A New Birth and A New Agreement

The time of the early Christians, including many martyrs for the faith, called the Patristic Age, lasted until the eighth century after the time of Jesus. But here we consider the centuries up to the end of the Western Roman Empire after the partition between East and West in 456AD. The 7th Ecumenical Council marks a final divide in the Church between East and West, though the Eastern Orthodox Church has always prayed for an 8th truly Ecumenical Council.

So the time-span of this present book is located from the end of the Old Testament era, which some would put at around 4BC on the Julian calendar, to the last years of Emperors in the West and the coming of the Barbarians and Ostrogoths to be kings of Italy in 476AD. It includes the writing of the whole of the New Testament which was finalised in the form we now know it around 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicaea. This was the first council which represented the whole of the Christian Church in the time of the Emperor Constantine.