The Rise of Christianity

This book is a collection of nineteen articles on the rise of Christianity, covering everything from the Jewish roots of Christianity, through the Reformation. Each article is between about five and ten pages, and is written by an established historian or author. As one might expect from a collection of essays, they are something of a mixed bag: some are quite fascinating, while others are too academic or just plain too short for the subject. My favorite part of the book, though, is definitely the appendix. The forty page(!) appendix is a collection of excerpts from 25 documents referenced in the articles. As such, you can read what the modern writer has to say, and then compare it with the original document and what it says. Even just on their own, these make for some wonderful reading.As such, I found this to be a very good book, though something of a mixed bag. I would recommend that you read this book, but I do not recommend that you buy it, unless you are buying for a library. I give it a guarded recommendation.

Written by a variety of biblical scholars, this work is easy to read and should be interesting to anyone in search of a good overview of Christianity, its beliefs, history and the manner in which it spread. No illustrations but a very good book. I would recommend this one for students from the 8th grade up, as well as the teachers and parents.