The photographs in this book are mesmerising, and the accompanying text gives you a real insight into the lives of this legendery group. Truly a book to have on display and not on the bookshelf.

A beaut! The cover and paper qualities set the tone of the content. The candid humorous posed and unposed photos are an absolute delight. I love the edge to edge photos which are complemented by the definite lack of color throughout the book, enhancing it's stylish feel. A wonderful book for anybody to enjoy the most exciting musical group we have ever known. It's a must!!

I have been a Beatles fan forever and cannot remember ever feeling as nostalgic as when I turned the pages of this beautiful book. It has become my most prized Beatles possession. Purely and simply, every Beatles fan should buy this book!

Pastor Richards was a person I would have liked to have known on a personal basis. Truly one of Gods blessed workers that let Jesus always be shown in all that he did. Bill

Richard Rubenstein delves into the complicated Arian heresy of the 4th century and writes a readable account of the times and personalities that were part of Roman and church history. Rubenstein does not always quote from letters or council documents at times when the quotation seems critical, but he summarizes well. One criticism I would have is that he develops ten chapters very well, but the last seems to be hurried, like the climax in a novel that the author is rushing to after making painstaking plot developments. Overall I believe that Rubenstein does a good job explaining the context of Roman history in which Constantine was trying to unify the empire through a unifying religion. To today's perspective it may seem that the riots which occurred over phrases, even a single word, that makes such a fine distinction, were extreme.

For those who read this book to find out how Jesus became God, they will discover it had to do the Nicene Council. This does not answer how Jesus actually did become God. As a historian, Runbenstein does not deal with this from faith. This faith is what caused the riots, the murders, the excommunications and eventually the split between not only the eastern and western Roman empires, but also between the eastern and western churches. One wonders how this is a work of God - from the faith perspective.

Reading this book can help to explain how today's broad spectrum of religious faiths can both unify and divide the world. Still Constantine, Constantius and others probably could name make any other decisions than they did. The complexity of conscience and political realities as well as raw survival is very hard to determine. People so the best they can.

Richard Rubenstein's book, When Jesus Became God, is not only a profound look at religious conflict and controversies in the early Christian Church -- its also a page turner! I had no idea how interesting and hard-fought the battle was between people who thought Jesus was God Himself and those who thought he was less than God. The story is gripping. Rubenstein puts you on the streets of Alexandria and Constantinople in the fourth century and in the minds of fascinating people like Emporor Constantine and Athanasius. His vivid portraits of the main characters, and his lively descriptions of the "action," ranging from political intrigues to street riots, make an overlooked complex historical situation--one of tremendous significance--lively, colorful and comprehensible. As someone interested in conflict resolution, I was taken by the story's implications for understanding modern religious conflicts. Whether you are interested in spirituality, conflict, history, or in all three, this book will capture your imagination.

This is an engrossing book about the early Christian Church's struggle with defining the nature of Jesus. What many Christians probably do not appreciate is that in the Forth Century, for nearly seventy years the Church hierarchy fought each other tenaciously regarding the views of a priest by the name of Arius.

The Arian controversy threatened to divide all of Christendom. Radical Arianism believed that Jesus was not God at all, while Conservative Arianism believed that Jesus became God by growing in wisdom and virtue. Interestingly enough, it was the Conservative Arians in the Eastern Roman Empire who believed that Jesus was not God by nature, but that he earned his deification by growing in wisdom and virtue.

The significance of this book is two fold. First, it illustrates the development of defining the nature of Jesus and how one group happened to win over the other group, but it could have had a different outcome if not for certain historical events. What Christians today take for granted as absolute truth is shown to have been a closely fought battle for hegemony and doctrine.

Secondly, it is only my own theory, but maybe there was some Buddhist influence in the Eastern Roman Empire that helped formulate the Conservative Arian view that Jesus grew in wisdom and virtue to the extent of deification. Rather than reach nirvana, Jesus reached godhood.

The historical struggle of doctrinal views in the early Christian Church should be fascinating reading for both Christian and non-Christian alike.

Don't worry about the "lay lines"--they're cute in that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" way, but the real fun in this book is the plethora of snarky comments about *everyone*, contemporary and historical. Funny, funny stuff.