Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Christianity

  • The First Three Thousand Years
  • By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
  • Narrated by: Walter Dixon
  • Length: 46 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (293 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Christianity cover art

Christianity

By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Narrated by: Walter Dixon
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £29.99

Buy Now for £29.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Faith Alone: Audio Lectures cover art
Rebel in the Ranks cover art
Turning Points cover art
Confessions cover art
Catholicism cover art
The Stripping of the Altars cover art
The Future of Faith cover art
The Rise of Western Christendom (10th Anniversary Revised Edition) cover art
The New Testament cover art
Forged cover art
Jesus, Interrupted cover art
Did Jesus Exist? cover art
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People cover art
Jesus Wars cover art
History of the Church cover art
Catholic History cover art

Summary

Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read and heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.

Christianity will teach modern listeners things that have been lost in time about how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. This audiobook encompasses all of intellectual history - we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of World War I and World War II.

We are living in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion and tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes with deep feeling about faith. His last book, The Reformation, was chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This awe-inspiring follow-up is a landmark new history of the faith that continues to shape the world.

©2010 Diamaid MacCulloch (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"Assuming no previous knowledge on the part of readers about Christian traditions, MacCulloch traces in breathtaking detail the often contentious arguments within Christianity for the past 3,000 years. His monumental achievement will not soon be surpassed." ( Publishers Weekly)
"A work of exceptional breadth and subtlety." ( Booklist)

What listeners say about Christianity

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    147
  • 4 Stars
    86
  • 3 Stars
    34
  • 2 Stars
    12
  • 1 Stars
    14
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    91
  • 4 Stars
    37
  • 3 Stars
    33
  • 2 Stars
    8
  • 1 Stars
    14
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    116
  • 4 Stars
    37
  • 3 Stars
    16
  • 2 Stars
    7
  • 1 Stars
    6

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Great content - disappointing narration

Having enjoyed Diarmaid MacCulloch's BBC series, I was thrilled to see this book available on Audible. The content is fascinating - however, I find the American narration off putting and distracting (timbre, pronounciations e.g. deity, Israel etc). Had it been a British narrator, I wouldn't hesitate to give it 5 stars.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

32 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Pedestrian historiography, shockingly bad reading

Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote mostly as I expected: an unchallenging, unprovocative, uninspired but well informed survey, mostly useful for its inclusion of material on non-Chalcedonian Christian traditions.

Walter Dixon failed fairly spectacularly. His tone was dull. He frequently put emphasis on clearly unemphatic parts of a sentence or paragraph. He read as a joke things which were not jokes, and missed the actually humorous asides. Most distracting was his clueless pronunciation. Simple words like diocese, Karl Barth, ecumenism and other non-technical terms were butchered each in a variety of ways. This was as distracting as hearing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" called "Uncle Tim's Cabin". This may not be his fault. His producers should have sorted this out, just like you would expect a director to make sure his actors can all pronounce the names of the other characters.

I am returning this audiobook.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Christianity as history

This is a very interesting book. The author describes himself as a friend of Christianity. The first few chapter cast doubt on the New Testament which I found difficult listening as a Christian. Once past this New Testament era the author paints a sweeping vista of Christian history which is amazing. It is worth knowing the world wide history of the church to see the amazing grace of God and foolishness of so many Christian leaders. There are real lessons to be learned.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Thought provoking

Whether you are a Christian or not, this book is well worth investigating for it's historical content alone. There are a number of surprises and much thought provoking material contained within. My friend and I listened to this while driving around Europe for two weeks, and it was great to provoke discussion. My only quibble is the reader and the appalling American pronunciations which are irritating and detract from the flow.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great writing, very disappointing reading

As many other reviewers have said, the reader of this book is very disappointing. I have no objection to listening to Americans, but in this case some of the pronunciations of words, particularly when they are referring to things relating to England, are just wrong, and I've never even heard Americans pronounce them that way. I was also irritated by his apparently careful pronunciation of the words "Irish" and "Ireland" with a self-conscious Irish brogue; I kept thinking "If he goes to that much trouble for those words why can't he put a bit of effort into the rest of it!

I spent most of my listening time having to suppress a constant level of irritation with the poor reading. I would definitely NOT buy another Audible book if it was narrated by this reader.

This is a great shame because the writing itself is really good.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Magisterial book; inconsistent reader

This book is a powerful & magisterial survey of the full sweep of Christian history, taking into account all manifestations of the faith across the globe & through all time & dwelling in depth on their historical contexts & results. The performance was, however, frustrating at times due to the editors' insistence on changing all references to "this book" or "this text" to "this audiobook", which made for very clumsy sentences, & the several mistakes made by the reader (he clearly read out the wrong word on several occasions, making the sentence nonsense) & his poor & inconsistent pronunciation of non-US English words, especially proper nouns: British place-names were universally mispronounced, & pronunciation of names in many languages were very inconsistent. This was a pity, & a frustrating distraction from what is an excellent book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book, shame about the narrator.

It is disappointing that an important book written by a British academic is read by an American. It almost seems to make it dishonest, and removes it from decent scholarship, which owns up to authorship. "Separated by the English language" - don't mind USA books read by USA narrators one bit, but...
An hour in, I'll translate it back to Standard English in my head, just like listening to Belgian French...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Narration is very poor but the book is great

I actually got the printed book instead after listening to this for awhile. As others have said, the narration is robotic, and would have benefited so much from having better narration - I have previously bought "A History of the World" on Audible by Andrew Marr and narrated by David Timson, and it is a fantastic listen. Just a pity this book didn't have anything near the same quality of narration. I'll hold off on giving the book itself a review because I'm still getting through it, but so far very good.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Robotic Narration

Brilliantly written and packed with interesting detail -a must for anybody interested in World History or Christianity. The product however is seriously marred by robotic narration -I could believe that it was electronically generated! A great shame, wish I'd got the print version.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

A great introduction to the major themes.

Once you get over the initially patronising tone of Walter Dixon's reading this is a genuinely interesting work. MacCullogh's agenda as a 'friend of Christianity' is apparent throughout and this is very much a study of Christianity from the outside with no proselytising mission. The audiobook can be confusing as several of the themes overlap, for obvious reasons, and it's more difficult to 'flick back a couple of pages' in an audiobook, so it can be easy to lose the thread from time to time. However, despite this the level of detail given to major thinkers and themes within the development of Christianity is useful and informative for everyone but the expert in this area. It is enjoyable to read / listen to a work from an author as comfortable citing Father Ted as St. Augustine. This is neither inaccessible to the beginner nor dumbed down to the point of meaninglessness. Well worth the 40 odd hours listening!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful