Jesus and After: The First Eighty Years

by E. Bruce Brooks

This book is an overview of the history of Early Christianity. Each chapter is based on one selection from Jewish texts or from those produced by the Jesus sect of Judaism. It gives a sense of how things happened, from the words of certain ancient prophets, to Jesus' effort to bring about those prophecies, to the efforts of his followers to reshape their expectations after his death. It follows the movement as it came to regard Jesus himself as divine, a process which eventually led to the separation of the sect from the parent religion. It ends with a glimpse of a surviving early Christian church on the shores of the Black Sea, and how it appeared to the Roman administrator who was in charge of executing those who, like the Early Christians, refused Emperor worship. From the evidence of two deaconesses whom he tortured, which Pliny reported to Emperor Trajan, we too learn what were the regular practices of that church.

192 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2018

Reviews

[Dan Downing · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the everyday practitioner of religion, the Bible remains the holy text for billions. Relatively few have read the Good Book cover to cover, fewer still are familiar with or even aware of other documents discussing/creating the Jewish tradition or the new path founded by Jesus. Professor Brooks provides a fine guide for beginning an analysis of those biblical stories from the First Century of the common era. For those who have read the Bible, whole or in part, particularly the New Testament, many of the head-scratchers one encounters are laid out here, along with the analytical methods used to suss out what was original and what later scribes and writers decided to add.
The central idea here is that the early church, composed of believers termed 'Alphas', morphed into a 'Beta' version, largely under the force of Paul's personality and ideas. We often lose sight of how early Christian belief was taken under the wing of the Jewish establishment: alter all, Jesus and his followers were mostly, if not entirely, Jews. Ideas and beliefs started to change even before Jesus met his demise, and the Jewish power base eventually tossed out the new sect.
To give "Jesus and After" a full reading one needs a Bible close at hand. A computer with a good search engine is a help. Plenty of questions may be asked of Brooks' assumptions, and no definitive answers are available. Never-the-less, this is an illuminating exercise, redolent of deep scholarship. And it is organized and written beautifully.
Recommended (for the general reader. For the religiously inclined, Highly Recommended.)

[Hands · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave me a better insight into the original teachings of Jesus of Nazareth

[Kate McCullough]

The facts for this history are different then I've studied in the past. Most biblical scholars say that Mark came about 30 years after Jesus's death and was not a contemporary. The first books of the bible (chronologically) according to Bart Erhman a new testament biblical scholar at Chapel Hill, are actually Paul's letters.