Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years [Hardcover]

Diarmaid MacCulloch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2010

The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Reformation returns with the definitive history of Christianity for our time

Once in a generation a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read-a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.

Christianity will teach modern readers things that have been lost in time about how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. This book encompasses all of intellectual history-we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of World War I and World War II.

We are living in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion and tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes with deep feeling about faith. His last book, The Reformation, was chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This awe-inspiring follow-up is a landmark new history of the faith that continues to shape the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Where does Christianity begin? In Athens, Jerusalem, or Rome? How did the early creeds of the church develop and differentiate? What was the impact of the Reformation and the Catholic Counterreformation? How have vital Christian communities emerged in Asia, Africa, and India since the 18th century? Award-winning historian MacCulloch (The Reformation) attempts to answer these questions and many more in this elegantly written, magisterial history of Christianity. MacCulloch diligently traces the origins and development of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianities, and he provides a more in-depth look at the development of Christianity in Asia and Africa than standard histories of Christianity. He offers sketches of Christian thinkers from Augustine and Luther to Desmond Tutu and Patriarch Bartholomew I. Three appendixes contain a list of popes, Orthodox patriarchs, and a collection of Christian texts. Assuming no previous knowledge on the part of readers about Christian traditions, MacCulloch traces in breathtaking detail the often contentious arguments within Christianity for the past 3,000 years. His monumental achievement will not soon be surpassed. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* MacCulloch signals the parameters of his prodigious scholarship when he brackets the Resurrection as a riddle no historian can resolve, then marvels at how belief in the Risen Lord has transformed ordinary men and women into martyrs—and inquisitors. Despite his refusal to affirm the faith’s founding miracle, MacCulloch demonstrates rare talent for probing the human dynamics of Christianity’s long and complex evolution. Even when examining well-known episodes—such as the Church Fathers’ fight against Gnosticism or the stunning conversion of Constantine—this capacious narrative opens unexpected perspectives. Readers encounter, for instance, surprising connections between Christian doctrine, on the one hand, and ancient Greek philosophy interlaced with Roman politics on the other. As the chronicle fractures into Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant strands, MacCulloch exposes unfamiliar but unmistakably human personalities who have shaped the worship of the divine. Readers meet, for instance, Gudit, a savagely anti-monastic Ethiopian queen, and Filofei, an irrepressibly ambitious Russian monk. Much closer to our time, we confront Christian enthusiasms that militarists harnessed in World War I, Christian hatreds that Nazis exploited in World War II. Concluding with the perplexities of evangelists facing an implacably secular world, MacCulloch leaves readers pondering a problematic religious future. A work of exceptional breadth and subtlety. --Bryce Christensen

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 1184 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (March 18, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021261
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021260
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Church History

More About the Author

Diarmaid MacCulloch is the author of The Reformation, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Wolfson Prize, and the British Academy Prize, and of Thomas Cranmer, winner of the Whitbread Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, and the Duff Cooper Prize. Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, he was brought up in a country rectory in East Anglia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

187 of 202 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A History Of The Christian Church, April 3, 2010

By 

C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Hardcover)

This is a long and scholarly history of the background, birth and growth of Christianity. The author is an Anglican and church historian. The narrative makes it clear that there has never been just one church, but many interpretations of who Jesus Christ was : from the early gnostic "heretics" (who lost the PR/political battles and were banned) to the Western Roman Church to the Eastern Greek Church to the Reformation and beyond (which spawned Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, et al). The love of Christ as shown by early Christian martyrs and by St. Francis of Assisi is contrasted with the intolerance of differences as shown by the religious wars and the Crusades. It is very readable and assumes no prior knowledge by the reader. With the approach of Easter, Mr. MacCulloch has written a book for the lay reader.

242 of 268 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Long Stretch, March 22, 2010

By 

Hande Z (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Hardcover)

Although he left out the history going back a few thousand more years in the development of god in ancient Sumerian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian cultures, which led to the god Jehovah's appearance to the Jews of the Old Testament this was an admirably well narrated story about the development of Christianity in which the author traced to roots in Greece and Rome 1000 years before the Common Era. Maculloch wrote in an impartial tone even as he pointed out excesses, absurdities, mythical incidents and contradictions. "In the Gospels, events in historic time astonishingly fuse with events beyond time". His account of the synoptic gospels pointed to contradictions but not in as great a detail as say, GA Well's "Did Jesus Exist?" But his account spanned a greater range than Wells'. He wrote in detail about the development of the various early churches in the Roman Empire, and explained why the church flourished - in its diverse forms. His chapter on the split in the church from the western and eastern orthodoxy to protestantism was an interesting and informative. Patience is required not because the writing style was turgid (on the contrary, it was extremely clear) but because it is a long account. His final chapters dealt with the rise of Christianity as a world religion and ecumenical efforts to seal the inevitable rifts created by diverse cultures and the hermeneutical method of understanding a vague Holy Book. It is a book for the believer and non-believer alike. One might not like or agree with his comments but the historical tracings are indispensable to anyone who wants to know the history of the religion as opposed to what the religion is about.

84 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Christianity in Historical Perspective: A narrative for the rational reader, April 10, 2010

By 

Didaskalex "Eusebius Alexandrinus" (Kellia on Calvary, Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Hardcover)

"...a landmark in its field, astonishing in its range, compulsively readable, full of insight even for the most jaded professional and of illumination for the interested general reader. It will have few, if any, rivals in the English language." Dr. Rowan Williams



Jon Meacham, Newsweek Editor, wrote an interest provoking review for the book in the NY Times, and when I read it I got myself to a nearby Borders, to find how the Christian faith is rooted a thousand years before its birth. After reading through the book for few hours, the Pulitzer author persuaded me of acquiring a copy of his compelling historiographic account.
I tried to discern the authors ideas and interpretation of the social and intellectual progress of Christianity from Meacham own critique, writing, "I live with the puzzle of wondering how something so apparently crazy can be so captivating to millions of other members of my species." That puzzle, I thought, did not hinder thousands of martyrs to offer their lives in defense of Christianity. They did not realize then its deep roots in the Jewish hope of 'human salvation,' echoed by Jeremiah's declaration of the 'New Covenant', Jer. 31:31-37.

MacCulloch does not only portray a vivid story but provides a balanced narration of a long and dramatic advance of the tradition, faith and spread of Christianity. He keeps coaching his reader to be mindful of the everlasting impact of Christianity on mundane events as well. "What Christianity brought into all this was a definition of Jewish identity (congregational fellowship) that opened up to become a definition of human identity..., the very idea of a religion as a form of belonging together," in the words of Dr. Rowan Williams. The learned Archbishop praises MacCulloch for resisting the narrative of decline and fall temptation of the skeptical historian of the church. "As a serious historian, he brushes aside the luxuriant growths of conspiracy theory - the Gnostics plus Mary Magdalene plus Knights Templar fantasy world," adds the Archbishop. The compelling scholar represents factual, well searched history of religious thought that diminishes the illusions of Gnostic teachings.

The author is very articulate on dogmatic turn points, with the clarity of a fair minded analyst. It is impressive how the eminent Oxford historian has related Pelagius opposition to Augustine on original sin as part of a medieval morality that left little room for personal experience and human freedom, which the Eastern Church call synergy, personal participation of own salvation. Another fine doctrine was the description of faith about the person of Christ by the ancient Church of Alexandria as Miaphysite rather than Monophysite, and various other doctrinal issues. He elaborated on the expansion of Christianity in the last three centuries, and described the reformation of the church institutions, a subject he proved his talent and knowledge, as re-establishing of the Catholic faith on the same basic biblical teachings. In conclusion, MacCulloch creatively helps the reader to realize that the historical evolution of church traditions was a normal progress and inevitable result of the development of Christianity that encountered theological and dogmatic differences.

Quoted Book Reviews:
"MacCulloch begins with what turns out to be one of many tours de force in summarizing the intellectual and social background of Christianity in the classical as well as the Jewish world." Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.
"MacCulloch's book is a landmark contribution to 'that understanding' -- Christianity cannot be seen as a force beyond history, ... and within human limitations. ... I did not see how people could make sense of the Bible if they were taught to think of it as a collection of Associated Press reports." Jon Meacham