RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON PETER PAUL AND JAMES
Webmasters Note: Some of these books have been read by the Webmaster or others. These recommendations come from various sources. All are available at Amazon.com. Click on logo above to go to the store.
Upon This Rock: St.
Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church (Modern
Apologetics Library)
by
Stephen K. Ray,
Stephen K. Ray
As an Evangelical Protestant, Stephen Ray realized that the real issue dividing Catholics and Protestants was authority. Everything else was secondary to the issue of authority. Protestants accept the authority of the Bible alone, whereas Catholics understand the authority to be residing in the Magisterium, the Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition. Ray goes through the Scriptures and writings from the first five centuries of the early Church to demonstrate that the early Christians had a clear understanding of the primacy of Peter in the See of Rome. He tackles the tough issues in an attempt to expose how the opposition is misunderstanding the Scriptures and history. He uses many Evangelical Protestant scholars and historians to support the Catholic position. This book contains the most complete compilation of Scriptural and Patristic quotations on the primacy of Peter and the Papal office of any book currently available
Jesus, Peter & the Keys: A Scriptural Handbook on the Papacy
by
Scott Butler,
Norman Dahlgren,
David J. Hess
Editorial by Norman DeWalt.
This book is well worth the read if you are looking for a cogent explanation on the issue of the Petrine Office, the Papacy.
Butler, Dahlgren & Hess divide their book into two halves. The first half is a comprehensive look at the scriptural support for the papacy and doctrines that devolve from it (i.e., papal infallibility, the role of the Church).
The second half of the book is a sampling of many Early Church Fathers and how they perceived the Petrine Office. In short, it is a quite compelling presentation in that the view of the Early Church Fathers, as presented, is the same view the Church promotes today.
This is the best book that I have found on the issue of the Papacy. If anyone is struggling with the issue of authority in the Church, this is the first book I would recommend not just because of its content but also because it is written in a very easy style.
Paul: The Founder of
Christianity
by
Gerd Ludemann
New Testament scholar Gerd Ludemann continues his exploration of the life
and teaching of Paul in this groundbreaking monograph, which synthesizes the
research of his earlier books on Christianity's leading apostle. Ludemann comes
to the conclusion that Paul should be considered not only Christianity's most
influential proselytizer, but in truth deserves the title of the founder of the
religion that ostensibly originated with Jesus of Nazareth. Though other
scholars have previously made the point that Paul's interpretation of the
Christian message actually obscured the original teachings of Jesus, Ludemann
goes further. His painstaking historical research shows that Paul created the
major tenets of the Christianity we know today and that his theology--an
original synthesis of Hebrew and Greek belief systems--differs significantly
from what we now know the historical Jesus to have preached.
This brilliant exegesis, based on twenty-five years of research by a leading New
Testament scholar with an unwavering commitment to historical accuracy, presents
a message rarely heard from any pulpit but one that churches can no longer
honestly ignore.
About the Author
Gerd Ludemann is professor of the history and literature of early Christianity
at the University of Gottingen, Germany, and the author of many books and
articles on the origins of Christianity including JESUS AFTER 2000 YEARS and THE
GREAT DECEPTION: AND WHAT JESUS REALLY SAID AND DID
Webmaster's Note: There are almost 800 books about Paul listed in Amazon.com's catalogue. My two choices are based on comments from others and one of them I have read. As one book editor points out there are almost as many books on Paul as Jesus.
Book Description
It begins on the road to Damascus, in a moment graven on the consciousness of
Western civilization. "Saul, Saul," asks the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, "why
persecutest thou me?" From this experience, and from the response of the Jewish
merchant later known as Paul, springs the Christian Church as we know it today.
For as A. N. Wilson makes clear in this astonishing and gripping narrative,
Christianity without Paul is quite literally nothing. Jesus, with the layers of
scholarship and ceremony stripped away, is a fastidious and fervent Jew who will
lead his followers into a stricter, purer observance of Judaism; it is Paul who
will claim divinity for him, who will transform him into the Messiah, center of
an entirely new religion. In Wilson's astute narrative, we see Paul negotiating
the dangerous political currents of the Roman Empire, making converts, and
writing the great epistles that define our understanding of Christ and of the
sublime paradoxes of his teaching. What drove Paul? What would he think of what
his church has become? The answers lie in Wilson's extraordinary biography,
which lays bare the psychological journey of Christianity's true inventor
From Booklist
The apostle Paul is one of the great question marks of Christianity. What really
happened on the road to Damascus to make this self-proclaimed persecutor of
Jesus' followers become one himself? And what compelled him to take the nascent
religion to the Gentiles? Moreover, did he realize that he was forming and
shaping a religious movement that says more about his own speculations than it
does about the ideas of Jesus? Almost as many books have been written about Paul
as about Jesus, but Paul's biographers have much more to go on, especially his
own writings. Wilson, author of Jesus: A Life (1992), does a tremendous job here
of not only examining all that is known about Paul's life but also putting it
into context with what was happening throughout the Roman Empire. As always,
Wilson's insights fascinate and provoke. Even as rich and incisive a portrait as
this one cannot provide a complete understanding of Paul or the turbulent time
in which he lived, but readers will come away seeing the enigmatic apostle as an
imaginative transformer who shaped a worldwide religious movement, often in
furious contrast to the man on whom it is supposedly based. Ilene Cooper --This
text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
In a worthy companion volume to his Jesus: A Life (1992), novelist-biographer
Wilson (A Watch in the Night, 1996, etc.) adeptly recreates the milieu of
Christianity's greatest interpreter and missionary. An ex-believer no longer
certain about Christianity's historical verities, Wilson is still awed by its
power to speak to a broken world. Contrary to the recent, politically correct
view of the apostle as a misogynistic, possibly self-hating homosexual, Wilson
makes a case for him as ``a prophet of liberty, whose visionary sense of the
importance of the inner life anticipates the Romantic poets more than the
rule-books of the Inquisition.'' The author works through irony and carefully
nuanced suggestion, turning over each shard of broken evidence from the ancient
world for a clue as to how Paul's ``richly imaginative, but confused, religious
genius'' developed. His Paul could spread Jesus' message almost to the limits of
the then-known world because he himself embodied a world of contradictions:
Hellenized Jew and Roman citizen; a member of Jerusalem's temple police used to
seeing horrifying crucifixions, who eventually made the crucified and
resurrected Christ the compelling figure of his thought. The biographer,
synthesizing much of the latest Roman and Judaic scholarship, establishes an
excellent context for the world in which Paul moved: Tarsus, Paul's putative
birthplace, where Mithraic rites and the worship of Herakles may have left
lasting impressions on his theology; a Palestine seething with sects maneuvering
against the Roman Empire; and a Rome growing ruthless toward this growing
nationalist unrest. This is not a Paul setting down rules for all time, but one
counseling followers to stay pure for the day of judgment they will see soon.
Wilson overstates the case for Paul, rather than Jesus, creating the beliefs in
the Eucharist and in Christ as savior that form the heart of Christianity, but
he eloquently shows why Paul was ``perhaps the greatest poet of personal
religion.'' (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights
reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this
title.
PAUL THE CONVERT:
Alan F. Segal
Dr. Segal has taken a revisionist view of Saint Paul by describing his life and thinking through is his Jewishness. Your webmaster read this book and finds partially successful. Segal maintains that Paul is best look at as a Jew and not as one of the first Christian. Other comments below.
Douglas Ward: In this 1990 work by Alan Segal, the author argues that the best way to understand Paul is by using the conversion language prevalent in the first century. Largely reacting to the writings of Krister Stendahl and E.P. Sanders, Segal writes that Paul did in fact undergo a conversion. This conversion was not an emotional or crisic experience, but was demonstrated in Paul's willing change of social setting. So Paul then, a Jew, lives as a non-observant in a Gentile community.
Segal uses this distinction to explain the struggle that Paul had with opponents in his letters. While Segal finds that conversions did occur in the first century, Paul's problems started in earnest when he tried to reconcile the observant and non-observant wings of the church. Segal's thesis is that Jews supported the idea of converting Gentiles, but were repulsed by non-observnt Gentiles and observant Jews worshipping TOGETHER.
The weakness of this work in its tendency to describe Paul as a kind of first-century religious quester. A position that does not fit with the self-description of the man in his letters. It is also a bit unnecessarily long, especially in the first 70 pages or so, when Segal spends much space describing the religious attitudes of various religions in the first century. Much of this does not apply to his larger argument, and provides detail for the sake of detail. It is, however, an excellent examination of the sociological implications of Paul and his work. A worthy read for any student of Paul and his literature.
Webmaster's Note: Our Study of James, Brother of Jesus (Also called, the Just) is really just beginning but has been heated up lately with the discovery of a first century Ossuary box (bone box) with the Aramaic inscription "James, son of Joseph Brother of Jesus." His role as the founder of the Jerusalem Church has never been attacked but several scholars are now giving him the role as first founder of the pre-Pauline church. Controversy rages over that.
I have read the first book below...it is a rough read being over 1000 pages long and requires patients and putting it down for a while. His writing style is complex and often obtuse. You will also need a copy of the Bible, especially the book of Acts, the histories of Josephus, Recognition by Saint Clement, and a translation of the Dead Seas Scrolls all of which you can download from the web.,
James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets
of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls
by
Robert Eisenman and his new book (2007) The New Testament Code.
From Kirkus Reviews
Gripping but partisan conjectures from Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Eisenman (Middle
East Religions/ California State Univ.), arguing that St. James is the missing
link between Judaism and a supposed pre-Pauline Christianity. Although James is
called the brother of Jesus and surnamed ``the Just'' (or ``the Righteous''), he
has a relatively minor role in the New Testament. For Eisenman, the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls opens up the background of events preceding the destruction
of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, revealing a world of highly
nationalistic and apocalyptic Jewish sects that were bitterly opposed to Gentile
influence and in which James was prominent. Eisenman argues that Christianity
was originally one of these groups, closely linked with the Essenes. James was,
Eisenman suggests, a leader of the Jerusalem Christians and represented the
authentic succession to Jesus, a continuity that was obliterated by the Roman
destruction of the city in 72 a.d. Eisenman hypothesizes an aboriginal
Christianity marked by scrupulous adherence to the Torah and standing in
complete contrast to St. Paul's universalism, grace, and freedom from Jewish
law. In this scenario, Paul is James's bitter antagonist: It was Paul who
transformed a zealot movement into a Hellenistic mystery religion acceptable to
the Roman imperium. That Christianity, albeit ``Pauline,'' was tailored to
first-century Roman tastes will strike many readers as a paradox. Eisenman
reaches his conclusions by exploring literary parallels and lacunae in the New
Testament, the Scrolls, and contemporary literature, a methodology colored by
the author's historical approach to Jesus and the New Testament, which denies
the supernatural and can shed a negative light on Christianity and its founders.
Eisenman's historical reconstruction makes for fascinating reading, but it never
takes us beyond the realm of the merely plausible. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus
Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover
edition.
Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition
(Personalities of the New Testament Series)
by
John Painter,
D. Moody Smith (Editor
From Library Journal
Painter (theology, St. Mark's Theological Centre, Canberra, Australia) has taken
on the same task here as Robert Eisenman in his James, the Brother of Jesus: The
Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (LJ
1/97): to rescue James the Just from the obscurity that history forced on him.
For both authors, the stream of early Christianity that became orthodoxy
suppressed the true importance of James. Painter sees traditions outside of and
later than the New Testament (Eusebius and Gnostic and apocryphal writings) as
providing a corrective and thus reads the gospels, Acts, and epistles in light
of them. However, he does not appeal to the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, he takes
issue with Eisenman's identification of James with the scrolls' Teacher of
Righteousness (and Paul the Apostle with "the spouter of lies"). Painter may
find more readers agreeing with him than does Eisenman, because he doesn't
stretch the imagination quite so far, but not all will want to stretch even this
far. Lacking the passion of Eisenman's, this work is more appropriate for
acadmic collections.?Craig W. Beard, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
Book Description
Just James provides a fascinating treatment of Jesus' brother based on all the
ancient sources: New Testament, early church fathers, Nag Hammadi codices, and
other early Christian writings. Painter evaluates the importance of this
towering figure of the early church whose contributions have been obscured from
the consciousness of modern Christianity. The author explores James'
relationship to Jesus, Mary's perpetual virginity, James' receipt of special
revelations from the risen Lord, and his status as one of the first martyrs of
the church
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