Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The River of God A New History of Christian Origins by Gregory J. Riley ISBN 13: 9780060669799. The River of God: A New History of Christian Origins. Riley, Gregory J. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. In this powerful and persuasive work trailblazing historian Gregory Riley traces the origins of Christianity beyond its familiar sources in Judaism and in the Hebrew Bible. journeying off the beaten path, Riley reveals other, lesser-known sources -- elements of Greek philosophy and science, Zoroastrianism, and the religions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. "From the very beginning," writes Riley, "there were several varieties of Christians." The differences were greater, perhaps, than those seen in the Christianity of today. Dozens of sects arose in different cities of the first- century Greco-Roman world, all claiming to be the religion of the risen Christ. Ultimately, these early, doctrinally disparate Christianities led to the present-day diversity of the Church. Moving from the origins of Christianity to understanding Christianity, this remarkable book guides the reader through five major areas at the core of Christian faith. The rise of monotheism. The subsequent development of Christian Trinitarianism. The evolution of the Devil and eschatology. The development and the consequences of the concept of body and soul for humans. The meaning of Jesus as savior. In straightforward, accessible prose, Riley shows how an enriched understanding of Christianity can uncover new truths and new pathways to faith. Likening the history of Christianity to a great river, Riley illustrates the ebb and flow of the relationship between God and humanity over the centuries. There are contributions from each side, divine and human, in a relationship that stretches over thousands of years, from before the dawn of writing to the time of the early Christians, and beyond. The River of God is an original and masterly exploration of how the beliefs and experience of early Christianity evolved among its early adherents. Weaving historical, theological, scientific, and social developments and insights, Gregory Riley distills the history of Christianity into a superbly readable volume that has profound implications for both its present and future. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Believing in Jesus means so many different things to so many people that it's difficult, if not impossible, to define the true essence of Christianity. The differences between a charismatic Baptist hymnal, for instance, and a high-church Anglican communion merely scratch the surface of the many varieties of Christian belief. The River of God reminds readers that Christian belief has always been wildly diverse, and that Christianity was preceded and informed by many ancient cultural traditions. This is the point made by author Gregory J. Riley, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in California and the author of One Jesus, Many Christs . Riley's prose is mostly uncomplicated, and his metaphorical argument is fairly clear: many cultural streams converged to form the river of God, and material from those streams built up the delta of Christianity. But this book is not, as its subtitle claims, "A New History of Christian Origins." It is primarily a reworking of a familiar and amply documented fact, made popular by the work of Elaine Pagels and Jack Miles, among others: Christianity did not spring into being independent from its cultural context. Like life, it evolved, and continues to evolve. Though not original, Riley's point does bear repeating. Its repetition cultivates Christian humility, by helping to remind us that everyone in history who has ever learned to live well--including, or perhaps especially, Jesus--has learned largely by paying attention to the world around him. --Michael Joseph Gross. Historical Jesus Theories: Gregory Riley. The purpose of this web page is to explain and explore some of the theories offered up by contemporary scholars on the historical Jesus and the origins of the Christian religion. Issues include the nature of the historical Jesus, the nature of the early Christian documents, and the origins of the Christian faith in a risen Jesus Christ. Gregory Riley. (Harper San Francisco 2001) (Fortress Pr 1997) (Fortress Pr 1995) From the title of One Jesus, Many Christs , one might expect three themes in the text: the first theme is the identity of the one and only historical Jesus, the second theme is the diversity of Christian images of Christ, and the third theme is how one gets from the former to the latter. Instead, we find that the first and third themes are missing entirely. The book by Riley is solely about the different ways in which early Christians viewed Christ and particularly in how these views of Christ are all based on the model of the Hellenistic hero. Riley concludes his first chapter with these words (p. 14): "The story of Jesus was the story of a kind and righteous man, a man from God, the son of God, whatever was meant by the phrase, who followed the will of God against evil to the death and thereby not only gained resurrection for himself, but could offer it to others who would do the same. And in so doing, the early Christians brought new meaning to the word 'martyr.' I think that Tertullian was right: the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. That is the kind of energy necessary to start a world religion and call forth the commitment that requires one's whole life. That energy is ofund in only one place in the Greco-Roman world - in the tales of the heroes that had been told for a thousand years. The very culture was founded on them, and the people lived and died imitating them. For those who heard the story of Jesus in the ancient world, whichever doctrinal form it came to them in, Jesus was a hero. He was also, of course, many other things to his followers far more familiar to us arising out the many doctrinal formulations. But why the story of Jesus was able to inspire so many people in the ancient world, why they imitated him and followed him to the grave, was that, in some way lost to us, he was their hero." Chapter 3 of the book is quite valuable, in which Riley explains "The Story of the Hero and the Ideals of Antiquity." Riley begins with an exploration of the different types of living beings according to Plutarch and Hesiod. Hesiod combined the story of the Four Ages of gold silver, bronze, and iron with the concept of the types of living beings: gods, daimones, heroes, humans, and animals. According to Hesiod, gods and humans came from the same source, and the Golden race was happy and favored by the gods. Hesiod says that the souls of those living in the Golden age became daimones, "agents of Zeus who now invisibly watch over human affairs, kindly spirits who guard and deliver us from harm (Works and Days, 122-24)" (p. 33). The daimon was not to be seen as purely evil until the rise of dualism after the Exile in intertestamental Jewish literature. After the golden age comes the silver age and the bronze age, which are successively more unhappy and violent. The bronze age destroys itself, and instead of leading to a further degeneration (in line with the ANE myth of the Four Ages), there comes the Age of Heroes: "they are not degenerates, but righteous demigods, literally hemitheoi, 'half gods,' again to be ruled over by Kronos in his new capacity as sovereign of the blessed afterlife. Yet they are curiously human like ourselves; they fight the battles and suffer the pains and death of the famous epics of Greece, the battles of Thebes and the Trojan War. These are the classical heroes of antiquity." (p. 34) After the age of heroes, comes the age in which we live, the worst of all ages, known as the Age of Iron. Yet, according to the myth, the age to come will be a return to the Golden Age. Riley notes that the hero is typically "the offspring of the union between divine and human parents," as reflected in Greek literature and even in Gen. 6:4. The hero is known to be a person of remarkable talent, such as a Homer or Alexander the Great. The fate of the hero is interwoven with the fate of the hero's people; "their very genetics placed them in the mids of destiny on a larger-than-human scale" (p. 43). Continuing his exploration of the hero in Greek culture, particularly in the Illiad, Riley notes: "This choice to die for principle and with honor became one of the most famous heroic events to be imitated in the entire tradition." (p. 47) And Riley says: "The issue of destiny, often fatal destiny, points to another aspect of the heroic career - heroes have divine enemies." Riley observes that heroes have rulers as human enemies and that the rulers who abuse the hero bring suffering on their cities (such as Troy and Thebes in Greek legend, or Jerusalem in Christian). Riley states: "Common to all stories of heroes is the test of character - the critical situation that is the hero's destiny and shows forth the true character of the soul," as is most obvious in the choice of Heracles between Vice and Virtue and subsequently in the labors (p. 51). Riley claims: "The fate in which the hero is bound while alive often forms a complex pattern of divine justice in which the gods themselves are partners: the hero suffers humiliation, privation, and even death as a kind of bait in a larger divine trap designed to catch and destroy the wicked." Riley points out the example of Odysseus, whose wanderings eventually led to the destruction of the wicked suitors. Riley also argues that the hero dies "in the prime of life, in the midst of the very test, the crisis for which they were destined" (p. 54). The prize of immortality is a theme among some stories of heroes: "One may see here the concept that among the ancient heroes suffering led to a prize. The prize for Heracles was immortality, but for the rest of us, in spite of the assurances of the philosophers, the prize was an uncertain remembrance of bravery among our friends and family, or perhaps nothing at all." (p. 58) The hero could act as an intermediary: "What remained after death was the right of the hero to stand on behalf of his or her worshipers who themselves passed the test. This was true because through death the hero became a transformed being." (p. 58) Riley also notes: "Heroes not only offered help - their stories also provided understanding of the proper modes of action. They were models, examples, and ideals." (p. 59) This sums up the concept of the hero. Riley boldly declares: "If one is not a New Testament scholar, one may see with little difficulty from the preceding chapters that stories of the life of Jesus were very much set in the mold of the stories of the ancient heroes." (p. 61) Please enjoy exploring the varied Historical Jesus Theories offered by these authors through the links below. Review of “Resurrection Reconsidered, Thomas and John in Controversy” by Gregory J. Riley, Part 1. According to conservative Christians, Paul believed and taught that Jesus had risen from the dead in a resurrected, transformed body of flesh. His resurrection was not simply of his spirit as some modern liberal theologians would have us believe. In the Resurrection doctrine of conservative/orthodox Christianity, the Resurrection of Jesus was most definitely of his physical body. And not only did Paul believe and teach Jesus’ physical resurrection, according to conservative Christians Paul claimed to have seen the resurrected physical body of Jesus the Christ standing before his very eyes on the Damascus Road. Conservative Christians will tell us that the evidence for Paul’s orthodox views are overwhelming. They will often point to New Testament scholar NT Wright’s 800 plus page “landmark” work, “The Resurrection of the Son of God” for the proof. So I read Wright’s book in 2014. His evidence seemed reasonable. I accepted his scholarship as fact. The apostle Paul believed and taught that Jesus was physically resurrected. But is this true? Let’s review a book by a scholar who takes a very different view on this issue. The title of the book is “Resurrection Reconsidered” by Gregory J. Riley. Riley is Associate Professor of New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont, California. Here is a copy of his bio from the institution’s website: Gregory J. Riley. Dr. Riley has expertise in the culture and religions of the Greco-Roman world and the ancient Near East. His main interests are the relationships between the diverse expressions of Christianity and their cultural context. His most recent book The River of God: A New History of Christian Origins was chosen by the History Book Club as an alternate selection. His book One Jesus, Many Christs was selected by the Book of the Month Club and the British Book of the Month Club as a first choice in Religion. Education. B.A., M.A. – University of California, Los Angeles M.A. – University of California, Santa Barbara M.A., Ph.D. – Harvard University. Gary’s Review: The Introduction. I think that most conservative Christians will find this opening statement from Riley’s introduction quite shocking: “Early Christian missionaries proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus throughout the Roman world not only as the founding event of their own faith but also as the central event in human history. Yet the claim that anyone might rise bodily from the dead was met in the Hellenic world by utter disbelief; it shocked the listeners into ridicule. We are told that the Athenians sneered at the apostle Paul; the philosopher Celsus thought the idea was disgusting and impossible. Even more remarkable, however, was that for the first four hundred years of the movement many Christians, often the most educated and often in the majority, agreed with the opponents. Jerome complained as late as the fifth century that the Eastern Church had written the great ecumenical creed of Constantinople in such a way as to be able to continue to deny the resurrection of the flesh. This opinion, that neither Jesus nor anyone else could rise from the dead in the flesh, had ancient roots in Greco-Roman culture and in earliest Christianity. Representative of such a view was the brand of apostolic Christianity which arose around the figure of the disciple Thomas and is found in the earliest document that bears his name, the Gospel of Thomas .” History. On July 29, 1853, Blessed Pope Pius IX created the Diocese of Portland, then comprising the states of New Hampshire and Maine (excluding the Madawaska region). The origins of the Catholic community in what is now Maine date much earlier than the middle of the 19th century however. In the summer of 1604, Pierre du Guast Sieur de Monts, a Huguenot, founded a mixed colony of about 80 French Catholics and Protestants on Ste. Croix Island (also known as Dochet’s Island) in the Ste. Croix River, not far from present-day Calais. This site was abandoned the following year after about half of the inhabitants, including the priest on the expedition, died during the harsh winter of 1604-1605. Further French settlements followed on Mount Desert Island in 1613, at Castine in 1633, and at Augusta on the Kennebec River in 1646. Blessed François Montmorency Laval, vicar apostolic of New France since 1658, reported that some 200 baptisms took place at the Assumption Mission in Augusta between 1660 and 1663, a true testimony to the dedication of the Jesuit missionaries who served there and along all the major rivers of what is now the state of Maine. Missionary activity continued throughout the 17th and early 18th century despite growing hostilities between France and England over control of the region. This armed conflict was punctuated by attacks on English settlements and Native American villages. In one of the most famous attacks, English forces destroyed the village at Norridgewock on August 23, 1724, killing scores of Native Americans, including their chiefs and Father Sebastian Rale, SJ, their devoted missionary for decades. During the American Revolution, the scattered Native American communities in Maine were periodically visited by chaplains of the French Navy allied with the rebel cause. By 1785, Loyalist settlers from New England forced Acadian farmers in New Brunswick off their lands, causing them to flee into the Madawaska territory in Aroostook County above the Great Falls on the St. John River, planting the roots of what would become a string of parishes on both sides of the St. John River Valley. In 1798, Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore, the first bishop in the newly-formed United States of America, sent the French refugee priest Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus to serve the Native Americans at Indian Island and to found what would become St. Patrick Parish in Newcastle. Parishes in North Whitefield, Eastport, Machias, and Portland followed in close succession to serve growing numbers of immigrants from Ireland. Bishop Benedict Fenwick of Boston founded a utopian Catholic farming community at Benedicta in 1834 with the hope of even establishing a college there. During the 1850’s, anti-Catholic prejudice led to the burning of the churches in Bath and Lewiston and to the tarring and feathering of Father John Bapst, S.J., by a mob in Ellsworth. In this climate, the Reverend Henry B. Coskery, Vicar General of Baltimore, declined to accept the appointment as first Bishop of Portland in 1853. It was not until 1855 that the diocese’s first bishop, David W. Bacon (1815-1874) of Brooklyn, arrived in Portland at night, dressed as a layman in order to avoid a riot. During Bishop Bacon’s tenure, the first Catholic schools were established in Portland, Bangor, and North Whitefield. After a halt due to the Civil War and the destruction wrought by the Great Fire of Portland in 1866, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, its chapel, and the Cathedral Residence were finally opened in 1869. In 1870, jurisdiction for the Madawaska territory, which had become part of Maine through the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, was finally transferred from the Diocese of St. John, New Brunswick, to the Diocese of Portland. Portland’s second bishop, James Augustine Healy (1830-1900), was born in Macon, Georgia, the eldest son of an Irish immigrant cotton planter, Michael Healy and his wife, Mary Eliza Clark, a mulatto slave. James Healy was ordained as the nation's first African-American bishop on June 2, 1875, in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. During his tenure, he oversaw the founding of parishes and schools for the growing number of Irish and French-Canadian immigrants. During his 25 years as Bishop of Portland, Bishop Healy founded 33 parishes, 22 schools, 18 convents, and a small number of hospitals and orphanages. Bishop Healy is remembered in particular as the bishop of children and of the poor. In 1901, Bishop Healy was succeeded by Bishop William H. O’Connell (1859-1944) as third Bishop of Portland. During his tenure, tensions broke out between the French-speaking and English-speaking clergy and laity, tensions which marked the reign of his successor. Bishop O’Connell is remembered for negotiating a very successful diplomatic mission to Japan on behalf of the Holy See. Within a month of his return from Japan in 1906, he was named Archbishop of Boston. Bishop O’Connell was succeeded in the See of Portland by Louis Sebastian Walsh (1858-1924), a native of Salem, Massachusetts, and superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Boston. Bishop Walsh’s tenure was marked by a new wave of immigrants, this time from Poland, Italy, Slovakia, and Lithuania. Vocal groups of Franco-Americans clashed with Bishop Walsh over the ownership of parish property, leading him to place six of the leading protesters under interdict. Bishop Walsh was a keen supporter of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (first founded as the National Catholic War Council) opposing the efforts of his predecessor, Cardinal O’Connell of Boston, who sought to have this first national organization of bishops suppressed by the Holy See. Bishop Walsh was an avid historian his entire life, acquiring the site of the French Capuchin mission at Castine, marking the tricentennial of the founding of Saint Sauveur mission on Mount Desert Island, and founding the Maine Catholic Historical Magazine. Having served as Auxiliary Bishop of Hartford, Bishop John Gregory Murray (1877-1956) was named fifth Bishop of Portland on May 29, 1925. A building boom of parish churches and schools in the early years of Bishop Murray’s tenure, and the borrowing to pay for that construction, left the diocese in precarious financial health at the onset of the Great Depression. Bishop Murray found himself unable to control the diocese’s spiraling indebtedness of millions of dollars. On October 29, 1931, he was transferred to the Archdiocese of St. Paul in Minnesota where he died in 1956, much beloved for his kindness and compassion toward people of all walks of life. Hartford once again provided Portland with a bishop in the person of Joseph Edward McCarthy (1876-1955) who succeeded to the diocese in 1932. By 1936, Bishop McCarthy had stabilized the financial situation of the diocese by issuing bonds which liquidated the entire debt by November 1963. Numerous Catholic elementary schools, high schools, and colleges opened during his tenure, which was also marked by the rigors of World War II. In 1946, the Holy See provided Bishop McCarthy with the diocese’s first auxiliary bishop, Daniel J. Feeney, a native of Portland. By 1948, the administration of the diocese fell to Bishop Feeney due to Bishop McCarthy’s declining health. Bishop Feeney (1894-1969) succeeded to the Diocese of Portland in 1955 upon the death of Bishop McCarthy. He quickly set about celebrating the centennial of the arrival of the first Bishop of Portland. That same year, 1955, saw the ordination of 15 candidates to the priesthood for the diocese, the largest class ever in Maine. Bishop Feeney’s tenure also saw the establishment of the Christian Family Movement, the Catholic Youth Organization, and the predecessor agencies of Catholic Charities Maine. He attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council and initiated the diocese’s participation in the nascent ecumenical movement. In 1966, Peter Leo Gerety (1912- ) of the Hartford Archdiocese was named the Coadjutor Bishop of Portland with right of succession to assist Bishop Feeney in the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Under Bishop Gerety’s direction, a number of new parishes were founded in the suburbs of the metropolitan areas of the state. The first diocesan capital campaign was held, and the Bureau of Human Relations Services, precursor to Catholic Charities Maine, became a state-wide agency for the first time. The declining numbers of religious sisters made it impossible for dozens of Catholic schools to remain open. On the other hand, the diocese opened its first units of low-income elderly housing in Portland and in Waterville during Bishop Gerety’s tenure. After eight years in Maine, Bishop Gerety was appointed Archbishop of Newark in 1974. That same year, Bishop Gerety’s auxiliary bishop, Edward C. O’Leary (1920-2002), succeeded to the diocese after also having served as a much-appreciated pastor and chancellor. Amedée Wilfred Proulx (1932-1993), a native of Sanford, became Bishop O’Leary’s auxiliary bishop in 1975, the first Franco-American to serve in this capacity. During Bishop O’Leary’s tenure, the Church in Maine experienced both an increase in population and a decline in the number of priests, leading to the first planning process to manage these trends. A sister diocese relationship was initiated with the Diocese of Nassau in the Bahamas. The diocese joined the Maine Council of Churches. Bishop O’Leary appointed women for the first time to positions of leadership in the Office of Catholic Schools, the Diocesan Tribunal, and the Chancellor’s Office. Like Bishops Healy, Walsh and Feeney before him, Bishop O’Leary took frequent public stands on a number of social issues of importance to the Church, notably pro-life issues. Bishop O’Leary retired for reasons of health in 1988. Portland’s tenth bishop, Joseph J. Gerry, O.S.B. (1928- ), was installed February 21, 1989, having served as Auxiliary Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire, for three years, and as Abbot of St. Anselm Monastery for 14 years prior to that. During his tenure, Bishop Joseph published roughly one pastoral letter per year, treating such topics as vocations, the Sacrament of Confirmation, and human sexuality. An increasing number of parishes began to share a pastor, and new parishes in Old Town, Lisbon, and Waterville, for example, were founded by the consolidation of two or more existing parishes. The revelation of the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests in decades past shocked the residents of the state in 1993, 1998, and 2002 into 2003. The crisis led to the establishment of the first Diocesan Review Board in 1993. Guidelines and processes were put in place to assist victims and survivors, as well as the accused. With the death of Bishop Proulx in November 1993, the Diocese of Portland was without an auxiliary bishop until the episcopal ordination of Sanford native Michael R. Cote (1949- ) in July 1995. He was appointed bishop of Norwich, Connecticut, in 2003. In 1997, after an exhaustive consultation process, the Sacrament of Confirmation began to be conferred at the same time as the celebration of First Eucharist. The first permanent deacons were ordained for the service of the local church. In 1999, voters turned down a referendum advocated by the diocese which would have prohibited partial-birth abortion. In 2000, voters narrowly defeated a measure permitting physician-assisted suicide which the diocese had vigorously opposed. A major renovation of the Cathedral was completed in 1999 in time for the diocesan observance of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. The high point of the diocesan jubilee year was a Eucharistic Congress, held at the Augusta Civic Center, which drew thousands. A new Saint Dominic Regional High School opened in January 2002, realizing a long-held dream of its alumni and supporters. In February 2004, the retirement of Bishop Joseph was accepted by Pope John Paul II upon having reached the age limit of 75. In November 2003, a new history of the diocese entitled The Catholic Church in the Land of the Holy Cross: A History of the Diocese of Portland, Maine was published by Les Éditions du Signe of Strasbourg, France. River of God, The: A New History of Christian Origins. Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The River of God narrates a "story" of worship. Christian belief is taken back to its begiinings, and shown to be wildly diverse. Christianity was firned friom many ancient cultural traditions. Author Gregory J. Riley, is professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology. Also wrote "One Jesus, Many Christs". The concept of metaphor is clear: many cultural streams converged to form the river of God, and material from those streams built up the delta. The subtitle claims, "A New History of Christian Origins." Not really "New" to many of us but perhaps to some. ' Credits the work of Elaine Pagels and Jack Miles, among others: Christianity is shown to be an excressence of cultural context saturated by folks looking for better gods. Gregory Riley traces the origins of Christianity beyond its familiar sources in Judaism and in the Hebrew Bible. Riley reveals many sources - elements of Greek philosophy and science, Zoroastrianism (becoming Manichaean Christianity) throughout ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. "From the very beginning, " writes Riley, "there were several varieties of Christians." Doctrinally disparate Christianities led to the present-day diversity of the Church. ( )