History

The most accessible and informative version of the Buddhist classic available in English, with instruction in meditation, illuminating commentary, and guidance in the practical use of the prayers The so-called “Tibetan Book of the Dead” has been renowned for centuries as a cornerstone of...

Olympus is the home of the Greek gods, much like Amravati of the Hindu devas. Zeus, leader of Olympians, wields a thunderbolt like Indra and rides an eagle like Vishnu. The feats of the Greek hero Heracles, known to Romans as Hercules, reminded many of Krishna, as did his name...

This book is a thoroughly researched primer on the 108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts. These Upanishads contain the most crystallized bits of wisdom gleaned from Hinduism. Roshen Dalal explains the concepts at the core of each Upanishad...

In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote....

Hinduism is an ancient religion, philosophy and way of life. Unlike other great religions that are based on a small set of books, there are hundreds of texts in Hinduism, most of which are very voluminous. They span not merely centuries, but millennia. And most importantly, these ancient...

"Where did the name Radha come from?When did Christianity first come to India?What is the connection between sanskar and dharma? After the enormous success of the first two seasons of EPIC Channel’s Devlok with Devdutt Pattanaik, India’s favourite mythologist is back with a third instalment...

The Ramayanam, an itihasa of the highest order, is considered adi kavya, the first poem to have been composed. Written by Valm ki during Rama's time, and ratified by him, this timeless epic has been treated with utmost care by all acaryas in their famed commentaries. Since the advent of human...

He's the destroyer of evil, the pervasive one in whom all things lie. He is brilliant, terrifying, wild and beneficent. He is both an ascetic and a householder, both a yogi and a guru. He encompasses the masculine and the feminine, the powerful and the graceful, the Tandava and the Laasya, the...

Taught by acclaimed Professor Robert Garland of Colgate University, these 12 thought-provoking lectures introduce you to the world of comparative religion, giving you insights into a variety of religious expressions and human cultures.

At last, the world will discover what happens to the greatest salesman when he finally emerges from his lonely retirement to commence a new career. At first, he finds failure - until he receives a special gift from someone he has not seen in half a century....

"Since time immemorial, India has been an ocean bed over which numerous stories have flowed and enriched the world. Storytellers from Tulsidas to Rohinton Mistry have added their magic to this magnificent repository. Inspired in part by Somadeva’s Kathasaritasagara, William Radice collects...

Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day powerful and fascinating....

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....

Sounds True is proud to present the first widely available audio recording of Elaine Pagels as she explores the text that has changed the way many of us think about the message of Christ....

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion "God" frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described....

In this major new BBC radio series, Neil MacGregor investigates the role and expression of shared beliefs through time and around the world. One of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions - a faith, an ideology, a religion - that goes...

The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom....

Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise....

It is a tale of courage and fear, love and hate, devotion and betrayal. The epic spans the three worlds of gods, humans, and demons....

A sweeping and comprehensive search for the origins of belief in a Satanic figure across the centuries, The Devil’s Best Trick is a keen investigation into the inescapable reality of evil.

The Middle Ages was a time of major historical shifts and transformations. This amazing era reverberates with discoveries, events, and processes integral to the world we know now. In these 24 lectures, Professor Salisbury leads you on a sumptuous tour of this incredible historical epoch....

In this impressive volume, leading scholars offer compelling glimpses into the biblical world, the world in which prophets, poets, sages, and historians created one of our most important texts—the Bible....

Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living....

The Jesus Family Tomb tells the story of what may be the greatest archaeological find of all time—the discovery of the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth The Jesus Family Tomb includes: A gripping real-life detective story that combines history, archaeology and cutting-edge science, and reveals...

Church history is important because it shows us how God's faithful dealings with His people in the Bible continue in the ongoing life and work of Christ in our world....

By the close of World War II, six million Jews had been erased from the face of the earth. Those who eluded death had lost their homes, families, and entire way of life. Their response was quintessentially Jewish. From a people with a long-history of self-narration, survivors gathered in groups and wrote books, yizkor books, remembering all that had been destroyed. Jane Ziegelman’s Once There Was a Town takes listeners on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts.

In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers. Playmakers reveals how the toy industry created the idealized American childhood: an enchanted world, full of wild creatures and eternal struggles between good and evil, with endless realms of fantasy and beauty.

This Very Short Introduction to Moses Maimonides surveys his many intellectual, literary, and professional ventures. Born in Islamic Cordoba, he ultimately settled in Cairo, where he served as jurist and civic leader and a highly esteemed physician with responsibilities at the Fatimid and Ayyubid courts, even as he deepened his philosophical-theological pursuits. He moved seamlessly between specialized, private, and public Jewish and Muslim spheres.

The success of books such as Elaine Pagels’s Gnostic Gospels and Dan Brown’s The 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, buried, or even forbidden by institutional religion over...

The Gospel of Thomas is a lost and rediscovered voice from the earliest days of Christianity—a collection of secret sayings attributed to Jesus that point not to external authority, but to inner revelation. Long excluded from the biblical canon, this text invites the listener into a world where enlightenment comes through self-knowledge and awakening to the divine already within.

هو عمل تأسيسي في الدراسات العربية الحديثة، يتكون من سلسلة محاضرات ألقيت في عام 1908م في الجامعة المصرية. يتناول الكتاب تاريخ الحضارة الإسلامية من بدايتها حتى سقوط الدولة العثمانية، ويركز على دور الإسلام في توحيد العرب ونبض الحضارة لديهم، وتناول أيضاً الكتابة والحفظ والتدوين. يهدف إلى إزالة الغبار عن الحضارة الإسلامية وإظهار قوتها الأصلية، كما يعالج أسباب أفولها، مع التركيز على الأسس التي قامت عليها.

History teaches that antisemitism is a disease which begins with the Jews but does not end with them. Once antisemitism is unleashed, it knows no bounds and can attack the very fabric of society. This deadly strain of hatred often turns against other minority groups too, not to mention foundational democratic values, beginning with equal rights and equal protection before the law. Therefore, antisemitism should be viewed as a universal human rights issue of importance to all, and not solely as a parochial Jewish or Israeli concern.

In this Very Short Introduction, now thoroughly revised and updated to take account of the most recent scholarship, Peter Marshall argues that the Reformation was a long-term process of social, political, and cultural change.

“Jenkins is one of America’s top religious scholars.” —Forbes magazine The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins offers a revolutionary view of the history of the Christian church. Subtitled “The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and...

For many Christians, our understanding of the history of the church universal jumps straight from what we read in the New Testament to a basic understanding of the Reformation. We're missing more than a millennium! And it was a busy, fascinating, tumultuous thousand-or-so years during which Christianity spread across three continents. In places as distant and different from each other as China, Sudan, and Britain, the gospel was spreading, the church was growing, and believers were expressing their faith in myriad ways.

Via det ene spor følger vi forfatterens fortsatte arbejde som elev hos Seeren på Montségurbjerget i Pyrenæerne samt deres fælles bestræbelser på at løse gåden om Den hellige Gral. Via det andet spor følger vi Maria Magdalenes livsbane, fra hun som tolvårig bliver forlovet med Jesus, til hun mange år senere forlader Det Hellige Land med kurs mod Sydfrankrig som højt indviet præstinde. De to spor bliver til ét: den spændende fortælling om den store feminine arketypes betydning og de muligheder, den har at tilbyde vor tid.

It may be the twenty-first century but religious tensions and conflicts continue all across the world. Even today, religion continues to play an unparalleled role in the lives of individuals and nations with people and leaders pitting one religious identity against another. But the question that...

“A spiritual defense of the proposition that faith and reason are not contradictory.” —Peter L. Berger, Director, Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University Addressing the central question facing the church today—Is the Gospel true?— Dallas Willard offers an...

World Religions All-in-One for Dummies offers an easy starting point for anyone curious to investigate religious and cultural differences. In terms anyone can understand, this book explains the foundations of major world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, Catholicism, and Taoism. You can choose the religions you'd like to focus on or hear about them all.

La Didachè est un petit livre qui fut écrit en langue grecque, sans doute en Syrie, vers la fin du premier siècle ou au début du deuxième siècle de notre ère. Son principal intérêt réside dans le tableau qu'elle nous trace des institutions chrétiennes. Elle nous apporte des renseignements souvent uniques sur la pratique des premières communautés, sur le baptême, les jeûnes, les temps de la prière, l'eucharistie, le ministère de la parole, la hiérarchie, la pénitence.