The Early Christian Centuries

A sweeping work by one of the leading historians of late antiquity. This is early Christianity as it was actually lived and experienced.

Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford

The book of an epoch in more than one senseColourful in feeling, thought and action.

Mark Vessey, University of British Columbia.

The firstsixcenturies of Christianity were perhaps the most dramatic in its history, as a faith held by a small group expanded to become a dominant world religion.

The Early Christian Centuries

is the full story of those first six hundred years. Starting in the world of second-temple Judaism The Early Christian Centuries carries the reader down to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities.

With a combination of rare tact and acuity, Philip Rousseau gives a colourful history of early Christianity and the late Roman world. He stresses the importance of shifting historical consciousness, the continuity and development of ideas, and the urge for social respectability.

Paying the greatest attention to the inner components of the Christian life - authority, worship, biblical interpretation, moral seriousness, and spiritual idealism - the resulting story also captures fully the major figures including full chapters on Jesus and Paul.

Philip Rousseau is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Christian Studies at the Catholic University of America.