Abrahamic Genealogy — interactive
Major divisions & a short reading list
Ancient Near Eastern & Israelite roots
The West Semitic world from which Israelite religion emerged, and the historical-critical reconstruction of Yahweh’s rise from a Canaanite-El and southern-desert matrix into monotheism.
- Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God
- Thomas Römer, The Invention of God
- William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife?
Judaism
From the diversity of Second Temple Judaism through the rabbinic synthesis to the medieval rites and the modern denominations.
- Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
- Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition
- Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity
Christian origins & the ‘parting of the ways’
How a Jewish messianic movement became a gentile religion, the lost early Christianities, and the slow separation of church and synagogue.
- Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities
- Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ
- James D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways
Eastern & Oriental Christianity
The Chalcedonian Orthodox and the non-Chalcedonian (Miaphysite and Church-of-the-East) communions that the Latin West too often overlooks.
- John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church
- Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church
- W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement
Roman Catholicism
The Latin church, the papacy and its religious orders – the largest single Christian communion.
- Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
- Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes
The Reformation & Protestantism
The 16th-century ruptures and the magisterial, Radical and Anglican families that fanned out from them.
- Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided
- Alec Ryrie, Protestants
- Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations
American evangelicalism & new movements
The revivalist, Restorationist and Pentecostal ferment of the New World, and the modern evangelical movement and its politics.
- Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism
- George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture
- Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals
- Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne
Islam
From the early ‘believers’ movement’ and its convergent origins through the Sunni-Shia-Kharijite divisions, the schools of law, Sufism and modern reform.
- Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers
- Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam
- Jonathan A. C. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad
- Heinz Halm, Shi’ism
Syncretic, creole & folk religions
The Afro-Atlantic, Amerindian-Catholic and other blended traditions born of conquest, slavery and mission.
- J. Lorand Matory, Black Atlantic Religion
- Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola
- David H. Brown, Santería Enthroned
Western esotericism & the occult
The Hermetic, Kabbalistic and Theosophical currents on the boundary of the Abrahamic world, descending from a Greco-Roman as well as a Semitic root.
- Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed
- Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism
- Olav Hammer, Claiming Knowledge
New religious movements
The prophet-founded, apocalyptic and boundary movements of the last two centuries – benign, controversial and catastrophic alike.
- Eileen Barker, New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction
- Catherine Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently
- J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions