It has been widely assumed that there were 6 million Christians (or 10% of the population of the Roman Empire) by around the year 300. The largely-unexamined consensus view is also that Christianity was an urban movement until the conversion of Emperor Constantine. On close examination, it appears that these two popular views would nearly saturate every urban area of the entire Roman Empire with Christians, leaving no room for Jews or pagans. In Who Were the First Christians?, Thomas Robinson shows that scenario simply does not work. But where does the solution lie? Were there many fewer Christians in the Roman world than we have thought? Was the Roman world much more urbanized? Or, is the urban thesis defective, so that the neglected countryside must now be considered in any reconstruction of early Christian growth? Further, what was the makeup of the typical Christian congregation? Was it a lower-class movement? Or was it a movement of the upwardly mobile middle-class? Arguing that more attention needs to be given to the countryside and to the considerable contingent of the marginal and the rustic within urban populations, this revisionist work argues persuasively that the urban thesis should be dismantled or profoundly revised and the growth and the complexion of the early Christian movement seen in a substantially different light.

Who Were the First Christians?: Dismantling the Urban Thesis

History

Robinson, Thomas A.

World

Oxford University Press

The 1920s saw one of the most striking revolutions in manners and morals to have marked North American society, affecting almost every aspect of life, from dress and drink to sex and salvation. Protestant Christianity was being torn apart by a heated controversy between traditionalists and the modernists, as they sought to determine how much their beliefs and practices should be altered by scientific study and more secular attitudes. Out of the controversy arose the Fundamentalist movement, which has become a powerful force in twentieth-century America.During this decade, hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of young girl preachers, some not even school age, joined the conservative Christian cause, proclaiming traditional values and condemning modern experiments with the new morality. Some of the girls drew crowds into the thousands. But the stage these girls gained went far beyond the revivalist platform. The girl evangelist phenomenon was recognized in the wider society as well, and the contrast to the flapper worked well for the press and the public. Girl evangelists stood out as the counter-type of the flapper, who had come to define the modern girl. The striking contrast these girls offered to the racy flapper and to modern culture generally made girl evangelists a convenient and effective tool for conservative and revivalist Christianity, a tool which was used by their adherents in the clash of cultures that marked the 1920s.

Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era (Religion in America)

Ruff, Lanette D.

Historical Study & Educational Resources

A Parents' Guide to CFIDS: How to Be an Advocate for Your Child with Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction

A Parents’Guide to CFIDS is the only complete book for parents of children with CFIDS (Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome). Written in a friendly, personal manner by parents for parents, A Parent?s Guide to CFIDS combines medical, parental, and personal experiences designed to minimize the negative effects of socialization and education on children with CFIDS. This guide will assist you in understanding CFIDS, also known as Fibromyalgia (FM) and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), one of the most complicated illnesses in medical history. You will learn how to help your child overcome the major academic challenges of CFIDS and the socialization issues inflicted by being cut off from friends and peers at a critical stage of development. Some of the topics covered in A Parent?s Guide to CFIDS include:
<ul>
<li>options for academic planning</li>
<li>how to be your child?s number one advocate</li>
<li>balancing your family life when you have a child with CFIDS</li>
<li>helping your CFIDS child develop socially with support groups</li>
<li>young people with CFIDS speak out about their experiences</li>
<li>deciding how much physical activity your child can handle</li>
<li>letters to the school from the physician</li>
<li>75 tips for coping with inflicted children, from pain to schoolworkA Parents’Guide to CFIDS is written by a doctor, educators, and parents of children with CFIDS, and guides parents and educators in understanding, coping with, and helping a child with CFIDS live a better life. This roadmap to recovery covers everything from medical terms and doctor visits to assisting with schoolwork and focusing on normal development to improve your child’s life. </li>
</ul>

Medical Books

Robinson, Mary

Bell, David S.

Pollard, Jean

Floyd, Bonnie

Medicine

CRC-Press

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Diseases & Physical Ailments

The ideal basic textbook for introductory courses in early Christianity For studying early Christianity in its historical context, standard editions of the New Testament fail to provide the best resources. They present the earliest Christian writings out of chronological order and omit writings similar in age and historical importance to the books of the New Testament. In Early Christian Reader, these texts are arranged in a more historically meaningful order. The books of the New Testament are presented in the NRSV, the most widely accepted version in university classrooms today. Also included are translations of the Gospel of Thomas, the Didache, the Letter of Barnabas, 1 Clement, and the letters of Ignatius. Each work's introduction discusses the date and place of composition, authorship, audience, basic themes, literary features, the Jewish and Hellenistic contexts, and suggestions for further readings in the secondary literature. Generous notes illuminate specific historical, lexical, and interpretive issues. Broader issues affecting the treatment of these texts are introduced in seven lead articles. Each section opens with discussions of pseudonomous authorship, church tradition, synoptic sources, epistles as documents, conflicting doctrines, and originating events. This approach allows Early Christian Reader to offer an objective, informed entrée into the complex world of the earliest Christian literature. Informative appendixes, maps, and charts make this an ideal text for the university or college classroom. Early Christian Reader includes the following texts, indexes, and maps: The Letters of Paul • 1 Thessalonians • 1 Corinthians • Philippians • Philemon • 2 Corinthians • Galatians • Romans Letters Attributed to Paul • Colossians • Ephesians • 2 Thessalonians • Titus • 1 Timothy • 2 Timothy Letters Associated with Peter • 1 Peter • Jude • 2 Peter Biography, Anecdote, and History • Mark • Matthew • Luke • Acts • Gospel of Thomas Writings Attributed to John • John • 1 John • 2 John • 3 John • Revelation Other Early Writings • James • Didache • Barnabas • Hebrews • 1 Clement • Ignatius, Romans • Ignatius, Ephesians • Ignatius, Magnesians • Ignatius, Trallians • Ignatius, Philadelphians • Ignatius, Smyrnaeans • Ignatius, Polycarp Appendixes • Coins and Money • Major Figures in the Herodian Family • The Jewish Civil Year • Early Christian Use of the Jewish Bible • The Lost Sayings of Source: "Q" • Dating the Early Christian Texts • The Literary Context of the Early Christians Maps • The Land of Israel/Palestine in the First Century of the Common Era • The Roman Empire • Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period Introductions and notes in the Early Christian Reader were written and edited by Steve Mason and Tom Robinson with contributions from Michael W. Holmes, Robert A. Kraft and Jay C. Treat, and Stephen J. Patterson.

Early Christian Reader

MASON, Steve

Baker Academic

An Essential Toolkit for Mastering New Testament Greek Learning New Testament Greek can be a daunting task. In Mastering New Testament Greek: Essential Tools for Students, with CD-ROM, Thomas A. Robinson offers learners an inventive set of tools that can be used alongside their beginning grammar text to help them move toward Greek mastery. At the heart of Robinson's ingenious vocabulary mastery system are his Cognate Groups that link Greek words together based on their common roots, enabling those desiring to learn Greek to build a working vocabulary more quickly and easily. Additional vocabulary-building tools in Mastering New Testament Greek include: • a comprehensive list of words that are identical in English and Greek • detailed explanations of Greek suffixes and prefixes • a familiar list of English words derived from Greek roots • a helpful cognate Greek-English dictionary Mastering New Testament Greek, the revised and expanded third edition of Robinson's well-received Mastering Greek Vocabulary, now includes an Index of Greek Word Endings that enables those studying Greek to decode baffling grammatical forms, as well as an innovative collection of charts that illustrate the correlations between Greek prepositions and the cases they use to complete their meanings. Mastering New Testament Greek also comes with a CD-ROM packed with user-friendly software programs that support and expand the utilities contained in the book. Software modules guide users in: •mastering the Greek alphabet and pronunciation •learning new vocabulary •reviewing Greek verbs •parsing difficult grammatical forms Taken together, the tools contained in Mastering New Testament Greek and in the accompanying CD-ROM comprise an essential toolkit that students of the language of the New Testament, from beginning to advanced, will not want to be without.

Mastering New Testament Greek: Essential Tools for Students with CD

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

How did the early Christian movement, which began among Jewish people and in close association with the Jewish temple and synagogues of the first century, develop into a predominantly Gentile movement by the end of the first century? Was this "parting of the ways" spurred by internal tensions within the Christian church, sociopolitical factors in the Roman city of Antioch, or growing hostility from the larger Jewish community? In Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways, Thomas A. Robinson addresses this intriguing historical question by taking a careful look at the writings of one of the few Christian writers who wrote about this parting first hand Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, who was martyred in the early years of the second century. Through a careful examination of the historical and sociological setting of first century Antioch, Robinson sifts the testimony of this church father on issues such as the nature of Christian conversion at Antioch, the sources of Jewish Christian tensions in that city and in the broader Roman world, and the development of the terms "Christian" and "Christianity." Assessing a number of current theories about the nature of the Jewish Christian parting, Robinson stresses the importance of hearing the voice of Ignatius himself on these questions. This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the early days of Christianity and in Jewish Christian relations.

Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early Jewish-Christian Relations

The Early Church: An annotated Bibliography of Literature in English is designed for students and interested laypersons, providing them with a non-technical, informed survey of recent scholarly debate on major topics important to an understanding of the early church. Divided into twenty-six chapters, each with an introductory essay of 2-3 pages, the bibliography contains abstracts of about one thousand books and major articles dealing with the church from the beginning of the second century roughly to the end of the sixth. Specific chapters deal with the development of the cannon, conversion and missions, persecution and martyrdom, monasticism, church office, church and state, creeds, orthodoxy and heresy, regional forms of Christianity, church and society, Constantine and the Christian empire, Christology, women, ethice, Gnosticism, Jewish-Christian relations, Roman society and empire, art and architecture, theology, worship and the liturgy, and patristic exegesis. More general chapters introduce the reader to the basic reference works, including dictionaries, atlases, serials, patristic texts and general histories. The entries are extensively cross-referenced, and user-friendly codes direct the reader to introductory works, survey articles, bibliographies, and collections of primary texts. Each abstract indicates the number of pages of bibliography, indexes, maps, charts, etc., and most abstracts are followed by a list of book reviews, enabling the user to gain access to a wider evaluation of the work in question. Almost forty pages of indexes (general and modern authors) complete the volume, making this a key tool for those interested in the early church.

The Early Church

Shaw, Brent

Scarecrow Press

Greek Verb Endings

Edwin Mellen Pr

The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in the Early Christian Church (Studies in the Bible & Early Christianity)

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