How did Christianity come to win official recognition from the state in A.D. 325? Why then? Why not until then? Harnack outlines answers to these questions and analysis the causes and courses of this transition. A standard work on the early expansion of the church by one of the greatest students of early Christianity in the last 200 years.

In a two-volume work, Eckhard J. Schnabel offers a comprehensive and defiinitive examination of the first century of missionary expansion--from Jesus to the last of the apostles.--From publisher's description.

of the Pope." --Book Jacket.

The consequences of becoming a Christian in the early Christian movement is set apart from that move from any other religious affiliation. You could become a Mithraist or Isiac or whatever, and it made no difference to your previous religious activities and loyalties. You continued to take part in the worship of your inherited deities of household, city, nation. But if you became a Christian you were expected to desist from worship of all other deities. And the ubiquitous place of the gods in all spheres of social and political activity made that difficult, and made for potentially serious consequences if you did desist. Indeed, it made it difficult to know how you could function socially and politically (to use our terminology). This book explores the growth of adherents to early Christianity; that all across this early period people became adherents of Christianity in the face of the costs and consequences of doing so.

The results of our rapidly expanded historical and archaeological knowledge have here been brought to bear on the Book of Acts to stunning effect. Outstanding as Jackson and Lake was in its day, this volume on the Graeco-Roman setting of Acts holds out the promise of equaling if not surpassing that great achievement. Paul Barnett, Bishop of North Sydney, Australia This well-written volume offers a remarkable, up-to-date collection of relevant new data to assist in scenario formation for a considerate reading of the Book of Acts . The largely Australian and British team of authors must be congratulated for preparing this very useful data set. There are authoritative descriptions of travel, of food supply, of domestic and political religion, of urban elites, and of the Eastern Mediterranean provinces and their leadership. Such information about the realm of the Graeco-Roman world will enable the interpreter of Acts to bring these data to bear in the process of interpretation.... Of great use to ancient historians, classicists, and biblical scholars, yet written and presented in such a way that it will be fascinating to intelligent nonprofessionals as well. Bruce J. Malina, Creighton University