Were the early Christians really hunted down and martyred, with repeated persecutions for an "illegal" religion forcing them to hide in the catacombs of Rome? Did the ancient Jews of Jesus' time always believe in a single, all-powerful God? How did breaking away from their Jewish roots make Christians more vulnerable in the Roman world? What were the actual roots of what we now think of as the distinctively Christian liturgical practices of baptism and the Eucharist?

In a world where Christianity has been, in the words of Professor Bart D. Ehrman, "the most powerful religious, political, social, cultural, economic, and intellectual institution in the history of Western Civilization," most of us have grown up believing we know the answers to those questions.