Publisher's Weekly Review
In this mundane and dreary book, O'Grady treads monotonously familiar and well-covered territory regarding the development of the world's religions during the first century C.E. Ranging over various cultures, their gods, and their religious groups-from Judaism to Buddhism and Jainism to ancient Chinese religion-she offers the unsurprising thesis that many gods died out because they failed to rise above their local identities and because religious leaders failed to develop the power and hope that their religions might offer in the face of other political or cultural threats. In the case of China, for example, rulers embraced Confucianism, a philosophy more than a religion, and disseminated it to few other than the culture's elite, to whom it had great appeal. O'Grady points out that Isiacism-the cult of Isis-which featured a compassionate goddess and a life after death, was a serious competitor to early Christianity, but the Romans adopted the latter as the empire's religion. Her rather unsurprising conclusion is that Christianity won the day in Rome because of Paul's preaching of a universalism that proclaimed equality in the face of inequality and displacement in the sprawling new cities in the empire. O'Grady's dull and unrevealing book fails to live up to its overly sensational title. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
In this popular history of the Roman and neighboring empires around the time of the first century, O'Grady focuses on the state's use of religion to advance its interests, including the difficulties these empires experienced governing religiously diverse populations. As a work of reportage, the book is eminently successful, nicely chronicling, for example, the explosive social, political, and religious tensions in Judaea leading up to Jesus' trial and execution. Yet, often these reports amount to little more than a collection of historical vignettes. Although the geographic swath she examines, extending from the Mediterranean to China, is impressive, it scarcely comprises, as the book's subtitle boldly asserts, the world at the time of Jesus. O'Grady is, however, a gifted storyteller. Her writing accessibly, engagingly, and vividly evokes the sights, sounds, smells, and colors of much of the ancient world. This invitation may be enough to spur readers who want to delve in more closely.--McConnell, Christopher Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A seminal epoch explored in terms of statecraft and religion, sociology and belief. The first century B.C. was largely dominated by imperial Rome and its regional client kings. Octavian defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra and became Augustus, master and overlord of the Roman world. In its German campaign, Rome suffered disastrous defeat. It was a time when conquest by trade was preferable to war, when mystery cults held sway, and pagan gods could be human enough to do business with mortal men. Charity was an unknown notion to the Romans, but clearly, religion held empires together. In Alexandria, still under Hellenic influence, compassionate Isis was the divinity of choice. The Arabian exporters of frankincense and unguents had their own gods, as did Palmyra. China, under Confucianism, was the world's oldest empire. There, the crafty usurper Wang Mang displaced the Han Dynasty for a few unhappy years. Despite Roman hegemony in Jerusalem and most of the known world, though, the Jews would not or could not be assimilated. In her fine synthesis, journalist O'Grady (co-editor: A Deep but Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Personal Experiences of God, 2003, etc.) brings antiquity to vivid life, relying on myriad sources, including Horace, Josephus and Saul of Tarsus, Suetonius, Cicero, Plutarch, Schama and Gibbon. There are tunics, togas, coins, carvings, slaves and struggles, all vibrantly presented in an admirably accessible text. O'Grady demonstrates the universal symbiosis of state and faith before and during the formative years of Christianity, and she offers a secular gloss of the remarkable success of Pauline Christianity in a tumultuous world. A wonderfully illuminating, prodigious tour de force of ecclesiastical anthropology.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
This popular history offers a sweeping view of the first century C.E. development of four world religions: Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism (Islam developed later). O'Grady (coeditor, A Deep but Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Personal Experiences of God) defines "the world" as that geographical boundary defined by the Roman mapmaker Strabo (from Ireland to China and south as far as Ethiopia) where political powers used religion as a stabilizing force of empire. While often sounding Marxist in her approach (e.g., beliefs are "one crucial way by which states exercise control over their subjects"), she embraces Weberian social theory as her guiding principle (e.g., that "individual beliefs coupled with personal interests and motives shape the course of human history"). Broad generalizations aside (was John the Baptist's father a Sadducee, as she casually claims, or merely a Zadokite priest?), this is an interesting, readable text. VERDICT A pleasant historical ride. Recommended for history of religion collections.-Sandra Collins, Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.