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A new 'life' of Jesus written by one of the outstanding scholars of his generation, it offers a complete resource on the 'Historical Jesus' debate. With an overview of the various positions taken on who the historical Jesus was, Casey provides a helpful and accessible tool for understanding how the historical Jesus has been received and understood, with attention paid to the contortions in evidence in the last century to prove that Jesus was not Jewish.

No detailed description available for \"The Historical Jesus in Recent Research\".

The Meditations on the Life of Christ was the most popular and influential devotional work of the later Middle Ages. With its lively dialogue and narrative realism, its poignant and moving depictions of the Nativity and Passion, and its direct appeals to the reader to feel love and compassion, the Meditations had a major impact on devotional practices, religious art, meditative literature, vernacular drama, and the cultivation of affective experience. This volume is a critical edition, with English translation and commentary, of a hitherto-unpublished Italian text that McNamer argues is likely to be the original version of this influential masterpiece. Livelier and far more compact than the Latin text, the Italian \"short text\" possesses a stylistic and textual integrity that appears to testify to its primacy among early versions of the Meditations. The evidence also suggests that it was composed by a woman, a Poor Clare from Pisa—an author whose work McNamer contends was obscured by the anonymous Franciscan friar who subsequently altered and expanded the text. In bringing to light this unique Italian version and building a case for its origins and importance, this book will encourage a fresh look at the Meditations and serve as a foundation for further scholarship and debate concerning some of the most compelling subjects in Italian and European literary and cultural history, including the role of women in the invention of new genres and spiritual practices, the early development of Italian prose narrative, the rise of vernacular theology, and the history of emotion. McNamer's volume will be of significant interest to medievalists, especially those who study medieval women, devotional literature, manuscript studies, and textual criticism. The linguistic analysis expands that audience to include those of a philological bent.

The central issue Bush finds in these works is how their authors have dealt with the authority of Mormon Church leaders. As she puts it in her preface, \"I use the phrase 'faithful transgression' to describe moments in the texts when each writer, explicitly or implicitly, commits herself in writing to trust her own ideas and authority over official religious authority while also conceiving of and depicting herself to be a 'faithful' member of the Church.\" Bush recognizes her book as her own act of faithful transgression. Writing it involved wrestling, she states, \"with my own deeply ingrained religious beliefs and my equally compelling education in feminist theories that mean to liberate and empower women.\" Faithful Transgressions examines a remarkable group of authors and their highly readable and entertaining books. In producing the first significant book-length study of Mormon women's autobiographical writing, Bush rides a wave of memoir publishing and academic interest in autobiography and other life narratives. As she elucidates these works in relation to the religious tradition that played a major role in shaping them, she not only positions them in relation to feminist theory and current work on women's life writings but ties them to the long literary tradition of spiritual autobiography.

The writings of Ademar of Chabannes (ca 990-1034) on Jerusalem and the Cross offer a valuable, albeit at times, clouded window on many central developments of the pivotal tenth and eleventh centuries and why they are so central.

Le Royaume [English Translation: The Kingdom] is one of the French author Emmanuel Carrère’s most successful works. The main question posed by this book is this: how can normal, intelligent people believe in something as absurd as the Christian religion? One of the believers with whom the author enters into dialogue is Carrère, who for some years was a devout Catholic himself. He then links this questioning to a form of historical research into the sources of Christianity. If Carrère’s historical research is not always up to date, the part devoted to introspection is a convincing testimony, showing how a renowned author grapples with his own past and that of the church in a postmodern, secular world. The interesting aspect of his research is that he finds that, although he is not a believer, he wants to be a disciple.

In volume two of At the Cross, Richard Allen focuses on the sanctification that follows a believer's initial commitment to Christ. This book is written for both new and seasoned believers so they may find direction for, and discover the ramifications of, that commitment.

Names play pivotal roles in unlocking early Christianity and are interpreted to reveal diverse theological positions. Just how much influence those names wielded cannot be overstated. It triggers this author to suggest the option of a nameless god. The book can be a primer for the person interested in objective observations and willing to consider plausible implications—over orthodoxy. Candor and tough decisions dominate this effort. A fresh view of agnostic thought emerges that is positive a.

In this revised translation and retrieval of the full text of the revised German edition, Schweitzer describes and critiques eighteenth and nineteenth century attempts at retrieving the \"Jesus of history\" and stands at the crossroads of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to bring closure to the former, and to open the latter for New Testament scholarship. Schweitzer saw the problems of historiography, theology, and politics in the ways the issues were formulated--and the answers proposed--and refocused attention on Jesus' \"eschatology\" in a way abandoned by his predecessors. Issues of the messianic secret, the nature of the kingdom of God, and Jesus' mission are addressed.