Title: Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30-325Author: Geza Vermes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781846141508
From the publisher: The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most poorly understood.
With a forensic, brilliant re-examination of all the key surviving texts, Geza Vermes traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was - a prophet fully recognisable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament - to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion. As his teachings spread across the eastern Mediterranean, hammered into place by Paul, John and their successors, they were transformed in the space of three centuries into a centralised, state-backed creed worlds away from its humble origins. This is the captivating story of how a man came to be hailed as the Son consubstantial with God, and of how a revolutionary, anti-conformist Jewish sub-sect became the official state religion of the Roman Empire.
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