Free Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch Page B

documents is E. G. Jay, The Church: Its Changing Images through Twenty Centuries (2 vols., London, 1977-8). Two books dealing in an engaging and personal manner with the everyday Christian encounter with the Christian Bible over the centuries are J. Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures through the Ages (New York and London, 2006) and L. A. Ferrell, The Bible and the People (New Haven and London, 2008). As a counterbalance, one might care in prurient mood to read D. Nash, Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History (Oxford, 2007). C. Harline, Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Superbowl (New York, 2007) has a fine eye for changing social detail. M. Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London and New York, 2009) brings a major assembly of literature and art and a sadly appropriate awareness of the relevance of anti-Semitism to her subject, to supplement the sparkling M. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 1976). J. Dillenberger, Style and Content in Christian Art (London, 1965) is a classic introduction to this subject, while N. MacGregor and E. Langmuir, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art (London, 2000) is an illuminating and often surprising survey. A thorough introduction to a related field is A. Doig, Liturgy and Architecture from the Early Church to the Close of the Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2008), while N. Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (London, 1990), established itself as a classic soon after publication of the original version in 1942; the Buildings of England/ Scotland/Wales/Ireland series initiated by Pevsner is an architectural gazetteer of which all other countries should be envious. M. Stringer, A Sociological History of Christian Worship (Cambridge, 2005), attempts the unenviable task of uniting sociology, history and liturgy, with fruitful results.
    In regional studies attempting to span a whole chronology, English church history is decently served by D. L. Edwards, Christian England (rev. edn, London, 1989), while a fine team of authors providing a variety of lively spotlights on the subject is captained by S. W. Gilley and W. J. Sheils (eds.), in A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the Present (Oxford, 1994). On the United States, a splendid if monumental study is S. E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (2nd edn, New Haven and London, 2004), and is rivalled (indeed, exceeded in its coverage of Canada) by M. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, 1992). R. E. Frykenberg, Christianity in India: From the Beginnings to the Present (Oxford, 2009), is the best coverage of the subject. Quite brilliant, even moving, from a participant, is A. Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950 (Oxford, 1994), which is unfair competition for a wise and informative longer survey also principally authored by a European who made Africa his life, B. Sundkler and C. Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge, 2000). An unusual and valuable collection of primary sources is K. Koschorke, F. Ludwig and M. Delgado (eds.), A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America 1450- 1990: A Documentary Sourcebook (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2007).

PART I: A MILLENNIUM OF BEGINNINGS (1000 BCE-100 CE)

General Reading
    K. Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah (London, 2006), provides a fine background survey of the great religions of ancient Europe and Asia which is not rendered redundant by being attached to the dubious concept of an 'Axial Age' in world religions. At a more detailed level, reflecting the best in contemporary scholarship, are the swarms of essayists marshalled by respectively W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism II: The Hellenistic Age (4 vols., Cambridge, 1984-2006), and M. M. Mitchell and F. M.