All God’s Children

How did a small band of Jesus followers spring from Judaism and expand across the Roman world? What made the Jews rebel against Roman rule despite impossible odds? Why did Rome almost self-destruct just a few years after reaching the height of its glory? At last, history’s least understood era is revealed in this riveting epic.

The years AD. 30-70 were among the most turbulent in human history, and All God’s Children is the most complete account ever assembled of how the Christians and Jews challenged the Roman world -- and why the degeneracy of their political overlords  paved the way.

All God’s Children is a factual history, but one using a fictitious narrator and the historical novel genre in order to reach beyond scholars to a mass audience. By seeing the first century through the eyes of Attalos, a Greek ex-slave and Roman immigrant who writes in A.D. 80, the reader is drawn into first century life -- before the existence of popes, crusades and cathedrals -- to the narrator’s world of  Olympic gods, rigid aristocracy and tormented masses. The result is a griping, inspiring tale of courage and compassion in a world of debauchery and despotism.            

All God’s Children also breaks new ground in scholarly research, revealing new insights into a forty-year period that was as confusing as it was critical to the formation of western civilization’s two most prominent religions. Author-journalist James D. Snyder aids the reader by: 

·       Organizing chapters into two year periods, including the most detailed chronology of the period ever compiled. 

·       Including 37 pages of endnotes, original maps, and illustrations of people and places of the mid-first century.

·       Casting new light on the close interaction between Roman, Christian and Jewish societies and showing how profoundly each one influenced the destinies of the others.  Thus, one learns, for example, how the debaucheries of emperors Caligula and Nero depleted the Roman treasury, why this caused a “raid” on the Jewish temple, and why desperate Jewish authorities felt compelled to crack down on the newly-emerging “sect” called Christians. And as readers come to understand why the Jews rebelled against Roman oppression, they learn why and how the Christians went their separate way. 

Author-historian James D. Snyder has written eight books ranging from this first century history to the colorful 5,000-year-old history of Indians, Spaniards and farmer-settlers in Florida. He has a journalism degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a master's in political science from The George Washington University.

Before his second career as an author, Snyder spent over twenty years in Washington, DC as a magazine writer, editor and publisher. He then formed Enterprise Communications Inc., which published seven business magazines and sponsored several conferences. He now lives in Tequesta, Florida on the Wild and Scenic Loxahatchee River.  

WRITING AND REPORTING have been at the heart of Jim Snyder’s life since he graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1958. After earning a master’s in political science at The George Washington University, he served as a Washington corespondent for several business magazines and medical journals.