The birth of Christianity : discovering what happened in the years immediately after the execution of Jesus

Synopsis

The world's foremost expert and bestselling author on the historical Jesus brilliantly illuminates how the Jesus movement was "resurrected" as Christianity by his companions who made their revolutionary vision and program into a compelling reality.In This Long-Awaited Companion to His Landmark The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan details his groundbreaking account of how Christianity emerged in the period after Jesus' death. Just as Crossan initiated the current "quest for the historical Jesus", he now moves to wholly new territory, revealing how we got from the Jesus who was executed on the cross to the Jesus of the New Testament many decades later.Crossan reveals how Jesus' companions -- men and women -- bravely expanded their movement by creating communities, new traditions, and tile earliest Gospels. In the most important book on Christian origins in years, he illuminates the mysterious period of the 30s and 40s, after Jesus and before Paul's letters, that set western history on its decisive course.