A Political History of Early Christianity

Historian Brent (U. of Cambridge, England) traces the history of early Christianity as a political movement with serious political challenges to the Pagan Empire, which pagans noticed and tried to stay away from. He argues that the hostility between Paganism and Early Christianity was not always caused by misunderstanding, but was often resistance to overt or surreptitious growth in both the order of Christian societies and the development of the theology that underpinned that order. Among his topics are the Jesus of history, him movement, and the politics of his day; the political theology of the Augustan revolution and John the Seer's apocalyptic response to it; the apologists and politics of the Trinity; the opposing eschatologies of Cyprian and Decius and the creation of a state within a state; and Constantine, the divine order of the Christian Empire, and its European legacy. T&T Clark is an imprint of Continuum. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Professor Allen Brent, formerly Professor in History, James Cook University of North Queensland, Australia, now member of the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Senior Member of St. Edmund's College. His books include Cultural Episcopacy and Ecumenism (Brill 1992), Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century (Brill 1995), The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order (Brill 1999).