Three thousand years from Galilee to the world
Trish Carn reviews Dairmaid MacCulloch's hostory of christianity, which accompanies the recent BBC4 TV series.
A History of Christianity: the first three thousand years by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Allan Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books. ISBN: 978 0 713 99869 6. £35 The size alone is impressive. Comprising 1,161 pages including almost sixty pages of index, seventy-seven pages of notes and fourteen pages of suggested further reading, it makes you realise that here is a book to take seriously. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury said in his Guardian review: ‘The provocative subtitle alerts you to the fact that this is going to be much more than a textbook. Diarmaid MacCulloch begins with what turns out to be one of many tours de force in summarising the intellectual and social background of Christianity in the classical as well as the Jewish world, so that we can see something of the issues to which the Christian faith offered a startlingly new response.’
