the History of Origins Christianity. Book V

The first apostles were passing away. Jerusalem lay in ruins. As Christianity entered a new generation, the memories and teachings surrounding Jesus began to take lasting written form.In The History of the Origins of Christianity, Book V: The Gospels, Joseph Ernest Renan examines the crucial decades in which oral traditions concerning Jesus developed into the written accounts that would become the foundations of Christian Scripture. With particular attention to Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Renan investigates the traditions and earlier sources behind the Synoptic Gospels, the circumstances in which they arose, and the ways successive writers shaped inherited accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus.Beyond the formation of the Gospels, Renan traces a Christian movement undergoing profound change: the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction, the gradual separation of the Church from Judaism, the disappearance of the last immediate disciples of Jesus, continuing persecution, emerging disputes over doctrine, and the growth of ecclesiastical organization. Combining historical reconstruction with detailed biblical criticism, The Gospels presents Renan's provocative account of the period when the memories of Christianity's first generation became written tradition and the young faith began assuming the forms that would shape its future.