Contents -- Illustrations -- Maps -- Preface -- A Trial -- The Seedbed -- Jesus before the Gospels -- Breaking Away -- What Did Paul Achieve? -- The Letter to the Hebrews -- Fifty Years On -- John and the Jerusalem Christians -- Creating a New Testament -- No Second Coming -- Toeholds in a Wider Empire -- Open Borders -- Was There a Gnostic Challenge? -- The Idea of a Church -- To Compromise or Reject -- The Earliest Christian Art -- Celsus Confronts the Christians -- The Challenge of Greek Philosophy -- Origen and Early Christian Scholarship -- New Beginnings -- Victims or Volunteers -- The Spread of Christian Communities -- The Motives of Constantine -- Debating the Nature of God -- The Stifling of Christian Diversity -- The Assault on Paganism -- 'No one is honoured before him' -- The Art of Imperial Christianity -- An Obsession with the Flesh -- The End of Optimism -- Divine but Human -- The Closing of the Schools -- A Fragile Church -- Faith, Certainty and the Unknown God -- Notes -- Glossary -- Further Reading -- Timeline -- Index.