Ranging in time from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC to the on-going migration crisis in Europe today, and from Nebuchadnezzar to the Beatles, it will explore just what it was that made Christianity so revolutionary and disruptive; how completely it came to saturate the mind-set of Latin Christendom; and why, in a West that has become increasingly doubtful of religion's claims, so many of its instincts remain irredeemably Christian. It shows that Christianity is not a static, rigid doctrine but instead process of continuous revolution that constantly questions it's premises, reshapes and reinvents itself, from the very first church of Peter and Paul onward.

As Holland recognises” the opportunity was for the rich and the educated to have their eyes opened and to stare the reality of injustice in the face, truly to be awakened. Photograph: Philippe Sauvan-Magnet/Active Museum/Alamy View image in fullscreen A terrible death: 15th-century painting of the crucifixion by Sano di Pietro. Stoics were encouraged to perform public duties and Epicureans instructed people how to be happy, but acts of self-sacrifice to help suffering were not recognised by morality or especially admired.I kept thinking about the book, kept mulling the idea over and then started to see WHY this idea was so important to how I should ultimately view "Western values" and it's so unique and WHY it is so worth preserving them. Holland remarks that the early Christians’ refusal to identify themselves with a homeland was a cause of scandal. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. According to Holland, over the course of writing about the " apex predators" of the ancient world, particularly the Romans, "I came to feel they were increasingly alien, increasingly frightening to me". According to the author, the book "isn’t a history of Christianity" but "a history of what's been revolutionary and transformative about Christianity: about how Christianity has transformed not just the West, but the entire world.

Even St Paul might join the critics to some extent - whilst Holland quotes him in Romans 2:15 - "God's law is written in their hearts" as something as a theme that leads to departure from scripture and religious laws, most interpretations rather see this as Paul explaining that right and wrong have always been discernible to some extent by nature - hence the emphasis on natural law moral philosophy within the Catholic Church. It is an epic masterpiece of storytelling and scholarship which gives an objective picture of the Christian contribution to the development of how we view the world. A masterpiece of scholarship and storytelling, Dominion surpasses Holland's earlier books in its sweeping ambition and gripping presentation -- John Gray * New Statesman * [Holland encapsulates] so much, so intelligently and entertainingly, in a book that's fizzing with ideas -- Andrew Lycett * Mail on Sunday * I love the sweep of it * Sunday Telegraph * Tom Holland's stupendous new book .Certainly those readers who are already predisposed against Christianity will and indeed have been particularly critical on this score.

A further point of interest was how the Jewish community in Prussia modified their identification with a Jewish nation to that of Jewishness as a religion a fact which was enforced upon them by Prussan regulations. If all men were equally redeemed by Christ and equally beloved of God, then there would no hierarchies or rank.The canon law argued that a matching principle that the poor had an entitlement to the necessities of life. Spartan warriors such as Leonidas whose people practiced eugenics and trained their children to kill undermenchen. It was released to positive reviews, although some historians and philosophers objected to some of Holland's conclusions. Tom Holland succeeds in demonstrating how as Christianity spread, the principles and tenets were adopted by those converted, thus shaping their religious viewpoint. this argument — that everything Nice in our contemporary world derives from Christian values, and everything Nasty in the actual history of Christendom was just a regrettable diversion from the true Christian path — seems to me to run dangerously close to apologetic".