In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman, a master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, shows how a religion whose first believers were twenty or so illiterate day laborers in a remote part of the empire became the official religion of Rome, converting some thirty million people in just four centuries. The Triumph of Christianity combines deep knowledge and meticulous research in an eye-opening, immensely readable narrative that...

The rise of Christianity from the death of Jesus to the establishment of the first Christian church is often portrayed as a rapid, almost seamless, movement in history. Sociologist Stark ponders why Christianity succeeded as it did in the early years of the first century. Stark uses contemporary social-scientific data, about why people join new religious movements and how religions recruit members, to investigate the formative history of Christianity....

A profound and moving journey into the heart of Christianity that explores the mysterious and often paradoxical lives and legacies of the Twelve Apostles—-a book both for those of the faith and for others who seek to understand Christianity from the outside in.

This course will explain the reasons for the clash between the pagans and the early Christians that ended in the Christianizing of the Roman.