The Dawn of Christianity
People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Exploring the origins of Christianity, this book looks at why it was that people first in Judea and then in the Roman and Greek Mediterranean world became susceptible to the new religion. Robert Knapp looks for answers in a wide-ranging exploration of religion and everyday life from 200 BC to the end of the first century.
Survival, honour and wellbeing were the chief preoccupations of Jews and polytheists alike. In both cases, the author shows, people turned first to supernatural powers. According to need, season and place polytheists consulted and placated vast constellations of gods, while the Jews worshipped and contended with one almighty and jealous deity.
Professor Knapp considers why any Jew or polytheist would voluntarily dispense with a well-tried way of dealing with the supernatural and trade it in for a new model. What was it about the new religion that led people to change beliefs they had held for millennia and which in turn, within four centuries of the birth of its messiah, led it to transform the western world? His conclusions are as convincing as they are sometimes surprising.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Knapp, professor emeritus of classics at the University of California, investigates how a small movement that arose 2,000 years ago grew into one of the world's great religions. Beginning with the life of Jesus of Nazareth, Knapp explains the social environment that allowed Christianity's prophet to appeal to Jews and polytheists alike even though they differed in a multitude of ways. Members of these groups were products of a world that seemed irrational, random, and dangerous. They adapted to this chaos by encountering the supernatural through ritual and tradition in order to inject a sense of meaning into the world around them. The miracles of Jesus of Nazareth (particularly his rising from the dead) could appeal to both groups because "people in both traditions continued to value overt displays of power in both magic and miracles as touchstones of supernatural efficacy, an efficacy they sought to access as they faced the contingencies of life." Although light on new information, this is a sound synthesis of historical data that, in broad strokes, paints the picture of how the nascent Christian movement influenced many different peoples and laid the foundations for Christianity to thrive globally.
