Christian Mythology

Author : Philippe Walter
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1620553694
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Mythology written by Philippe Walter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how Christian mythology has more to do with long-standing pagan traditions than the Bible • Explains how the church fathers knowingly incorporated pagan elements into the Christian faith to ease the transition to the new religion • Identifies pagan deities that were incorporated into each of the saints • Shows how all the major holidays in the Christian calendar are modeled on pagan rituals and myths, including Easter and Christmas In this extensive study of the Christian mythology that animated Europe in the Middle Ages, author Philippe Walter reveals how these stories and the holiday traditions connected with them are based on long-standing pagan rituals and myths and have very little connection to the Bible. The author explains how the church fathers knowingly incorporated pagan elements into the Christian faith to ease the transition to the new religion. Rather than tear down the pagan temples in Britain, Pope Gregory the Great advised Saint Augustine of Canterbury to add the pagan rituals into the mix of Christian practices and transform the pagan temples into churches. Instead of religious conversion, it was simply a matter of convincing the populace to include Jesus in their current religious practices. Providing extensive documentation, Walter shows which major calendar days of the Christian year are founded on pagan rituals and myths, including the high holidays of Easter and Christmas. Examining hagiographic accounts of the saints, he reveals the origin of these symbolic figures in the deities worshipped in pagan Europe for centuries. He also explores how the identities of saints and pagan figures became so intermingled that some saints were transformed into pagan incarnations, such as Mary Magdalene’s conversion into one of the Celtic Ladies of the Lake. In revealing the pagan roots of many Christian figures, stories, and rituals, Walter provides a new understanding of the evolution of religious belief.

Author : George Every
Publisher : Hamlyn (UK)
ISBN 13 : 9780600316015
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Mythology written by George Every and published by Hamlyn (UK). This book was released on 1970-01-01 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elaborately illustrated text depicts various legends and superstitious beliefs surrounding the Old and New Testaments.

Author : Gregory A. Boyd
Publisher : HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN 13 : 031056591X
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Myth of a Christian Nation written by Gregory A. Boyd and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2009-05-18 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The church was established to serve the world with Christ-like love, not to rule the world. It is called to look like a corporate Jesus, dying on the cross for those who crucified him, not a religious version of Caesar. It is called to manifest the kingdom of the cross in contrast to the kingdom of the sword. Whenever the church has succeeded in gaining what most American evangelicals are now trying to get – political power – it has been disastrous both for the church and the culture. Whenever the church picks up the sword, it lays down the cross. The present activity of the religious right is destroying the heart and soul of the evangelical church and destroying its unique witness to the world. The church is to have a political voice, but we are to have it the way Jesus had it: by manifesting an alternative to the political, “power over,” way of doing life. We are to transform the world by being willing to suffer for others – exercising “power under,” not by getting our way in society – exercising “power over.”

Author : Alan Watts
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807013755
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Myth and Ritual In Christianity written by Alan Watts and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1971-06-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Our main object will be to describe one of the most incomparably beautiful myths that has ever flowered from the mind of man, or from the unconscious processes which shape it and which are in some sense more than man.… This is, furthermore, to be a description and not a history of Christian Mythology.… After description, we shall attempt an interpretation of the myth along the general lines of the philosophia perennis, in order to bring out the truly catholic or universal character of the symbols, and to share the delight of discovering a fountain of wisdom in a realm where so many have long ceased to expect anything but a desert of platitudes.” —from the Prologue

Author : Chrystine Trooien
Publisher : Mascot Books
ISBN 13 : 9781631775239
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Mythology for Kids written by Chrystine Trooien and published by Mascot Books. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The famous Bible stories are explored through a secular lens, providing secular families a guide to modern Christianity."--Publisher website.

Author : John Mackinnon Robertson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 518 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christianity and Mythology written by John Mackinnon Robertson and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Brigham Leatherbee
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
ISBN 13 : 1465608621
Total Pages : 103 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Christian Mythology written by Brigham Leatherbee and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That Christianity, as to-day presented by the orthodox, is far different from the Christianity promulgated by the early fathers, few are so blinded as to doubt. Christianity, like all other religions, came not into the world full-grown, but from the simple conceptions of its early followers became gradually elaborated by the introduction of pagan forms and customs until it supplanted its early rivals and gave its adherents a compact and solid theology not very different from that of its predecessors. However, before considering the genealogy of Christianity, or its heirlooms from paganism, let us turn our attention to what were presumably the beginnings of the religious views of mankind. Probably the true source of that human characteristic which is defined as the religious instinct and which is supposed to be an elevating and moral agent, is to be found in the superstition which originated in fear of the unknown. The first ages of human life were so devoted to the animal needs that little attention was given to anything else, but later the craving for protection and help from some power greater than himself led primitive man to look about him for something to sustain and aid him in his struggle for existence. Surrounded by natural phenomena of which he could give no explanation satisfactory to his experience, he came to the conclusion that he was in an environment permeated with bodiless intelligences who governed these matters by supernatural power. Awed to fear by the inexplicable workings of nature, he sought to propitiate the spiritual agencies by bribes, and he did all things for them which he thought would be agreeable to them to keep them in good-natured interest or indifference toward him. And, naturally, he considered that what would be pleasing to himself would be pleasing to them. Therefore, his offerings and his conduct towards these spirits were such as he would have desired shown toward himself. Death and its imitation, sleep, being the greatest mysteries confronting him, he naturally began to consider the spirits of the dead, with whom he seemed to have intercourse in his dreams, as being influential factors in his career; and thus originated ancestor-worship with its highly-developed rites and sacrifices, which in a modified form still exists in the Roman church in the practice of reading masses for the souls of the dead. At the same time, noticing the great benefits derived from the warmth of the sun, to whose rays he owed his subsistence and whose glorious and awful presence was constantly before him, man began to feel grateful to that mighty power which was the source of all his welfare, and, appreciating that all terrestrial life depended upon it, he came to recognize it as the great creative power.

Author : Andrew McGillivray
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110625385
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Influences of Pre-Christian Mythology and Christianity on Old Norse Poetry written by Andrew McGillivray and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál serves as a representation of early pagan beliefs or myths and as a myth itself; the poem performs both of these functions, acting as a poetic framework and functioning as sacred myth. In this study, the author looks closely at the journey of the Norse god Óðinn to the hall of the ancient and wise giant Vafþrúðnir, where Óðinn craftily engages his adversary in a life-or-death contest in knowledge.

Author : Gábor Klaniczay
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9637326766
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology written by Gábor Klaniczay and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-10 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second volume of a series of three, containing seventeen essays of altogether forty-three articles based on the topics of the interdisciplinary conference held on "Demons, spirits, and witches" in Budapest. Recognized historians, ethnologists, folklorists coming from four continents present the latest research findings on the relationship, coexistence and conflicts of popular belief systems, Judeo-Christian mythology and demonology in medieval and modern Europe. After a first volume, published in 2005, on "Communicating with the Spirits", the studies in the present volume examine the manifold interchanges between learned and popular culture, and its repercussions on magical belief-system and the changing figure of the witch. Book jacket.

Author : Jesse Curtis
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479809411
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Myth of Colorblind Christians written by Jesse Curtis and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how Christian colorblindness expanded white evangelicalism and excluded Black evangelicals In the decades after the civil rights movement, white Americans turned to an ideology of colorblindness. Personal kindness, not systemic reform, seemed to be the way to solve racial problems. In those same decades, a religious movement known as evangelicalism captured the nation’s attention and became a powerful political force. In The Myth of Colorblind Christians, Jesse Curtis shows how white evangelicals’ efforts to grow their own institutions created an evangelical form of whiteness, infusing the politics of colorblindness with sacred fervor. Curtis argues that white evangelicals deployed a Christian brand of colorblindness to protect new investments in whiteness. While black evangelicals used the rhetoric of Christian unity to challenge racism, white evangelicals repurposed this language to silence their black counterparts and retain power, arguing that all were equal in Christ and that Christians should not talk about race. As white evangelicals portrayed movements for racial justice as threats to Christian unity and presented their own racial commitments as fidelity to the gospel, they made Christian colorblindness into a key pillar of America’s religio-racial hierarchy. In the process, they anchored their own identities and shaped the very meaning of whiteness in American society. At once compelling and timely, The Myth of Colorblind Christians exposes how white evangelical communities avoided antiracist action and continue to thrive today.