Showing titles in History

In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed the kingdom of Israel, and after a siege of three years, the city of Samaria fell to the troops of Sargon II. As was a common practice in the ancient world, the victor uprooted the inhabitants and forced them into exile, scattering the refugees throughout Asia Minor and possibly Africa to destroy them as a cohesive group and prevent them from possibly revolting. That exile brought about the end of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. Only the much smaller and less important kingdom of Judah, nestled in the arid lands of the south, survived....

Take a journey through the ancient history of the Jewish people, a proud and stubborn people who desired to retain their freedom and uniqueness. They fought for this ideal for centuries with various success, but then came the mighty Roman Empire. At first, the Romans were their allies, but they eventually conquered the Jewish state into their vast realm.

In this popular introduction to church history, now in its third edition, Mark Noll isolates key events that provide a framework for understanding the history of Christianity. The book presents Christianity as a worldwide phenomenon rather than just a Western experience. Students in academic settings and church adult education contexts will benefit from this one-semester survey of Christian history.

From the Upper Room of Pentecost to Azusa Street in Los Angeles, God has used prayer movements throughout history to change the world. Over fifteen years ago, a group of students gathered for a prayer vigil in Chichester, England—and the prayers they started haven’t stopped. Out of that first meeting came 24-7 Prayer: an international movement of prayer, mission, and justice that has reached Chinese underground churches, Indian slums, Papua New Guinea jungles, ancient English cathedrals, and even a brewery in Missouri.

In the winter of 1945, in Upper Egypt, an Arab peasant discovered a large vessel. Inside were scrolls containing a hitherto unseen book. One of these books was the Gospel of Thomas. Here before you is the translation of that book. This is the contemporary translation of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas with Greek and Coptic verses. Included are Bible parallels and commentary placed within the flow of the text to explain and expand these amazing verses.

Church history is important because it shows us how God's faithful dealings with his people in the Bible continue in the ongoing life and work of Christ in our world. If you have ever wished for a short book highlighting church history's most important events that will enlighten your mind and pique your interest, this is the one you've been waiting for. Three prolific church historians collaborate their efforts in Church History 101 to present you with a quick listen of church history's high points.

During its 2,500-year life, the book of Genesis has been the keystone to almost every important claim about reality, humanity, and God in Judaism and Christianity. And it continues to play a central role in debates about science, politics, and human rights. With clarity and skill, acclaimed biblical scholar Ronald Hendel provides a panoramic history of this iconic book, exploring its impact on Western religion, philosophy, science, politics, literature, and more.

A story of spiritual awakening, St. Augustine's Confessions is a fascinating look at the life of an eminent Christian thinker. Widely seen as one of the first Western autobiographies ever written, it chronicles the life and religious struggles of Augustine of Hippo, from his days as a self-confessed sinner to his acceptance of Christianity as an older adult.

This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.

In Enemies and Neighbors, Ian Black, who has spent over three decades covering events in the Middle East and is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics, offers a major new history of the Arab-Zionist conflict from 1917 to today. Laying the historical groundwork in the final decades of the Ottoman Era, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources - from declassified documents to oral histories to his own vivid on-the-ground reporting - to recreate the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides.

John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce suffered lifelong opposition and endured for the causes of gospel truth, missionary zeal, and political justice. They found, in solid doctrine and humble joy, the tough roots for habitual tenderness in response to their adversaries - without doctrinal or moral flinching. They are examples of remarkable grace. In the third book of the Swans Are Not Silent series, best-selling author John Piper looks at the lives of these three great men and how they not only endured great opposition but did so with joy and without bitterness.

In 1948, Israel’s founders sought a “national home for the Jewish people,” where Jewish life would be transformed. The state they ultimately made, says Daniel Gordis, is a place of extraordinary success and maddening disappointment, a story of both unprecedented human triumph and great suffering.

There is a lot of talk about heresy these days. The frequency and volume of accusations suggest that some Christians have lost a sense of the gravity of the word. On the other hand, many believers have little to no familiarity with orthodox doctrine or the historic distortions of it. What's needed is a strong dose of humility and restraint, and also a clear and informed definition of orthodoxy and heresy. In Know the Heretics: Audio Lectures, scholar and author Justin Holcomb provides an accessible "travel guide" to the most significant heresies throughout Christian history.

In this book, Katrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as Hoodoo. Working against conventional scholarship, Hazzard-Donald argues that Hoodoo emerged first in three distinct regions she calls "regional Hoodoo clusters" and that after the turn of the 19th century, Hoodoo took on a national rather than regional profile.

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation". Many on the left contend that the Founders were secular or Deist and that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state throughout the land. None of these claims are true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman.

King's Cross is Timothy Keller's revelatory look at the life of Christ as told in the Gospel of Mark. There have been many biographies of Jesus, but few will be as anticipated as this one by Keller, the man Newsweek calls "a C. S. Lewis for the 21st century". In it, Keller shows how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal, calling each of us to look anew at our relationship with God.

In 2007, two Israeli news publications, Israel Today and News First Class, reported that the most famous rabbi in Israel's modern history, 108-year-old Yitzhak Kaduri, had left a cryptic death note revealing the name of the long-awaited Messiah. Within a year after the rabbi's death, the note was reported to have been verified as authentic by some of Kaduri's closest followers and then placed on Kaduri's own website (Kaduri.net).

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.

Alexandria was the epicenter of Hellenic learning in the ancient Mediterranean world, yet little is known about how Christianity arrived and developed in the city during the late first and early second century CE. In this volume, M. David Litwa employs underused data from the Nag Hammadi codices and early Christian writings to open up new vistas on the creative theologians who invented Christianities in Alexandria prior to Origen and the catechetical school of the third century.

Here is the compelling narrative of the founding of America, told from a perspective that few people have ever heard. That perspective is the Sermon on the Mount. America's currency declares, "in God we trust". But did the American colonists truly trust in God in the founding of the United States? The product of nine years of research, this new work challenges much of what most of us learned in school about the founding of America and the American Revolution. Bercot's well-documented findings will surprise many people.