The River of God: A New History of Christian Origins

by Gregory J. Riley

Book Overview

Where did Christianity come from Acclaimed author Gregory Riley embarks on a remarkable journey in this readable and persuasive account of the origins of Christianity. Riley demonstrates that early Christians held widely differing beliefs about God, Jesus, the Devil, and the human soul, and follows these beliefs back to their sources in Greek science and philosophy and the religions of the ancient Middle East. An expert on the context in which Christianity...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060669802
• ISBN13: 9780060669805
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Worth every dime

The River of God is yet another great book by Dr. Riley. Riley is one of the foremost New Testament scholars living today. Riley brings a educated perspective that most NT scholars don't have. There are a lot of reviews here into the details of the RIver of God so I don't see the need to go into more details, but realize this: reading this book will help you understand how Christianity has developed over the years. Riley, is a Christian and a scholar. Because of this his unique insight is way beyond most of the dribble out there today.

River of God by Gregory J. Riley

The River of God is a well written book by Prof. Gregory J. Riley on the origins of Christianity. Riley uses three metaphors to trace the development of Christianity-- of river, of genealogy, and of evolution, and he names his book with the metaphor of river. I think a more appropriate title for the book might be the River of Christianity because Riley is tracing the development of Christianity. We, human beings, live our life based on how we understand life. Religion, as I understand it, is a combination of a view of life and a way of life based on it, and it varies according to time and place. Christianity is an instance of religion at a specific time and place. How this form of religion came into existence and how it further evolved is the subject of Riley's book. Several streams contribute to form a river, and it further splits into several tributaries. A human being is a child of two parents, and he/she with a partner further gives birth to children. A species evolves to adapt with the changing environment. Using these three metaphors in the background, Riley explains how Christianity evolved. This, I think, is an honest and scientific approach to the study of religion, which is opposed to the fundamentalist approach, which is subjective, naïve, and biased. This approach doesn't entertain any claims of superiority to any form of religion. It places a specific form of religion in a time and place, and traces its genealogy backward and forward. A form of religion is not necessarily of more quality than its parents or its siblings. Survival of a form is not always due to better quality. At any point in time and place a variety of religious forms exist simultaneously. If the people who hold these various views have to live together, they must have a pluralist and multicultural view. While holding on to one's own view, people must develop openness to the view of others. By Christianity Riley means the religious movement that began in the first century CE Palestine and spread all over the Roman Empire and elsewhere. This movement has behind it all the religious forms in and around Palestine. The religion in Palestine was mainly Judaism. Palestine was a part of the Roman Empire in those days. Earlier, Palestine was under the Greek Empire, and before that it was under the Persian Empire. The Roman Empire inherited the religion of the Greek Empire, and so the Greco-Roman religion may be seen as one here for convenience. Hence besides Judaism, the Greco-Roman religion as well as the Persian religion was very much alive there. Thus the religions of Palestine, Rome, Greece, and Persia may be seen as the direct parents of Christianity. The genealogy of each of these religions may be further traced backward. Judaism has behind it the Canaanite religions. The Greco-Roman religion has behind it the Indo-European religions, which shared the parentage of even the religions of the Far East. The Persian religion has behind it the religions of ancient M

Jesus as a Jewish Gnostic

This work by Gregory Riley of the Claremont School of Theology, also author of "One Jesus, Many Christs," makes the case that the major doctrines of the New Testament and early Christianity came from the Jewish Gnostics, who were centered in Galilee, Jesus' home base.The peoples of the Mediterranean world, including the Hebrews, all believed that the earth was a flat disk sitting on top of a disk of water. Over that was a hard dome, not more than a few thousand feet high, on top of which sat the gods. All the gods had bodies, including the Chief One. The Hebrews, like everyone else, never believed that God was an immaterial spirit or that people had spiritual souls that could unite with God after death. People just lived out their lives on earth under the gaze of the gods and the fates.This view was challenged by the great mathematician Pythagoras in the 6th century b.c., who stated the earth is a sphere, and by Eratosthenes, who in the 3rd century b.c. computed that the earth is 40,000 kilometers in circumference, wonderfully close to its actual size. Riley says we cannot over emphasize the dramatic effect this new Greek science had on religious beliefs (the whole premise of his book is that religious beliefs are constantly changing in response to their times). For one thing, these discoveries made the material universe immense, infinite. For another thing, there was a commensurate change in the idea of God. The Greeks developed the via negativa method of describing the new God as immaterial, ineffable, and unknowable. Plato extended this idea of God to humans, describing their bodies as shells from which the soul-an emanation of God of sorts-would escape after death and return to God.Riley says that these ideas were slow to catch on, but they did. In Jewish society they took root among the very well educated class, especially in Galilee-a true crossroad of many cultures and religions. (Jerusalem was in the isolated highlands). Riley says that at the time of Jesus, all the Pharisees, Essenes, Gnostics, and Hellenists together were a very tiny fraction of Jewish society. The educated classes among the Jews, especially the Gnostics, were very interested in the new Greek ideas of God. If God was all perfect, however, what caused evil in the world? For that answer, the Jewish Gnostics relied on Persian Zoroastrian religion, which proposed a cosmic conflict between the god of good and the god of evil. The Gnostics had to demote the Evil One from a god to a fallen angel, but he served the purpose of drumming up all the evil and suffering in the world. In their scenario, a lesser emanation of God had created a very imperfect world, which God allowed the devil to corrupt and control in order to test his human creations. The New Testament teachings of Jesus embody the doctrines of the Jewish Gnostics almost verbatim. Riley emphasizes what revolutionary teaching this was at the time. People did not know they had immortal souls. Neither did they suspect w

Excellent history of the evolution of religious concepts.

I really like this book. The analogy to an actual river is a concept of brilliance. All these religious ideas have interplayed with others. They are the products of the human mind in various stages of cultural evolution. The anthropomorphic god who walked in the cool of the day in the garden. He became the ethereal Monad in the perfect spheres of the geocentric universe.What is a soul? What is the body? Riley shows that 5'th century BCE Greek science created the concept of a soul. It was adopted by the religous beliefs. First Greek then Zoroastrian then Jewish then Christian. Great read!

The River of God: The Whole Story

In The River of God, Gregory Riley shines light on much of the history of Christian origins often ignored by scholars. Most researchers of Christianity restrict themselves to the influence of the West (Greek and Roman) and often confuse Rabbinic Judaism with the Judaism of Jesus' times; Prof. Riley adds the whole of Middle Eastern religious history to the story of our search for God. Riley includes the development of Cannanite and Mesopotamian religion in the history of ancient Judaism. In addition to Greek ideas of Orphism, Pythagoreanism and Plato, he recognizes the Egyptian and Persian Zoroastrian influences on the development of Christian concepts of afterlife. Riley outlines the role of Persian Zoroastrianism on our understanding of Satan and a world savior. He details how various ancient religious models of God from both East and West as well as Greek science contributed to the development of our understanding of the division of body and soul and the creation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century. The River of God is not a general overview of world religions; it is specifically about the development of Christianity from a modern Christian perspective. Prof. Riley writes with a broad brush in his outline of the development of Christianity and, while scholars will quibble over some of the details and generalizations, I found The River of God to be an excellent overview of our understanding of "the process of the River of God."