Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Young (eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity I: Origins to Constantine (Cambridge, 2006). A bracingly critical examination of the whole biblical text, drawing extensively on archaeology, is R. Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible (London, 1991), while a reliable commentary both academic and devotional is J. Barton and J. Muddiman (eds.), The Oxford Bible Commentary (Oxford, 2001).

1: Greece and Rome ( c . 1000 BCE-100 CE)
    Recent starting points in understanding are R. Lane Fox, The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome (London, 2005), and C. Kelly, The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2006). Among the survey works from distinguished twentieth-century classicists which have stood the test of time are O. Murray, Early Greece (rev. edn, London, 1992), M. I. Finley, The Ancient Greeks (London, 1963), and F. Millar with D. Berciu, R. N. Frye, G. Kossack and T. Talbot Rice, The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours (London, 1967). T. Holland, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (London, 2004), is a spirited modern account of the fall of the Roman Republic, but R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), is the classic and epic account. Still arresting in its insights is E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, CA, and London, 1951).

2: Israel ( c . 1000 BCE-100 CE)
    An engrossing and subtle introduction to the city which has so obsessed three world faiths is A. Elon, Jerusalem: City of Mirrors (rev. edn, London, 1996). A sound introduction to the history of ancient Israel is H. Jagersma, A History of Israel in the Old Testament Period (London, 1982), translated from Jagersma's Geschiednis van Israel in het Oudtestamentische Tijdvak (Kampen, 1979), while M. Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London, 2006), is a majestic account of a tragic meeting of cultures. The monumentality and rigour of German scholarship on the subject is to be sampled in R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period (2 vols., London, 1994), a translation of Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit (2 vols., Gottingen, 1992, 1996). A nuanced and user-friendly companion to the book that emerged from ancient Israel's history is J. Barton, Reading the Old Testament (2nd edn, London, 1996). J. Murphy O'Connor, The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford, 1980), is an indispensable companion to the physical remains of the biblical and post-biblical landscape by one who knows it intimately.
    Particular themes in relation to the Tanakh/Old Testament are examined by J. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (London, 1984); J. L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (2nd edn, Louisville, 1998); E. W. Nicholson, God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament (Oxford, 1986). Moving from texts canonical for both Jews and Christians, the connections of the world of early Judaism with its Christian offspring are presented via primary sources in C. K. Barrett (ed.), The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (rev. edn, London, 1987). J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols., Garden City, NY, 1983-5), is the most comprehensive recent collection of Jewish sacred literature beyond the Tanakh, although H. F. D. Sparks (ed.), The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford, 1984), is also a convenient collection of these texts. To make sense of this bewildering melange, C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London, 1982), and his Christian Origins: An Account of the Setting and Character of the Most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism (London, 1982), are masterly accounts of the Intertestamental period of Judaism and their links to the formation of Christianity.

PART II: ONE CHURCH, ONE FAITH, ONE LORD? (4 BCE -451 CE)

General Reading
    No one interested in the period can abstain from the reading of E.