In the early first century, a small group of illiterate peasants from the backwaters of the Roman Empire proclaimed that an executed enemy of the state was God 's messiah. Less than four hundred years later theirs was the official religion of Rome with some thirty million followers. How did this happen' Christianity didn 't have to become the dominant religion in the West. It could have easily been just another forgotten sect of Judaism fated to have the historical importance of the Sadducees or the Essenes. Bart Ehrman, a master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, explores what it was about the Christian message that converts found so compelling. Through meticulous research and luminous prose, he upends the way we think about one of the most important cultural transformations our world has ever seen that which has shaped the art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics, economics and law of modern Western civilization.