Early Religions

In Firstlight, best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd offers readers an intimate glimpse into the early years of her journey as both writer and spiritual seeker. Drawn from the author's early writings for Guideposts and, to a lesser extent, other publications, this selection of personal reflections and essays is organized around 13 spiritual motifs and interwoven to create a compelling narrative about the author's spiritual awakening.

Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes is the definitive study of the early Christian theologian Carpocrates, his son Epiphanes, and the leader of the Carpocratian movement in Rome, Marcellina. It contains the first full-length study of and commentary on the fragments of Epiphanes, the earliest reports on Carpocrates and Marcellina, as well as the Epistle to Theodore (containing the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark). Listeners also encounter an up-to-date history of research on the Carpocratian movement, and three full profiles of all we can know from the earliest Carpocratian leaders.

Decades ago, we systematically removed religious education from the public school day. LifeWise Academy is bringing it back. During School Hours is the two-part (true) story of how it's happening right now. Part 1 investigates WHY religious education was removed from public schools, the unintended consequences of its removal, and why reinstalling it is a game-changer for future generations. Part 2 shows exactly HOW LifeWise Academy is doing it now - bringing Bible education to public school students During School Hours.

The Theragatha is one of the most striking texts in the Pali Canon. It is a collection of 264 poems or verses - some short, some long - by monks who, traditionally, lived at the time of the Buddha, and which expressed their experience of insight, the culmination of their spiritual path. In fact, it is generally recognised now that this collection was added to over the years, so that some of the verses date from a later time.

The book not only provides a vivid window into the world of early Christianity but also offers spiritual encouragement and inspiration for Christian life today.

India has “philosophy” in the Western sense of the term, and it began early. This book deals with the roots of that philosophical thought. Included here are plain English translations (with notes) of selections of the Rig Veda, Atharva Veda, and especially the classic Upanishads. Also included are five essays to help understand this philosophical reflections. These essays are on the sources of Indian philosophy, knowledge, metaphysics, and ethics, with a specialized essay on “unknowing” in the Isha Upanishad.

A detailed look into ancient advanced technology, science, and medicine - some of which has yet to be reproduced today.

Perhaps no declaration incites more theological and moral outrage than a human's claim to be divine. Those who make this claim in ancient Jewish and Christian mythology are typically represented as the most hubristic and dangerous tyrants. Their horrible punishments are predictable and still serve as morality tales in religious communities today. But not all self-deifiers are saddled with pride and fated to fall.

Athanasius rightly knew that upon one’s view of Christ hung one’s eternal destiny. As he wrote to the bishops of Egypt in 356: “as therefore the struggle that is now set before us concerns all that we are, either to reject or to keep the faith, let us be zealous and resolve to guard what we have received, bearing in mind the confession that was written down at Nicaea.” And, by God’s grace, his victory in that struggle has been of enormous blessing to the church ever since.

For more than three decades, Dr. Thomas Horn was a proficient Bible scholar and pioneer who addressed with perceptive wisdom and discernment serious and controversial questions most religious scholars wouldn’t touch. Now back in circulation for the first time since 1998, this book is a republication of two of Tom's earliest works. In Spiritual Warfare: The Invisible Invasion and Gods Who Walk Among Us, Horn brings insight to our troubling times and assurance of God's eventual victory over darkness.

This book welcomes listeners to appreciate the origins of Christianity within the Roman world in which early Christianity got its first foothold. It does that by immersing listeners in the life and culture of two thriving first-century towns—Pompeii and Herculaneum. Those towns (destroyed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE) act as showpieces of the world into which the early Christian movement was spreading.

Many years ago, in a lecture on the creation of the Mishnah, the Orthodox Jewish historian, Rabbi Berel Wein discussed the rise of early Christianity as a historical and theological backdrop. He mentioned that this era is of particular importance to Jews because of the complicated and tragic relationship between Jews and Christians over the centuries. He referred to Joseph Klausner, the famed Jewish professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who in the earlier part of the 20th century, had authored several works on early Christianity from a Jewish standpoint.

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 216 The scholarly investigations and translations of Prof. Sebastian Brock have been largely responsible for bringing Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also known as Isaac the Syrian, to public attention. Isaac was a seventh-century Syriac Christian bishop and monastic author from Beth Qatraye in the region of Qatar. He is best known for his writings on Christian asceticism. This selection of Isaac’s prayers, taken from the three collections of his Discourses, is elegantly translated by Dr Brock into accessible English, bringing the thought and prayer of one of the great ...

In this fifth volume of a multi-year translation project by the Davenant Institute, we present key sections from Book V of Hooker’s "Laws," in which Hooker thoroughly yet succinctly lays out the Reformed yet catholic perspective on both Christology and the sacraments. Long regarded as both the theological and rhetorical high point of the "Laws," these chapters provide a survey of the church’s historic teaching on the person of Christ and our union with him, as well as an irenic defense of Reformed distinctives over against the Catholic, Lutheran, and anti-sacramental alternatives.

Pascal illuminates the substantial differences between the early church and the Church of today. Formerly, it was necessary to forsake the world in order to be received into the Church, while people now enter the Church at the same time as they enter the world. There was thus an essential distinction between the world and the Church, the two being considered as two opposites.

A look at many different aspects of how Martin Luther became the Father of the Reformation.

What was the starting point of Christianity? Was it in a little town in Bethlehem, just as the lyrics of our favorite Christmas songs contend? In truth, in the earliest days of Christianity, when Peter and Paul first set out to preach the gospel, the belief systems of early Christians were viewed as merely a new sect of Judaism.

The Jewish sect which ascribed Jesus the title of Messiah was eventually transformed into a non-Jewish movement wholly separated from its Jewish context. The transformation was not instantaneous, and there were deviating or at the least parallel streams of Jesus supporters early on. A critical mistake which has been made, in my opinion, is the assumption that the Jesus movement was uniform even among its early Jewish followers. Analyzing the original movement(s) in the first centuries of the Common Era can reveal how the schism between Judaism and Christianity evolved.

Discover the Hidden Gods of the Rig Veda Long before the rise of Shiva and Vishnu in Puranic Hinduism, the Rig Veda sang of gods who have faded from modern memory. In The Forgotten Deities of Rig Veda, explore the rich, symbolic, and often mysterious figures that once held central roles in ancient Vedic rituals. This book dives deep into the Vedic pantheon, revealing the stories, hymns, and meanings behind deities like Indra, Agni, Surya, Usha, and others now rarely worshipped. Whether you're a student of Hindu mythology, a seeker of spiritual roots, or a lover of ancient texts, this book ...

Even as Julie worries about how her children are coping with the loss of their father and the recent move to their new ghost-town home in Mae’s Second Chance, her youngest son is quietly searching through one of the centuries-old buildings for a treasure he believes that his father means for him to find. But what he eventually discovers is not at all what he expects.Julie Engstrom has brought her family to the deserted ghost town of Mae’s Second Chance. She knew that her family needed something different as they struggled to deal with the loss that has changed their lives forever. Her ...