A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Jesus seems to have maintained that the trumpet would sound for the end of time very soon, and in a major break with the culture around him, he told his followers to leave the dead to bury their own dead (see p. 90). Maybe he wrote nothing because he did not feel that it was worth it, in the short time left to humanity. Remarkably quickly, his followers seemed to question the idea that history was about to end: they collected and preserved stories about the founder in a newly invented form of written text, the codex (the modern book format). They survived a major crisis of confidence at the end of the first century when the Last Days did not arrive – perhaps one of the greatest turning points in the Christian story, although we know very little about it.