This is a much extended and enhanced re-issue of Episode 1, first published in January 2009. Retaining the account of the major shifts in the Roman Mediterranean during the 300s AD, it goes deeper into the social and historical background of the emergence of Christianity, focusing on its almost immediate transmutation from a marginal Judaic ‘Last Days’ charismatic movement into a new religion, which in critical aspects ‘went over’ to the surrounding Helleno-Roman social milieu and absorbed some of its religious reflexes.