The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity

I'm neither a scholar who has read many early histories of Christianity nor a novice. I was led to this book by an extensive and enthusiastic review in the New York Review of Books, this by a well-known scholar in the field. Over the years, I've read bits & pieces of Christian history, though my knowledge of non-Western/non-Latin Christian history was quite limited. And as an ex-historian (musicologist), I've often felt my lack of overview.This book is a delight. As many reviewers have noted, it's well-written without being dumbed down. Wilken has made each brief chapter fairly stand-alone: centering on a key idea, person, and/or aspect of Christian organization, worship, or geography. It's not Euro/Latin-centric, because in the first 1000 years, Christianity wasn't Euro/Latin-centric. Most Christians then spoke Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopean, Arabic and other languages. Yes, the European world is included, but it's given its proper place, showing what influenced it as well as how it became distinctive.Most chapters are written around a great person or two, who is placed in his AND her social, cultural, economic, political, and geographic contexts. The chapters are liberally sprinkled with illuminating quotes, often whetting my appetite for more reading. I felt, in some ways, I got to know the people, their concerns and their situation, as well as what was most vital about them.Yes, I know it's not like reading a book on, say, the great Syriac-speaking hymnist St. Ephrem, or the Council of Nicaea and the follow-up Council of Constantinople, or what happened to half the Christian population when they were conquered by Moslems over the course of just a few hundred years. But I got a good start, and I have a quick review that I can go back to, if I want.And while there are no footnotes, a sad omission, there's an appendix that lists good specialized histories and, particularly nice, another appendix of recommended English translations of most key figures.What did I find mind-bending? The sheer diversity of Christianity's first 1000 years: its many different pathways of development; the vast scope of its geniuses, heroes and villains; its great expansions and equally great contractions. While I had some knowledge of Christianity's first 200 years, and some grasp of Western Christianity's first 500 years, there was still so, so much that I hadn't known or even suspected.(By the way, I read the Kindle edition, and it was almost entirely free of errors -- I noticed only one or two.)So if you find yourself curious about a geographically, intellectually, culturally inclusive overview of Christianity's first 1000 years -- during which, as Wilken says, Christianity became the first global religion, spreading from Ireland and Iceland to Persia, India and China -- I recommend this book highly.You'll not only learn something intriguing, I believe you'll also enjoy it!

Wilken's overview of the First Thousand Years of Christian history is exceptionally well-written. His short chapters are engaging and full of details and anecdotes that bring the story he is telling to life. I especially liked the fact that Wilken included material on eastern, African, and Egyptian Christians which are often left out or minimized in other surveys of church history. As a teacher, I was pleased to see that most chapters could stand on their own as short reading assignments for students, but the book hangs together well and transitions are smooth. The work is accessible to those who know very little about the history of Christianity but useful even to experts in the field. One of the most pleasant history texts I've read in a long time.Note: I read this book at the same time that I was reading David Bentley Hart's The Story of Christianity: An Illustrated History of 2,000 Years of the Christian Faith, and the two books work well together. Both seek to branch outside of the traditional focus on Latin Christianity, and both cover much of the same ground. However, the overlap proved rewarding rather than redundant.

This book does a wonderful job of outlining the years of the early Church while staying away from falling into the minute of the development of various doctrines over the time. Instead focusing on the growth, both actual size and in geographical power during those years.

Wilkin presents Church history of the first millennium from a different perspective than from West looking to Europe as the center. The perspective of Oriental Christianity is at once fascinating and sobering. Although it was clear there was ample scholarship behind this work, it was an easy and delightful read, well written, and accessible to most people. Fr. Jerry Brown

If you enjoyed Prof. Wilken's "The Spirit of Early Christian Thought" and "The Christians As the Romans Saw Them," then you will almost certainly enjoy this book, intended for the general reader but crammed with interesting information about the Church's growth and struggles during its first millenium. Written with the engaging style and narrative flow of his earlier books, Prof. Wilken covers an immense amount of territory--geographic, religious, and historical--in a book that is relatively short for the scope of its subject matter, including forays into the evangelization of far-flung areas such as Central Asia, India, and China. The author is adept at placing important events in their full context. See, for example, how adroitly he places the events surrounding Christ's birth in Palestine within the context of both the Roman Empire's temporal power and the Pax Romana. The several chapters he devotes to the rise and rapid spread of Islam confirm his belief that this new religion posed the greatest threat to Christianity during its initial thousand years. Some professional reviewers have credited this book as Prof. Wilken's "tour de force." IMHO, that's a well-deserved appellation!

I liked the condition of this used book, and it came with the original jacket. The illustrations looked very nice. I have yet to read it, but I've been prompted to provide a review. The book just arrived today.

We used “The First Thousand Years“ as one of our textbooks in a Christian history course at Urbana Theological Seminary, but it reads more like a novel. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the first thousand years of Christian history, but doesn’t have time to take a college course. Wilken does a wonderful job of telling the story of the history of the church.