Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea

by Geza Vermes

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300195316
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations vii

Map x

Introduction xiii

1 Charismatic Judaism from Moses to Jesus 1

2 The Charismatic Religion of Jesus 28

3 Nascent Charismatic Christianity 61

4 The Christianity of Paul 87

5 Johannine Christianity 115

6 The Didache and Barnabas 134

7 The Apostolic Fathers: 1 and 2 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Hermas and Diognetus 155

8 Apologists and Theologians of the Second Century: Justin, Melito and Irenaeus 177

9 Three Pillars of Wisdom: Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen 200

10 Nicaea: Eusebius of Caesarea, Arius and Constantine 223

11 From Charisma to Dogma - A Bird's Eye View 235

Postscript 243

Select Bibliography 245

Index 257

What People are Saying About This

Stuart Kelly

This book represents the summation of [Vermes’s] thinking about the early history of Christianity. It is a challenging and engaging book that sets out to retrace the route by which a Jewish preacher in 1st-century Israel came to be declared as consubstantial and co-equal with the omnipotent, omniscient only God.—Stuart Kelly, Scotsman

Rowan Williams

Geza Vermes is the unchallenged doyen of scholarship in the English-speaking world on the Jewish literature of the age of Jesus, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is a beautiful and magisterial book.—Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Guardian

Eric Ormsby

Geza Vermes's brilliant new study of Christian origins, at once a summation and a culmination of his several earlier works on the Jewish milieu in which Jesus lived and moved, . . . is both highly readable and very persuasive.—Eric Ormsby

Karen Armstrong

Over the course of his long, distinguished career, Geza Vermes, the first professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford university, has made a major contribution to our understanding of the historical Jesus. In this book, however, Vermes takes the story further, showing how the human figure of Jesus became increasingly other-wordly until, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, he was declared fully divine.—Karen Armstrong, Financial Times

Diarmaid MacCulloch

The subject is not exactly Christian Church, which makes an appearance effectively only half way through the text; it is Jesus – what he was, what he said he was, and what Christians said about him after his crucifixion. For anyone puzzling over such questions, this is an exciting and challenging port of call, sweeping aside much of the fuzzy thinking and special pleading that bedevils the study of sacred scripture. . . [a] courteously expressed and witty little book.—Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Times

Editorial Reviews

"Geza Vermes's brilliant new study of Christian origins, at once a summation and a culmination of his several earlier works on the Jewish milieu in which Jesus lived and moved, . . . is both highly readable and very persuasive."—Eric Ormsby, Standpoint

Eric Ormsby

“A magnum opus of early Christian history and one of the year’s most significant titles’”—Bookseller

Bookseller

“Over the course of his long, distinguished career, Geza Vermes, the first professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford university, has made a major contribution to our understanding of the historical Jesus. In this book, however, Vermes takes the story further, showing how the human figure of Jesus became increasingly other-wordly until, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, he was declared fully divine.”—Karen Armstrong, Financial Times

Karen Armstrong

“This book represents the summation of [Vermes’s] thinking about the early history of Christianity. It is a challenging and engaging book that sets out to retrace the route by which a Jewish preacher in 1st-century Israel came to be declared as consubstantial and co-equal with the omnipotent, omniscient only God.”—Stuart Kelly, Scotsman

Stuart Kelly

“The subject is not exactly the Christian Church, which makes an appearance effectively only half way through the text; it is Jesus – what he was, what he said he was, and what Christians said about him after his crucifixion. For anyone puzzling over such questions, this is an exciting and challenging port of call, sweeping aside much of the fuzzy thinking and special pleading that bedevils the study of sacred scripture. . . [a] courteously expressed and witty little book.”—Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Times

Diarmaid MacCulloch

"A beautiful and magisterial book."—Rowan Williams, Guardian

 

Rowan Williams