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"This story is enormously unlikely." --Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion, Princeton University Pagels is right on the mark: what began two millennia ago as a Jewish sect has grown into the most widespread religion in history, despite unbridled oppression in its early years and countless denominational splits ever since. The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in church history, and A&E's documentary Christianity: The First Thousand Years is a splendid example of solid scholarly research meshed with entertaining production values that speaks to this interest. The result is a resource with equal appeal for the historian and the theologian alike. The issues that confronted the early church seem now quite strange since there are 2,000 years of tradition behind them today: - Should gentile converts to the Jesus movement have to adhere to the laws of kashrut?
- What authority did Paul have as an apostle though he never personally knew Jesus?
- What is Jesus' relationship to God?
- How can a tripartite Christian theology be resolved with Judaism's strong tradition of monotheism?
- Which texts should form the Christian scripture?
- What relationship do the apostolic bishops at Jerusalem, Damascus, Rome, Constantinople, and elsewhere have to each other--and how should the church be structured?
- What should be the central statement of faith of Christians?
Most of these issues were solved at the Council of Nicaea and at other early church councils--though authority of the papacy at Rome is a persistent divider both between the Eastern and Western churches and between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Christianity: The First Thousand Years provides background and the original perspectives that led to the East-West split--a split whose basis we hardly question today. The rapid spread of the church from the controversial conversion of Constantine to the conquests of Otto is tied closely to the history of the Roman Empire itself. Without the empire as its catapult, it is unlikely that Christianity would have spread even to remote Iceland and Finland by the year 1000. The early church modeled itself structurally on imperial institutions, and it integrated itself into the fabric of imperial life. Indeed, the central role of Christianity in Byzantine life is one of numerous often-overlooked but fascinating historical perspectives that A&E manages to cover here. The four-part set features Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, whose unusual but pleasant voices will be well known to viewers of A&E's TV series Mysteries of the Bible. Like the TV series, Christianity: The First Thousand Years is marked by thorough scholarship, including interviews with many highly regarded scholars such as Pagels. Snippets of these interviews are interspersed with photography from the Holy Land and some reenactments, leading to an informative and revealing exploration of the early church. --Erik J. Macki
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