{"id":136,"date":"2011-01-24T16:19:01","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T23:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=136"},"modified":"2011-01-24T17:00:01","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T00:00:01","slug":"praise-for-a-history-of-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"Praise for a History of Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/christianity2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-140\" title=\"christianity\" src=\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/christianity2-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/christianity2-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/christianity2.jpg 329w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/a>Stephen Wishnevsky of Winston-Salem weighs in on a weighty book. He hasn\u2019t quite finished the book &#8211; it&#8217;s long &#8211; but his review is worthwhile nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>By Stephen Wishnevsky<\/p>\n<p>CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS. By Diarmaid MacCulloch. Viking Press.\u00a0 2010. 1016 pages. $45.<\/p>\n<p>As much as I hate to review a book that I have not completed, I must admit defeat. I have gotten through 518 pages out of 1,016 pages of actual text, not counting Notes, Index and Further Reading. I have gotten to &#8220;The Third Rome,&#8221; Moscow, and the Mongols are coming over the hill. Enough.<\/p>\n<p>This is a wonderful book, very well written in accessible prose, with a modicum of footnotes \u2013 a\u00a0 narrative history that is indeed a narrative. It is a marvelous work. \u00a0MacCulloch keeps a dispassionate view, even when the subjects of his writing are writhing in extreme agonies.<\/p>\n<p>I especially respect the fact that he introduces each character carefully, giving enough back story to ground the reader in the time and place. Classical histories are fond of referring to &#8220;The Bishop of Antioch,&#8221; assuming that any reader would already know the story and was reading merely to become awed by the prose style. MacCulloch assumes nothing. He tells you who Augustine was, has a few words for his mother, his compatriots, his setting and the struggles of his time.<\/p>\n<p>A most worthwhile book. I cannot think of another history so engrossing and informative. In a subject field so fraught with lies, distortion, misapprehension, outright fraud and blood-soaked accusations of heresy, this book deserves to be the benchmark for anybody who needs to know what happened to Joshua ben Joseph, and what happened to his ever-so-simple words. It is easy to see that his message was lost before the body cooled, no matter what the mythmakers affirm.<\/p>\n<p>I do plan to finish this book; only 700 years to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephen Wishnevsky of Winston-Salem weighs in on a weighty book. He hasn\u2019t quite finished the book &#8211; it&#8217;s long &#8211; but his review is worthwhile nonetheless. By Stephen Wishnevsky CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS. By Diarmaid MacCulloch. Viking Press.\u00a0 2010. 1016 pages. $45. As much as I hate to review a book that I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-nonfiction","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}