A swirl of Jewish sectarian movements muddied the religious waters during the late Second Temple period. In recent decades, scholars of the Bible have struggled to understand the role these sects played in the rise and spread of the Jesus movement. Nazorean joins this wave of sectarian scholarship. In this book, Kem Luther sketches the history of a wisdom-oriented sect that gave birth to the Christian church. Weaving a series of what the philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood called "webs of imaginative construction," he provides a provocative and plausible story about a wisdom sect--the Nazoreans--that shaped the career and teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus. To support his scenario, Luther offers sectarian readings of passages from the Gospels of Matthew and John, the Epistle of James, Acts, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Psalms of Solomon. He links his developing awareness of the sectarian context of these documents to his own trek through a landscape of post-1960 American religion. The candid account of Luther's own journey through a naive modernism, his immersion in evangelical subculture at a Bible school, and his postgraduate studies in mysticism and philosophy makes a fascinating complement to his textual studies.

How credible are the Gospel narratives in the Bible? What did really happen during the life of Jesus of Nazareth? This ground-breaking book is destined to revolutionize the discipline of New Testament studies. Its aim is to provide a novel, original, and credible explanation of the origins and contents of the Gospel narratives in the New Testament of the Bible, as well as some extra-biblical writings, using critical, scientific, and rational methods and techniques, from the perspective of a non-partisan historian. This book examines the value of the narratives as historical sources for the life, teachings, and execution of Jesus of Nazareth and to reconstruct his life as far as possible after the mythological, metaphysical, dogmatic, legendary, and obviously skewed descriptions of his life have been exposed and cleared away. New insights regarding the background of the Gospels are presented and the previously ignored and hidden role of astronomical and astrological phenomena in the life of Jesus is highlighted. No serious student of the Bible can ignore this book.

Volume 7 "F-G" (Fadono - Gyothe ). COMPARATIVE ENCYCLOPEDIC DICTIONARY OF MESOPOTAMIAN VOCABULARY, DEAD AND ANCIENT LANGUAGES. Lexicon and Thesaurus of 15 Languages and Dialects of the Ancient. From a set of 18 volumes: Akkadian. Arabic. Aramaic. Assyrian. Babylonian . Canaanite. Chaldean. Farsi (Persian). Hebrew. Phoenician. Sumerian. Syriac. Turkish. Ugaritic. Urdu. Published by Times Square Press, New York and Berlin. Written by the world's most prolific linguist, who authored 14 dictionaries of dead languages & ancient languages known to mankind.

Where Did Christianity Come From? surveys the first 150 years of Christianity. It looks for the environment in which Christianity began and traces the process by which Christianity emerged from it. The search follows clues given by familiar rites and institutions, especially by the central Christian sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. The formation of Christianity involved both continuity and discontinuity with the original environment, symbolized by the death and resurrection of Jesus. This approach conveys new insights into the study of Christian origins.

The essays in this book consider issues of tolerance and intolerance faced by Jews and Christians between approximately 200 BCE and 200 CE. Several chapters are concerned with many different aspects of early Jewish-Christian relationships. Five scholars, however, take a difference tack and discuss how Jews and Christians defined themselves against the pagan world. As minority groups, both Jews and Christians had to work out ways of co-existing with their Graeco-Roman neighbours. Relationships with those neighbours were often strained, but even within both Jewish and Christian circles, issues of tolerance and intolerance surfaced regularly. So it is appropriate that some other contributors should consider 'inner-Jewish' relationships, and that some should be concerned with Christian sects.

An innumerable number of books have been written about Jesus of Nazareth and it seems as if it is impossible to say anything new about him. Yet, this is precisely what this book promises to do. It breaks new ground by coordinating the Bible’s information with astronomical phenomena such as solar and lunar eclipses and the movements of the planets, as well as incorporating insights from neuroscience. A rational investigation of all available sources reveals that the dogmas about Jesus cannot be sustained. He was merely a charismatic leader who had the delusion that he was the king-in-waiting of the Jews—certainly not a divine being in a human body.

Raised like sisters, Mariamne and Salome are indulged with riches, position, and learning-a rare thing for females in Jerusalem. But Mariamne has a further gift: an illness has left her with visions; she has the power of prophecy. It is her prophesying that drives the two girls to flee to Egypt, where they study philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy in the Great Library of Alexandria. After seven years they return to a Judaea where many now believe John the Baptizer is the messiah. Salome too begins to believe, but Mariamne, now called Magdalene, is drawn to his cousin, Yeshu’a, a man touched by the divine in the same way she was during her days of illness. Together they speak of sharing their direct experience of God; but Yeshu’a unexpectedly gains a reputation as a healer, and as the ill and the troubled flock to him, he and Magdalene are forced to make a terrible decision. This radical retelling of the greatest story ever told brings Mary Magdalene to life-not as a prostitute or demon-possessed-but as an educated woman who was truly the “apostle to the apostles.”

Evie Moss is a doctor.... of Egyptology that is. As a matter of fact, her esteemed credentials had her running an entire floor at the New York Egyptology Center, which also allowed her to duck out of work early. One fateful day, doing just that in an attempt to avoid rush-hour crowds, she left work early. Unbeknownst to her, a series of mysterious events were about to occur that would change her life forever. Two young boys hunting frogs along the shores of the Red Sea stumbled upon a foundling amongst the reeds. Barely breathing and near death she was rushed to their nearby home to be cared for by the royal physician. After nursing her back to health, the royal family adopted her and she was educated in the Way of Love by her older sister, Meri. The Golden Rose Enigma is an epic tale spanning the births, lives and ministries of Mary Magdalen and Yeshua as witnessed first-hand and journaled by a woman Nazarian scribe.

Was Jesus a public figure? A political figure? Yes, according to Luke's gospel, Jesus was a Christ who was both public and political. Recent developments in the theory and practice of the study of space have provided tools to classify ancient social-spatial spheres with greater nuance and depth. A broad survey of literary and archaeological resources in the ancient world, as well as an in-depth look at Plutarch's Political Precepts and Philostratus's Life of Apollonius, reveals that the familiar dichotomy of public and private does not suffice to describe the Hellenistic-Roman milieu that shaped the author and audience of the third gospel. This study employs social-spatial analysis to explore how Luke uses the power of place to portray Jesus frequently engaging the unofficial public sphere and local politics, specifically in 18:35--19:43--the public healing of the blind beggar, the unexpected impact of Zacchaeus's hospitality, the political implications of the parable of the king and his subjects, and the publicity and politics of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. The result is an illuminating look at the overall spatial character of Luke's gospel, the development of Christianity in the latter half of the first century, and the role of place in contemporary Christianity.