dennisfischman 's review for:

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch

3.0

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I've marked this book with three stars, but that is unsatisfactory. I want somehow to mark it with five stars and two stars at the very same time. It's a gloriously old-fashioned history, with the broad scope that its title suggests--nobody writes books like this any more! And I can't help being impressed by McCulloch's encyclopedic knowledge. The books teaches me a lot more about the Christian history I knew something about already (mostly the medieval Roman church and the Reformation), and it opens my eyes to Christian churches that have been just as important in other parts of the world that my high school and college history teachers ignored (the Greek traditions of the Byzantine empire and the Middle Eastern and Eastern European churches, called Miaphysite, Dyophysite, and Orthodox) that grew out of them. I'm especially intrigued by McCulloch's ability to make me think "What if?" What if (as seemed likely for a while) Alexandria or Antioch had become more important than Rome? How would history have changed?

Alas, the book has the flaws of an old-fashioned history as well. Far too many pages read like lists of names, doctrines, and battles. The author refers to topics he hasn't discussed yet (with page numbers, so you can go look them up, if you want, but that's not a good way to learn new ideas and have them stick in memory). The maps are useless. The plates of photos and paintings are not near the topics to which they relate, nor do they show up in the same order as they do in the narrative. A timetable would have helped a lot. Finally, although I give McCulloch a good deal of credit for spending a chapter explaining the Jewish roots of Christianity, he gets some things shockingly wrong.

I recommend this book because there is nothing else like it, but I wish there were!