A competent summary of available knowledge and ideas about the origins and spread of Christianity. ( )

A very good narrative history of the early years of Christianity. There is very little that can be said about Jesus from historical sources, and the gospel of Mark is thought to be written between AD 65 and 75. The earliest document written and preserved by Christians as part of the accepted Bible is Paul's letter to the Galatians written about AD 49. Comparing the "synoptic gospels" (Mark, Matthew and Luke) shows that there are many sayings of Jesus that are not the same in each gospel, and appear to come from a lost earlier source, known as "Q". Paul's letters and travels to Christian communities in the middle east created the theology and some of the traditions of worship. It seems that the Eucharistic meal was well established by AD 60. Later works, including Luke's gospel and his sequal,the Acts of the Apostles, show a more established tradition. The Gospel of John was the latest written, about AD 100, but seems to draw on eyewitness accounts of Christians around Jerusalem. The story is then taken up by the competing sects, until the Emperor Constantine orchestrated the Nicene creed in 325 AD. The main break appears to be between those who saw Jesus as "one in substance" with the father, and begotten before time with the father. The "subordinationists" or Arians, (followers of Arias, a priest in Alexandria) who believed that Jesus was a later and distinct creation of God the Father, with the Holy Spirit a later emmantion of the Father and Son. There were several Eucumenical Councils, more interference by Emperors, until Augustine, writing around 400 to 410, closes the debates on the nature of God. Friedman, who is the author of this study, ends at this point. He thinks that Augustine destroys the Greek interest in debating theology along creative pathways, and leads to the "Closing of the Western Mind", a title of another book treating early Medieval Christianity.
Some quotes I marked:

p 127: "One opponent, writing about AD 200, sees Christians as 'a crowd that lurks in hiding places, shunning the light; they are speechless in public but gabble away in corners'"

p 129: "Communities converted en masse are notoriously unstable, and many of the new Christians must have lapsed (as Pliny's own comments suggest). Yet a charismatic preacher can create a sustained movement. The early 20th century Congolese prophet Simon Kimbangu, who came from a Baptist background, began preaching in the Belgian Congo in 1921 and within a period of only six months achieved an enthusiastic following"

p 161: Tatian, a Greek Christian from Syria who had become a student of Justin Martyr in Rome, set about creating a single version of the four Gospels known as the Diatessaron ('through the four')... Even so, it is fascinating to note that the Koran refers to a single Christian gospel and this may well be the Diatessaron.

p 184: Once you have your core of faith then you can proceed either by logic or spiritual intuition to knowledge.

p. 310: In the hands of John Philoponus 'the lover of toil' of Alexandria (c. 490-570) this was a sophisticated attack. Philoponus noted the contradictions in Aristotle's works and the weakness of his arguments for the eternity of the world (arguments which any orthodox Christian had to confront).

p. 322: The traditions of reason and free enquiry may only have reached a tiny elite, but it only needs the effective use of reason by a few for major progress to be made.

p. 324 (Abelard 1079-1142) 'Human understanding increases as the years pass and one age succeeds another ...yet in faith - the area in which threat of error is most dangerous - there is no progress... This is the sure result of the fact that one is never allowed to investigate what should be believed about what is said among one's own people, or to to escape punishment for raising doubts about what is said by everyone ... People profess to believe what they admit they cannot understand, asi if faith consisted in uttering words rather than in mental understanding.'

p 324: This book began with what was an intense emotional experience undergone by a small group of Jews in Jerusalem after their spiritual leader had been crucified by the Roman authorities in collaboration with the Jewish priesthood. That experience is irrecoverable but very soon Jesus was being conceived in formulas that used Jewish terminology, all that they had to hand, but which also transcended these formulas so as to give him divine status. It came to be believed that God required his son to suffer so horribly so as to lift the weight of sinfulness that was perceived to be the predominant feature of humanity. The movement became sustainable, its teachings and beliefs passing from one generation to another and transferring into the spiritually complex world of the Greeks, and then further afield, surviving and adapting to different cultural contexts. ( )