The 4,000 Year Rise and Fall of Christianity
A historical reconstruction, in podcast form, of how Christianity was formed, contested, and inherited across four millennia. 34 episodes so far, spanning the ancient Near East to the Council of Nicaea.
Christianity Unearthed traces the development of Christianity across 4,000 years. It follows how ancient traditions, Jewish scripture, the historical Jesus, early Christian movements, texts, institutions, and imperial power combined to produce a single dominant form of Christianity.
This series is organized into five historical Ages. Each examines a phase in the long development of Christianity, from its ancient roots to its institutional form and beyond.
Ancient Near Eastern and Jewish foundations.
Early Christianity and the formation of the New Testament. The hinge of the entire project.
Institutional consolidation and alignment with imperial power.
Peak institutional power and the strains that precede rupture.
Fragmentation, Reformation, and the long afterlife of Christianity.
How the New Testament took shape.
This season examines the Gospels and early Christian texts as evidence of a movement still in formation. It shows how different accounts of Jesus reflect different communities, and how coherence was gradually imposed on that diversity. It traces the process by which a set of competing voices became a structured body of texts.
The earliest surviving gospel is not calm. It is raw. Mark begins not with angels or genealogies, but with urgency, conflict, and a world in which catastrophe has not yet been turned into serenity.
Watch / listen S2 · Episode 4By the end of the first century, Christianity was no longer one movement with one center. It was a field of competing texts and competing portraits of Jesus. This episode is the map from there to Nicaea.
Watch / listen S2 · Episode 3Jesus was crucified. That should have ended the movement. Instead, the claim that God had raised him rewrote the story, reread scripture, and let memory and myth begin to organize who Jesus was.
Watch / listenAvailable wherever you follow podcasts.
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