{"product_id":"the-faith-isbn-9780385491150","title":"The Faith","description":"Beginning with the birth of Jesus and tracing the religion established by his followers up to the present day, \u003cb\u003eThe Faith \u003c\/b\u003eis a comprehensive exploration of the history of Christianity. Judiciously covering all the signal moments without bogging down in minutia, author Brian Moynahan's superbly written and generously illustrated book is of central importance to Christians, historians, and anyone interested in a faith that shaped the modern world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMoynahan's research uses little-known sources to tell a magnificent story encompassing everything from the early tremulous years after Jesus' death to the horrors of persecution by Nero, from the growth of monasteries to the bloody Crusades, from the building of the great cathedrals to the cataclysm of the Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, from the flight of pilgrims from Europe in pursuit of religious freedom to the Salem Witch Trials, from the advent of a traveling pope to the rise of televangelists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing just in time for Jubilee 2000, this ambitious book reveals and commemorates the significance of the Christian faith.\u003cb\u003eBRIAN MOYNAHAN\u003c\/b\u003e graduated with honors from Cambridge University and embarked on a career as an author and journalist. He served on the staff of \u003ci\u003eThe Yorkshire Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTown\u003c\/i\u003e Magazine, and \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London). Since 1989, he has concentrated on writing histories while continuing to write for British and American newspapers. His previous books include \u003ci\u003eAirport International\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFool's Paradise\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eClaws of the Bear,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eComrades\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Russian Century\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eA Biography of Rasputin. \u003c\/i\u003eChapter I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Cross\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEli, Eli, lama sabachthani?\" cried the dying man. \"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?\" (Matt. 27:46). This forlorn reproach was delivered from a hillside on the periphery of the Roman Empire, in a strange tongue unknown to the vast majority of its subjects, by a condemned man of profound obscurity who had an alien belief in a single God. A darkening sky; a claim that the veil in the Temple of Solomon, far down the slope from the execution ground, was \"rent in twain\" at the moment of death; a strange earthquake, mentioned only in Matthew's gospel, that split open rocks and opened tombs but did no damage to buildings--the Father's response to the crucifixion of the Son was modest even in the Gospels that proclaimed it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHuman reaction was as muted. The Roman governor who had authorized the\u003cbr\u003eexecution--with such extreme reluctance that some Christians later honored\u003cbr\u003ehis memory with a feast day--marveled only that Jesus had died so swiftly,\u003cbr\u003ein little more than three hours. To the soldiers who carried it out, the\u003cbr\u003ecrucifixion was mere routine, a standard punishment for slaves and\u003cbr\u003enon-Romans, that ended in the traditional perk of sharing out the victim's\u003cbr\u003eclothes. The priests who had demanded the death noted with sarcastic\u003cbr\u003esatisfaction: \"he saved others, himself he cannot save\" (Matt. 27:42). No\u003cbr\u003edisciple or relative was bold enough to claim the body for burial. He had\u003cbr\u003ebeen almost recklessly brave at his trial; they had expected miracles at\u003cbr\u003ehis death, and none had occurred. They hid their ebbing belief behind\u003cbr\u003ebarred doors in the steep streets of Jerusalem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe painters and sculptors who were to fill the world with his image worked\u003cbr\u003efrom imagination alone. No physical description of Jesus was left by any\u003cbr\u003ewho knew him; no hint existed of the color of the eyes, the timbre of the\u003cbr\u003evoice, the carriage of the head. His age, and the year of his birth and\u003cbr\u003edeath, is not accurately recorded. The abbot Dionysius Exiguus, who created\u003cbr\u003eour system of dating years from the conception of Christ, as anno Domini,\u003cbr\u003ethe year of the Lord, made his calculations five hundred years later. The\u003cbr\u003eabbot estimated that Jesus was born in the year 753 a.u.c. of the Roman\u003cbr\u003esystem of dating ab urbe condita, \"from the founding of the city\" of Rome.\u003cbr\u003eHe set this as a.d. 1, with previous years in receding order as \"before\u003cbr\u003eChrist,\" b.c. or a.c. for ante Christum in Latin. But Matthew's gospel says\u003cbr\u003ethat Jesus was \"born in Bethlehem . . . in the days of Herod the King.\"\u003cbr\u003eHerod is known to have died in 4 b.c., and most modern scholars date Jesus'\u003cbr\u003ebirth to 6 or 5 b.c.* The dates of his brief ministry--John's gospel\u003cbr\u003esupports a ministry of two or three years, the others of a single year--and\u003cbr\u003ehis final journey to Jerusalem are also uncertain. The crucifixion may have\u003cbr\u003ebeen as early as a.d. 27, instead of the traditional date of a.d. 33; it is\u003cbr\u003ecertain only that he died on a Friday in the Jewish lunar month of Nisan,\u003cbr\u003ewhich straddles March and April.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA single incident is known of his childhood; as a twelve-year-old, he went\u003cbr\u003emissing on a visit from his native town of Nazareth to Jerusalem until his\u003cbr\u003eparents found him in the temple, \"sitting in the midst of the doctors both\u003cbr\u003ehearing them and asking questions\" (Luke 2:46). He may--or may not--have\u003cbr\u003eworked as a carpenter in his youth. His public ministry probably lasted\u003cbr\u003elittle more than two years at most and seemed fragile and incomplete. His\u003cbr\u003eteaching was informal, often in the open air; his message was literally\u003cbr\u003ehearsay, for no contemporary notes were written down. It demanded an\u003cbr\u003eabsolute morality and selflessness never expressed before; it lacked the\u003cbr\u003efamiliar comfort of an established rite, and he had taught only a single\u003cbr\u003eprayer, the brief formula beginning \"Our Father, which art in heaven . . .\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe never formally stated that he was the \"Son of God,\" an imperial title\u003cbr\u003eclaimed in Latin as divi filius by the Roman emperor. He described himself\u003cbr\u003eas \"the Son\" indirectly and in John's gospel alone: \"Say ye of him, whom\u003cbr\u003ethe Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I\u003cbr\u003esaid, I am the Son of God?\" (John 10:36). The Hebrew title of Messiah, or\u003cbr\u003eChristos in Greek, was equally regal; it meant \"anointed\" and was used of\u003cbr\u003ekings whose investiture was marked by anointing with oil. Jesus refused to\u003cbr\u003edirectly claim divinity as Christ when he was asked during his trial: \"Tell\u003cbr\u003eus whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.\" \"Thou hast said,\" he\u003cbr\u003ereplied (Matt. 26:63-64). His miraculous birth--the impregnation of his\u003cbr\u003evirgin mother by God's Holy Spirit--is mentioned in only two Gospels. He\u003cbr\u003ehimself made no specific reference to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the moment of its extinction, it was inconceivable that his brief\u003cbr\u003elife--and terrible but commonplace death--would inspire a faith of immense\u003cbr\u003epower and complexity; that his simple prayer would be repeated in the very\u003cbr\u003ecrannies of the earth; that his name and the cross itself, the ancient\u003cbr\u003einstrument of his suffering, would become universal symbols, of love and\u003cbr\u003eredemption and, at times, of bigotry and terror.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe faith did not begin to flow until the third day after death, until the\u003cbr\u003eResurrection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBjesus had set out from Galilee on his final journey in the late winter,\u003cbr\u003emeandering southwards toward Jerusalem. His reputation as a miracle\u003cbr\u003eworker--healing the sick, paralytics, and the blind, raising the dead,\u003cbr\u003eexorcising demons, turning water into wine, transforming a few loaves and\u003cbr\u003efishes into food for a multitude--was growing but still largely confined to\u003cbr\u003ethe towns and fishing villages round the Sea of Galilee. His life was\u003cbr\u003ecentered in this backward area, the northernmost region of ancient Israel,\u003cbr\u003eits lake set deep beneath mountains in a great rift running to Africa,\u003cbr\u003eseven hundred feet below sea level. It was a turbulent place, known for its\u003cbr\u003eextremists and their apocalyptic visions. \"Can any good thing come out of\u003cbr\u003eNazareth?\" a potential follower said doubtfully when he was told where\u003cbr\u003eJesus had grown up (John 1:46). He had few convinced followers, with a core\u003cbr\u003eof only a dozen apostles; they were men of little apparent distinction, and\u003cbr\u003ehe himself was the son of a carpenter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe message of gentleness and humility he brought--\"love thine enemies and\u003cbr\u003epray for them that persecute thee\"--was at odds with the cruel and imperial\u003cbr\u003espirit of the age. Herod the Great, king of Judea, had ordered the massacre\u003cbr\u003eof all male infants in Bethlehem shortly after Jesus was born in the city.\u003cbr\u003eWhether this claim in Matthew's gospel was true or not, it was said with\u003cbr\u003ereason to be \"better to be Herod's pig than Herod's son\"; from his\u003cbr\u003edeathbed, having already murdered two of his sons, the king had commanded a\u003cbr\u003ethird to be put to death. Herod ruled by the grace and favor of Roman\u003cbr\u003emasters, at the height of their power and majesty. Their empire embraced\u003cbr\u003ethe Mediterranean world; its frontiers ran for ten thousand miles,\u003cbr\u003eenclosing eighty million people. To the north and west, it traversed Europe\u003cbr\u003eto the coasts of the Atlantic and the North Sea. In the east, it lapped as\u003cbr\u003efar as the Syrian and Arabian deserts; a century before, the great soldier\u003cbr\u003ePompey had entered Rome in triumph after his conquest of Jerusalem and the\u003cbr\u003eJews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo the south, in Egypt, a quarter of a millennium of rule by the\u003cbr\u003eHellenistic Ptolemies had ended within living memory with the suicide of\u003cbr\u003eCleopatra. The rich granaries of the Nile and the great city of Alexandria\u003cbr\u003ehad fallen to Rome; the empire continued westward along the African coastal\u003cbr\u003estrip past Carthage until, after a gap for the Mauritanian desert, it again\u003cbr\u003ereached the Atlantic at the edge of the known world. The first Roman\u003cbr\u003eemperor, Augustus, had been deified on his death and the eighth month was\u003cbr\u003enamed for him. His spirit was seen to ascend to heaven from the flames of\u003cbr\u003ehis funeral pyre, or so it was said; the Roman Senate had declared him\u003cbr\u003eimmortal and appointed priests to conduct the sacred rites of his cult.\u003cbr\u003eJesus had been born in the reign of Augustus; he was now the subject of\u003cbr\u003eTiberius, the second emperor, the son of a god.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis insignificant young Jew was nevertheless proclaimed by his followers\u003cbr\u003eas the Masiah, Hebrew for the \"Lord's anointed.\" As Messiah, he was seen in\u003cbr\u003ethe light of generations of Jewish expectation and prophecy, which applied\u003cbr\u003eto the nature of his imminent death as well as to his life. The Jews dated\u003cbr\u003etheir special relationship with God from the days of Abraham, some two\u003cbr\u003ethousand years before, when the Lord had told the patriarch that he would\u003cbr\u003e\"multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and . . . in thy seed shall all\u003cbr\u003ethe nations of the earth be blessed, because thou has obeyed my voice\"\u003cbr\u003e(Gen. 22:17-18). Prophecies of the coming of a Messiah went back for more\u003cbr\u003ethan a millennium, when God had promised King David that he would\u003cbr\u003e\"establish the throne of his kingdom for ever\" (2 Sam. 7:13) under his\u003cbr\u003edescendants. Messianic writings were a constant theme in the Psalms and the\u003cbr\u003eProphets; the \"Coming One\" was expected to be \"of the line of David\" and\u003cbr\u003ewould be granted \"dominion, and glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples,\u003cbr\u003enations and languages should serve him\" (Dan. 7:14). The vision was often\u003cbr\u003emartial, of a leader who would defeat the enemies of Israel; hopes of such\u003cbr\u003edivine intervention, to expel the Romans, ran high as Jesus neared\u003cbr\u003eJerusalem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was not the figure of the unwritten New Testament; he was seen by the\u003cbr\u003eeager crowds as the culmination of the Old, a living Messiah fulfilling\u003cbr\u003eancient expectations. \"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,\" he told his\u003cbr\u003edisciples, \"and all the things that are written by the prophets shall be\u003cbr\u003eaccomplished unto the Son of Man\" (Luke 18:31). Those things were far from\u003cbr\u003eglorious or martial; he predicted that he would die violently in the city,\u003cbr\u003ehaving first been publicly whipped and mocked. A purely spiritual Messiah\u003cbr\u003ewho mirrored this death had been prophesied by Isaiah in about 735 b.c.\u003cbr\u003eThis redeemer was to be a suffering servant of humanity, atoning for their\u003cbr\u003esins. His birth would be miraculous, for \"a virgin shall conceive, and bear\u003cbr\u003ea son, and shall call his name Immanuel\" (Isaiah 7:14).* His life would be\u003cbr\u003eshort and his end violent. \"He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of\u003cbr\u003esorrows,\" the book of Isaiah says of him. \"He was wounded for our\u003cbr\u003etransgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: . . . and with his\u003cbr\u003estripes we are healed. . . . He was oppressed, yet he humbled himself and\u003cbr\u003eopened not his mouth, as a lamb that is led to the slaughter. . . . By\u003cbr\u003eoppression and judgement he was taken away . . . and they made his grave\u003cbr\u003ewith the wicked although he had done no violence, neither was there any\u003cbr\u003edeceit in his mouth\" (Isaiah 53:3-9). As he died, he bore \"the sins of\u003cbr\u003emany, and made intercession for the transgressors. . . .\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBwarnings of such a fate were clear throughout the final journey. A group\u003cbr\u003eof Pharisees, strict Orthodox Jews, approached Jesus and told him that\u003cbr\u003eHerod Antipas \"would fain kill thee\" (Luke 13:31). It was a real threat;\u003cbr\u003eHerod Antipas, a surviving son of Herod the Great, was a known killer of\u003cbr\u003eprophets. He had recently disposed of John the Baptist, a troublesome man\u003cbr\u003ein a homemade shift of camel hair strapped by a leather belt, who had\u003cbr\u003epreached the coming of the Messiah and had described the political\u003cbr\u003eestablishment of Pharisees and Sadducee priests and aristocrats as a \"brood\u003cbr\u003eof vipers.\" He lived on locusts and wild honey, the food of the deprived;\u003cbr\u003ehe described himself as \"the voice of one crying in the wilderness,\" but\u003cbr\u003ethe poor had listened to his unsettling message. John had baptized Jesus in\u003cbr\u003ethe river Jordan; as he did so, he saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus in\u003cbr\u003ethe form of a dove, and declared Jesus to be \"the Lamb of God, which taketh\u003cbr\u003eaway the sins of the world\" (John 1:29). He had also denounced Herod's\u003cbr\u003emarriage to his niece Herodias, for which Herod had him decapitated in the\u003cbr\u003efortress of Machaerus near the Dead Sea, and presented his head on a salver\u003cbr\u003eto Salome, the daughter of his new wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJesus asked the Pharisees to tell \"that fox,\" Herod, that the threat of\u003cbr\u003edeath would not deflect him. He also revealed the place where he would die.\u003cbr\u003e\"I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\"For it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem,\u003cbr\u003eJerusalem, which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto\u003cbr\u003eher!\" (Luke 13:33-34). He cured a man of dropsy on the Sabbath, a\u003cbr\u003eprovocation to orthodox Pharisees for whom it was strictly a day of rest.\u003cbr\u003eHe preached to all--\"he who hath ears to hear, let him hear\"--and the\u003cbr\u003ePharisees murmured angrily that the crowds who pressed close to hear him\u003cbr\u003ewere full of \"all the publicans and sinners\"; marginals, the discontented,\u003cbr\u003ethe \"publicans,\" tax collectors who sat in roadside stalls to levy tolls\u003cbr\u003efrom travelers for Herod and the Romans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis message was inflammatory and disturbing for those in power: the exalted\u003cbr\u003ewere humbled, the humble exalted; the mark of the blessed was to share with\u003cbr\u003ethe \"poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind\"; the beggar Lazarus lay in life\u003cbr\u003eat the gate of the rich man, fed with crumbs, dogs licking his sores, but\u003cbr\u003ein heaven he nestled in the bosom of Abraham while the rich man pleaded\u003cbr\u003ewith him from hell to \"dip the tip of his fingers in water, and cool my\u003cbr\u003etongue, for I am in anguish in this flame\" (Luke 16:19-24). In Jericho,\u003cbr\u003eJesus lodged in the house of a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus, a man so\u003cbr\u003edespised in the town that he was obliged to quieten a grumbling mob by\u003cbr\u003epromising to repay fourfold any he had defrauded. By now the travelers were\u003cbr\u003eaccompanied by \"great multitudes,\" so thick that Zacchaeus had been obliged\u003cbr\u003eto climb a tree to watch them arrive; the miraculous cure of a blind man\u003cbr\u003eadded to the fervor of the onlookers. Jesus, however, predicted no triumph\u003cbr\u003ewhen they reached Jerusalem; instead he had hinted at how he would die.\u003cbr\u003e\"Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me,\" he preached,\u003cbr\u003e\"cannot be my disciple\" (Luke 14:27).","brand":"Image","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304063684837,"sku":"NP9780385491150","price":31.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385491150.jpg?v=1767739273","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-faith-isbn-9780385491150","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}