The Journey Of Christianity To India In Late Antiquity

Explores the social interactions and pathways that enabled Christianity to travel across Asia and to India.

Marshalling previously untapped Christian materials, Bar-Asher Siegal offers radically new insights into Talmudic stories about Scriptural debates with Christian heretics.

The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism is a comprehensive treatment of a relatively new form of scholarship-one of the most compelling and contested theories to emerge in recent times, and a topic that actively seeks to expand the ways in which the Bible can be studied, interpreted, and applied. Generally speaking, postcolonialism aims to critique and dismantle hegemonic worldviews and power structures, while giving voice to previously marginalized peoples and systems of thought. This approach, often varied in form, has inevitably engaged with the text and reception of the Bible, a scripture that Western colonizers introduced to-and often imposed upon-their colonial subjects. With a globally diverse list of contributors, the Handbook aims to cover the perspective and context of the authors of the Bible, as well as the modern experiences of imperialism, resistance, decolonization, and nationalism. Moreover, the volume includes both a theoretical overview and an exploration of how the field intersects with related areas, such as gender studies, race, postmodernism, and liberation theology.

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia , the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis. Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule.

This book delves into the political and cultural developments of pre-Islamic Arabia, focusing on the religious attitudes of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension into the Syrian desert. Between the third and the seventh century, Arabia was on the edge of three great empires (Iran, Rome and Aksūm) and at the centre of a lucrative network of trade routes. Valentina Grasso offers an interpretative framework which contextualizes the choice of Arabian elites to become Jewish sympathisers and/or convert to Christianity and Islam by probing the mobilization of faith in the shaping of Arabian identities. For the first time the Arabians of the period are granted autonomy from marginalizing (mostly Western) narratives framing them as 'barbarians' inhabiting the fringes of Rome and Iran and/or deterministic analyses in which they are depicted retrospectively as exemplified by the Muslims' definition of the period as Jāhilīyah, 'ignorance'.

Exploring the key documents, authors and themes of Early Christian traditions, this volume traces the vital trajectories of emerging distinctive Christian identity in the Graeco-Roman world. Special attention is given to the coherent growth of Christian faith in connection with worship, alongside the crucial transformation of Christian life and doctrine under the Christian Emperors. As well as offering a chronological development of the Early Church, the book examines the interaction between Christian worship and faith. In addition, readers interested in systematic theology can refer to chapters on the roots of some significant theological notions in Christian Antiquity, also with reference to ancient philosophy. Issues addressed include: · Distinctiveness of the Christian identity during the first centuries · Diversity of communities and their theologies · Connection between faith and worship · Transition from the persecuted minority to triumphant Church with Creeds · History of early Christian thought and modern systematic theology

Situating former Harvard neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander's Near-Death Experience within the ontological landscape of Romanity, or, the 'Byzantine'-Ottoman Continuum of Roman Ecumenicity, namely: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God's Gift, World's Deception is a unique exploration of this unique NDE, attesting to its vital and organic ties to those experiences of the New Testament Fathers of the 'Byzantine' Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church (? ??? ?????? ??????, the unity of all being/existents), which came to them via theosis. The book claims that Dr. Alexander's experience is indeed a continuation and completion of the theophanic visions of the Old Testament Prophets, and is linked to the imaginal divine becomings of the Koranic Ottoman vahdet-i vücud tasavvuf Masters ('the unity-of-Being' Sufism, in both Sunni and Alevi traditions); but also highlights the distorting effects of the interpretive resources available in the predominantly neo-Gnostic-cratic West (religious and secular), as well as its Globalist agenda, creating an unfit backdrop for an exegetical attempt at the Proof of Heaven Experience. Ultimately, God's Gift, World's Deception reconfirms the engendered existence of the Divine-human Ecumene as a historically spiritual-somatic reflection of the Divine Realm, and, above all, it shows the Theanthropic Lord Jesus Christ as the True Om, the Real Hakîkat-? Muhammediyye, and the Eternal Tao. Dr. Christos Retoulas (DPhil (Oxon)) is a member of the Scientific Board of the Dimitri Kitsikis Foundation (Athens).

If St. Thomas reached India in 52 AD, where was he preaching in the years prior to ths? Can there be truth to the idea that he traveled to India? This book tries to give comprehensive answers to these questions.