When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation - Softcover

Fredriksen, Paula

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300248407 ISBN 13: 9780300248401

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2019

Synopsis

A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religion
 
How 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 this title

About the Author

Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300248407
• ISBN 13: 9780300248401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280