“if we do take history seriously without taking it for granted, isn't the triumph of Christianity the strangest thing that ever happened? Rome under Tiberius was not some ignorant backwater but the most cosmopolitan society the world had ever seen, and the eastern Mediterranean was its intellectual centre. And where Greek philosophy, ancient religions and Roman pragmatism met, some fishermen, a tax collector and a guy who had a seizure on the way to Damascus persuaded their neighbours, people in distant cities and then the Empire itself that a dead Jewish carpenter was God.” John Robson in the Ottawa Citizen September 13 2000
