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The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years is unavailable, but you can change that!

Contrary to several popular works of Christian scholarship, historian Paul Barnett maintains that the first two decades of Christian history are hardly “lost years.” As he shows in this penetrating book, the period between Jesus and the earliest Christian texts is open to historical investigation, and he richly details the time and setting in which the church was born. Writing with accessible...

preaching Jesus as “Christ,” “Son of God,” and “Lord” from that time. This means that the christology that he “received” was already pre-formed. As well as the overall time frame, however, it is important to work out intermediate details such as the dates of Paul’s “call” and his first return visit to Jerusalem. Here I am indebted to the thorough research of Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period,23 though I regard 33 as more likely than 30 as the date of the crucifixion.
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