Book Review: The Dawn of Christianity by Robert J Hutchinson

About a year ago, our men's group read up on a book that dealt with church history. One of the things we discussed was the importance of church history and why we should be studying it. Church history has been a topic for some time among evangelicals considering the climate of our current culture.

We see in the Bible how Christianity got started from the gospels and the book of Acts. There are sources outside the Bible that have also contributed to recording the history of the beginning of Christianity. Robert J Hutchinson takes some of these sources along with the Biblical narrative and presented them in his book, The Dawn of Christianity.

Hutchinson states that after 2,000 years of Christianity, historians are still trying to figure out how it all came together. People cannot simply get wrapped in their heads that a Jewish Rabbi from a little village started a movement called Christianity. What Hutchinson is trying to do in this book is simply go back and see what Jesus did and said during His three years of public ministry that started such a movement.

This book is a narrative telling the readers that story of the beginning of Christianity. He used recent discoveries in Biblical archeology and New Testament studies as support for his narrative. He does the New Testament while using outside Biblical sources such as the works of Josephus, the Talmud, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also used the Gnostic Gospels which leaves me wondering why because some of those writings do not paint a picture of the Biblical Jesus hence why they were rejected from the Canon.

Did Hutchinson fulfill what he set out to do in the book? Yes. He writes the history of Christianity in a way where people can read it and be engage in the story. I wouldn't say it is my new favorite Church History book, but it is not a bad idea to have this one as a reference book.

Thanks BookLook Bloggers for letting me review this book.