Bøker av Jon Davies

From Antioch to Babylon traces the spread of Christianity in its first two centuries between two major centers of the Jewish diaspora. Antioch of Syria has long been known as the city where non-Jewish adherents to Christianity first emerged in substantial numbers, but it was also the gateway between two empires-that of Rome and that of its eastern counterpart Parthia, located on terrain once occupied by the ancient Babylonian Kingdom that had exiled the Jewish people from their homeland centuries earlier and from which many never returned. As such, Antioch served as a center from which differing versions of Christianity spread not only to the west but to the east. Although the importance of the city in its Western religious context has been frequently examined, its importance in its Eastern context has been less frequently explored.Christianity's tale in the West is in some ways the reverse of that in the East insofar as while the Roman Empire became increasingly tolerant of Christianity but less so of the Jewish faith, the territories controlled by the Parthian Empire began as tolerant of both but with that empire's fall became increasingly intolerant. The result was an early Eastern faith that was in many ways just as diverse as that in the West, as local cultures transformed it, but that also maintained a more heavily Jewish tinge. The story of Christianity, then, involves not just such luminaries in Antioch as Peter, Paul, and Ignatius but also such influential easterners as Addai, Aggai, and Palut.

Drawing on empirical work and secondary analysis from the UK and Finnish construction industries, this book contributes a deep-rooted analysis of construction industry harms that originate from corporate-industrial-state processes.

The World Jesus Entered traces the roots of what would become the Christian religion during its first two centuries, from the time of Jesus to the second and third generations of Christian believers. Although Jesus was a Jew among Jews who focused his ministry within a Jewish milieu, the Jewish people were themselves part of a wider world that had heavily impacted their culture and society by the time of Jesus; that world would in turn eventually help shape what would become the religions of both Judaism and Christianity. As different parties fought to control Jewish adaptation to a post-Jerusalem-centered mindset, the teachings of Jesus would become subsumed by ideas and practices quite different from those recorded as belonging to the first generation of his followers.Four discrete chapters focus on differing influences--Jewish, non-Jewish, alt-Jewish, and Gnostic--as an introduction to the societies and cultures the teachings of Jesus entered. The book closes with two chapters showing how such influences impacted both Christian practice and doctrine, in the form of missionary activity and worship and in teachings regarding the afterlife and the very nature of existence proposed by the new Christian sect. As Jewish elites fought to define their culture and as non-Jewish Christians aimed to distinguish themselves from Jewish rebels fighting the Roman Empire and come to an understanding of the man-God Jesus who had been introduced to them, the faith Jesus founded would transform the world as much as it would be transformed by it.

Jon Davies charts the significance of death to the emerging religious cults in the pre-Christian and early Christian world. He also draws on the sociological theory of Max Weber to present a comprehensive introduction to the subject.