Spectacular recent discoveries and a stream of material artifacts have heightened interest in what archaeology can tell us about early Christianity. The first of its kind, William Frend's important and engaging work tells the full story of the archaeological search for early Christianity. He shows how, despite nationalisms, religious rivalry, and personal ambition, archaeology since Napoleon's time has excavated important sites and developed scientific methods to explore them.

He explains the important light archaeology sheds on the art, architecture, and social world of Christians in the Roman Empire. He shows how archaeology enriches our understanding of Jewish-Christian relations in the first centuries, and provides clues to long-ignored popular religion and non-orthodox traditions of the Donatists, Manichees, and Monophysites. And he shows how archaeology decisively corrects and modifies text-based scholarly consensus on the mission of Christianity in the Roman Empire.