When Christians Were Jews, Paula Fredriksen
When Christians Were Jews, Paula Fredriksen
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When Christians Were Jews
The First Generation

Author: Paula Fredriksen

Narrator: Matthew Lloyd Davies

Unabridged: 6 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/04/2018


Synopsis

A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religionHow did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians.

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question 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. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

About Paula Fredriksen

Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, is currently the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sanjuro on October 26, 2018

I enjoyed reading this book. It was well written, and organized, and clear in its purpose. And yet, it reads as a rehash, too reliant on work that precedes it, and even then only reliant on previous work from a very niche corner of the academic world of Christian origins. If you've ever read previou......more

Goodreads review by Sabin on October 04, 2024

It was not what I expected, but I wasn't disappointed. I expected that there would be so much more information about that time, about Palestine in the first century after Jesus's death, but it seems that there are only a few first hand accounts from that time, Paul's letters and two chronicles by a......more

Goodreads review by Paul on September 27, 2023

O scriere destul de drăguță despre începuturile creștinătății, acoperind cam primii 50 de ani de la moartea lui Isus. Informativă, cu o traducere ciudată, Paula Fredriksen folosește ca surse primare Evangheliile, epistolele, manuscrisele de la Marea Moartă și pe Iosefus și cam atât. Mă așteptam la c......more

Goodreads review by Peter on April 27, 2019

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - [URL not allowed]-re... I was amazed at the scholarly depth and insight of author Paula Fredriksen's "Augustine and the Jews." I gave her more recent "Paul: The Pagan's Apostle" top marks in my Amazon review. However, this book left me un......more

Goodreads review by Joel on April 30, 2019

Fredriksen’s main aim in this book is to show the early church within its Jewish roots, and her reason for doing so is best explained in her own words: . “If we use “Christian” of this first generation, we pull them out of their own context, domesticating them for ours. We thereby lose an appreciation......more