This book aims to introduce readers to the Christian tradition that has shaped the two millenia from the dawn of the Roman Empire to the present. It provides a diversifying discourse on the ways in which the church provides meaning to persons and peoples, explaining how some of the current problems of the modern church came to be. Special focus has been paid to the Jewish roots of Christianity; each section represents conventional breaks in the periodization of Christian history. It gives attention to the cultural manifestations of Christianity, including the art, music, and literature. For those readers interested in a history of Christianity that is unique, as it takes the voices of the laity and women seriously, and includes art and music as Christian cultural traditions.

The Christian Tradition

Religion & Spirituality

Keen, Ralph

Christian Books & Bibles

PRENTICE/HALL

This volume brings together two important contemporary accounts of the life of Martin Luther in a confrontation that had been postponed for more than four hundred and fifty years. The first of these is written after Luther's death, when it was rumoured that demons had seized the Reformer on his deathbed and dragged him off to Hell. In response to these rumours, Luther's friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon wrote and published a brief encomium of the Reformer in 1548. A completely new translation of this text appears in this book. It was in response to Melanchthon's work that Johannes Cochlaeus completed and published his own monumental life of Luther in 1549, which is translated and made available in English for the first time in this volume. After witnessing Luther's declaration before Charles V at the Diet of Worms, Cochlaeus had sought out Luther and debated with him. However, the confrontation left him convinced that Luther was an impious and malevolent man. Consequently, over the next twenty-five years, Cochlaeus fought vigorously against the influence of the Reformation. Such is the detail and importance of Cochlaeus's life of Luther that for an eyewitness account of the Reformation - and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-Reformation - there is simply no other historical document to compare. Published in collaboration with The Sohmer-Hall Foundation, this book also supplies introductory texts to the lives of both Cochlaeus and Melanchthon, plus comprehensive annotation for readers who wish to make of broader study of the period. These translations will be essential reading for students and academics of the Reformation and all early modern historians interested in this fascinating period of religious history.

Luther's lives: Two contemporary accounts of Martin Luther

Biographies & Memoirs

Vandiver, Elizabeth

Frazel, Thomas D.

Historical

Manchester University Press

The Christian Tradition, formerly published by Pearson/Prentice Hall, introduces students at the beginning of the third millennium to a religion that has evolved over and shaped two previous millennia. With particular focus placed on the social and cultural background to this tradition, the text provides a stimulating survey of the history of Christianity from its Jewish roots to the challenges it faces in the twenty-first century. This innovative text weaves a consideration of the arts, spirituality, religious life and practice―especially among the laity, women, and others outside the dominant institutional tradition―into its rich historical narrative, and offers a comprehensive and diverse view of the course of Christian history.

History

World

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Christian Tradition

Exile and Restoration in Jewish Thought: An Essay In Interpretation (Continuum Studies in Jewish Thought)

Exile and Restoration in Jewish Thought presents the history of an idea originating at the intersection of Judaic piety and the social history of the Jews: faith in a protective sovereign deity amid contrary conditions. Exiled primordially (Eden), during the Patriarchal era, in the sixth century bce, and from the first century to the twentieth, the Jewish experience of alienation has been the historical backdrop against which affirmations of divine benevolence have been constructed. While histories of Jewish thought have tended to accentuate the speculative creativity of medieval and modern Jewish philosophers, the intellectual tradition can come into focus only with attention to these thinkers' understanding of diaspora and persecution.Ralph Keen describes the distinguishing feature of Jewish thought as a religious hermeneutic in which the primitive promise made to Abraham is preserved not just as a pious memory but as a certain hope for eventual restoration. Intended for readers with some familiarity with the history of philosophy, this book offers the historical context necessary for understanding the distinctively Judaic character of this tradition of thought, and elucidates the role of religious experience in the long process of negotiating between adversity and expectation.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Continuum

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Keen, Ralph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Keen, Ralph