pt. 1. Beginnings -- A trial -- The seedbed : Judaism in the first century AD -- Jesus before the Gospels -- Breaking away : the first Christianities -- What did Paul achieve? -- The letter to the Hebrews -- Fifty years on : the Gospel writers reflect on Jesus -- John and the Jerusalem Christians -- Creating a New Testament -- No second coming : the search for stability -- pt. 2. Becoming Christian -- Toeholds in a wider empire -- Open borders : the overlapping worlds of Christians and Jews -- Was there a gnostic challenge? -- The idea of a church -- To compromise or reject : confronting the material world -- Interlude one : The earliest Christian art -- Celsus confronts the Christians -- The challenge of Greek philosophy -- Origen and early Christian scholarship -- New beginnings : the emergence of a Latin Christianity -- Victims or volunteers : Christian martyrs -- The spread of Christian communities -- pt. 3. The imperial church -- The motives of Constantine -- Debating the nature of God -- The stifling of Christian diversity -- The assault on paganism -- 'No one is honoured before him' : the rise of the bishop -- Interlude two : The art of imperial Christianity -- An obsession with the flesh -- The end of optimism : Augustine and the consequences of sin -- Divine but human -- The closing of the schools -- A fragile church : Christianity and the collapse of the western empire -- Faith, certainty and the unknown God.

Reprint. Originally published: c2009.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [327]-358) and index.