The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Undestanding the New Testament Book

This book is beautiful in its story telling, and therefore valuable for those who are interested in the history of the New Testament. The premise behind the book is brilliant, as it does bring to light and life the history behind all those books in the bible. I'd like to give the book 5 stars, but I cannot for the following reasons. First the author writes the book as if there was much more factual history available than there is. The precise dates and years, and the direct statements of who was involved and when are presented as if this represents truth. Yes, the author provides a very reasonable history based on the consensus of scholars, but I don't believe any scholars would claim their dates to an accuracy better than 5 years (except perhaps near significant events, like Paul's death and the fall of Jerusalem). This seeming accuracy will give a reader a false confidence, which might be damaging. Secondly, there is at least one statement that is completely false. When introducing Philippi, Viola writes: "Philippi is the famous battle site where Marc Antony defeated Octavian in 31 B.C." I am not a very good historian, but even I recognised a problem here. Rather, Philippi is where Marc Antony and Octavian were on the same winning side in a civil war. Given this error, I wonder how many other wrong statements were made that I didn't notice.