A Concise History of Christianity

By K. L. Bruenn

Where did Christianity come from? What single factor drove the development of Christianity? Why did Pontius Pilate wash his hands? What did the first Christians believe, and how did it change? Who wrote the Bible? What lies ahead for this religion? Big answers in a small book (less than 10,000 words, but it contains a recommended reading list).

• Language: English
• Publisher: K. L. Bruenn
• Release date: Feb 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370013968

K. L. Bruenn

A professional software engineer in Silicon Valley, and an amateur everything else.

Book preview

A Concise History of Christianity

By K. L. Bruenn

Copyright 2017 K. L. Bruenn

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To Jasmine

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The Rise of the Iron Age

Chapter 2 The Book of Enoch

Chapter 3 The Jesus Family Tomb

Chapter 4 Jerusalem vs Rome

Chapter 5 Creating the Bible

Chapter 6 The End of the Roman Empire

Chapter 7 The Middle Ages

Chapter 8 Protestantism and Capitalism

Chapter 9 The Future: Jubilee or Dark Age

Appendix: Recommended Reading

Preface (back)

Where to begin? Perhaps in the vastness of outer space, focussing on a particular galaxy, then moving towards the edge of that galaxy (our own Milky Way), towards a small yellow star. Then zipping past the gas giant planets (improbably aligned) to the third rocky planet from the yellow star, our Sun. We are here.

We can take a similar journey through time with the human species. 700,000 years before now there was an eruption from the Yellowstone super volcano, which meant several years of winter, and it is probably not a coincidence that at that time humans diverged into Neanderthal and Modern species. Over the next six Ice Ages the Neanderthal evolved into big game hunters, living in small bands and using stone tools that changed slowly over time. It is quite possible that the Neanderthal became true carnivores, like the cats. Modern humans, on the other hand, were omnivores.

At 70,000 years before now there was another super volcano eruption in Indonesia, and modern humans almost went extinct. We are all descended from a small population in South Africa that ate seafood during the climate crisis. Significantly, this population learned to talk, and thus to innovate technology much faster than their Neanderthal cousins. Technology and speech are what separates us from our more distant cousins, the Great Apes, in the following way: the apes live in hierarchies established and maintained by brute force, and in such societies it is unlikely for pair bonding to last. In the small bands of the Neanderthal, there is not much opportunity for hierarchy, and so relationships would have been life long. But in modern humans, speech and technology combine to completely negate the advantages of brute force, and so pair bonding, and egalitarianism, were natural to our ancestors.

The Neanderthal became extinct 20,000 years ago, perhaps in a delayed reaction to the super volcano