{"product_id":"comparing-christianities-isbn-9781119086031","title":"Comparing Christianities","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA ground-breaking introductory textbook for the study of the New Testament and the first Christians, written for the next generation of students\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eComparing Christianities:\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eAn Introduction to the New Testament and the First Christians \u003c\/i\u003emaps the historical rise of Christianity out of a network of early Christian movements. This major new textbook systematically explores the struggles to define the faith by presenting Christianity as the result of a lengthy process of religious consolidation which emerged from a landscape of persistent Christian diversity. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book delves into the history of the first five generations of Christians, from Paul to Origen. The first chapter considers the challenges of constructing Christian histories and offers a new model of Christian families to organize and explain the emergence and competition of different varieties of Christianity. Each successive chapter focuses on key issues that Christian leaders engaged over the centuries, demonstrating how the questions they posed and the answers they provided gave Christianity its distinct shape. As the movements competed for social advantage, Christians began identifying certain Christian movements as enemies and consolidated against them. The final chapter schematizes the Christians studied in the book into three families of Christian movements based on the particular God they worshipped and other shared patterns of thought and practice. This chapter also explains where the varieties of Christianities came from and how the process of consolidation undertaken by some churches shaped Christian identity within a forge of intolerance that still affects us today. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eComparing Christianities\u003c\/i\u003e explores the answers to questions: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003eWho were the early Christians and what did they write?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhat did Christians think about sex, women, immortality, Judaism, suffering and death?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWhat rituals did the first Christians practice, and what did their religious experiences mean to them? \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eHow did Christians live in a Roman-dominated world?\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eHow did the first Christians explain the origins of their movement?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eComparing Christianities:\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eAn Introduction to the New Testament and the First Christians \u003c\/i\u003eserves as an excellent primary textbook in undergraduate classrooms for Introduction to Christianity, Introduction to Religion, New Testament Studies, Christian Origins, World Religions, and Western World Religions, and a thought-provoking resource for anyone wishing to know more about Christianity. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePreface ix\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcknowledgments xi\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e1 Sectarian Jews 1\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e2 A New Religion 27\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3 Early Gnostic Churches 49\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e4 The Church of the Martyrs 81\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e5 Early Christian Philosophical Movements 103\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e6 The Universal Church 131\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e7 Holiness Movements in Asia and Syria 157\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e8 The Expansion of Gnostic Churches 183\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e9 The Construction of Orthodoxy 207\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e10 Church Reform 231\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e11 The Mystical Church 257\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e12 A Family History 283\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eGlossary of Terms 327\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndex 339 \u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAPRIL D. DECONICK\u003c\/b\u003e is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and the Director of the GEM (Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism) University Certificate Program at Rice University. She is the award-winning author of several books including \u003ci\u003eThe Gnostic New Age: How A Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today\u003c\/i\u003e. Professor DeConick was featured in the CNN special series \u003ci\u003eFinding Judas\u003c\/i\u003e in 2015.   \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhy did the form of Christianity that emerged from the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE become the accepted orthodoxy? In what ways did the religious consolidation of Christianity affect the unsuccessful varieties of Christianity? How was the formation of Christian belief influenced by various cultural and socio-political factors? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eComparing Christianities: An Introduction to Early Christianity,\u003c\/i\u003e April D. DeConick presents a new narrative of Christian origins that highlights the plurality of early Christian movements and their relationship to each other, Judaism, and Greco-Roman culture. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroducing students to the multiple streams of Christian tradition from the first through the early fourth century, this unique textbook employs a sociological model of new religious movements to map the origins of Christianity, identify the similarities and differences between early Christian sects, and provide a balanced understanding of the earliest Christians and the literature they produced. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFocusing on belief and social formation, \u003ci\u003eComparing Christianities\u003c\/i\u003e integrates all early Christian literature into a history of the first Christians to offer an inclusive gateway to the study of Christian beginnings. Thorough yet accessible chapters explore the effects of ‘orthodox’ and ‘heretical’ beliefs on Christian tradition, address questions of sex, gender, race, religious intolerance, anti-Semitism, and colonization, discuss the cognitive and social processes in the production and interpretation of early Christian literature, and more. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eComparing Christianities: An Introduction to Early Christianity\u003c\/i\u003e is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of early Christianity, Christian origins, the New Testament, Gnosticism, diversity in Christianity, and early Christian thought.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wiley-Blackwell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47988956823781,"sku":"NP9781119086031","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781119086031.jpg?v=1761782204","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/comparing-christianities-isbn-9781119086031","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}