Crucible of Faith

Last updated on: August 21, 2017 at 6:12 am by Philip Jenkins

Crucible of Faith 2017-08-21T06:12:17-04:00 Philip Jenkins

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

My new book will be out shortly. This is *Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World (*Basic Books, 2017). It will be available on September 19.

That “Crucible” refers to an era of revolutionary transformation that occurred in the Jewish and Jewish-derived world in the couple of centuries before the time of Jesus – roughly from 250 BC through the late first century BC. Or to adapt the publisher’s description:

The New Testament proclaims a mighty cosmic vision of Heaven and Hell, angels and Satan, the Messiah and the Apocalypse. Yet although all these ideas have their roots in the Old Testament, those earlier books imagined a very different and usually more limited spiritual universe than we find in historic Judaism and Christianity. What happened to alter religious thought so dramatically in the centuries following the closing of the Hebrew Bible?

In Crucible of Faith, Jenkins describes how the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250–50 BC, during the turbulent “Crucible Era”—a time when Jews grappled with overwhelming forces of Hellenization and globalization. As a result, Judaism produced new religious ideas that responded to a changing world. The revolutionary politics of the 160s BC created an apocalyptic world-view where earthly struggles reveal a cosmic significance, a universe dominated by angels and demons; by the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 AD, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized—and thus passed on to Christianity and later Islam.

Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, and the nature of God and Satan. Crucible of Faith describes one of the greatest revolutions in human thought.

Here is my argument.

Just over two thousand years ago, a new universe was created, one that we still inhabit today.

At the heart of Western religious thought, we find a group of very familiar stories, images and characters. To varying degrees, Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share a grand historical narrative that begins with Creation, the Garden of Eden and the Fall, and culminates in an apocalyptic conclusion to the world order. Featuring in this drama are a Messiah and Satan, as well as a host of lesser figures, of angels and demons, the forces of Light and Darkness locked in deadly combat until the Final Judgment. The setting is a hierarchical universe that includes a Heaven (or Heavens) and Hell, which will be the ultimate destinations for all living human beings. These are the familiar building blocks of Western religion, as well as the staples of two millennia of Western art.

However familiar and thoroughly “Biblical” the individual components of the story appear, they represented a radical departure from the belief system that we find in the Hebrew Bible, or what modern Protestants call the Old Testament. During the period covered by the Old Testament, up to around 400 BC, none of those ideas existed in Jewish thought, or if they did their role was strictly limited: not the Edenic Fall of Man nor the apocalypse, not the Messiah or Satan, neither Heaven nor Hell, not even an idea as essential as the afterlife. By the start of the Common Era though, these themes had achieved the complex and even florid form that has shaped Western faith and culture ever since.

Scarcely less innovative were the means by which humanity learned such cosmic truths, namely through sacred texts and scriptures that presented divine revelations. Although living teachers and charismatic prophet still mattered enormously, religious truths were chiefly conveyed through canonical scriptures.

So much of what we think of as the Judeo-Christian spiritual universe was only conceived and described after the closure of the canonical Old Testament text. Scholars have long known that the famous apocalyptic imagery derived from the New Testament Book of Revelation has a specific history rooted in worldly events of a particular historical era, in contemporary factions and conflicts. But so also does the End of the World, and Satan, and the Messiah, and so do angels and demons. All these ideas can be dated quite precisely to a startlingly little known historical era that has seldom received the attention it deserves. Virtually every component of that world-view entered the Jewish world in the two or three centuries before the Common Era.

It was in these years, after the closure of the Hebrew Bible, when the heavens and hells became so abundantly populated, and when the universe was conceived as a battleground between cosmic forces of Good and Evil. In the first centuries of the Common Era, such Jewish-derived themes spilled forth into the wider world, ultimately becoming transcontinental. In the seventh century AD, Islam fully absorbed and incorporated these religious components, which today are the shared cultural inheritance of well over half the world’s people.

Those critical centuries, before the turn of the Common Era, made the religious world the West has known ever since. Without this transformation, neither Christianity nor Islam would exist, and Judaism itself would have been unimaginably different.

Such a radical transformation of religious thought in such a relatively brief period makes this one of the most revolutionary times in human thought. Yet the fact of that change, and the profundity of its character, is rarely acknowledged. In terms of its impact on human culture – in creating Western consciousness – this era is at least as significant as the celebrated Axial Age that has been claimed several centuries earlier.

For over two centuries, the Jewish and Jewish-derived world was a fiery crucible of values, faiths and ideas, from which emerged wholly new religious syntheses. That era, and that transformation, is the subject of my Crucible of Faith.

Philip Jenkins

Crucible of Faith

inter-testamental period

Previous Post

August 18, 2017

A Book of Signs

Next Post

August 22, 2017 The Spiritual Spirit of St. Louis

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe Guest Post guest post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims Piracy pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public Executions Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was Jesus' earthly profession?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Shepherd Fisherman Carpenter Tentmaker