The World S Oldest Church

Michael Peppard provides a historical and theological reassessment of the oldest Christian building ever discovered, the third-century house-church at Dura-Europos. Contrary to commonly held assumptions about Christian initiation, Peppard contends that rituals here did not primarily embody notions of death and resurrection. Rather, he portrays the motifs of the church’s wall paintings as those of empowerment, healing, marriage, and incarnation, while boldly reidentifying the figure of a woman formerly believed to be a repentant sinner as the Virgin Mary. This richly illustrated volume is a breakthrough work that enhances our understanding of early Christianity at the nexus of Bible, art, and ritual.

Michael Peppard provides a historical and theological reassessment of the oldest Christian building ever discovered, the third-century house-church at Dura-Europos. Contrary to commonly held assumptions about Christian initiation, Peppard contends that rituals here did not primarily embody notions of death and resurrection. Rather, he portrays the motifs of the church's wall paintings as those of empowerment, healing, marriage, and incarnation, while boldly reidentifying the figure of a woman formerly believed to be a repentant sinner as the Virgin Mary. This richly illustrated volume is a breakthrough work that enhances our understanding of early Christianity at the nexus of Bible, art, and ritual.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Modern research techniques have revealed a hidden scheme aimed at God's Holy Words... Modern Bibles have changed many verses because of the discovery of an "ancient" manuscript in a monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. The manuscript, called Sinaiticus, is claimed to be the earliest complete copy of the New Testament. Its discoverer, who was a world leading Bible scholar in his time, told the world Sinaiticus was from the 4th century and that it was the "oldest and best" Bible available. Publishers rushed to make new Bibles with many changes to match it. But not everyone agreed. When this famed 19th century Bible scholar, Constantine Von Tischendorf, claimed the ancient date, a well-known Greek calligrapher said, "No! I made that document!" But why did no one believe him? Maybe it's because pages of the manuscript were stored where no one could view them, archived in exclusive collections across several continents. Now, an international group has carefully photographed each page of Sinaiticus and is displaying it on the internet as high-quality digital images. For the first time, Bible scholars and students can see the entire manuscript together, as was never possible before. And what they are seeing with their own eyes is shocking. Some of the pages are white and look quite new, while others have been darkened to make them look very old. If they are all from the same "old" Bible, how can this be? Researcher David W. Daniels proves with easy-to-understand evidence that the Sinaiticus is not the oldest manuscript and certainly not the best, either. He is also convincing in showing it's not old after all and that the Greek calligrapher did make it, in the 19th century. The textual (and doctrinal) changes in modern Bibles are based upon a fake —a shadowy scheme worthy of Satan's hatred for the preserved words of God.

If the devil has cooked up a plot against your Bible, would you want to know it? Conspiracy theories are destroyed by solid evidence. Author David W. Daniels came to the point where he could no longer ignore the mounting evidence. He was schooled in Bible college and seminary to believe that the King James was hopelessly obsolete. But the mounting confusion around the new Bible translations left him wondering. He already knew how to use modern search techniques to quickly discover relevant evidence. He soon learned that the Bible version issue was more than a baseless conspiracy. Many new facts had become available shedding light on the history of Bible versions. He learned that the scholars who decided over 100 years ago to “fix” the King James may not have had the best intentions. His discovery of Satan’s plan to damage God’s words is chronicled in a series of books. In 2017, his book, "Is the 'World’s Oldest Bible' a Fake?" presented heavy evidence against Codex Sinaiticus, the manuscript that scholars claim is the world’s oldest Bible. This book attempts to answer the next question: Who Faked the “World’s Oldest Bible”? It reads like a mystery novel, but over 100 illustrations and more than 300 footnotes gives it the force of a graduate research paper. The murky narrative of the discovery and evaluation of the Sinaiticus becomes much clearer with this new book. Daniels leaves it up to the reader to decide how this might affect his or her eternal destiny.

This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them. The connections between emotions and ritual, between rites and their materiality, and between emotions and their physical manifestation in ancient Mediterranean culture have been inadequately explored as yet, especially with regard to early Christianity and its water and dining rites. Readers will find all three areas—ritual, emotion, and materiality—engaged in this exemplary interdisciplinary study, which provides fresh insights into early Christianity and its world. Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World will be of special interest to interdisciplinary-minded researchers, seminarians, and students who are attentive to theory and method, and those with an interest in the New Testament and earliest Christianity. It will also appeal to those working on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion, emotion, and ritual from a comparative standpoint.

The story of how the Codex Sinaiticus was created and used in the ancient church; how it was preserved for centuries at the monastery of St. Catherine's, Mount Sinai; its subsequent history and how its pages came to be divided and dispersed; and how it has been compiled again and made accessible to a worldwide audience for the first time.--From publisher description.