Book Description

Excerpt from The Divine Mystery: A Reading of the History of Christianity Down to the Time of Christ The present volume is the first of a series intended to elucidate the history and significance of the greatest revolution in history. The writer is proceeding with a study of Jesus the Nazarene, and the intricate problem of the growth and formation of the Christian creed and scriptures. It was not my original purpose to do more than summarise and combine the labours of previous students, and hence this outline was written mainly from memory. In deference to the wishes of others, I have now provided it with a modest furniture of references and citations for the guidance of readers unfamiliar with the subject (in doing which I have had the expert assistance of Mr. Dudley Wright); but I need not say that these notes give a very inadequate idea of the material actually drawn upon. It is as a work of interpretation, and not as a work of reference, that the volume has been planned, and the only scientific merit it can pretend to is that claimed by Bossuet for his Universal His tory, the merit of a general chart which shows the relations between different provinces. Current literature is seriously deficient in comprehensive surveys of the kind and I may be allowed to pay a tribute in passing to Professor Myres' lucid sketch, The Dawn of H istory, which I could wish to be read by way of introduction to these pages. So far as I am aware this is the first attempt at a complete outline of the Christian evolution in the light of modern knowledge, and perhaps the chapters dealing with the rise of monotheism may be found to bridge a real gap. No reader can feel so strongly as the writer how tentative and provisional every work of this kind must be for a long time to come but if we were to wait for perfect certainty in the field of history, we should wait for ever. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.