Customer Reviews

The First Days of Christianity (History Channel Ultimate Collections)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A nicely done 400 minute summary of the history of the Christian religion. Does a decent job of explaining how Jesus and his 12 Apostles spread Christianity throughout the known world.Done in the typical "Biography" style. Believers and non-believers alike will find this film edifying and interesting. Does an especially good job of explaining the East-West split in Christendom and the Papal/King alliances of the first 1400 (approx)years of Christianity. The only negative I would say about this effort is it's not quite as scholarly as I would have liked but that is purely my take. All in all it hits all the main features of the development of Christendom. Believers will be glad they watched.

"The First Days of Christianity" is, on the whole, not worth the money. The only possible exception would be free copies.

The first part covers the "Holy Family". It uses the Gnostic Gospels as a reliable source despite the nearly universal rejection of them by modern reputable scholership. As a result, the first portion of this poorly executed attempt at an entertaining biography is largely innaccurate and biased. The reenactments of loosely related miracle accounts are worthy of a high school play at best. If you do choose to buy this, don't even bother with the first section.

The second part is a head and shoulders improvement over the first, but it still falls far short of a well done documentary. It clearly favors an atheist (or at the very least agnostic) viewpoint in reporting the history of the very early church. As the timeline becomes more removed from Jesus and the history becomes less controversial, the documentary improves considerably.

Got this for the mom for Christmas. Being an Atheist not something I would usually buy but watched some with mom and it had pretty decent production value. So yeah I give it 4 out of 5

I am very suprised by the negativity & dislike for this documentery because i loved it. Yes some of it is not what I had been taught but i did like it & it touched on things I didn't know, like Paul. I have watched this over & over & I would recommend. It is nicely boxed & very well done, and I paid a lot more for it..

Warning this is a very inferior title on the subject !
The set is made up of two very different History Channel documentaries
1: "In the Footsteps of the Holy Family" this title is on the par with an amateur Christmas pageant, its only professional is the aging actor Robin Moore. Complete with extremely poorly done reenactments totally devoid of facts and in some cases context. In many cases footsteps has a distasteful political slant bordering on propaganda. Many of the so called Miracles are laughable lacking even internal creditability. My personal favorite was a tale of a General Harper of the Egyptian Army(?).

2. The Apostles Collection is by far the better of the two titles. Narrated by Martin Sheen, its production values make it at least watchable.

I will have to admit the packaging of this 4 disc Boxed set is a work of art

I love history and usually the products are pretty good....this was not what I thought it would be. It really has nothing to do with the first days of the Christian Faith. It's really just one testamony after another.