“How did a small, provincial Jewish sect called Christianity convert the mighty pagan Roman Empire? Bart Ehrman answers this baffling question with the same wit, passion, and rigorous scholarship that have made him one of the vital popular religion writers on this planet today. The Triumph of Christianity is a marvelous book.”
— Reza Aslan, New York Times bestselling creator of Zealot
“The great appeal of Ehrman’s approach to Christian history has all the time been his steadfast humanizing impulse… Ehrman all the time thinks hard about history’s winners and losers without valorizing the losers or demonizing the winners… Reading about how an entire culture’s precepts and traditions can be overthrown without anyone being able to stop it may not be heartening at this particular historical moment. All the more reason to spend time in the company of such a humane, thoughtful and intelligent historian.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“Drawing on a wealth of ancient sources and contemporary historical research, Bart Ehrman weaves complex questions into a vivid, nuanced, and enormously readable narrative.”
— Elaine Pagels, National Book Award-winning creator of The Gnostic Gospels
“Like a good college lecture class, [Ehrman’s] book offers both a wealth of historical information and, to make sense of it all, a couple of plausible theories — including his own. He doesn’t tell us what to think. He gives us a lot to take into consideration.”
— Newsday
“Ehrman is a great scholar, and this — as one would expect — is a book full of learning and nuance.”
— The Spectator (UK)
“Well worth reading for those wishing to dispel myths around the early Christian churches.”
— Publishers Weekly
“The value of Ehrman’s book, as is so ceaselessly the case with his writings, is in his ability to synthesize complex material and distill it into highly readable prose.”
— Booklist
“One of Christian history’s greatest puzzles after the age of the apostles is how a tiny band of mostly-illiterate outsiders converted the proud and massive Roman Empire in just three centuries — a historical blink of an eye. In The Triumph of Christianity, Ehrman brings impressive research, intellectual rigor, and an instinct for storytelling to this unusual dynamic.”
— David Van Biema, former religion author at Time and creator of the forthcoming Speaking to God
“Accessible and intriguing.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Bart Ehrman is the leading expert on early Christian texts and here he takes the story on into the fourth century in a vivid and readable narrative that explores why Christianity “triumphed” as a world religion. The work is particularly valuable for its critical survey of the work of other scholars in the field.”
— Charles Freeman, creator of A New History of Early Christianity
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