Book Details

THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN BELIEFS: THE THOUGHT WORLD OF EARLY CHRISTIANS
RAISANEN

ISBN: 9780800662660
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Publication date: September 2009

Price in UK sterling: £25.99

Availability in UK and Europe: Available to buy now

Expected delivery time: UK: 3-5 working days; Europe: 5-8 working days

Heikki Räisänen offers a historical survey of the "roots and first growth" of the thoughts, values, and practices of the early Christians and explains the evolution of Christian belief in terms of vital adaptations to specific challenges. An ideal textbook for university introductory courses on the New Testament and Early Christianity, The Rise of Christian Beliefs offers chapters discussing "paradigmatic events" - the life and death of Jesus and experiences of Easter, principal figures and groups, last things and afterlife, savior figures and the human condition, ethnicity, identity, and morality, and ritual community life.

Heikki Raisanen is Academy Professor Emeritus in the Academy of Finland and former Head of the Centre of Excellence in the Department of Biblical Studies of the University of Helsinki.

Excerpt

The religious landscape in the Greco-Roman world was governed by flourishing traditional cults. Public acts of worship included those performed in the name of people by magistrates and state priests, those in which all citizens participated, and those carried by local associations as part of the total community. There was no weekly feast day, but a large number of feast days spread at irregular intervals over the year.

Reviews

“Heikki Raisanen has written a magisterial book summarizing the cumulative wisdom of a lifetime of scholarship. This comprehensive representation of the early Christian thought world is accessible both to non-believers and believers…This is a great book for all who want an informed, fair and well-founded picture of the early Christians.”
– Gerd Theissen, Professor of New Testament Theology, University of Heidelberg


“Thoroughly researched but always clear, thoughtful and thought-provoking, this will be absolutely essential reading for all students of early Christianity.”
- Cristopher Tuckett, University of Oxford

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