In The Lost Apostle award-winning journalist Rena Pederson investigates a little known subject in early Christian history—the life and times of the female apostle Junia. Junia was an early convert and leading missionary whose story was “lost” when her name was masculinized to Junias in later centuries. The Lost Apostle unfolds like a well-written detective story, presenting Pederson’s lively search for insight and information about a woman some say was the first female apostle.
In The Lost Apostle award-winning journalist Rena Pederson investigates a little known subject in early Christian history—the life and times of the female apostle Junia. Junia was an early convert and leading missionary whose story was “lost” when her name was masculinized to Junias in later centuries. The Lost Apostle unfolds like a well-written detective story, presenting Pederson’s lively search for insight and information about a woman some say was the first female apostle.
The name "Junia" appears in Romans 16:7, and Paul identifies her (along with Andronicus) as "prominent among the apostles." In this important work, Epp investigates the mysterious disappearance of Junia from the traditions of the church. Because later theologians and scribes could not believe (or wanted to suppress) that Paul had numbered a woman among the earliest churches' apostles, Junia's name was changed in Romans to a masculine form. Despite the fact that the earliest churches met in homes and that other women were clearly leaders in the churches (e.g., Prisca and Lydia), calling Junia an apostle seemed too much for the tradition. Epp tracks how this happened in New Testament manuscripts, scribal traditions, and translations of the Bible. In this thoroughgoing study, Epp restores Junia to her rightful place.
Long ago, the ancient gospels of Jesus's female apostles were stolen by powerful churchmen and relegated to the rubbish heaps of history. But those apostles have been reborn as female children, and are dictating new gospels that will be incorporated into a radical new religious text, the Holy Women's Bible. At a hidden women's fortress in Greece, the teenager Lori Vale develops a paranormal relationship with one of the reincarnated children, and soon begins to suspect that she may have been connected to the female apostles of Jesus in ancient times, when the Son of God walked the earth and preached to the people of the Holy Land. While information about Lori's past is unfolding, she finds herself caught in a violent religious conflict that has immense historical repercussions. Powerful, brutal men want to suppress the emerging gospels of the she-apostles, men who are hell-bent on destroying the radical women and their heretical texts. The women race to get their material completed and published before they are annihilated, but they have another big problem: the twelfth she-apostle-Martha of Galilee-has not been found yet, and the other female apostles say she holds a dark secret that could do enormous damage to the cause of women, and to the entire planet. . . .
Presented here are two volumes of apocryphal writings reflecting the life and time of the Old and New Testaments. Stories told by contemporary fiction writers of historical Bible times in fascinating and beautiful style.
We have misunderstood Paul, badly. We have read his words through our own set of assumptions. We need to begin with Paul's world view, to see things the way he saw them. - What if 'original sin' was never part of Paul's thinking? - What if the idea that we are saved by faith in Christ, as Luther argued, was based on a mistranslation of Paul's words and a misunderstanding of Paul's thinking? 'Over the centuries,' writes Steve Chalke, 'the Church has repeatedly failed to communicate, or even understand, the core of Paul's message. Although Paul has often been presented as the champion of exclusion, he was the very opposite. He was the great includer.' Steve Chalke MBE is a Baptist minister, founder and leader of the Oasis Charitable Trust, and author of more than 50 books.
Lost Scriptures offers an anthology of up-to-date and readable translations of many non-canonical writings from the centuries after Christ--texts that have for the most part been neglected or lost for nearly two millennia. Here is an array of remarkably varied writings from early Christian groups whose visions of Jesus differ dramatically from our contemporary understanding. Ehrman has included a general introduction, plus brief introductions to each piece. Lost Scriptures gives readers a vivid picture of the range of beliefs that battled each other in the first centuries of the Christian era. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in the Bible or the early Church.
Reveals the true role of James, the brother of Jesus, in early Christianity • Uses evidence from the canonical Gospels, apocryphal texts, and the writings of the Church Fathers to reveal the teachings of Jesus as transmitted to his chosen successor: James • Demonstrates how the core message in the teachings of Jesus is an expansion not a repudiation of the Jewish religion • Shows how James can serve as a bridge between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam James has been a subject of controversy since the founding of the Church. Evidence that Jesus had siblings contradicts Church dogma on the virgin birth, and James is also a symbol of Christian teachings that have been obscured. While Peter is traditionally thought of as the leader of the apostles and the “rock” on which Jesus built his church, Jeffrey Bütz shows that it was James who led the disciples after the crucifixion. It was James, not Peter, who guided them through the Church's first major theological crisis--Paul's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Using the canonical Gospels, writings of the Church Fathers, and apocryphal texts, Bütz argues that James is the most overlooked figure in the history of the Church. He shows how the core teachings of Jesus are firmly rooted in Hebraic tradition; reveals the bitter battles between James and Paul for ideological supremacy in the early Church; and explains how Paul's interpretations, which became the foundation of the Church, are in many ways its betrayal. Bütz reveals a picture of Christianity and the true meaning of Christ's message that are sometimes at odds with established Christian doctrine and concludes that James can serve as a desperately needed missing link between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to heal the wounds of centuries of enmity.
The Apostle Islands are a solitary place of natural beauty, with red sandstone cliffs, secluded beaches, and a rich and unique forest surrounded by the cold, blue waters of Lake Superior. But this seemingly pristine wilderness has been shaped and reshaped by humans. The people who lived and worked in the Apostles built homes, cleared fields, and cut timber in the island forests. The consequences of human choices made more than a century ago can still be read in today’s wild landscapes. A Storied Wilderness traces the complex history of human interaction with the Apostle Islands. In the 1930s, resource extraction made it seem like the islands’ natural beauty had been lost forever. But as the island forests regenerated, the ways that people used and valued the islands changed - human and natural processes together led to the rewilding of the Apostles. In 1970, the Apostles were included in the national park system and ultimately designated as the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness. How should we understand and value wild places with human pasts? James Feldman argues convincingly that such places provide the opportunity to rethink the human place in nature. The Apostle Islands are an ideal setting for telling the national story of how we came to equate human activity with the loss of wilderness characteristics, when in reality all of our cherished wild places are the products of the complicated interactions between human and natural history. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frECwkA6oHs
Perhaps no person exerted more influence on postwar white Southern memory than former Confederate chaplain and Baptist minister J. William Jones. Christopher C. Moore's Apostle of the Lost Cause is the first full-length work to examine the complex contributions to Lost Cause ideology of this well-known but surprisingly understudied figure. Commissioned by Robert E. Lee himself to preserve an accurate account of the Confederacy, Jones responded by welding hagiography and denominationalism to create, in effect, a sacred history of the Southern cause. In a series of popular books and in his work as secretary of the Southern Historical Society Papers, Jones's mission became the canonization of Confederate saints, most notably Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, for a postwar generation and the contrivance of a full-blown myth of Southern virtue-in-defeat that deeply affected historiography for decades to come. While personally committed to Baptist identity, Jones supplied his readers with embodiments of Southern morality who transcended denominational boundaries and enabled white Southerners to locate their champions (and themselves) in a quasi-biblical narrative that ensured ultimate vindication for the Southern cause. In a time when Confederate monuments and the enduring effects of white supremacy are in the daily headlines, an examination of this key figure in the creation of the Lost Cause legacy could not be more relevant.
