Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (197 page)

107
On the time-lag in attitudes to Hell among Catholics, Hastings, 272-3.

108
On Maurice, O. Chadwick,
The Victorian Church
(2 vols., 2nd edn, London, 1970-72), I, 545-50; on the Irving nexus, R. Brown, 'Victorian Anglican Evangelicalism: The Radical Legacy of Edward Irving',
JEH
, 58 (2007), 675-704, at 694-701. See also G. Rowell,
Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life
(Oxford, 1974).

109
B. Parsons,
Committed to the Cleansing Flame: The Development of Cremation in Nineteenth-century England
(Reading, 2005), 39 (quotation), 51.

110
S. Prothero,
Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America
(Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, 2001), esp. 188-9, 202-12. The first American cremation was in 1876: ibid., 15. See also P. C. Jupp,
From Dust to Ashes: Cremation and the British Way of Death
(Houndmills, 2006), esp. 193-6.

111
J. Northrop Moore,
Elgar: Child of Dreams
(London, 2004), 44-5, 65-6, 70-71, 77, 130; I. Kemp,
Tippett: The Composer and His Music
(Oxford and New York, 1987), 9, 29-33, 154, 158, 386-91; P. Holmes,
Vaughan Williams: His Life and Times
(London, New York and Sydney, 1997), 35-7, 42-3; S. A. Morrison,
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement
(Berkeley, CA, and London, 2002), 116-17, 121-2.

112
Qu. ibid., 115.

113
I. Watts,
Psalms of David
(1719): 'Jesus shall reign where'er the sun . . .' My italics.

114
A point made with elegance by P. Jenkins,
Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History
(Oxford and New York, 2000), esp. 17-18, 232-5.

115
H. U. von Balthasar,
The Moment of Christian Witness
(San Francisco, 1994; first published 1966), 32.

116
Figures provided by the
International Bulletin of Missionary Research
, 33 (2009), 32: Global Table 5.

Further Reading

This is designed to provide general introductory reading or classic works in English in the various sections of the book. Detailed reading on particular topics is cited in the notes relating to each chapter, often in works in languages other than English, and is not necessarily repeated here; the same applies to books listed in the table of abbreviations.

GENERAL READING FOR ALL CHRISTIAN HISTORY

Indispensable for reference is the present-day manifestation of a work quirkily Anglo-Catholic in flavour in its first guise half a century ago, but now transformed, E. A. Livingstone (ed.),
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
(4th edn, Oxford, 2005). Reliable too are the expert essays themed by region and Church in K. Parry (ed.),
The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity
(Oxford, 2007). A work of reference which has no peer in any other culture, providing biographies of individuals connected with the British Isles/ Atlantic Isles or the British Empire, is the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
, best consulted in its regularly updated and corrected form as
http://www.oxforddnb.com/index.js
. Papal official pronouncements from the pontificate of Leo XIII are to be found on the Vatican website at
http://www.vatican.va/holy
-father/.

Of making surveys of Christian history, there is no end. A slightly less daunting way in than the present volume, with more emphasis on primary documents, is J. Comby with D. MacCulloch,
How to Read Church History
(2 vols., London, 1985, 1989), and an incisive and lavishly illustrated survey is O. Chadwick,
A History of Christianity
(London, 1995). R. Harries and H. Mayr-Harting (eds.),
Christianity: Two Thousand Years
(Oxford, 2001), is the concise published result of a course of public lectures by Oxford academics celebrating the millennium. More meditative, while providing a brief chronological overview, is E. Cameron,
Interpreting Christian History: The Challenge of the Churches' Past
(Oxford, 2005), and a magisterial if controversial study from a major twentieth-century combatant in Roman Catholic history is H. Kung,
Christianity: Its Essence and History
(London, 1995), translated from Kung's
Christentum: Wesen und Geschichte
(Munich, 1994). Another more reluctant combatant, Primate of All England, compellingly distils an exceptional historical imagination into R. Williams,
Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church
(London, 2005). A. F. Walls,
The Cross-cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith
(Edinburgh, 2001), provides a refreshing perspective from an expert on the history of Christian mission, with an enviably wide chronological sweep.

Beyond these, there are multi-volume surveys of the field, notably the
Oxford History of the Christian Church
: a series of individually authored stand-alone studies of particular periods, still sailing as majestic in their blue livery as a twentieth-century ocean liner, and edited by the brothers O. and H. Chadwick, themselves the embodiment of one era in European church history. Fine multi-authored volumes of the
Cambridge History of Christianity
cover the whole span in nine volumes, and single-authored volumes in the
I. B. Tauris History of the Christian Church
provide crisp surveys also aiming to span the history of the Church. I cite particular volumes from all three of these series in section bibliographies below. The same survey task is performed by expert multiple authors in a single volume: A. Hastings (ed.),
A World History of Christianity
(Grand Rapids, 1999). An astonishing, not to say daunting, multi-volume account of Christian theology by one of the princes of American liberal Protestant theology is J. J. Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine
(5 vols., Chicago and London, 1971-89). Even more monumental, from a great Jesuit intellectual historian, is F. Copleston,
A History of Philosophy
(9 vols., London, 1946-75). Western Christianity is so inextricably tangled with Western culture that it is worth consulting the comfortingly sensible synthesis of J. S. McClelland,
A History of Western Political Thought
(London and New York, 1996). The tangle is interestingly interpreted from a classic Jesuit background in J. O'Malley,
Four Cultures of the West
(Cambridge, MA, 2004). The mystical and spiritual dimension of Christianity is dealt with in L. Bouyer,
A History of Christian Spirituality
(3 vols., London, 1968-9). The Paulist Press
Classics of Western Spirituality
series, with volumes now running into triple figures, is a user-friendly series of translations presenting a rich variety of Western spiritual writers. One tradition within the West can be sampled in G. Rowell, K. Stevenson and R. Williams,
Love's Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness
(Oxford, 1989).

Christian history lends itself to particular themes treated over long periods. A model of popular history covering two millennia is E. Duffy,
Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes
(3rd edn, New Haven and London, 2006), engagingly supplemented by R. Collins,
Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy
(London, 2009), and, on an allied theme, there is wise guidance and exposition from N. P. Tanner,
The Councils of the Church: A Short History
(New York, 2001). Larded with ecclesiological documents is E. G. Jay,
The Church: Its Changing Images through Twenty Centuries
(2 vols., London, 1977-8). Two books dealing in an engaging and personal manner with the everyday Christian encounter with the Christian Bible over the centuries are J. Pelikan,
Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures through the Ages
(New York and London, 2006) and L. A. Ferrell,
The Bible and the People
(New Haven and London, 2008). As a counterbalance, one might care in prurient mood to read D. Nash,
Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History
(Oxford, 2007). C. Harline,
Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Superbowl
(New York, 2007) has a fine eye for changing social detail. M. Rubin,
Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary
(London and New York, 2009) brings a major assembly of literature and art and a sadly appropriate awareness of the relevance of anti-Semitism to her subject, to supplement the sparkling M. Warner,
Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary
(London, 1976). J. Dillenberger,
Style and Content in Christian Art
(London, 1965) is a classic introduction to this subject, while N. MacGregor and E. Langmuir,
Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art
(London, 2000) is an illuminating and often surprising survey. A thorough introduction to a related field is A. Doig,
Liturgy and Architecture from the Early Church to the Close of the Middle Ages
(Aldershot, 2008), while N. Pevsner,
An Outline of European Architecture
(London, 1990), established itself as a classic soon after publication of the original version in 1942; the
Buildings of England/ Scotland/Wales/Ireland
series initiated by Pevsner is an architectural gazetteer of which all other countries should be envious. M. Stringer,
A Sociological History of Christian Worship
(Cambridge, 2005), attempts the unenviable task of uniting sociology, history and liturgy, with fruitful results.

In regional studies attempting to span a whole chronology, English church history is decently served by D. L. Edwards,
Christian England
(rev. edn, London, 1989), while a fine team of authors providing a variety of lively spotlights on the subject is captained by S. W. Gilley and W. J. Sheils (eds.), in
A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the Present
(Oxford, 1994). On the United States, a splendid if monumental study is S. E. Ahlstrom,
A Religious History of the American People
(2nd edn, New Haven and London, 2004), and is rivalled (indeed, exceeded in its coverage of Canada) by M. Noll,
A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada
(Grand Rapids, 1992). R. E. Frykenberg,
Christianity in India: From the Beginnings to the Present
(Oxford, 2009), is the best coverage of the subject. Quite brilliant, even moving, from a participant, is A. Hastings,
The Church in Africa 1450-1950
(Oxford, 1994), which is unfair competition for a wise and informative longer survey also principally authored by a European who made Africa his life, B. Sundkler and C. Steed,
A History of the Church in Africa
(Cambridge, 2000). An unusual and valuable collection of primary sources is K. Koschorke, F. Ludwig and M. Delgado (eds.),
A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America 1450- 1990: A Documentary Sourcebook
(Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2007).

PART I: A MILLENNIUM OF BEGINNINGS (1000 BCE-100 CE)

General Reading

K. Armstrong,
The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah
(London, 2006), provides a fine background survey of the great religions of ancient Europe and Asia which is not rendered redundant by being attached to the dubious concept of an 'Axial Age' in world religions. At a more detailed level, reflecting the best in contemporary scholarship, are the swarms of essayists marshalled by respectively W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Judaism II: The Hellenistic Age
(4 vols., Cambridge, 1984-2006), and M. M. Mitchell and F. M. Young (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Christianity I: Origins to Constantine
(Cambridge, 2006). A bracingly critical examination of the whole biblical text, drawing extensively on archaeology, is R. Lane Fox,
The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible
(London, 1991), while a reliable commentary both academic and devotional is J. Barton and J. Muddiman (eds.),
The Oxford Bible Commentary
(Oxford, 2001).

1: Greece and Rome (
c
. 1000 BCE-100 CE)

Recent starting points in understanding are R. Lane Fox,
The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome
(London, 2005), and C. Kelly,
The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford, 2006). Among the survey works from distinguished twentieth-century classicists which have stood the test of time are O. Murray,
Early Greece
(rev. edn, London, 1992), M. I. Finley,
The Ancient Greeks
(London, 1963), and F. Millar with D. Berciu, R. N. Frye, G. Kossack and T. Talbot Rice,
The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours
(London, 1967). T. Holland,
Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
(London, 2004), is a spirited modern account of the fall of the Roman Republic, but R. Syme,
The Roman Revolution
(Oxford, 1939), is the classic and epic account. Still arresting in its insights is E. R. Dodds,
The Greeks and the Irrational
(Berkeley, CA, and London, 1951).

2: Israel (
c
. 1000 BCE-100 CE)

An engrossing and subtle introduction to the city which has so obsessed three world faiths is A. Elon,
Jerusalem: City of Mirrors
(rev. edn, London, 1996). A sound introduction to the history of ancient Israel is H. Jagersma,
A History of Israel in the Old Testament Period
(London, 1982), translated from Jagersma's
Geschiednis van Israel in het Oudtestamentische Tijdvak
(Kampen, 1979), while M. Goodman,
Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
(London, 2006), is a majestic account of a tragic meeting of cultures. The monumentality and rigour of German scholarship on the subject is to be sampled in R. Albertz,
A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period
(2 vols., London, 1994), a translation of
Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit
(2 vols., Gottingen, 1992, 1996). A nuanced and user-friendly companion to the book that emerged from ancient Israel's history is J. Barton,
Reading the Old Testament
(2nd edn, London, 1996). J. Murphy O'Connor,
The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide
(Oxford, 1980), is an indispensable companion to the physical remains of the biblical and post-biblical landscape by one who knows it intimately.