Jesus of Nazareth is a perennial subject of interest, and one of the most influential people that ever lived. The religious movement which flowed from him produced the Christian Church in all its various manifestations. Christian believers have in common a regard for Jesus as Lord and God, in some way a bodily appearance revealing the Father of the universe. Christian thinkers down the centuries have continually tried to define and explain who Jesus was and is. This book draws together some of the best modern thinking about the biblical evidence, the beliefs of the first few centuries when "orthodoxy" was being defined, the past two centuries when churchmen have responded to the challenge of modern rationalism, and some of the reactions to Jesus in the world-wide spread of modern Christianity and in Islam. It concludes with an attempt at a simple formula which might provoke and sustain faith in Jesus Christ in the most recent intellectual environment.

A new edition of this well-respected work. "Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church" is clearly written and carefully organized with cross-references throughout to its two companion volumes, "A New Eusebius and Creeds" and "Councils and Controversies" (revised editions SPCK 1987 and 1989). It is well established as the standard introduction to the subject for student and general reader alike. The second edition makes the text easier to understand in the light of widespread use; provides a fuller and updated bibliography; and brings thinking up to date on a number of topics including house churches, Athanasius, Gnostics, Hippolytus, Constantine, the Creed of Constantinople, and the Monophysites.

The extraordinary success of The Da Vinci Code has dramatically intensified interest in the mysterious origins of Christianity. But in fact there has always been huge curiosity about a wide range of contentious issues concerning Jesus and early Church history. Who was the 'real' Jesus? How much do we really know about his disciples? What is written in the 'secret' early Christian writings, such as the Gnostic Gospels? How did the Church Fathers decide which beliefs were heretical and which weren't? Who were the first Popes and how did they take control of the early Church? Decoding Early Christianity addresses all such questions, separating truth from legend, and showing how the early Church Fathers and Popes interpreted competing views and traditions to produce, over time, an approved and codified view of Jesus and his followers, and developed an accepted liturgy with which to worship him. Expertly written by a team of highly distinguished authors, it is a clear and engaging exploration of fact and fiction for anyone who wants to be reliably informed on the subject. The authors show how speculative fancies arise from a mixture of tenuous evidence and wishful thinking, and bring the issues back to the solid - but no less extraordinary - evidence in the main canon of the Gospels and the Acts. After Leslie Houlden's Introduction, which briefly explores the nature and context of the different issues, nine chapters, each written by an expert, tackle the evidence: 'What Did Jesus Do and Teach?' (Leslie Houlden), 'Who Were the Disciples?' (Stephen Need), 'Who Were the First Popes?' (Graham Gould), 'What is the Apocryphal New Testament?' (Stuart Hall), 'What was Gnosticism?' (Stuart Hall), 'What Was the Qumran Sect and Did Jesus Share their Beliefs?' (Stephen Need), 'How Did the Early Christians Worship?' (Graham Gould), 'Who Were the Heretics and What Did they Believe?' (Lionel Wickham) and 'What Did Constantine Do for Christianity?' (Graham Gould).