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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20562 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-10-30
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 400 minutes

Amazon.com
"This story is enormously unlikely." --Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion, Princeton University

Pagels is right on the mark: what began two millennia ago as a Jewish sect has grown into the most widespread religion in history, despite unbridled oppression in its early years and countless denominational splits ever since. The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in church history, and A&E's documentary Christianity: The First Thousand Years is a splendid example of solid scholarly research meshed with entertaining production values that speaks to this interest. The result is a resource with equal appeal for the historian and the theologian alike.

The issues that confronted the early church seem now quite strange since there are 2,000 years of tradition behind them today:

• Should gentile converts to the Jesus movement have to adhere to the laws of kashrut?
• What authority did Paul have as an apostle though he never personally knew Jesus?
• What is Jesus' relationship to God?
• How can a tripartite Christian theology be resolved with Judaism's strong tradition of monotheism?
• Which texts should form the Christian scripture?
• What relationship do the apostolic bishops at Jerusalem, Damascus, Rome, Constantinople, and elsewhere have to each other--and how should the church be structured?
• What should be the central statement of faith of Christians?

Most of these issues were solved at the Council of Nicaea and at other early church councils--though authority of the papacy at Rome is a persistent divider both between the Eastern and Western churches and between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Christianity: The First Thousand Years provides background and the original perspectives that led to the East-West split--a split whose basis we hardly question today.

The rapid spread of the church from the controversial conversion of Constantine to the conquests of Otto is tied closely to the history of the Roman Empire itself. Without the empire as its catapult, it is unlikely that Christianity would have spread even to remote Iceland and Finland by the year 1000. The early church modeled itself structurally on imperial institutions, and it integrated itself into the fabric of imperial life. Indeed, the central role of Christianity in Byzantine life is one of numerous often-overlooked but fascinating historical perspectives that A&E manages to cover here.

The four-part set features Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, whose unusual but pleasant voices will be well known to viewers of A&E's TV series Mysteries of the Bible. Like the TV series, Christianity: The First Thousand Years is marked by thorough scholarship, including interviews with many highly regarded scholars such as Pagels. Snippets of these interviews are interspersed with photography from the Holy Land and some reenactments, leading to an informative and revealing exploration of the early church. --Erik J. Macki

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Customer Reviews

Good Exposure
I've always been interested in history but never read about Christian history except tangentially. These dvds provide a decent chronology especially as to the first 1000 years and they provide important details I was not aware of: St. Ignatius returned to school with adolescents to learn Latin, etc., so as to be allowed to preach; Nicea was prompted by Constantine's desire to publish 50 collections of what today we call the Bible; Pope Gregory enforced a very unpopular decree that (married) priests must be celibate; etc. Well worth the time.
Louis J Sheehan

good pre-modern history of christianity
This was overall a good video on the historical development of Christianity (pre-20th century). The part on
Christianity in the 20th century was very weak.

really good, not great
I learned a great deal of history through the 400 minutes of video in this series, and I thought I already knew a lot! I liked it overall and I think it's something that everyone should watch. My only complaints were that there are a couple of times that they weren't completely accurate, or mispresented something, such as making it seem like the canonization of the books of the Holy Bible were done hastily at the demand of an Emperor.

I also wish that there were more acted out scenes. Through most of the video you're looking at artwork or scenery, and it's not always pictures of what they're talking about, which was weird.

Still... my rating is a 4 because I think it was really good, just could've been better.