Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World

by Philip Jenkins

One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition

In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins 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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465096409
• ISBN13: 9780465096404
• Release Date: September 2017
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Critical Sources Yield Mirroring

The latter centuries of the Protestant dubbed "400 years of silence" get a hefty treatment of detail, this tumultuous time receiving a memorable and corresponding label of the "Crucible Era." The book equips readers with both a detailed historical and textual knowledge of this period, providing an invaluable bridge serving to close the gap between Israelite religion and its severing faction groups found in the Apostolic Writings. Protestants will especially benefit from the gap filling which paves the path of understanding that, for one, Christianity's textual heritage did not merely stem from a (later contrived) Pharisaical canon, nor was the Faith developed in a vacuum void of Judean foundations through and through. The Hasmonean (Maccabean) Dynasty receives especial attention and historical contextualization with its contributions to ongoing conflicts, the crucial Hellenistic etymology of the term "Judaism," and how their legacy related to later groups such as the Qumran community, Pharisees, Zealots, Saducees, and Essenes. The closing chapter tactfully applies the influence of the thoroughly afore-discussed foundational years of the second temple period, in relation to later ideologies such as Rabbinic Judaism, Qabala, Hellenic Christianity, Samaritan Gnosticism and Marcionism, Manichenism, followers of John the Baptist, and even Islam. As Jenkins attempts to provide an objective historical account of the pivotal years in question, it leads him to adopt a critical religious view bent on sacrilege. The tired and bankrupt view of progressive revelation with a corresponding and presumptively insistent premise that Israelite religion evolved from polytheism, was anything but convincing. If that wasn't cringeworthy enough, he threw in the distasteful Documentary Hypothesis into the mix, and topped it off with (somewhat tame but) late dates for the so-called 2nd temple literature texts (to include even some Tanakh texts too). To the detriment of the historical survey, the narrative is a bit too intertwined with the late dating of the texts, yet it was amusing to see the circular reasoning of second temple literature classifications based on angelic details though. Nonetheless, I'm still appreciative of non-dismissive opinions pertaining to both the deutercanonical or Apocrypha as well as the Qumran texts (so glad the Essene assumption isn't parroted). If it wasn't for my commited opposition to progressive revelation and insistence of early dating of texts (especially Enoch), the textual-influenced narrative provided herein would have been almost convincing. To his credit though, the author does provide arguments of reservation for Enoch that are useful against his own stance, and even maintains a pre-Christian composition of the Wisdom of Solomon. While the book will by no means bolster one's faith in inspiration of the sacred texts and the Israelite faith, it does needfully magnify the immensely foundational years of religious history, ones that are otherwise grossly taken for granted and neglected by the big three monotheistic religions of the world...and then some. In spite of the irreconcilable stances I had with the author, these were outweighed by the plethora of useful historical tidbits and nuggets. I'm still led to want to read his The Many Faces of Christ book next, and maybe others too.