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Although he left out the history going back a few thousand more years in the development of god in ancient Sumerian, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian cultures, which led to the god Jehovah's appearance to the Jews of the Old Testament this was an admirably well narrated story about the development of Christianity in which the author traced to roots in Greece and Rome 1000 years before the Common Era. Maculloch wrote in an impartial tone even as he pointed out excesses, absurdities, mythical incidents and contradictions. "In the Gospels, events in historic time astonishingly fuse with events beyond time". His account of the synoptic gospels pointed to contradictions but not in as great a detail as say, GA Well's "Did Jesus Exist?" But his account spanned a greater range than Wells'. He wrote in detail about the development of the various early churches in the Roman Empire, and explained why the church flourished - in its diverse forms. His chapter on the split in the church from the western and eastern orthodoxy to protestantism was an interesting and informative. Patience is required not because the writing style was turgid (on the contrary, it was extremely clear) but because it is a long account. His final chapters dealt with the rise of Christianity as a world religion and ecumenical efforts to seal the inevitable rifts created by diverse cultures and the hermeneutical method of understanding a vague Holy Book. It is a book for the believer and non-believer alike. One might not like or agree with his comments but the historical tracings are indispensable to anyone who wants to know the history of the religion as opposed to what the religion is about.