Reviews for Early Christian Traditions

The average rating for Early Christian Traditions based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-26 00:00:00 Mark D Bailey This is worth explaining. I used to be one of those people who said I'd never use Kindle, I needed the feel of a physical book in my hands. Then I started traveling to India, and couldn't easily carry the number of books required to have something to read throughout the trip (two 24-hour flights plus a week of sleepless nights). So I got a Kindle. Which led me to discover the huge amount of free or nearly free content--mostly old, for works with expired copyrights. This is how I came across "History Of The Christian Church (The Complete Eight Volumes In One)" for $1.99. It's an 8-volume set, thousands of pages, written in the late 1800s by a protestant theologian and still in use in academic circles today. I started off just skimming it, and ended up getting interested in the history of the so-called church fathers of the first few centuries A.D. I started a program of reading Augustine, Aquinas, Hildegard and others to complement my Steiner and Christian Community studies. I think it was the Cicero trilogy by Robert Harris (highly recommended) that drew me back to ancient times, and a deep interest in the interplay between the Roman empire and the emergence of Christianity. What I hadn't previously realized is the wealth of information available from the Christian thought leaders (compared to the little evidence available regarding the life of Jesus). I've recently acquired Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the classic by Edward Gibbon (1300 pages, also $1.99) to pursue the parallel histories of Rome and the Church. So this interest deepened to the point that I set my sights on post retirement study and possible entry into a seminary to study theology with a focus on early church history. Then an amazing coincidence occurred. We got a new assistant priest at St Thomas (the Sunnyvale Episcopal church). She is recently retired from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the seminary in Berkeley that I intend to pursue. Her speciality? Early church history. Oh, and she wrote a book about it, this book, Early Christian Traditions, from which I've developed a now substantial reading list of works of the early Christians (I've already purchased the 99 cent books, and created a new wish list for the others). So as of Monday I'm retired and can pursue this area of study as prep for seminary or simply as an end in itself. In the meantime I hope to avail myself of Rebecca's knowledge and guidance as I consider my options. Seems like it was meant to be.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-03 00:00:00 Matthew Shaw one of my favorites of the series so far. concise and precise overview of the complexities of issues affecting the development of the early church and it's structure and doctrines.