The First Thousand Years

December 3, 2012
In this brilliant survey of the development of Christianity, Wilken, dean of early Christian history (The Christians as the Romans Saw Them), tells a riveting story of a struggling young religion searching for an identity that slowly, over the course of centuries, develops into a collection of religious communities of global proportions. He traces the lives and thought of many individuals who give the story of Christianity its peculiar vigor: Macrina, who introduced a form of monasticism to Asia Minor; Theodore Abu Qurrah, the first Christian to write theological works in Arabic; theological thinkers such as Augustine and Origen, among others. Wilken elegantly weaves the colorful threads of the Christian development of doctrines and rituals with the influence of three significant institutionsâbishops, monks, and kings or emperorsâinto a patchwork quilt that colorfully covers Christianity's expansion in the first third of the millennium, its mid-millennium rise, and its decline in its encounters with Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries. By the end of the first millennium, Christians lived in three large areasâSyria and the Arabic Middle East, the Greek and Slavic East, the Latin Westâand each region had its own distinctive forms of Christian life, art, worship, and piety.

September 15, 2012

In this ambitious book, Wilken (history, Univ. of Virginia; The Spirit of Early Christian Thought) aims to present not just the history of a religion but rather the history and development of a "religious community." A major theme is that Christianity is a "culture-forming religion." It is because of its transformative force that Wilken extends his account beyond the early Church to a millennium; many of the transformations did not reach fruition until that much time had passed. VERDICT Given the vast scope of material covered, it is perhaps unavoidable that the book becomes dizzying and superficial at times, leaving readers asking questions and, most likely, looking to other books for further detail. However Wilken's descriptions, particularly of the often-neglected locations of early Christianity (e.g., Armenia, China, India), make this a worthwhile read. Serious readers seeking an introduction to early Christianity or seeking to contextualize its global growth will find this useful.--Fred Poling, Long Beach City Coll. Lib., CA

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