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Hopkins' World of Gods

Comparison of Approaches used by Hopkins in
A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity
(Chapters 1-4)

In his book, A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity, Keith Hopkins attempts a new way of presenting the history of early Christianity through an array of approaches. In his creative and interesting endeavor, Hopkins includes fiction, scholarly analysis, storytelling, and informal response letters from critical colleagues to formulate his views on early Christianity. These different, and somewhat daring, approaches incorporate a number of literary devices which may be seen as deviating from orthodox scholarship. However, this experimental method in how to write religious history employed by Hopkins gives his book a postmodern turn and directly affects the way the reader looks at early Christianity.
Hopkins begins with two imaginary time travelers, James and Martha, whom he has hired to go back in time to report the religious aspects of the Ro...

Posted by: Justin Rech

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