S.G.F. Brandon

S.G.F. Brandon suggests the influence of the idea of the Devil in Christian culture has been profound, inspiring both noble works of art and the most degrading superstitions.

S.G.F. Brandon analyses the differences that divide the Eastern and Western views of man’s nature and destiny, concluding as to their urgent significance today, as mankind becomes more closely interrelated and interdependent.

S.G.F. Brandon explains how, early in the history of Egyptian religion, Osiris, the slain king, emerged as the classic prototype of the saviour-god, whose death and resurrection assures his worshippers a new life.

S.G.F. Brandon explains how, from the religious conceptions of the ancient Hebrew people, sprang the traditional idea of how mankind originated.

The majestic narrative of the fortunes of the Jewish people, as unfolded in the Pentateuch, incorporates four different strains of literary tradition. Once fused together, writes S.G.F. Brandon, they produced a philosophy of history that has influenced not only Israel itself but the whole of Christian Europe.

Possibly some innate realism prevented the Mesopotamians from seeing death other than objectively. But the Epic of Gilgamesh remains an eloquent witness to the poignancy of their interrogation of the meaning of human life and destiny. S.G.F. Brandon.

Gnosticism was one of those developments of religious thought that, although finally rejected by Christians as heretical, played a major part in the formation of Christian theology during the first three centuries of the Church’s life, writes S.G.F. Brandon.

S.G.F. Brandon poses the question: was Josephus, the famous Jewish historian of the first century A.D., an arch Quisling of the ancient world? He “could scarcely have given a worse impression of himself than that to be derived from the Jewish War,” whence he emerges as an unscrupulous opportunist whose conduct is rendered even more distasteful by a hypocritical profession of the highest motives.

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the Roman conquest of Jerusalem marked a crisis in the early development of Christianity, and paved the way for a general acceptance of the Pauline message.