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Sat 11 Nov 2009The greatest story
THEOLOGY: A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, By Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allan Lane, 1161pp, £35
‘JEWGREEK IS GREEKJEW. Extremes meet,” quoth the Cap (with saturnine spleen) in the Circe chapter of Ulysses, and while Joyce’s Nighttown episode may seem far from a summary of the history of Christianity, it is striking how apposite these words are for just such a task. The first generation of Christians were Jews living in a world shaped by Greek elite culture. So much of the subsequent history of Christianity has been a history of successful and failed attempts to reconcile opposing positions, frequently of the extreme variety.
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