited by aliens. This world-famous best seller has withstood the test of time, inspiring countless books and films, including the author's own popular sequel, The Eye of the Sphinx.

From self-realization and self-promotion to self-help and the selfie, the modern world encourages us to be self-obsessed. We are even told that finding ourselves is the key to happiness. Better to lose yourself! More than 2,500 years ago, the Buddha argued that the self is an illusion—and that our belief in it is the cause of most, if not all, of our suffering. How to Lose Yourself presents lively, accessible, and expert new translations of ancient Buddhist writings about the central, unique, and powerful Buddhist teaching of "no-self."

This volume contains a complete English translation of the famous Ethiopian work, The Kebra Nagast, i.e. the Glory of the Kings [of Ethiopia]. This work has been held in peculiar honour in Abyssinia for several centuries, and throughout that country it has been, and still is, venerated by the people as containing the final proof of their descent from the Hebrew Patriarchs, and of the kinship of their kings of the Solomonic line with Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

The I Ching, or Book of Change, has been consulted through the ages, in both China and the West, for answers to fundamental questions about the world and our place in it. The oldest extant book of divination, it dates back 3,000 years to ancient shamanistic practices involving the ritual preparation of the shoulder bones of oxen. From this early form of communication with the other world, it has become the Chinese spiritual book par excellence.

In Holy Fools, we begin to gain a better understanding of these saints' curious manner of serving Christ, as we learn about the extraordinary lives of twenty of the most well-known fools for Christ in a series of brief hagiographies.

Either read silently or aloud, Spiritual Liberation can be included during meditation or prayer. Each chapter includes an affirmation that distills its core concepts into a sentence or two for the reader to easily practice throughout the day. Beckwith's personal and touching accounts guide the practitioner to integrate and activate the intrinsic gifts of divinity into everyday.

You recite it. But do you understand it? The Apostles’ Creed has become so familiar to us that we don’t think about what we’re saying. Christians from different times, places, and traditions have been united by its eternal truths. We believe them, we recite them, but do we build our lives on them? The fact that so many in the early church died for their faith means they were caught up in something greater than themselves. What were those truths? How did they empower a revolution?

How might premodern exegesis of Genesis inform Christian debates about creation today? Imagine a table with three people in dialogue: a young-earth creationist, an old-earth creationist, and an evolutionary creationist. Into the room walks Augustine of Hippo, one of the most significant theologians in the history of the church. In what ways will his reading of Scripture and his doctrine of creation inform, deepen, and shape the conversation?