Ancient Christianities
The First Five Hundred Years
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Ancient Christianities
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Narrated by:
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Rachel Perry
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By:
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Paula Fredriksen
About this listen
How, over the course of five centuries, one particular god and one particular Christianity came to dominate late Roman imperial politics and piety
The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities, Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople.
The New Testament, as we know it, represents only a small selection of the many gospels, letters, acts of apostles, and revelations that circulated before the establishment of the imperial church. It tells how the gospel passed from Jesus, to the apostles, thence to Paul. But by using our peripheral vision, by looking to noncanonical and paracanonical texts, by availing ourselves of information derived from papyri, inscriptions, and archaeology, we can see a different, richer, much less linear story emerging. Fredriksen brings together these many sources to reconstruct the lively interactions of pagans, Jews, and Christians, tracing the conversions of Christianity from an energetic form of Jewish messianism to an arm of the late Roman state.
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- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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What was the apostle Paul's relationship to Judaism? How did he view the Jewish law? How did he understand the gospel of Jesus's messiahship relative to both ethnic Jews and gentiles? These remain perennial questions both to New Testament scholars and to all serious Bible readers. Respected New Testament scholar Matthew Thiessen offers an important contribution to this discussion. A Jewish Paul is an accessible introduction that situates Paul clearly within first-century Judaism, not opposed to it.
By: Matthew Thiessen
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The Shortest History of France
- From Roman Gaul to Revolution and Cultural Radiance: A Global Story for Our Times
- By: Colin Jones
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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As nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric surge in France (and elsewhere), The Shortest History of France presents a portrait of a nation whose politics and society have always been shaped by global forces. Grounded in up-to-date historical scholarship that avoids the traps of national exceptionalism, Jones reminds us that it was only after the first millennium of French history that a nation-state began to emerge.
By: Colin Jones
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The McKinley Years
- The Life and Times of Our 25th President
- By: Christopher Kenney
- Narrated by: Scott R. McKinley
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The McKinley Years: The Life and Times of our 25th President utilizes the rich resources of the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum archives. Through photos and documents only available at the museum, Christopher Kenney paints a picture of not only William McKinley the President but William McKinley the man. This book explores McKinley's early years, service in the Civil War, family life, and his rise from lawyer to Congressman, to Governor, and finally to the highest office in the land.
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Miracles and Wonder
- The Historical Mystery of Jesus
- By: Elaine Pagels
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I had high hopes for this title
- By Christine on 04-02-25
By: Elaine Pagels
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American Laughter, American Fury
- Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850
- By: Eran A. Zelnik
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Eran A. Zelnik offers a cultural history of early America that shows how humor among white men served to define and construct not only whiteness and masculinity but also American political culture and democracy more generally. Zelnik traces the emerging bonds of affinity that white male settlers in North America cultivated through their shared, transformative experience of mirth. This humor—a category that includes not only jokes but also play, riot, revelry, and mimicry—shaped the democratic and anti-elitist sensibilities of Americans.
By: Eran A. Zelnik
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After Jesus, Before Christianity
- A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements
- By: Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott, Hal Taussig, and others
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent and informative
- By Claire Z. on 04-17-22
By: Erin Vearncombe, and others
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What Is Ancient History?
- By: Walter Scheidel
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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It's easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity's pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.
By: Walter Scheidel
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Journeys of the Mind
- A Life in History
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age.
By: Peter Brown
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Pagans
- The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity
- By: James J. O'Donnell
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4 out of 5 stars 83
Pagans explores the rise of Christianity from a surprising and unique viewpoint: that of the people who witnessed their ways of life destroyed by what seemed then a powerful religious cult. These "pagans" were actually pious Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Gauls, who observed the traditions of their ancestors. To these devout polytheists, Christians who worshiped only one deity were immoral atheists who believed that a splash of water on the deathbed could erase a lifetime of sin.
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1 out of 5 stars
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19th Century Scholarship
- By Marianne on 10-16-18
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Jesus Wars
- How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years
- By: Philip Jenkins
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
In this fascinating account of the surprisingly violent fifth-century church, Philip Jenkins describes how political maneuvers by a handful of powerful characters shaped Christian doctrine. Were it not for these battles, today's church could be teaching something very different about the nature of Jesus, and the papacy as we know it would never have come into existence. Jesus Wars reveals the profound implications of what amounts to an accident of history: that one faction of Roman emperors and militia-wielding bishops defeated another.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Intellectualism (Academia)
- By No to Statism on 06-15-21
By: Philip Jenkins
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Mediterranean Sweep
- The USAAF in the Italian Campaign
- By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
With the defeat of the Germans and Italians on Sicily in mid-July 1943, the focus of the war in the air shifted toward the battle for the Italian mainland itself. This campaign took place in the context of the coming invasion of northwest Europe, with many of the best units from the North African and Sicilian campaigns withdrawn to prepare for the new front, while those units that remained had a lower priority for replacements of men and material.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mediterranean Sweep
- By Ross Gordon on 03-27-25
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Honor Thy Fathers
- Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers
- By: Zachary Garris
- Narrated by: Benjamin Garrett
- Length: 3 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story5 out of 5 stars 6
Calvin. Luther. Knox. Vermigli. In recent years, the Reformed world has seen a resurgence of interest in recovering the doctrinal work of these men and others from the shadows of centuries gone by. This work of retrieval often requires courage, as we modern heirs of the Reformers inevitably discover that some of what we thought to be “Reformed” proved to be theological novelty in the face of the primary sources. We often discover that 19th- and 20th-century social movements and cultural pressures have successfully smuggled their ideas into the bedrock of our thinking.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great analysis of modern day application of 5th commandment
- By Jordan on 05-08-25
By: Zachary Garris
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The Spoils of Time
- A World History from the Dawn of Civilization Through the Early Renaissance
- By: C. V. Wedgwood
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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The Spoils of Time is a concise history of the world in nine chapters, tracing the prehistoric beginnings of early man’s halting steps towards civilization and ending sometime around 1500. The scope is vast, with Wedgwood’s scholarship spanning all the continents. As the author states, her purpose was to create a continuous narrative of human history for her own pleasure and to find out for herself what, if any, interlacing relations might hold us together.
By: C. V. Wedgwood
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The Jewish Gospels
- The Story of the Jewish Christ
- By: Daniel Boyarin
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Guiding us through a rich tapestry of new discoveries and ancient scriptures, The Jewish Gospels makes the powerful case that our conventional understandings of Jesus and of the origins of Christianity are wrong. In Boyarin's scrupulously detailed account, the coming of the messiah was fully imagined in the ancient Jewish texts. Jesus, moreover, was embraced by many Jews as this person, and his core teachings were not at all a break from Jewish beliefs and teachings. Jesus and his followers, Boyarin reveals, were simply Jewish.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Overall review
- By Suzanne Waters on 07-16-22
By: Daniel Boyarin
What listeners say about Ancient Christianities
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jacob Kilgore
- 04-17-25
Among the best
I’ve listened to over a hundred audiobooks between last year and now, and this one has some of the most useful bits of information. Dozens of bookmarks were made for me to check later.
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