A never-ending story................

     Religions rose and fell as they spread across Eurasia, fighting with each other for audiences, loyalty and moral authority.  Communication with the divine was more than a matter of seeking intervention in daily life:  it became a matter of salvation or damnation.  The jostling became violent.  The first four centuries of the first millennium, which saw Christianity explode from a small base in Palestine to sweep through the Mediterranean and across Asia, were a maelstrom of faith wars.

-Peter Frankopan,  The Silk Roads:  A New History Of The World