Constantine

Constantine
Author: Paul Stephenson
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1468303007

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This “knowledgeable account” of the emperor who brought Christianity to Rome “provides valuable insight into Constantine’s era” (Kirkus Reviews). “By this sign conquer.” So began the reign of Constantine. In 312 A.D. a cross appeared in the sky above his army as he marched on Rome. In answer, Constantine bade his soldiers to inscribe the cross on their shield, and so fortified, they drove their rivals into the Tiber and claimed Rome for themselves. Constantine led Christianity and its adherents out of the shadow of persecution. He united the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire, raising a new city center in the east. When barbarian hordes consumed Rome itself, Constantinople remained as a beacon of Roman Christianity. Constantine is a fascinating survey of the life and enduring legacy of perhaps the greatest and most unjustly ignored of the Roman emperors—written by a richly gifted historian. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the idea of a unified Christian Europe underpinned by a commitment to religious tolerance. “Successfully combines historical documents, examples of Roman art, sculpture, and coinage with the lessons of geopolitics to produce a complex biography of the Emperor Constantine.” —Publishers Weekly

Creating Christ

Creating Christ
Author: James S. Valliant
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2016-09-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

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Exhaustively annotated and illustrated, this explosive work of history unearths clues that finally demonstrate the truth about one of the world’s great religions: that it was born out of the conflict between the Romans and messianic Jews who fought a bitter war with each other during the 1st Century. The Romans employed a tactic they routinely used to conquer and absorb other nations: they grafted their imperial rule onto the religion of the conquered. After 30 years of research, authors James S. Valliant and C.W. Fahy present irrefutable archeological and textual evidence that proves Christianity was created by Roman Caesars in this book that breaks new ground in Christian scholarship and is destined to change the way the world looks at ancient religions forever. Inherited from a long-past era of tyranny, war and deliberate religious fraud, could Christianity have been created for an entirely different purpose than we have been lead to believe? Praised by scholars like Dead Sea Scrolls translator Robert Eisenman (James the Brother of Jesus), this exhaustive synthesis of historical detective work integrates all of the ancient sources about the earliest Christians and reveals new archeological evidence for the first time. And, despite the fable presented in current bestsellers like Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, the evidence presented in Creating Christ is irrefutable: Christianity was invented by Roman Emperors. I have rarely encountered a book so original, exciting, accessible and informed on subjects that are of obvious importance to the world and to which I have myself devoted such a large part of my scholarly career studying. In this book they have rendered a startling new understanding of Christianity with a controversial theory of its Roman provenance that is accessible to the layman in a very powerful way. In the process, they present new and comprehensive archeological and iconographic evidence, as well as utilizing the widest and most cutting edge work of other recent scholars, including myself. This is a work of outstanding and original scholarship. Its arguments are a brilliant, profound and thorough integration of the relevant evidence. When they are done, the conclusion is inescapable and obviously profound. Robert Eisenman, Author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code "A fascinating and provocative investigative history of ideas, boldly exploring a problem that previous scholarship has not clearly or credibly addressed: how (and why!) the Flavian dynasty wove Christianity into the very fabric of Western civilization." -Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler

Christ the Emperor

Christ the Emperor
Author: Nathan Israel Smolin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre: Church history
ISBN: 9780197689554

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"This project focuses on the intersection of Roman Imperial politics and Christian theology in the 4th century AD. It contends that during this period, Christian theology became the principal realm in which political structure and theory were debated. Chapters 1-2 argue that the Emperor Constantine possessed a consistent theological viewpoint centered on the justification of his legitimacy in religious terms, as a charismatic "Man of God" appointed by a monarchical deity to supreme rule. This theology in later stages was developed in dialogue with that of Eusebius of Caesarea, also profiled in Chapter 2, which posited a chain of monarchical powers extending from heaven to Earth. Chapters 3-4 provides a narrative of the reign of Constantine's son Constantius II, whose interventions focused on the urgent need to repair the failing Constantinian Settlement and justify his rule against dynastic and episcopal rivals. The final two chapters focus on the development, by an alliance of bishops including Lucifer of Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers, of a consensus "Nicene" political theology centered on the assertion of equality among divine and human persons and a theory of legitimacy whereby bishops, not Emperors, represented the divine in human society. As described in the Epilogue, this conflict ultimately gave way to a more collaborative settlement under Theodosius I, requiring the Emperor to construct his legitimacy not as a privileged agent within a fixed cosmic order, but as a holder of essentially temporary, "secular" power within the structures and rituals of the Christian Church"--

On the Person of Christ

On the Person of Christ
Author: Justinian I (Emperor of the East)
Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1991
Genre: Council of Chalcedon
ISBN: 9780881410891

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At the opening of the sixth century, large segments of the Roman Empire had fallen to barbarian warlords. The Churches of Rome and Constantinople were locked in a schism rooted in different attitudes towards the decrees and definitions of the Fourth Ecumenical council held at Chalcedon in 451. The emperor Justinian (527-565) dreamed of reunifying and restoring the Empire; but to accomplish this he needed a unified Church. Before Justinian ascended the throne the schism between Rome and Constantinople had been healed, largely due to Justinian's influence, but a significant segment of the Eastern population (dubbed monophysites) would not accept the union and the imperial church remained divided.

Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age

Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age
Author: Jonathan Bardill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2012
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0521764238

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"Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. The book explores the emperor's image as conveyed through literature, art, and architecture, and shows how Constantine reconciled the tradition of imperial divinity with his monotheistic faith. It demonstrates how the traditional themes and imagery of kingship were exploited to portray the emperor as the saviour of his people and to assimilate him to Christ. This is the first book to study simultaneously both archaeological and historical information to build a picture of the emperor's image and propaganda. It is extensively illustrated" --Provided by publisher.

Eusebius' Life of Constantine

Eusebius' Life of Constantine
Author: Eusebius
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 1999-09-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191588474

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Eusebius' Life of Constantine is the most important single record of Constantine, the emperor who turned the Roman Empire from prosecuting the Church to supporting it, with huge and lasting consequences for Europe and Christianity. The only English version previously available is based on a seventeenth-century Greek edition, but two new critical editions produced this century make a new English version necessary. The authors of this edition present the results of the recent scholarly debate, as well as their own researches so as to clarify the significance of Eusebius' work and introduce the student to the text and its interpretation, thus opening up the contentious issues. At face value much of what Eusebius wrote is false. This book shows how, once his partisan interpretations and rhetoric are properly understood, both Eusebius' text and the documents it contains give vital historical insights.

Making Christian History

Making Christian History
Author: Michael Hollerich
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520295366

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Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision. Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.

Christ the Emperor

Christ the Emperor
Author: Nathan Israel Smolin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 019768954X

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The Roman Empire of the fourth century AD, ruled by the Emperor Constantine the Great, was a society marked by social, religious, and political transformation as the empire came under the influence of the Christian Church. To understand how this period's emperors and bishops, among other political and social actors, thought about and enacted political theory, Nathan Israel Smolin turns to theological sources, revealing an age of profound political, social, and religious ferment, in which ideas and structures fundamental to the history of the following millennia were developed and contested--ideas that continue to shape our world today.

Christ and the Emperor

Christ and the Emperor
Author: Gilbert van Belle
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Bible
ISBN: 9789042930643

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This volume contains the proceedings of an international symposium held at Leuven University on November 30 - December 2, 2011. The contributors are I. Dunderberg, J. Frey, S. Freyne, P. Herz, N. Huttunen, J.S. Kloppenborg, D.-A. Koch, M. Labahn, A. Lindemann, T. Nicklas, C.M. Tuckett, S. Witetschek, and T. Witulski. They deal with various aspects of this fascinating topic that has received much attention in recent years. Among the topics addressed are: the influence of the emperor cult in the Galilee, the similarities and differences between the Roman emperor cult and the New Testament evidence, the concept of universalism as understood by Roman and Christian authors, the notion of the divine judge, the ritual of proskynesis, and methodological problems in dealing with the emperor cult and the New Testament evidence. Several essays deal with specific passages from the gospels - the Son of David title, the controversy on paying taxes, Jesus and the emperors as miracle workers, the notion of conquering and victory in John, and Roman characters in the Gospel of John (the basilikos, the centurion, Pilate).

Defending Constantine

Defending Constantine
Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2010-09-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830827226

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Peter Leithart weighs what we've been taught about Constantine and claims that in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. He reveals how beneath the surface of this contested story there lies a deeper narrative--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--with far-reaching implications.