Saving Interfaith Jesus (Paperback)

Paperback. For two thousand years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been divided over a single man. The deepest wounds between them - the charge of deicide, the theology that sailed aboard the slave ships, the wall between the mosque and the church - trace back to one claim made about him three centuries after he died.Saving Interfaith Jesus argues that the division came later than the man.Drawing on the earliest surviving Christian documents, this book recovers a Jesus who looks unfamiliar to the modern reader and strikingly familiar to all three faiths: the Didache, older than several books of the New Testament, which calls Jesus simply "servant" and never mentions the cross, the Trinity, or atonement. The Jerusalem community led by his own brother James - Jews who followed Jesus and never stopped keeping the Sabbath or praying in the Temple. And six early texts that denied the crucifixion centuries before the Quran existed.Inside: Why the oldest Christian prayer book contains no Trinity and no blood atonementWhat Jesus's own brother wrote in his letter - and what he left outThe 150 CE Christian text that tells the story of Mary almost exactly as the Quran doesWhat actually happened at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CEHow one doctrine became the engine behind centuries of religious violence - and what falls away when it comes downThis book asks no one to convert. It asks no reader to abandon their faith, their scripture, or their prayers. It asks a single question: how much of the last two thousand years of conflict was ever actually about him?A rescue mission for the Messiah three faiths have been fighting over. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…