Cambridge-based ancient-history professor Keith Hopkins has said that his book A World Full Of Gods was inspired by an argument that ensued when he and three friends tried to agree on a uniform view of the early years of Christianity. The dispute reminded Hopkins of those contentious first centuries of the Common Era, when Christianity was a much-derided cult, competing in the spiritual marketplace with pagan polytheism and the long traditions of Judaism. To bring that hot-blooded emotion to the page, the expert on Roman times chose to get in his colleagues' kitchen a little, delivering a piece of populist history that forgoes the know-it-all tone of the academic in favor of the theatrical principles of Brecht and Godard. Hopkins invents time-traveling tourists and reprints their postcards from Pompeii. He imagines a fatuous TV news crew profiling a Dead Sea Scroll-bearing exile from Qumran. He "discovers" a letter written by a Christian to his spiritual mentor shortly after the Christian was laughed out of a dinner party. In between these fanciful episodes, he supplies comments from fictional friends about how his goofy little project fails to address the important subjects. The subtitle to the American edition of A World Full Of Gods is "The Strange Triumph Of Christianity," but Hopkins doesn't overtly dwell on the impact of the ancient on the modern; instead, he focuses on viewing the ancient as clearly as modern eyes will allow. Hopkins spends much of his 300-plus pages telling us what he's trying to do, so that when he finally does it, it feels more like summary than fresh insight. When he's not indulging in post-modernism, Hopkins settles for relating apocryphal stories in a flat, dry style that's devoid of drama. Nevertheless, the daring with which he deconstructs scholarly writing lingers, pervading even the blandest passages. Hopkins really hits his stride when he delves into the divisions within Christianity itself, describing how early scholars struggled to define the canon of stories and letters that would become the New Testament. As the puckish professor dredges up obscure, long-abandoned versions of the life of Jesus Christ, he comes closest to explaining how an upstart religion survived through constant, possibly self-denying revision. All of which serves a message that believer and heathen alike would do well to heed: Even history has a history.