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Guide Home > Ancient Christianity & Judaism
Additional TopicsThe following are additional topic areas related to Ancient Christianity & Judaism. If there is a bracket number after the topic, that number indicates how many actual articles there are related to that subject. If the link for the topic is not live, it simply means the topic is a 'planned area' for future growth.
Ensign ArticlesThese articles cited below provide information on the topic of this page. The Ensign is one of the official publications of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When you click on one of the article links below, you are whisked to the article found in the archives of the Church's Web site. De Lamar Jensen, "Seventeen Centuries of Christianity," Ensign, September 1978, 51. How Christianity prepared the way for the Restoration in the Last Days. Robert J. Matthews, "Was John's baptism a new ordinance or were the people already familiar with it?," Ensign, September 1974, 16. Hugh W. Nibley, "The Lachish Letters: Documents from Lehi's Day," Ensign, December 1981, 48. These ancient documents give significant support to the historical picture painted at the beginning of the Book of Mormon. Robert J. Woodford, "How much do we know about baptism before Christ's time?," Ensign, July 1991. Other ResourcesThe resources listed below are related items available on the Web that should be of interest. These links are to information not located on the FAIR Web site. Wilfred C. Griggs, "Rediscovering Ancient Christianity," BYU Studies (1999), 73-90 When materials purporting to be Christian in authorship or content are recovered from the past, one is faced with the difficulty of determining whether they formed an authentic part of early Christianity or were deviations from it. The resulting judgments concerning the value of such discoveries may be quite different to traditional Christians and members of the restored Church. Before evaluating the impact that recent discoveries have had on modern Christianity, one must understand how the traditional model of Christianity came about. For many who have thought that the early Church Fathers were the protectors of the faith against outside influences and external persecutions, it may come as a surprise to learn that the earliest manifestations of Christianity were in fact much broader in doctrine and richer in ordinance activity than was the case in later centuries, when the Fathers had trimmed away all that was unacceptable to them. Only within the last century and a half has much of the material from the early period of Christian history become available, permitting us to see what existed before the Fathers made their censorious decisions. The post-apostolic period of Christianity was comprised of many attempts to define the parameters of the faith, primarily focusing on the questions of who had the authority to speak on behalf of the church and what writings were to be accepted as normative for the religion. Nevertheless, one notes that the boundaries prescribing the limits of orthodoxy and heresy were not so well established by the end of the second century as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, writing around 185, would have his readers believe. Hugh Nibley, "The Expanding Gospel," BYU Studies (City Unknown: BYU, 1966), 1-21 Dr. Nibley demonstrates that traces of authentic gopsel doctrines can be found in the previously forgotten writings of the ancients. Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hambin, "Christianity in Ethiopia," (City Unknown: MeridianMagazine.com) The roots of Christianity are in the Near East and its teachings took hold in Africa long before it dominated Europe. Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin, "The Great Religious Books of Early Judaism," (City Unknown: MeridianMagazine.com) Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin, "The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem," (City Unknown: MeridianMagazine.com) Gerald Smith, Ezra Stiles, Yale University, Predicts the Restoration. Gerald Smith, Nag Hammadi and LDS Beliefs. Shows that many LDS beliefs are rooted in ancient Christian theology.
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