The "marvelous" (Reza Aslan, bestselling author of Zealot ), New York Times bestselling story of how Christianity became the dominant religion in the West. How did a religion whose first believers were twenty or so illiterate day laborers in a remote part of the empire became the official religion of Rome, converting some thirty million people in just four centuries? In The Triumph of Christianity , early Christian historian Bart D. Ehrman weaves the rigorously-researched answer to this question "into a vivid, nuanced, and enormously readable narrative" (Elaine Pagels, National Book Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels ), showing how a handful of charismatic characters used a brilliant social strategy and an irresistible message to win over hearts and minds one at a time. This "humane, thoughtful and intelligent" book ( The New York Times Book Review ) upends the way we think about the single most important cultural transformation our world has ever seen--one that revolutionized art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics, economics, and law.