Birth of a Worldview: Early Christianity in Its Jewish and Pagan Context

Every religion represents a worldview, an account of human beings and their place in the world, of birth and death, of pain and suffering, of wealth and poverty, of injustice and war. At the dawn of the Christian era, the first Christian intellectuals wrestled with these questions, and in Birth of a Worldview, Robert Doran tells the story of how they worked to make their world comprehensible. Amid much internal strife, amid the competing worldviews of Hellenistic paganism and early Judaism, figures from Justin Martyr to Saint Augustine hammered out what became the worldview that dominated thought in the Christian West for a millennium. By illuminating the varieties of views within the early church and the rich cultural environment in which these views were contested, Doran reveals a fascinating process that might well have turned out dramatically differently. In this high-stakes game, heretics were simply the losers. Among the many riches or this book are the review of the role of women, the documentation of the vitality and influence of Jewish intellectual thought, and the continuing impact of Greek intellectual thought during Christianity's formative years. In addition, Doran's generous and effective use of long passages from a wide range of original sources gives his account a freshness and authenticity not to be found in other accounts of this period. Birth of a Worldview is a breakthrough study of the first Christian intellectuals. Scholarly and engaging throughout, it will attract a wide range of scholars, students, and general readers in religious studies and ancient history.