Historians, religious scholars, and scholars of the Middle East begin with five chronological essays on Christianity in its native land during the millennium from its origins to the Crusades and subsequent 100-year European occupation of the Holy Land. Then they focus on major themes and issues such as monasticism, Christians and Jews in Byzantine Palestine, pilgrimage and Christian sacred landscape, the liturgy of Jerusalem in the Byzantine period, and the Holy Land in Christian art. Distributed in the US by the David Brown Book Company. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)