Cynthia White, The Emergence of Christianity (Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Ancient World, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), xv + 209 Pps., $45.00.
Cynthia White is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Arizona, and the author of several articles on classical and medieval Latin texts. In this title, she explores the origin of Christianity amid the polytheistic Roman Empire. The book is tightly argued and presented in five essays from a classicist with a literary and Roman bias.
Chapter one is historical overview of the Jewish background of Christianity. The second chapter details Jewish-Christian interactions under the Herodian dynasty, which ruled at the discretion of the Roman emperors. This second chapter also includes a short history of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Chapter three covers Diocletian’s reforms, his persecutions of Christianity, and the adoption of Christianity by Constantine in 312 C.E. Chapters four and five addresses the debates between emperors, popes, and pagans regarding the place of traditional religious practices in Rome. She highlights that by the time Theodosius gave legal sanction to Christianity in 391 C.E., the Roman Empire had become the seedbed for the new Christian empire.
In sum, there are many attractive features that make this text an ideal supplement to a course covering the origins of Christianity: the text is well supplemented by photos; each chapter is divided into short sections, which fosters comprehension; there is a chronology at the beginning of the book; there are a number of short biographical sketches of important figures at the end of the text; there are selections from primary sources; and there is an annotated bibliography. And she does all that in 209 pages! All in all, this is a worthy text for introductory religion courses.