EdenOne: I recommend it, but as I said, it keeps things on a relatively accessible level, but for more in-depth research, there are better works. Have you read it?
I have not read it, although I understand the general position that Ehrman takes. Of course, there may be better books, but I think that Ehrman may have written for a wider audience. A really scholarly analysis of any topic will likely lose most readers who are not part of the academic community. (And some books-papers may even lose the academic community - grin).
There's a really intriguing book named, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian, by an Allen Brent, in which Brent argues that the way that early Christianity was organised, was as a response to the Imperial Cult, (Emperor worship). But having tried to read it, I suggest that most people wont go past a few pages.
Brent btw is an excellent scholar. His wikipedia entry reads:
The Rev. Prof. Allen Brent is a scholar of early Christian history and literature. He is a Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, formerly Dean (2012-2013), was an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge in 1998-2010. At present he is Professor in Early Christian History and Iconography at King's College London where he is joint researcher (with Professor Markus Vinzent), on a two year BARDA project: Early Christian Epigraphy and Iconography after Dölger. He is also Professore Invitato at the Augustinianum (Lateran University), Rome. He was formerly Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Huddersfield, and has previously been Professor of History at James Cook University. He was ordained a deacon for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 28 April 2011 and a priest on 15 June 2011. His webpage ishttp://www.allenbrent.co.uk.
All of which doesn't make him correct, but does demonstrate that he may know a little more about Christian history than the average elder, and, I think there's a possibility that he's correct in some of his ideas.
Certainly, the organised church that Constantine accepted as an alternative to the Imperial Cult, fitted easily into the slot previously occupied by the Imperial cult.
A more readable book, in which Brent presents some of his arguments, and that may interest readers on this site, is: "A Political History of Early Christianity."
An editorial review quoted by Amazon describes the book:
'Allen Brent is one of the boldest and most seminal historians currently writing about Christianity in the ancient world. In his works on Hippolytus and Ignatius, he has already displayed his magisterial learning and his ability to shed new light on the history of ideas by the investigation of social and cultural backgrounds. If he is not one to be carried away on a bandwagon, he is also not one to neglect a theory merely because it is difficult or because it has become dangerously fashionable in other disciplines. His aim in the present book is to examine the relation between metaphysical theories and their political contexts, with a broad remit in the interpretation of the terms "metaphysical" and "political". The introduction promises an astute engagement with such figures as sociologist Peter Berger, intellectual historian Quentin Skinner and the virtuoso of the social sciences, Max Weber. In his opening chapter he plunges dauntlessly into the thickets of New Testament scholarship, doing ample justice to the arguments of those who deny an eschatological character to the original preaching of Jesus, but showing at the same time that their attempts to cast Jesus as an ascetic teacher for the present world exaggerates the significance of non-canonical texts and is patently motivated by contemporary interests. The writing is characteristically lucid, the scholarship impeccable, the argument brisk but incisive; if this chapter is an augury of the rest, we can expect another distinguished addition to a corpus of scholarship that is already impressive.' — Mark Edwards, Christ Church, Oxford, UK.
