The content ranges from the breezy, as in his descriptions of modern trends, to the dense, as in his treatment of the controversies animating the earliest church councils. whereas it is true that to cover 3000 years of human and religious history, the writer must default to an inch and a half below the surface and some readers may be disappointed in that factor, i decidedly was not. My Christ is obviously English and he, like me, loves churchyards and cathedrals, waits every year with eager anticipation for a decent carol service so he can join robustly in the old, familiar favourites, and if it ever snows at Christmas, likes to read Elliot's Journey of the Magi and ponder the whole mystery of the thing. i also have the bbc dvds of the series made from this book. Rather, it reaffirms it. The first three thousand years do not seem likely to be also the last. the sheer breadth of the work, by default, wove together so many disparate parts that i can not help but appreciate the effort. The book is over 1,000 pages. It is a survey of Christianity from its earliest lineages. He was knighted in the UK New Year’s Honours List of 2012. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch: review. The content of his historical review of Jesus life is extensive, and it is surprising. It's rich with explanations of periods and time that my education skipped over—oh, let's be frank, my education didn't even go faintly near, periods like the entire history of the Eastern Christian Church and the millenium of Byzantine history. His survey of Christianity seems to me to not be dispassionate or objective. we know most of the information therein ... but in pieces. May 5th 2010 The first tipoff is his use of CE and BCE instead of Anno Domini (AD) and BC. I found the book deeply satisfying, and I recommend it highly. Points and ideas that could easily be made in 1 or 2 sentences usually takes the writer 4 or 5 to get across. the sheer breadth of the work, by defa. 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?) Nevertheless, the author does a good job telling the story in a free flowi. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Some”, “Along the coast runs a wide fertile plain, backed to the east by a north–south spine of hills which in the north become mountains; Jerusalem sits in the middle of the hill country. 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. A massive book--over 1000 pages. Most readers will find parts of it ob. Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. 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. 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. MacCulloch makes reading exhaustive history exhilarating rather than exhausting, and although everyone will have a favourite nit to pick - mine being the dubious treatment of Hegel, and the absence of anything about Erigena - only the most die-hard partisan could claim that this is anything other than brilliant. 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