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The ancient cento-genre was prone to be used on all kinds of subjects. New texts were created out of the classical epics. Empress Eudocia followed this practice and composed the story of Jesus in lines lifted almost verbatim from Homer’s epics. Jesus and his relevance to her audience is thus presented within the confines of style and vocabulary offered by the Iliad and Odyssey. The lines picked to convey her theology are often clustered around key Homeric motifs or type scenes, such as warfare, homecoming, feast, reconciliation, hospitality. Jesus waging war against all evil and Hades in particular runs throughout this Homeric and simultaneously biblical epic. The story starts in the Old Testament which is conceived as a divine counsel on Mt. Olympus where a plan to save sinful humanity is presented. The narrative then follows the biographic lines of the canonical gospels, with John’s Gospel holding pride of place in the way she renders and interprets the Jesus-story. The story told suspends both the geography and time of Jesus. Eudocia preaches the story she tells. She emerges in this poem as one of the most, if not the most prolific female theologian and preacher in the first Christian centuries.
Our culture is well-populated with superheroes: Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and more. Superheroes are not a modern invention; in fact, they are prehistoric. The gods and goddesses of the Greeks, for example, walked on water, flew, visited the land of the dead, and lived forever. Ancient Christians told similar stories about Jesus, their primary superhero—he possessed incredible powers of healing, walked on water, rose from the dead, and more. Dennis R. MacDonald shows how the stories told in the Gospels parallel many in Greek and Roman epics with the aim of compelling their readers into life-changing decisions to follow Jesus. MacDonald doesn’t call into question the existence of Jesus but rather asks readers to examine the biblical stories about him through a new, mythological lens.
In this groundbreaking book, Dennis R. MacDonald offers an entirely new view of the New Testament gospel of Mark. The author of the earliest gospel was not writing history, nor was he merely recording tradition, MacDonald argues. Close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad and that he wanted his readers to recognise the Homeric antecedents in Mark's story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes. Much like Odysseus, Mark's Jesus sails the seas with uncomprehending companions, encounters preternatural opponents, and suffers many things before confronting rivals who have made his house a den of thieves. In his death and burial, Jesus emulates Hector, although unlike Hector Jesus leaves his tomb empty. Mark's minor characters, too, recall Homeric predecessors: Bartimaeus emulates Tiresias; Joseph of Arimathea, Priam; and the women at the tomb, Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache. And, entire episodes in Mark mirror Homeric episodes, including stilling the sea, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, the Triumphal E
This book studies the interplay of theology and poetics in the three great epics of early modern England, the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained. Bond examines how Spenser and Milton adapted the pattern of dual heroism developed in classical and Medieval works. Challenging the opposition between 'Calvinist,' 'allegorical' Spenser and 'Arminian,' 'dramatic' Milton, this book offers a new understanding of their doctrinal and literary affinities within the European epic tradition.
"This book uses the superhero theme to present Christ crucified in a way that readers may never have seen Him before. But Jesus is not merely another myth on the fantasy shelf in the library or on the movie screen. His story is historical fact! And Christ's superhero errand to rescue fallen mankind brings together the important elements in all hero stories. Jesus' sojourn of salvation will be examined in the Scriptures yet conveyed in storytelling language. This glory story of Christ will enlighten readers as to why Jesus is the only hero the world ever truly needed-or ever will need"--
Skelton leads the reader through fast-paced discussions of such striking phenomena as the influence of Christ's life on superheroes, and the similarities between the devil and comic book protagonists.
Comic superheroes embody the hopes of a world that is desperate for a savior. But those comic creations cannot save us from our greatest foes—sin and death. Throughout the history of the Church there have been bad ideas, misconceptions, and heretical presentations of Jesus. Each one of these heresies fails to present Jesus as the Bible reveals him. In Superheroes Can’t Save You, Todd Miles demonstrates how these ancient heresies are embodied in contemporary comic superheroes. Miles compares something everybody already knows (who the superheroes are) with what they need to know (who Jesus is), in a book that makes vitally important Christian truths understandable and applicable to a wide audience.
Integrates a contemporary understanding of Jesus with the most powerful, imaginative visions of Jesus in philosophy, literature, and religion. The Contemporary Jesus is the first critical study integrating contemporary understanding of Jesus with the most powerful, imaginative visions of Jesus in our history. The book imaginatively engages many views of Jesus: an apocalyptic Jesus, gnostic Jesus, Buddhist Jesus, Pauline Jesus, Crossan's Jesus, and the Catholic, Protestant, and nihilistic views found in writers such as Dante, Joyce, Milton, Blake, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. Altizer also examines the Jesus who emerges from the Jesus Seminar. Seldom, if ever, has there been such an intense public and critical engagement with Jesus, as our New Testament scholarship is wholly isolated from both our imaginative and our conceptual traditions, and likewise isolated from all genuine theological or even religious understanding. The Contemporary Jesus bridges that chasm, this alone making the book unique, but the book is also an embodiment of a contemporary radical theology which is Christian and universal at once. It intends a critical recovery of the original Jesus that can be integrated with our deeper history, a history which is finally a universal history, but a universal history that is wholly opaque to our given and established theological understanding.
"Epic" is a collection of some of the most epic stories in the Bible, but each story points to Jesus, the one true hero. Whether the story is about David and Goliath, or Jonah and the big fish, you can be confident Jesus is on display for little readers. After all, that was always God's plan.
With characteristic boldness and careful reassessment of the evidence, MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus: the earliest Gospel, which was used as a source by the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the earliest commentary on the Gospels, by Papias of Hierapolis, who apparently knew Mark, Matthew, and the lost Gospel, which he considered to be an alternative Greek translation of a Semitic Matthew. MacDonald also explores how these two texts, well known into the fourth century, shipwrecked with the canonization of the New Testament and the embarrassment at outmoded eschatologies in both the lost Gospel and Papias’s Exposition.