Are there always good reasons to get out of bed in the morning? This book argues that there are, citing the line of poetry from Virgil’s Aeneid that is inscribed at the World Trade Center memorial: ‘No day shall erase you from the memory of time’. It traces fascinating parallels between the role played in the Aeneid by deceitful gods and the role played in the Bible by a deceitful Devil, and explains how Jesus, respecting our free will, offers us eternal happiness, but refuses to convert us by force.

Jesus Christ is arguably the most famous man who ever lived. His image adorns countless churches, icons, and paintings. He is the subject of millions of statues, sculptures, devotional objects and works of art. Everyone can conjure an image of Jesus: usually as a handsome, white man with flowing locks and pristine linen robes. But what did Jesus really look like? Is our popular image of Jesus overly westernized and untrue to historical reality? This question continues to fascinate. Leading Christian Origins scholar Joan E. Taylor surveys the historical evidence, and the prevalent image of Jesus in art and culture, to suggest an entirely different vision of this most famous of men. He may even have had short hair.

In this groundbreaking book, Dennis R. MacDonald offers an entirely new view of the New Testament gospel of Mark. The author of the earliest gospel was not writing history, nor was he merely recording tradition, MacDonald argues. Close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad and that he wanted his readers to recognise the Homeric antecedents in Mark's story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes. Much like Odysseus, Mark's Jesus sails the seas with uncomprehending companions, encounters preternatural opponents, and suffers many things before confronting rivals who have made his house a den of thieves. In his death and burial, Jesus emulates Hector, although unlike Hector Jesus leaves his tomb empty. Mark's minor characters, too, recall Homeric predecessors: Bartimaeus emulates Tiresias; Joseph of Arimathea, Priam; and the women at the tomb, Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache. And, entire episodes in Mark mirror Homeric episodes, including stilling the sea, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, the Triumphal E

The diversity of the world's religions has come to the West, but believers are often ill-equipped for any kind of serious engagement with non-Christians. In Encountering World Religions, professor and author Irving Hexham introduces all the world's major religious traditions in a brief and understandable way. Hexham outlines key beliefs and practices in each religion, while also providing guidance on how to think critically about them from the standpoint of Christian theology. African, yogic, and Abrahamic traditions are all covered. Accessible and clear, Encountering World Religions will provide formal and lay students alike with a useful Christian introduction to the major faiths of our world.

Abandoning monolithic approaches and embracing the possibility of inconsistencies and incongruities in Greek thought, behaviour, and culture, this book investigates how ancient Greeks could validate the complementarity of dissonant, if not contradictory, representations in e.g.polytheism, theodicy, divine omnipotence and ruler cult.

The first volume of the series addresses the more essential questions concerning Islamic faith: e.g. God and the nature of His existence; can islam solve every problem? Did Prophet Muhammad write the Qur'an Subjects like the Prophethood, Satan, etc. are also examined.

This book has grown out of lectures upon the historical Jesus given in a good many cities of India during the winter of 1915-16. Here and there are incorporated passages (rehandled) from articles that have appeared in the Conservative quarterly, the Nation, the Expositor, and elsewhere. cf. Pref.