Crucible of Faith

Heaven and hell, angels and demons, Satan and the Messiah. All of these seem fundamental to the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Yet these figures are largely, and conspicuously, absent from the Biblical Old Testament.

Philip Jenkins, one of America's foremost scholars of religion, argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible Era." It was during these years that Judaism grappled with Hellenizing forces, and produced new religious ideas that reflected and responded to their changing world. By the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized-and thus passed on to Christianity. Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, Creation, and the nature of God.