A New History of Early Christianity

The relevance of Christianity is as hotly contested today as it has ever been.A New History of Early Christianityshows how our current debates are rooted in the many controversies surrounding the birth of the religion and the earliest attempts to resolve them. Charles Freeman's meticulous historical account of Christianity from its birth in Judaea in the first century A.D. to the emergence of Western and Eastern churches by A.D. 600 reveals that it was a distinctive, vibrant, and incredibly diverse movement brought into order at the cost of intellectual and spiritual vitality. Against the conventional narrative of the inevitable "triumph" of a single distinct Christianity, Freeman shows that there was a host of competing Christianities, many of which had as much claim to authenticity as those that eventually dominated. Looking with fresh eyes at the historical record, Freeman explores the ambiguities and contradictions that underlay Christian theology and the unavoidable compromises enforced in the name of doctrine. Tracing the astonishing transformation that the early Christian church underwentfrom sporadic niches of Christian communities surviving in the wake of a horrific crucifixion to sanctioned alliance with the stateCharles Freeman shows how freedom of thought was curtailed by the development of the concept of faith. The imposition of "correct belief," religious uniformity, and an institutional framework that enforced orthodoxy were both consolidating and stifling. Uncovering the difficulties in establishing the Christian church, he examines its relationship with Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman society, and he offers dramatic new accounts of Paul, the resurrection, and the church fathers and emperors.

Charles Freeman, a popular historian and specialist on the ancient world and its legacy, is the author of numerous books including The Closing of the Western Mind.

List of Illustrations	p. ix
List of Maps	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Beginnings	p. 1
A Trial	p. 3
The Seedbed: Judaism in the First Century AD	p. 8
Jesus before the Gospels	p. 19
Breaking Away: the First Christianities	p. 31
What Did Paul Achieve?	p. 47
The Letter to the Hebrews	p. 66
Fifty Years On: the Gospel Writers Reflect on Jesus	p. 72
John and the Jerusalem Christians	p. 87
Creating a New Testament	p. 97
No Second Coming: the Search for Stability	p. 111
Becoming Christian	p. 121
Toeholds in a Wider Empire	p. 123
Open Borders: the Overlapping Worlds of Christians and Jews	p. 132
Was There a Gnostic Challenge?	p. 142
The Idea of a Church	p. 155
To Compromise or Reject: Confronting the Material World	p. 163
The Earliest Christian Art	p. 169
Celsus Confronts the Christians	p. 171
The Challenge of Greek Philosophy	p. 176
Origen and Early Christian Scholarship	p. 186
New Beginnings: the Emergence of a Latin Christianity	p. 196
Victims or Volunteers: Christian Martyrs	p. 205
The Spread of Christian Communities	p. 215
The Imperial Church	p. 223
The Motives of Constantine	p. 225
Debating the Nature of God	p. 238
The Stifling of Christian Diversity	p. 248
The Assault on Paganism	p. 254
æNo one is honoured before himÆ: the Rise of the Bishop	p. 261
The Art of Imperial Christianity	p. 271
An Obsession with the Flesh	p. 274
The End of Optimism: Augustine and the Consequences of Sin	p. 285
Divine but Human	p. 298
The Closing of the Schools	p. 306
A Fragile Church: Christianity and the Collapse of the Western Empire	p. 313
Faith, Certainty and the Unknown God	p. 321
Notes	p. 327
Glossary	p. 337
Further Reading	p. 353
Timeline	p. 359
Index	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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