A provocative study of the gnostic gospels and the world of early Christianity as revealed through the Nag Hammadi texts.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The premier study Bible used by scholars, pastors, undergraduate and graduate students, The New Oxford Annotated Bible offers a vast range of information, including extensive notes by experts in their fields; in-text maps, charts, and diagrams; supplementary essays on translation, biblical interpretation, cultural and historical background, and other general topics.Extensively revised--half of the material is brand new--featuring a new design to enhance readability, and brand-new color maps, the Annotated Fourth Edition adds to the established reputation of this essential biblical studies resource. Many new and revised maps, charts, and diagrams further clarify information found in the Scripture text. In addition, section introductions have been expanded and the book introductions present their information in a standard format so that students can find what they need to know. Of course, the Fourth Edition retains the features prized by students, including single column annotations at the foot of the pages, in-text charts, and maps, a page number-keyed index of all the study materials in the volume, and Oxford's renowned Bible maps. This timely edition maintains and extends the excellence the Annotated's users have come to expect, bringing still more insights, information, and perspectives to bear upon the understanding of the biblical text. · The renowned New Revised Standard Version Bible translation, the scholarly standard for study of the Bible· Wholly revised, and greatly expanded book introductions and annotations.· Annotations in a single column across the page bottom, paragraphed according to their boldface topical headings. · In-text background essays on the major divisions of the biblical text.· Essays on the history of the formation of the biblical canon for Jews and various Christian churches.· More detailed explanations of the historical background of the text. · More in-depth treatment of the history and varieties of biblical criticism. · A timeline of major events in the ancient Near East.· A full index to all of the study materials, keyed to the page numbers on which they occur.· A full glossary of scholarly and critical terms.· 36-page section of full color New Oxford Bible Maps, approximately 40 in-text line drawing maps and diagrams. Classic but not stodgy, up-to-date but not trendy, The New Oxford Annotated Bible: 4th Edition is ready to serve new generations of students, teachers, and general readers.

The premier study Bible used by scholars, pastors, undergraduate and graduate students, The New Oxford Annotated Bible offers a vast range of information, including extensive notes by experts in their fields; in-text maps, charts, and diagrams; supplementary essays on translation, biblical interpretation, cultural and historical background, and other general topics.Extensively revised--half of the material is brand new--featuring a new design to enhance readability, and brand-new color maps, the Annotated Fourth Edition adds to the established reputation of this essential biblical studies resource. Many new and revised maps, charts, and diagrams further clarify information found in the Scripture text. In addition, section introductions have been expanded and the book introductions present their information in a standard format so that students can find what they need to know. Of course, the Fourth Edition retains the features prized by students, including single column annotations at the foot of the pages, in-text charts, and maps, a page number-keyed index of all the study materials in the volume, and Oxford's renowned Bible maps. This timely edition maintains and extends the excellence the Annotated's users have come to expect, bringing still more insights, information, and perspectives to bear upon the understanding of the biblical text. · The renowned New Revised Standard Version Bible translation, the scholarly standard for study of the Bible· Wholly revised, and greatly expanded book introductions and annotations.· Annotations in a single column across the page bottom, paragraphed according to their boldface topical headings. · In-text background essays on the major divisions of the biblical text.· Essays on the history of the formation of the biblical canon for Jews and various Christian churches.· More detailed explanations of the historical background of the text. · More in-depth treatment of the history and varieties of biblical criticism. · A timeline of major events in the ancient Near East.· A full index to all of the study materials, keyed to the page numbers on which they occur.· A full glossary of scholarly and critical terms.· 36-page section of full color New Oxford Bible Maps, approximately 40 in-text line drawing maps and diagrams. Classic but not stodgy, up-to-date but not trendy, The New Oxford Annotated Bible: 4th Edition is ready to serve new generations of students, teachers, and general readers.

Special edition including the complete text of the Gospel of ThomasElaine Pagels, one of the world’s most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the National Book Award for her groundbreaking work The Gnostic Gospels, now reflects on what matters most about spiritual and religious exploration in the twenty-first century. This bold new book explores how Christianity began by tracing its earliest texts, including the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945.When her infant son was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, Elaine Pagels’s spiritual and intellectual quest took on a new urgency, leading her to explore historical and archeological sources and to investigate what Jesus and his teachings meant to his followers before the invention of doctrine–and before the invention of Christianity as we know it. The astonishing discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, along with more than fifty other early Christian texts unknown since antiquity, offers startling clues. Pagels compares such sources as Thomas’s gospel (which claims to give Jesus’ secret teaching, and finds its closest affinities with kabbalah) with the canonic texts to show how Christian leaders chose to include some gospels and exclude others from the collection we have come to know as the New Testament. To stabilize the emerging Christian church in times of devastating persecution, the church fathers constructed the canon, creed, and hierarchy–and, in the process, suppressed many of its spiritual resources. Drawing on new scholarship–her own, and that of an international group of scholars–that has come to light since the publication in 1979 of The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels shows that what matters about Christianity involves much more than any one set of beliefs. Traditions embodied in Judaism and Christianity can powerfully affect us in heart, mind, and spirit, inspire visions of a new society based on practicing justice and love, even heal and transform us.Provocative, beautifully written, and moving, Beyond Belief, the most personal of Pagels’s books to date, shows how “the impulse to seek God overflows the narrow banks of a single tradition.” Pagels writes, “What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions–and the communities that sustain them–is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery, encouraging us, in Jesus’ words, to ‘seek, and you shall find.’”

Students, professors and general readers alike have relied upon the Oxford Annotated Bible for essential scholarship and guidance to the world of the Bible for four decades. Now a new editorial board and team of contributors have completely updated this classic work. The result is a volume which maintains and extends the excellence the Annotated's users have come to expect, bringing new insights, information, and approaches to bear upon the understanding of the text of the Bible. The new edition includes a full index to all of the study material (not just to the annotations), and one that is keyed to page numbers, not to citations. And, to make certain points in the text clearer for the reader, there are approximately 40 in-text, line drawing maps and diagrams. With the best of the Annotated's traditional strengths, and the augmentation of new information and new approaches represented in current scholarship, the Third Edition will continue to serve as the reader's and student's constant resource.

While most people think that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are the only sacred writings of the early Christians, this is not at all the case. A companion volume to Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, this book offers an anthology of up-to-date and readable translations of many non-canonical writings from the first centuries after Christ--texts that have been for the most part lost or neglected for almost two millennia.Here is an array of remarkably varied writings from early Christian groups whose visions of Jesus differ dramatically from our contemporary understanding. Readers will find Gospels supposedly authored by the apostle Philip, James the brother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen, and others. There are Acts originally ascribed to John and to Thecla, Paul's female companion; there are Epistles allegedly written by Paul to the Roman philosopher Seneca. And there is an apocalypse by Simon Peter that offers a guided tour of the afterlife, both the glorious ecstasies of the saints and the horrendous torments of the damned, and an Epistle by Titus, a companion of Paul, which argues page after page against sexual love, even within marriage, on the grounds that physical intimacy leads to damnation.In all, the anthology includes fifteen Gospels, five non-canonical Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles, a number of Apocalypses and Secret Books, and several Canon lists. Ehrman has included a general introduction, plus brief introductions to each piece. This important anthology gives readers a vivid picture of the range of beliefs that battled each other in the first centuries of the Christian era.

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, and as Ehrman shows, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners. Ehrman's discussion ranges from considerations of various "lost scriptures"--including forged gospels supposedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus's alleged twin brother--to the disparate beliefs of such groups as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various "Gnostic" sects. Ehrman examines in depth the battles that raged between "proto-orthodox Christians"--those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief--and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame.Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, Lost Christianities is an eye-opening account of politics, power, and the clash of ideas among Christians in the decades before one group came to see its views prevail.

The Book of Enoch was considered one of the most important books in early Christianity and was used widely. R.H. Charles, who translated the book, said, "the influence of I Enoch on the New Testament has been greater than that of all the other aprocryphal and pseudepigraphical books put together." One of the main influences from the book is its explanation of evil coming into the world with the arrival of the "fallen angels." Enoch functions as a scribe, writing up a petition on behalf of these fallen ones, to be given to higher powers for judgment. Enoch was apparently chosen for this duty because he was of a different nature than the angels. It appears that Christianity later adopted some of its ideas and philosophies from this book, including the Final Judgment, the concept of demons, the Resurrection, the origins of evil, and the coming of a Messiah and Messianic Kingdom. This makes The Book of Enoch of immense importance, not only to the study of Christianity's origins, but to the possible reality of strange, otherworldly visions or visitations. If this book was so important to Christian beginnings, why was it removed from the canon and banned? Enoch had found and experienced God face to face, something which gnostics always strive for. The Church opposed gnostics-to them, they were heretics. Only now, after many centuries, are people rediscovering this book's value, along with its important counterpart, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Both of these important books are now shedding new light on Christian origins and otherworldly "encounters."

The Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization, and also the most difficult to interpret. It has been the vehicle of continual conflict, with every interpretation reflecting passionately-held views that have affected not merely religion, but politics, art, and even science. This unique edition offers an exciting new approach to the most influential of all English biblical texts--the Authorized King James Version, complete with the Apocrypha. Its wide-ranging Introduction and the substantial notes to each book of the Bible guide the reader through the labyrinth of literary, textual, and theological issues, using the most up-to-date scholarship to demonstrate how and why the Bible has affected the literature, art and general culture of the English-speaking world. The Bible: Authorized King James Version also includes the lastest biblical research, evaluated and put into context as well as discussing centuries of critical opinion. A non-sectarian, historical approach makes it suitable for a wide range of readers. A Glossary of terms used in the Notes and six maps of the Holy Land further illuminate the meaning of this most culturally influential version of the Bible.

Part of the International Inductive Study Series, this book takes an in-depth look at Philippians and Colossians to provide encouragement and guidelines for growing in the knowledge of God.