Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Christian Theology - Christology

In Seek to See Him April DeConick argues that the Gospel of Thomas, contrary to the way Thomas is normally understood, does not originate from gnostic traditions. Instead, she proposes that Thomas is best explained by Hermetic and Second Temple Jewish mystical traditions.

DeConick substantiates her proposal by first examining the developmental stages of the Gospel of Thomas, questioning the classification of Thomas as gnostic on the basis of Thomas' dualism and his speculation about original sin. DeConick carefully delineates the difference between Thomas' and gnostic views of...

The relationship among Judaism, Gnosticism, and Christianity perpetually eludes easy description. While it is clear that by the second and third centuries of the Common Era these three religious groups worked hard to distinguish themselves from each other, it is also true that the three religious traditions share common religious perspectives.

Jarl Fossum, in The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord, examines this common heritage by proposing that the emergence of an anticosmic gnostic demiurge was not simply Gnosticism's critique of the Jewish God or a metaphysical...

In Angelomorphic Christology author Charles Gieschen demonstrates that angel and angel-related traditions, especially those built upon the so-called "Angel of the Lord" figure in the Hebrew Bible, had a profound impact upon the origin, development, and shape of early Christian claims about Jesus.

Gieschen's book falls neatly into two halves. The first catalogues the various antecedents for Angelomorphic Christology--Jewish speculation about principal angels, mediator figures, and related phenomena--with chapters on "An Angelomorphic God," "Angelomorphic Divine Hypostases"...

While the relationship between Second Temple Jewish exegesis and early Christian exegesis as demonstrated in the New Testament is universally recognized, the reasons for their similarities and differences are often elusive. Donald H. Juel in Messianic Exegesis seeks to unknot this tangled web of interpretation.

Juel's thesis is simple: Christianity's origins are rooted in the earliest Christian interpretations of Israel's Scriptures. The difficulty resides in showing how these distinctive interpretations arose. Juel argues that the events of Jesus' life form the fulcrum for...

Second Temple Judaism exerted a profound and shaping influence upon early Christianity. The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism documents this influence by exploring the ways in which the Christian praxis of Christ-devotion in the first two centuries of the Common Era can be understood as a manifestation of Jewish monotheism.

The volume approaches this phenomenon along four distinctive lines of inquiry: (1) reexamining (and problematizing) the theological force of monotheism during the Second Temple period; (2) retracing the historical steps of Christianity's adaptation,...

There are more than 2.2 billion Christians in the world. In one form or another, each of these Christians follows the teachings of Jesus Christ as described in the Bible; however, some relevant texts aren't included in the Bible we know today.

In his new book, Francis William Bessler explores a different side of Jesus-one described in the long-lost, noncanonical gospels of Thomas and Mary.

Drawing upon these texts, Bessler presents Jesus as a down-to-earth figure who had some good ideas instead of a deity to be worshipped. Many people find fulfillment in Jesus the Lord-but is...