Ancient Religion History

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.

How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read or listen to the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’ freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God - which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.

The Ancient Dead Sea Scrolls speak about a mysterious 364-day solar calendar used by the ancients from the time of Creation to about 170 BC. In the second century BC, it was replaced with a lunar calendar by corrupt Jewish priests. Today we know this corrupt lunar calendar as the modern Jewish calendar. In this book we will learn about God’s original solar calendar and discover what prophecies it reveals. Most Christians know that the Jewish festivals teach prophecy. Festivals like Passover, teach about the First Coming of the Messiah.

"Arguably the most distinctive feature of the early Christian literature," writes Bart Ehrman, "is the degree to which it was forged." The Homilies and Recognitions of Clement; Paul's letters to and from Seneca; Gospels by Peter, Thomas, and Philip; Jesus' correspondence with Abgar, letters by Peter and Paul in the New Testament - all forgeries. To cite just a few examples.

Why You Think the Way You Do traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. Professor and historian Glenn S. Sunshine demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that—based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God—established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization.

This audiobook is a Christian timeline of ancient post-flood history based on Bible chronology, the early church fathers, and ancient Jewish and secular history. This can be used as a companion guide in the study of creation science. This revised edition adds the background history of nine new countries. Learn the true origins of the countries and people of France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, Greece, Italy, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Iran, China, the Arabs, the Kurds, and more.

Our greatest need is to be recognized—to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we’ve displaced that need with the ease of technology. We’ve dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.

In Love Wins, Rob Bell confronted the troubling questions that many people of faith are afraid to ask about heaven, hell, fate, and faith. Using the same inspired, inquisitive approach, he now turns to our most sacred book: the Bible. What Is the Bible? provides insights and answers that make clear why the Bible is so revered and what makes it truly inspiring and essential to our lives. Rob takes us deep into actual passages to reveal the humanity behind the Scriptures.

Centuries before whisperings began, of secret knowledge being handed down from the ancient Greeks, through shrouded fraternities such as the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, the Druids were slowly and steadfastly creating priests and philosophers of their own, akin to the Brahmans of India, the Magi of the Persians, as well as the hierophants and scholars of what would eventually become known to the world as the Western Mystery Tradition.

In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation.

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life.

The ancient Israelites emerged from Mount Sinai onto the hilly plains of Canaan and established a civilization that endured for hundreds of years. Even when the Israelites fell to incursions from foreign invaders and were subjected to torture and exile, they held fast to their belief system. They emerged from the Babylonian captivity as the people of Yehud. With the aid of Cyrus the Great and the Achaemenid Empire, they rebuilt their sacred temple and got back on their feet.

Two and a half decades ago, Ascended Master Teachers Arten and Pursah appeared to Gary Renard and held a series of conversations with him that elaborated on the teachings of two spiritual classics, The Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. Gary immortalized what he learned in the books of his best-selling series. This fourth book, a companion to the original trilogy, explores six of the lifetimes in which the incarnations of Jesus and Buddha lived together, beginning in 700 BC when they were known as Saka and Hiroji.

The Celts are one of the most well-known groups in Europe and one of the least understood. Depending on which classifications are used, the Celts are also one of the oldest civilizations in Europe. In the centuries before Christ, the Celts were spread out across much of continental Europe, and though they are mostly identified with Gaul, evidence suggests they also spread as far as Portugal.

One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think About God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are central events in our salvation. Yet few Christians have a good grasp of the first-century historical and religious context in which the crucifixion took place, nor of its true significance for the people of that time - and hence for our time as well. Biblical scholar and attorney Dr. Jeannie Constantinou puts modern listeners in the center of the events of Christ's Passion, bringing the best of modern scholarship to bear while keeping her interpretation faithful in every particular to the Orthodox tradition.

This book begins with King Solomon's reign and ends just before Jesus' birth, but don't expect to hear an historical record as in a textbook. This is history read as God's master plan, and He knows exactly what He's doing.

Prophets and Kings is volume two of a five-volume set that covers human history from the beginning of our time and on into the future.

Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.

Providing all the necessary evidence to restore the goddess to both Judaism and Christianity, Picknett and Prince expose the disastrous consequences of the suppression of the feminine from these two great religions and reveal how we have been collectively and instinctively craving the return of the Sacred Feminine for millennia.

You are invited to witness the enormous power of the early church when it connected to the ultimate power. Then you are invited to request and experience it for yourself. You will again witness the enormous power of the early church as you listen to The Acts of the Apostles, a remarkable commentary on the book of Acts. Then you are invited to request it and experience it for yourself and your church.