The the history of Jesus and the evolution of many religeous beliefs were covered nicely in Winwood Reade's outstanding book, The Martyrdom of Man, published in 1872. His book covers history in a passionate way that many later works missed. He seems to have understood the excitement and emotions of people and their beliefs as they battle through time. He also seemed to have access to historical material that has since disappeared from the mainstream of history. This scholarly work, which mentions Hull as well as Hell, is chocked full of human details from times when beliefs were a matter of life and death, long before they became catnip for web-pussies.

You can read the book on-line or download a zipped file. Three long paragraphs on the rise of Christianity in Ancient Rome will give you the flavour of Winwood Reade's writing:
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So passed the Roman street-life day, and with the first hours of darkness the noise and the turmoil did not cease; for then the travelling carriages rattled towards the gates, and carts filled with dung-the only export of the city. The music of serenades rose softly in the air, and sounds of laughter from the tavern. The night watch made their rounds, their armour rattling as they passed. Lights were extinguished, householders put up their shutters, to which bells were fastened-for burglaries frequently occurred. And then for a time the city would be almost still. Dogs, hated by the Romans, prowled about sniffing for their food. Men or prey from the Pontine Marshes crept stealthily along the black side of the street signalling to one another with sharp whistles or hissing sounds. Sometimes torches would flash against the walls as a knot of young gallants reeled home from a debauch, breaking the noses of the street statues on their way. And at such an hour there were men and women who stole forth from their various houses, and with mantles covering their faces hastened to a lonely spot in the suburbs, and entered the mouth of a dark cave. They passed through long galleries, moist with damp and odorous of death-for coffins were ranged on either side in tiers one above the other. But soon sweet music sounded from the depths of the abyss; an open chamber came to view, and a tomb covered with flowers, laid out with a repast, encircled by men and women who were apparelled in white robes, and who sang a psalm of joy. It was in the catacombs of Rome, where the dead had been buried in the ancient times, that the Christians met to discourse on the progress of the faith; to recount the trials which they suffered in their homes; to confess to one another their sins and doubts, their carnal presumption, or their lack of faith; and also to relate their sweet visions of the night, the answers to their earnest prayers. They listened to the exhortations of their elders, and perhaps to a letter from one of the apostles. They then supped together as Jesus had supped with his disciples, and kissed one another when the love feast was concluded. At these meetings there was no distinction of rank; the high-born lady embraced the slave whom she had once scarcely regarded as a man. Humility and submission were the cardinal virtues of the early Christians; slavery had not been forbidden by the apostles because it was the doctrine of Jesus that those who were lowest in this world would be highest in the next, his theory of heaven being earth turned upside down. Slavery therefore was esteemed a state of grace, and some Christians appear to have rejected the freeman´s cap on religious grounds, for Paul exhorts such persons to become free if they can-advice which slaves do not usually require.

As time passed on, the belief of the first Christians that the end of the world was near at hand became fainter and gradually died away. It was then declared that God had favoured the earth with a respite of one thousand years. In the meantime the gospel or good tidings which the Christians announced was this. There was one God, the Creator of the world. He had long been angry with men because they were what he had made them. But he sent his only begotten son into a corner of Syria, and because his son had been murdered his wrath had been partly appeased. He would not torture to eternity all the souls that he had made; he would spare at least one in every million that were born. Peace unto earth and goodwill unto men if they would act in a certain manner; if not, fire and brimstone and the noisome pit. He was the emperor of heaven, the tyrant of the skies; the pagan gods were rebels, with whom he was at war, although he was all-powerful, and whom he allowed to seduce the souls of men although he was all-merciful. Those who joined the army of the cross might entertain some hopes of being saved; those who followed the faith of their fathers would follow their fathers to hell-fire. This creed with the early Christians was not a matter of half-belief and metaphysical debate, as it is at the present day, when Catholics and Protestants discuss hell-fire with courtesy and comfort over filberts and port wine. To those credulous and imaginative minds God was a live king, hell a place in which real bodies were burnt with real flames, which was filled with the sickening stench of roasted flesh, which resounded with agonising shrieks. They saw their fathers and mothers, their sisters and their dearest friends, hurrying onward to that fearful pit unconscious of danger, laughing and singing, lured on by the fiends whom they called the gods. They felt as we should feel were we to see a blind man walking towards a river bank. Who would have the heart to turn aside and say it was the business of the police to interfere? But what was death, a mere momentary pain, compared with tortures that would have no end? Who that could hope to save a soul by tears and supplications would remain quiescent as men do now, shrugging their shoulders and saying that it is not good taste to argue on religion, and that conversion is the office of the clergy? The Christians of that period felt more and did more than those of the present day, not because they were better men but because they believed more; and they believed more because they knew less. Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

In that age the Christians believed much, and their lives were rendered beautiful by sympathy and love. The dark, deep river did not exist-it was only a fancy of the brain: yet the impulse was not less real. The heart-throb, the imploring cry, the swift leap, the trembling hand out-reached to save; the transport of delight, the ecstasy of tears, the sweet, calm joy that a man had been wrested from the jaws of death-are these less beautiful, are these less real, because it afterwards appeared that the man had been in no danger after all?