This 287-page volume recounts how a small rabble of Jews, followers of an executed leader named Jesus of Nazareth, planted the seed of a new faith called Christianity across the mighty Roman Empire. It describes in vivid narrative and pictures the founding of the church, the astonishing work of the apostle Paul, the origins of the Gospels, the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul under the sadistic emperor Nero, and the horrific siege and destruction of Jerusalem and its great Temple by the Roman general Titus.