PanThe Wall Street JournalTangled lives...the raw footage of history, sadly wind up on the cutting-room floor of Bart Ehrman’s The Triumph of Christianity, a chipper but superficial retelling of the rise of Christianity ... Mr. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar, is to be commended for daring to tackle the rough politics of the fourth century. But he never quite finds his footing as a social historian. The story he tells, it must be admitted, features a spectacular cast: maniacal emperors, wondrous miracle workers and at least one well-known day laborer ... in the balance of the book, he connects the dots and proceeds to characterize—in 'broad swaths'—the 30 million Romans who converted to Christianity ... There's a lot left out of the picture ... What readers are given, instead, is an unconvincing account of how Christians came to dominate Roman culture through their nagging evangelism.
