Books on early Christianity, angels among Christmas gift possibilities.

6 books on early Christianity, angels, mindfulness, Jewish literature make great Christmas gifts

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette again offers a selection of books ideal for gift-giving.

Last week’s selections included a book on finding joy, stories of the saints and a search for the Bible in America and more.

This week’s final six selections include a devotional focused on angels in the Bible, a closer look at the Christmas story and an examination of the early days of Christianity.

Destroyer of the Gods, by Larry W. Hurtado (Baylor University Press, $29.95) — Christianity is mainstream today but it wasn’t always so, as Hurtado discusses in Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. The fledgling “Jesus movement” was quite unusual for its time and was considered silly and irrational in the Roman era.

Hurtado says Christianity also was considered dangerous at the time, and something of a slap in the face to the religion of the day. He writes that it “challenged what were then accepted notions of religion, piety, identity and behavior. Indeed, in that ancient Roman setting, Christianity was perceived by man as irreligious, impious, and unacceptable, a threat to social order.”

How, then, did it manage to not only survive, but thrive? Hurtado explores the early history of the faith — specifically the first three centuries — to answer that question and traces Christianity as it emerged from a “world full of Gods” to create an entirely new one.

All God’s Angels, by Martin Shannon (Paraclete Press, $19.99) — This beautifully illustrated book focuses on angelic visits found in the Bible and uses them as a basis for reflection or meditation. The 24 entries are divided evenly between the Old and New Testaments. Each features a Scripture entry, a short reading, as well as an image to aid in contemplation or meditation on the text. Images include well-known paintings like The

Sacrifice of Abraham by Rembrandt, as well as mosaics and frescoes.

For example, a Byzantine mosaic from the late 12th century accompanies the entry for Genesis 3:22-24 — “Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’ — therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.”

The mosaic, Expulsion From Paradise, depicts an angel escorting Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden as they sadly look back at the cherubim guarding the gate. The book will appeal to art lovers and those interested in angels. Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ, by Timothy Keller (Viking, $20) — Best-selling author and pastor Timothy Keller explores the Nativity story in Hidden Christmas. It’s a story most everyone thinks they know — one filled with angels, shepherds and a newborn king. But, Keller wonders if the true meaning of Christmas will be lost as the secular pushes out the sacred.

Keller points out that while Christmas has become a highly commercialized, secular holiday, even the nonreligious can’t completely escape the religious trappings of the season. The hymns and carols that contain the essentials of the Christian faith seep in, and if we listen closely the songs tell the story of the faith. He writes, “to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel.”

That’s his goal in Hidden Christmas — to help readers examine the story told in those familiar Bible passages and “learn about the gifts God gave us at Christmas,” as well as how to receive them. Finding the Blue Sky, by Joseph Emet (Tarcher-Perigee $16) — Subtitled A Mindful Approach to Choosing Happiness Here and Now, this book by Emet looks at where the ancient teachings of Buddhism meet those of positive psychology (or the study of what makes people happy).

Emet writes, “the blue sky of happiness is found just beyond the gray clouds of sadness, everyday concerns, stress or anxiety.” The key to finding happiness, he writes, is to change our thoughts. Changing our thoughts can lead to a change in our habits, which help form our character and affect how we live our lives. He points to the practice of mindfulness as a way to change those thoughts and habits.

Each chapter features a story, a text to reflect on and instructions for putting the lesson into practice. Finding happiness, he says, takes practice just like everything else, but it can be done. Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life, by Henri J.M. Nouwen (Convergent Books, $24) — Love, Henri features more than 100 letters from Nouwen, the late best-selling author, priest and professor.

Gabrielle Earnshaw, who spent 15 years cataloguing all of Nouwen’s correspondence, writes in the preface that he received more than 16,000 letters in his lifetime. He kept every piece of correspondence, no matter if it was a postcard, a piece of paper, a greeting card or a fax. He also responded to each and every one.

The book features letters written to and from Nouwen over a 22-year span that offer insight into his life. Earnshaw writes, “For Henri, letter writing was an integral part of friendship …. Words, he felt, had the power to give life and when offered in friendship could be a source of grace.”

Nouwen, who died in 1996, wrote more than 40 books, among them The Return of the Prodigal Son and The Wounded Healer. Born in Holland, he joined the priesthood, taught psychology, worked alongside Trappist monks, lived with the poor in Peru and eventually found his home working with the developmentally disabled. The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature, by Adam Kirsch (W.W. Norton and Co., $28.95) — Kirsch examines some of the great books of Jewish history, thought and tradition in The People and the Books.

Of course, in Judaism, the Bible and the Talmud are central to the faith, but what he looks at here are other books “whose richness and variety testify to the great length and breadth of Jewish history.”

Focusing on the key areas of God, the Torah, Israel and the Jewish people, Kirsch’s 18 selections cover a 2,500-year period and feature fiction and philosophy, fables and history and more. He includes two biblical books — the Book of Deuteronomy — the last of the Five Books of Moses that form the Torah — and the Book of Esther, as well as writings from the philosopher Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn and many more.

Kirsch is director of the master’s program in Jewish Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a poet, a columnist for Tablet magazine and is also a contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.