A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

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Destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality” ( Los Angeles Times )— Tattoos on the Heart is a series of parables about kinship and redemption from pastor, activist, and renowned speaker, Father Gregory Boyle—now in paperback. It’s a formidable task to read it, but it’s very readable, because although Gibbon was humourless about himself, he has a tremendous sense of humour about the rest of the world. This classic biography was first published thirty years ago and has since established itself as the standard account of Saint Augustine's life and teaching. I am a lay theologian and have worked with most dioceses of the Church of England but now am a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral where I oversee Theology, Learning, and Art in the life of the Cathedral. Generations of users attest to its status as the best one-volume Bible reference tool for any home, library, or classroom.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, with twenty new essays and introductions and others--as well as annotations--fully revised, offers the reader flexibility for any learning style. The popular and distinguished Oxford historian, Diarmaid MacCulloch, recommends books that will help you make a start.It's about time that someone wrote church history that tells about people, not just about "eras" and "ages.

Whereas MacCulloch provides the “big picture” of Christian history, Ehrman targets the first centuries of Christianity—those centuries so critical to current debates about gender and lay roles in churches—to help us understand what we don’t understand about holy texts, especially ones that never made it into Christian Bible. Lewis, who was once an atheist, has been on both sides of the table, and he approaches the notion of God with accessible, clear thinking. The book is "a landmark in its field, astonishing in its range, compulsively readable, full of insight even for the most jaded professional and of illumination for the interested general reader. This thoroughly revised and substantially updated edition contains the best scholarship informed by recent discoveries and anchored in the solid Study Bible tradition. After all my reading—of the book, the front-matter, the blurbs, the “About the Author”—I still have no idea about Kelly’s religious stripe.The recognition that right now I have a choice either to do right or to do wrong, to be selfish or to be selfless, to please God or offend Him.