Armenia, a buffer state, which became one of the first kingdoms to embrace Christianity, is given rather short shrift as an area that eventually came under Byzantine orbit. The author does not do justice to Christianity among the Arabs beforeMuhammad, nor does he refer to Irfan Shahid's important monographs on the subject. Moffett's treatment of the rival Manichaean movement is rather unsatisfactory. Of necessity, this volume, which brings the story down to 1500, is a welter of names, places, cultural crosscurrents, and varying religious traditions,both within and apart from Christianity. The very detail of this history makes for tough going but the rewards are enormous. . . .
Specific vignettes add spice to the story. . . .
It should give pause to those who natter on about the church as the realm of Dead White European Males. Moffett brings us a panorama of Semitic, Indian, Asian, Mongol, Persian, and African peoples of both sexes and of many gifts. Full' of course is a relative term, but in this first volume, . . . Moffett tells it fuller than any historian before him has done. And he has done it brilliantly, amassing an incredible amount of source materials, crisscrossing them and weavingthem into a vivid story that is at once complex and coherent, informative andinsightful, never compromising the historian's astuteness not to confuse fantasies with facts, not to fill historical lacunae with pure speculation.