A History of Christianity 6-DVD Set + The First Three Thousand Years Paperback Book. There is nothing like the parables in the writings of Jewish spiritual teachers (rabbis) before Jesus used them; interestingly, they emerge as a literary form in later Judaism only after Jesus’s death. Fast, free delivery. First half was more interesting from a historical point of view. Get unlimited DVD Movies & TV Shows delivered to your door with no late fees, ever. Sections. i took the 40 days of lent (started a week before; ended a week early) to tackle the job. Three thousand years in even 1000+ pages is pushing the limits for any topic. it was worth the effort. 0:21 [mUvwO. This is a very good history. MacCulloch gives sardonic and playful commentary, emerging from his status as a self-professed "friend of Christianity", as an aid to his herculean task of writing a popular history and prognosis for established Christianity in an era of doubt, while also trying to address modern outbreaks of fervour, from Latter-Day Saints to Pentecostals. All Quotes Each of these was a polis – another of those Greek words like logos which at first sight seems easy to translate into English, in this case as ‘city’. Refresh and try again. A product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill, Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years goes back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and encompasses Christianity's spread across the globe. His survey of Christianity seems to me to not be dispassionate or objective. I found the book deeply satisfying, and I recommend it highly. I don't trust his objectivity because he lost a high-ranking position in his church when he was outed, and he seems to be sneering at Christianity. it does not disappoint. Readers' Most Anticipated Books of January. Read more. May 5th 2010 AbeBooks.com: A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (9780713998696) by MacCulloch, Diarmaid and a great selection of similar New, … And obviously that's an unreasonable ask in even a big book on the history of 2000 years. This book did not destroy my faith. It was neither as well flowing or as unbiased as I hoped it would be. One month free trial! It's not only huge, it's pretty overwhelmingly erudite. One of the characteristics of Western Christianity between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries is its identification of various groups within the Western world as distinct, marginal and a constant potential threat to good order: principal among such groups were Jews, heretics, lepers and (curiously belatedly) homosexuals.8 In 1321 there was panic all over France, ranging from poor folk to King Philip V himself, that lepers and Jews had combined together with the great external enemy, Islam, to overthrow all good order in Christendom by poisoning wells. Abundant slave labour, after all, blunted the need for any major advance in technology. His deep learning and understanding of his subject are set with an elegant and flowing prose style so the book is both a pleasure to read and a means of understanding most of the hows, whys and wherefores of Christianity. The use of these terms seems ludicrous considering the subject of his book. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch 5,009 ratings, 4.11 average rating, 434 reviews Open Preview See a Problem? But this book, which is surely destined to become a classic in the field, goes a long way to explaining why Christianity has. It took three library renewals to get through this book (and thanks to an ice storm, the fifth this year!, I still owe the library a one day fine, a whole nickel that they thank you for and dump in a desk drawer with a bunch of rubber bands, and I love living in the country and having that library), and then work kind of slammed me a little, so it’s just been sitting there languishing on my currently-reading shelf for two weeks. And in all that time I still haven’t come up with something deeply. His survey of Christianity seems to me to not be dispassionate or objective. seemingly without effort, macculloch weaves the ideas together, making connections, showing cause and effect, and more often than not doing so seamlessly. This kind of book is exactly why the adjective "magisterial" was invented. But I kept finding myself wanting more. The title provides an early indication that the Ancient Greek and Hebrew roots of Christianity are covered by this book in addition to the past two thousand years that are more commonly accepted as the era of Christianity. I had high hopes for his one-volume Christian history with its intriguing title. The Definitive account of Christianity in our time. It covers the whole range of Christian history from its roots in Judaism to modern day. every continent and every religion has found a place of clarity in this book. I only read the first 150 pages, plenty far enough to understand how MacCulloch feels about Christianity. The first time I had read this book I was trying to make sense of the Trinity and how it developed and caused differentiation between sects of the Christian faith. How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of humanity its followers? Its quite humbling for those who maintain 'the correct doctrines' and at the same time. The only issue I have is that it's just too much at once. An Oxford professor examines the history of the Christian faith, starting a millennium before the birth of Jesus. I know the author is just being PC (same reason why he doesn't take digs at the other two major religions discussed in this book) but I think it is really silly to avoid AD and BC especially given the book's subject matter. Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic, acclaimed history A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years follows the story of Christianity around the globe, from ancient Palestine to contemporary China. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years covers the story of Christianity with (pretty much) all the variations, heresies, and twists and turns from its origins in Judaism, to the history of the early Christian Church, through the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counterreformation, and up to the present day. I only read the first 150 pages, plenty far enough to understand how MacCulloch feels about Christianity. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. i also have the bbc dvds of the series made from this book. ‘What religion am I?’ asks Homer Simpson in one episode of his family's eponymous cartoon. No nonsense. So much of its own history - fragmented, argumentative and hypocritical - has always seemed to be at odds with much of Christ's core message, and I've never quit understood how so many Christians can fail to see that contradiction in their own faith's history. Whether it be one person, one nature, and one will; or two people, one nature, and one will; or ....... doesn't make sense a. Christianity is complex. As a double priests kid (both my parents were Anglican clergy) an assumption was usually made that I knew quite a bit about Christianity. In conclusion, I was disappointed with this book. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch. This kind of book is exactly why the adjective "magisterial" was invented. to read 1100+ pages of christianity's history is to read 1100+ pages of world history since christianity has been a prime mover of human history. This is the impulse which makes King Arthur’s knights sleep under certain mountains, ready to bring deliverance, or creates the fascination with the Knights Templar and occult conspiracy which propelled The Da Vinci Code into best-seller lists.”, “Epicurus, saw the pursuit of happiness as life’s ultimate goal: that Epicurean affirmation is echoed in the American Declaration of Independence, curiously omitting the original qualification that happiness consists in the attainment of inner tranquillity.”, “There was little follow-up to the remarkable advances seen in Classical Greece in the understanding of technology, medicine and geography. Quotes By Diarmaid MacCulloch. A dark secret spans several... To see what your friends thought of this book, I have found the historical review of Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrmann, to be a well balanced, historically comprehensive, and intellectually satisfying summ. but getting through this book without becoming dizzy means the reader must pace herself. the Rapture. this book is for you. This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. that's how well macculloch presented the material. I have a feeling that 'currently reading' may stay the status of this book for quite a while. It is really not much worth reading. I'll begin my review this way: there are a few reviewers who did not like this book due to the secular (but by no means anti-Christian) perspective most educated readers would expect from a serious church historian. It claims to cover three thousand years of global history, but it does so sketchily, most of its focus being on, first, the Middle East and, second, Europe and America. Rent A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009) starring Diarmaid MacCulloch on DVD and Blu-ray. I'm only halfway through and we've already covered: Rome, early popes, African christians, the Orthodox Church, the beginnings of various brotherhoods and convents, ways to pray, Constantine, early theologians and philosophers, pergatory, the energy of God. The terms he uses are used by certain publishing houses and writers to "avoid offending non-Christians". We’d love your help. A History of Christianity episode 1 – The First Christianity . I didn't get bored throughout; quite the opposite--I was eager to read and learn more. So much of its own history - fragmented, argumentative and hypocritical - has always seemed to be at odds with much of Christ's core message, and I've never quit understood how so many Christians can fail to see that contradiction in their own faith's history. Polis was more than the cluster of houses around a temple which was its visible embodiment and gave it its name. Most readers will find parts of it ob. I can't list everything. Robert Louis Wilken's "The First Thousand" years is an exemplary survey of Christianity's first millenium. For example, he does not even mention the Emperor Nero... more of my comments later...? Cambridge University Press 577pp 100 [pounds sterling] ISBN 978 052181106 4 Another point that irked me about this book is the use of BCE and CE instead of AD and BC. He also doesn’t ignore the spiritual, faith aspect of his subj. Dupuche, ‘Sufism and Hesychasm’, in B. Neil, G. D. Dunn and L. Cross (eds. He also shares some personal facts about his upbringing as an evanglical Christian, his college education, and his ultimate disillusionment with the Christian faith, and the promises of the evanglical Christian "Right", which is still committed to the hope of a miraculous apocalyptic return of the Savior, and the restitution of the human race through death, rebirth and (hopefully?) Firstly, the author's style of writing is very "busy". Weaknesses and glosses seem to multiply the closer he gets to the modern era, but that is partially the danger of moving from popular historian to commentato. The book is over 1,000 pages and I didn't find much in it I didn't already know. This book is certainly thorough, however, it is neither straight forward or unbiased. The first tipoff is his use of CE and BCE instead of Anno Domini (AD) and BC. So if you want an overview of church history, and don't mind wading through a 1000 page book (though, with 2000 years of history to tell, how much shorter could such a book be?) I'm what you might call a slightly bewildered agnostic, but I've always had a particular interest in Christianity. This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main ideas and personalities of Christian history, its organisation and spirituality, but how it has changed politics, sex, and human society. His deep learning and understanding of his subject are set with an elegant and flowing prose style so the book is both a pleasure to read and a means of understanding most of the hows, whys and wherefores of Christianity. Reading Selection 1: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 1-12 According to MacCulloch, Christian history is a story which was told and believed by Jesus’ disciples. It depresses me a bit because it is written in the cynical, anti-establishment style which is typical of the educated elite today, but it is valuable for its quality and the insight which it offers regarding the multitude of different takes on Christianity (most of them sincere and justified, none of them isolated from political expediency) which were the fruit of the early Church. We will need to consider the politics of the polis at some length to understand just why the Greeks made their remarkable contribution to shaping the West and the versions of Christianity which it created.”, “In the words of the great twentieth-century philosopher-historian R. G. Collingwood: ‘Deep in the mind of every Roman, as in the mind of every Greek, was the unquestioned conviction which Aristotle put into words: that what raised man above the level of barbarism … to live well instead of merely living, was his membership of an actual, physical city.”, “One of his central commands is a commonplace of ancient philosophy, and is a conclusion at which most world religions eventually arrive: ‘whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them’ – what has come to be known as the Golden Rule.18”, “It is always difficult to catch irony and humour across a gap of centuries; but if evanescent tints remain in the phrase ‘Son of Man’, they are much clearer in another distinctive and engaging feature of Jesus’s discourses, the miniature stories or ‘parables’ which illuminate aspects of his message. I am going to look for a more balanced and complete history of Christianity. Christianity, the religion, has done its share of good for the world, as the author describes, but it has its dark side too, practiced imperfectly over three thousand years. It's nothing less than an attempt at a truly "ecumenical" (pun intended) history of Christianity, covering not only its temporal history, which as you can tell by the subtitle goes back much farther than the BC-AD line, but also all of the different denominations, their doctrinal disputes, the major figures, philosophical lineages, and how the various Christian faiths changed and were changed by the countries they touched. Wilken starts with the life of Jesus and follows an approach encyclopedically organized around topics and geography to close with the Christianization of the Slavs in the 10th Century. He”, “Thucydides had grasped that vital historical insight that groups of people behave differently and have different motivations from individual human beings, and that they often behave far more discreditably than individuals.”, “The writing and telling of history is bedevilled by two human neuroses: horror at the desperate shapelessness and seeming lack of pattern in events, and regret for a lost golden age, a moment of happiness when all was well. It is a large book but if you persevere you will be rewarded. Even if the meaning of the word is given one more layer of sophistication as ‘city-state’, the translation is inadequate to convey the resonance of polis, with the same sort of difficulty one might find in speaking of the resonance of the English word ‘home’. The book is over 1,000 pages. Put these together and you have an urge to create elaborate patterns to make sense of things and to create a situation where the golden age is just waiting to spring to life again. A thorough history of the christian religion from an Oxford don and the son of a Church of England parson whose background and upbringing give the whole book a flavour of what has made the Anglicans or the C of E such a distinctive part of Christanity. When the steam engine was invented in Alexandria about a hundred years after the birth of Jesus Christ, it remained a toy, and the ancient world failed to make the breakthrough in energy resources which occurred in England seventeen centuries later. It's so learned, engaging, and comprehensive that by the time you finish it your mind feels full. There was nothing benevolent about the providence which watched over the process. MacCulloch has rectified this with A History Of Christianity. (The Christian Rapture is not discussed in his book, "How Jesus Became God". Points and ideas that could easily be made in 1 or 2 sentences usually takes the writer 4 or 5 to get across. The New York Times bestseller and definitive history of Christianity for our time—from the award-winning author of The Reformation and Silence A product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill, Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity goes back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and encompasses the globe. A massive book--over 1000 pages. New year! Christianity is complex. I'm what you might call a slightly bewildered agnostic, but I've always had a particular interest in Christianity. It is a large book but if. The polis included the surrounding mountains, fields, woods, shrines, as far as its frontiers; it was the collective mind of the community who made it up, and whose daily interactions and efforts at making decisions came to constitute ‘politics’. I am a Catholic Christian. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. To be clear he does go into detail on some stuff! it does not disappoint. Whether it be one person, one nature, and one will; or two people, one nature, and one will; or ....... doesn't make sense and never will and trying to understand that is a wasted effort and anyone who doesn't believe in my narrow interpretation is deserving of death (j/k, but historically that is what happened). Most of the book is, by nature, extrapolation based on a very fragmented set of documents and conflicting histories, but MacCulloch is always overanxious to undermine Christianity by taking huge leaps of speculation and is never, at least that I saw in the first 150 pages, willing to remain neutral or actually go the other direction. The content of his historical review of Jesus life is extensive, and it is surprising. every continent and every religion has found a place of clarity in this book. the sheer breadth of the work, by defa. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch: review. The results are frequently disappointing, and always terminate in the embarrassing non sequitur of death.”, “The only way in which Darwin's data made sense was to suppose that species battled for survival, and that evolution came when one slight adaptation of a species proved more successful than another in the battle: a process which he named 'natural selection'. Ignore anyone who tells you it's anti-(insert your own sect here), and read it. This is probably the best one-volume history of Christianity that you can find. A thorough history of the christian religion from an Oxford don and the son of a Church of England parson whose background and upbringing give the whole book a flavour of what has made the Anglicans or the C of E such a distinctive part of Christanity. Refresh and try again. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life’s work. A century on, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga formed an English Catholic parallel, conscious or unconscious, to Smith's work.”, “Punishment was thus directed to outsiders as well as to sinful Christians. One fifth of the way in, I've concluded I'm a 'cultural' Christian. How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of humanity its followers? MacCulloch is so uptight PC he must squeak when he walks. But this book, which is surely destined to become a classic in the field, goes a long way to explaining why Christianity has had so many schisms, so many sects and splinter groups, reformations and counter-reformations. Christianity, one of the world’s great religions, has had an incalculable impact on human history. One fifth of the way in, I've concluded I'm a 'cultural' Christian. It claims to cover three thousand years of global history, but it does so sketchily, most of its focus being on, first, the Middle East and, second, Europe and America. [FREE DOWNLOAD]] Great Christian Jurists in English History (Law and Christianity) by Cambridge University Press PPT. Click here for the lowest price! New books! Was this form of Jesus’s teaching so successful that it impressed and influenced even Jews who did not become his followers?27 Because the parables are stories, they have woven themselves into general memory more than any other aspects of Jesus’s message: the Good Samaritan; the Wise and the Foolish Virgins; the bad and good use of talents – a word which has itself been enriched thanks to the parable of the Talents, whose original reference was simply to coins called talents and not to gifts of personality. Very good book. As a double priests kid (both my parents were Anglican clergy) an assumption was usually made that I knew quite a bit about Christianity. 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