Best books on the history of Christianity?

[Clarky]

Just curious as to what some of you think are the best/most accurate/objective books on Christian history. I've just finished Diarmaid MacCullock's "A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years" upon Christopher Hitchen's recommendation in one of his final debates (certainly more objective than his own account).

 

[Nietzsche]

Which portion of Christian history? There's literally two thousand years worth of material.

 

[Desert Snake]

The best book: The Bible.

 

[Nietzsche]

The best book: The Bible.

Christian history far exceeds, even in the Bible's own time-frame, what is actually in the Bible. Once you get out of the periods covered directly by the Bible, it's basically useless as a Christian-history text.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Just curious as to what some of you think are the best/most accurate/objective books on Christian history. I've just finished Diarmaid MacCullock's "A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years" upon Christopher Hitchen's recommendation in one of his final debates (certainly more objective than his own account).

For understanding the origins of Christianity and the historical Jesus, Meier's four volume A Marginal Jew is unparalleled in breadth, scope, balance (with respect to viewpoint; Meier sets out to right not what he believes but what he believes the consensus positions or majority positions to be), and accessibility while being scholarship (the technical details meant for other scholars are relegated to the endnotes of every chapter; thus sometimes a single note is a page long and a substantial number of pages that would seem to make these volumes to voluminous to bother with are due to these endnotes, not to mention the occasional excursus).

For a history of the first generation of Christians, J. D. G. Dunn has a very comprehensive book (it's a sequal to his book on the historical Jesus, but is independent enough that nothing is lost if one reads it and not the first book). The book is Beginning from Jerusalem (Christianity in the Making, vol. 2).

For primary source material on early Christianity (apart from the obvious, i.e., the NT, the Nag Hammadi finds, etc.) there is a series New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity which has at least 9 volumes (as I own these 9 volumes but haven't checked if more have been published since the 9th) which are mostly collections of published inscriptions, papyri finds, etc., but volume V contains chapters on the nature of the languages of the documents as well as some historical details (chapter 5 is "A fishing cartel in first-century Ephesos").

While actually not on just on Christianity, I can't not mention the incredible work of scholarship that is Fox's Pagans and Christians: Religion and Religious Life from the Second to the Fourth Century AD, When the Gods of Olympus Lost Their Dominion and Christianity, with the Conversion of Constantine, Triumphed in the Mediterranean World. It is staggering in scope and detail yet contains none of the obstacles many similar works of scholarship do (e.g., the assumption of a high level of familiarity with the subject matter, knowledge of languages like Latin and Greek, knowledge of German or French, etc.).

For a beginning level book on early Christianity, there's White's very accessible From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith.

For what is one of the only good comprehensive books that covers Christianity from Jesus to the beginning of the 7th century, there's The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great. Also, when I typed in the name to copy and past it (yes I am that lazy; I will put in a word from the title and the author's name and just copy the title from google or amazon), guess what popped up? The entire book (just click on the link).

For Christianity in the medieval period in general I don't have much (all that I have is too specific, but one that, while specific, is also broad enough in subject and the time period covered to be well worth reading:
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn

I've found the two-volume Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity very helpful and well done, but for more technical histories of one branch of Eastern Orthodox there's the two volume Christianity and the Eastern Slavs which goes up to the modern period.

For American Christianity, Dr. Philip Jenkins has two good books:
Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History
&
The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice

That may be all I have that isn't too specific (e.g., The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and Nazism (Studies in Modern British Religious History), Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity Vols I & II, Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Companions to the Christian Vol. 9), etc.). I might have more that aren't on the shelves but in piles or boxes.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Just curious as to what some of you think are the best/most accurate/objective books on Christian history. I've just finished Diarmaid MacCullock's "A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years" upon Christopher Hitchen's recommendation in one of his final debates (certainly more objective than his own account).

Yeah, so I came in here to recommend MacCullock's book...lol
If you're looking for approachable stuff, and don't mind drifting from the subject matter a little, I have a good book on early Byzantine history that has plenty on Constantine and his successors. I'll check the title and author when I get home.

 

[wgw]

I suggest for a history of the early church, the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. The Ecclesiastical History of England by the Venerable Bede has long been celebrated. John Calvin presents in his Institutes much historical wealth; I reject utterly his conclusions but his is one book from the Renaissance I can suggest. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the product of a fatuous deist; if you like Thomas Paine though it should give you a rush, and it's full of good data that I can appreciate in between moments of exasperation at the author.

Then, as far as more modern works are concerned, I suggest for a history of the Orthodox Church, The Orthodox Church by Metropolotan Kallistos Ware. The Oxford Handbook to Methodism is a thorough study of that movement. The freely available Catholic Encyclopedia offers a traditionalist Caholic perspective on all aspects of Christianity. On the basis of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, the Oxford Handbook of Christian Worship, The Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix, and The Eucharistic Liturgies, the authors of which escape me, have been invaluable.

Another document of historical usefulness is the Pedalion, the Book of Canon Law of the Orthodox Church, which is freely downloadable online. As Orthodox canon law primarily dates from the first Millenium, the canons and the ancient epitomes provided represent a valuable source of historic record.

No history of Christianity would be complete without hagiography. Where history stops and legend begins doesn't matter

 

[wgw]

And on the subject of Hagiography (I inadvertantly hit Post Reply on my iPad) a good starting place is the fabulously romantic Golden Legend. The Life of Amthony by St. Athanasius and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers are more spiritually profitable however, and somewhat less fantastic.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So I looked around a bit more and found some other books that might be of interest (a lot of the books that I read when I was new to a subject are indiscriminately boxed up and I'm currently re-organizing my shelves as I had to by some new ones). The first if F. Donald Logan's A History of the Church in the Middle Ages. The second is not a book but advice: stay clear of anything written by Rodney Stark.

Next is a more comprehensive look at Christianity in the US than exists in the two books on that subject I recommended above (and still do, both are interesting and well-done, unlike the author's book Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way, which I absolutely do not recommend) : Church and State in America The First Two Centuries (Cambridge Essential Histories).

If you are interested in Christian history outside the mainstream, there's also The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys and Mystics of the Christian Tradition (which also popped up as a pdf; what's going on? Were it not for the fact that I don't like reading e-books I'd be pretty pissed off that I paid for books that apparently are online for free).

Finally, I found what I think was one of the first books I bought on the subject: The Early Church: Origins to the Dawn of the Middle Ages.

 

[shawn001]

Just curious as to what some of you think are the best/most accurate/objective books on Christian history. I've just finished Diarmaid MacCullock's "A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years" upon Christopher Hitchen's recommendation in one of his final debates (certainly more objective than his own account).

not a book but, pretty interesting from Bible scholars


The Bible's Buried Secrets
An archeological detective story traces the origins of the Hebrew Bible.

NOVA | The Bible's Buried Secrets

 

[Bunyip]

I thought 'A trembling upon Rome.' By Richard Condon was great. A page turner set in the 14th century and focussing on the life of Cossa, who became Pope. Historical part fiction and some hotly contested ideas - but a great alternative to more serious scholarly works that does give a good window into a crucial period of Church history.
Also 'How the Irish saved civilisation' a short, brilliant historical book that you will be unable to put down. It describes a perspective on the early church during the darkest of ages. The conflict between the Augustine and Franciscan worldviews was never more beautifully described.

 

[Augustus]

For Christianity in the medieval period in general I don't have much (all that I have is too specific, but one that, while specific, is also broad enough in subject and the time period covered to be well worth reading:
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn

Strongly recommend this book to anybody who is interested in modern religious violence, ISIS, al-Qaeda, etc. Will help you put the information into a bit more context and remind you of how many times similar things have happened in the past.

Actually, I recommend it to anyone, it's great.