Showing titles in History

** THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ** Readers love The Greatest Story Ever Told 'Outstanding. A page-turner with a life-changing message.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review 'This book is incredible. It will speak to believers and non-believers alike.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review 'Wow what a book...

Hidden treasures. Secret societies. War and plunder. You’ve heard the stories, seen the movies, pondered the conspiracy theories. You know that the Knights Templar are said to be connected with the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the Freemasons—even Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. But who were they really?

From the first centuries CE to the present, the question of who wrote the Bible has fascinated readers, theologians, and scholars. While countless viewpoints have circulated, the matter of who wrote the Bible remains a compelling issue. In these 24 eye-opening lectures, Professor Baden takes you deeply into the history of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

In this final volume of the series, John Strickland tells the story of Christendom’s most tumultuous century. As nihilism began to cast its menacing shadow on the eve of the First World War, a self-styled “antichrist” named Friedrich Nietzsche and an obstinately Christian Fyodor Dostoevsky both offered ominous visions of what the West would become if “God is dead” and any moral act thus becomes permissible. Though total warfare seemed to confirm such predictions, a project arose in its wake to rebuild utopia with secular ideologies that, in the case of Nazism, opened the abyss even further.

BLK SHP Scott is a pastor, teacher, and Bible communicator whose work spans the pulpit, the classroom, and the screen. He leads BLK SHP Bible Talk, a teaching ministry built on the conviction that the Bible can withstand every hard question, and that most people have never been shown how deep it actually goes. Dynasty of Slaves is that conviction applied to one of the most consequential and contested chapters in Scripture.

On May 8, 1373, 30-year-old Julian of Norwich, sick and near death, had a series of visions of Christ. In these 16 visions she learnt about God's loving nature. God in Julian's visions was not angry and wrathful. Instead, the three properties of God were presented as life, love and light, and all of His creation was good, including his servant, man. In Julian's version, Man is not to blame for his sin; instead it is something that he must experience and overcome in his spiritual journey with God.

* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * National Book Award Finalist * Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year * New York Times Notable Book “We have long needed a fair-minded overview of this vitally important religious sensibility, and FitzGerald has now provided it”...

Now updated with a new preface by Michael Pollan and an exclusive bonus chapter. This audiobook also includes a foreword written and read by Graham Hancock, the New York Times bestselling author of America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As seen on The...

The success of books such as Elaine Pagels's Gnostic Gospels and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code proves beyond a doubt that there is a tremendous thirst today for finding the hidden truths of Christianity - truths that may have been lost or buried by institutional religion over the last two millennia. In Forbidden Faith, Richard Smoley narrates a popular history of one such truth, the ancient esoteric religion of gnosticism, which flourished between the first and fourth centuries AD, but whose legacy remains even today, having survived secretly throughout the ages. 

Is God a sadistic torturer? Coldhearted judge? Genocidal maniac? Unfortunately, our popular caricatures often make him out to be. God has some skeletons in the closet. At least, that's what many of us fear. "How can a loving God send people to hell?" "Isn't it arrogant to believe Jesus is the only way to God?" "What is up with holy war in the Old Testament?" These are difficult questions that our family, our friends, our culture - even we ourselves - are asking.

This extraordinary document represents a new form of historical research and straightens out many open questions and misinterpretations. It takes the form of direct dialogues between a modern researcher and a member of the Qumran Essene community. Alive around the time of Christ, this community has become the focus of ideas about the connection of Jesus' teachings to earlier traditions.

In this magisterial history, Raymond Ibrahim chronicles the long and brutal conflict between Islam and the West through the eyes and lives of Christendom’s original commando forces: the knights of the Temple and Hospital. These warrior monks, whose unprecedented fusion of piety and militancy remains unmatched to this day, played a pivotal—though overlooked if not suppressed—role in defending Christian civilization against the onslaught of Islamic forces during the Crusades and beyond.

Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic, acclaimed history A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years follows the story of Christianity around the globe, from ancient Palestine to contemporary China. How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of...

A New Yorker best book of 2025 'brilliantly inventive'. - Tom Holland 'learned, highly informative and readable'. - Literary Review 'thoughtful, humane and open-minded'. - Kirkus Reviews 'A brilliant book'. - Library Journal 'witty writing'. - The Times 'Hugely accomplished and endlessly...

James was a vegetarian, wore only linen clothing, bathed daily at dawn in cold water, and was a life-long Nazirite. In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenman introduces a startling theory about the identity of James - the brother of Jesus - who was almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament.

The past life memories of two women capture a true and compelling portrait of Jesus the man, from the healing miracles he performed to the gentle philosophy he preached. This is an insider view, direct from Jesus' time, deep in feeling tones and profound in implications, giving a sense of how things truly were.

The Bible is the world's best-known text. Yet, it is a book that never was - its original form does not exist and likely never did. What we have is the inheritance of generation after generation of Christians who have sought to hear God speak. Available in over 3,000 languages and taking innumerable forms, each version is a revelation, evolving as a reflection of its own culture and moment.

These are the words or sayings (Apophthegmata), of various monks (the abbas, i.e. fathers) who lived in the deserts of Egypt between 250 A.D. and 400 A.D. They cover topics such as love, poverty, fasting, humility, and prayer, and there is usually a short story that gives the context of the sayings. These sayings are one of the few surviving records of the first monks such as St. Anthony the Great and St. Pachomius, who followed a strict way of life. Their sole aim was to draw closer to God through their labours.

Step into the armour-clad world of one of history’s most iconic and misunderstood brotherhoods—the Knights Templar. In this compelling and richly detailed exploration, Korey Blathewick unpacks the rise, structure, and ultimate fall of an order that straddled the divine and the deadly. From humble origins guarding pilgrims on the treacherous roads to Jerusalem, the Templars swiftly rose to become elite warriors, international bankers, and spiritual exemplars—answerable only to the Pope and feared by kings.

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.