Book Review: When Jesus Became God, By Richard E. Rubenstein

Introducing an interesting book worth buying and reading.

Transcript

00:00Well, Shabbat Shalom one and all. Thank you for joining me again today. Today I want to

00:04do a book review. You know I love books and I like to review them and share them with

00:09you and kind of help you out with your spiritual journey. And this book here is called When

00:16Jesus Became God, The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome. And the author

00:22here was Richard E. Rubenstein. And this book is right here. It's a pretty good sized book.

00:35Book is, if I could see the pages, 267 pages long. Books got, let's see when, try to see

00:50when copyright was, how old this book is. This book is, it was copyrighted in 1991.

00:59And it's got no pictures in it of course. But I want to read one review on here. It

01:05says, Rubenstein has turned one of the great fights of history into an engrossing story.

01:11And that came from Jack Miles, The Boston Globe. I'm going to read the back of it for

01:18you. If you want to, here's another one. Succeeds in bringing fully alive a moment

01:24in history when matters of faith were capable of inspiring authentic passion in ordinary

01:31men and women. That's from Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times. Now do a little back story

01:41on Mr. Rubenstein. He says here he's a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs

01:49at George Mason University, where he specialized in religious conflict. A graduate of Harvard

01:58College, Oxford University, Rhodes Scholar, and Harvard Law School. He lives in Fairfax,

02:07So he's got some credentials back there and education background. Apparently he's got

02:13the passion. And I want to read this other section of this back book to help you understand

02:20what the book's about. After almost 300 years of persecution, Christianity made an astounding

02:27breakthrough in 324 CE when Constantine the Great became the emperor of Rome. No longer

02:35fearing for their own survival, Christians turned to the question of how to define what

02:41beliefs identified a true Christian. Led by two charismatic priests, Arius, who preached

02:48that Yeshua, through uniquely holy, is less than Yahweh. And Athenius, who argued that

02:58Yeshua is an Elohim. He's like Yahweh, his father, himself, in human form. The debate

03:07over Yeshua's degree of divinity escalated from heated argument to violence and bloodshed.

03:15With vivid detail and meticulous research, Rubenstein recreates the political intrigue,

03:24riots, and power struggles of one of the most critical moments in history. One with

03:30startling parallels to our own time. So, this is a good book. I read it. And his claim is

03:39when did Yeshua, when was he elevated to divinity? You know, it was a serious matter back then.

03:48And the only way it, well, kind of got resolved, but not really, was the Council of Nicaea

03:55with Constantine presiding over all the bishops and he was trying to iron out, you know, things

04:01like the, what was the, you know, Yeshua's role? Was he divine? What was his nature?

04:07Things like that. But yeah, you get this book. I got this book, actually a friend of mine,

04:13Mr. Tim, he gave me this book. This is a book he gave me to look at and I thanked him

04:19for that and I thank him still. And if you want to get this book, I seen it on amazon.com,

04:27real dirt cheap, or else bookstore, you can get it on a bookstore. But yeah, I encourage

04:33you to get this book. If you're interested in it, pick the book up, check it out for

04:39yourself. Let me know what you think. Go to my comments, let me know what you think about

04:42it and I'd love to hear from you. And anyways, that's all I have to say about that. And please

04:49give me a big like, hit that notification bell and also subscribe. I could always use

04:54subscribers and that's all I have to say right now. Until we meet again, brothers and sisters,

04:59peace out and shalom.