This major work draws on current archaeological and textual research to trace the spread of Christianity in the first millennium. William Tabbernee, an internationally renowned scholar of the history of Christianity, has assembled a team of expert historians to survey the diverse forms of early Christianity as it spread across centuries, cultures, and continents. Organized according to geographical areas of the late antique world, this book examines what various regions looked like before and after the introduction of Christianity. How and when was Christianity (or a new form or expression of it) introduced into the region? How were Christian life and thought shaped by the particularities of the local setting? And how did Christianity in turn influence or reshape the local culture? The book's careful attention to local realities adds depth and concreteness to students' understanding of early Christianity, while its broad sweep introduces them to first-millennium precursors of today's variegated, globalized religion. Numerous photographs, sidebars, and maps are included.

This volume honors Professor Everett Ferguson of Abilene Christian University on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Reflecting the interests of the honoree, the twenty-one contributions focus on various aspects of the early church and its environment. Together the articles form a broad tapestry of interrelated topics informed from the disciplines of philosophy, patristic theology, archaeology, rhetoric, art, Greco-Roman religion, and biblical studies.

Examines how the early Christians manage to establish a religion and institution which, despite persecution, flourished and grew. This book discusses the emerging beliefs of the early Church (including divine creation, salvation, eschatology, the humanity and divinity of Christ and the inter-relationships of the Trinity) between 50-600 CE.

Now a modern classic, Michael Green’s Evangelism in the Early Church shows how the first Christians worked to spread the good news to the rest of the world. Studying the New Testament and church fathers, Green explores the earliest methods, motives, and strategies of spreading the good news. He also considers the obstacles to evangelism, using outreach to Gentiles and to Jews as examples of differing contexts for proclamation. Thoroughly informed by primary sources, this book will help contemporary readers learn from the past and renew their own evangelistic vision.

This study of the early church is written from a new religious and theological studies perspective.

Arthur G. Patzia explores the story, weighs the issues and traces the contours of the early church's expansion and growth, life and practices, leadership and worship.