Intended as a companion to The Blackwell dictionary of eastern Christianity (1999), this volume offers twenty-four essays, the majority of which are devoted to particular eastern Christian ecclesiastical traditions, but complemented by chapters on liturgy, iconography and architecture, and hagiography, in specific traditions; a final chapter has the title ‘Sociology and eastern Orthodoxy’. It is good that the less familiar eastern Christian Churches which have never accepted the Council of Chalcedon (451), and likewise the eastern Catholic Churches, are also included. Thus the Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox Churches each has a chapter of its own, while that on ‘Syriac Christianity’ successfully embraces all of the three different Christological traditions involved; and ‘Eastern Catholic Christianity’ (P. Galadza) also has a chapter to itself (with some informative tables). For the Orthodox Churches of Chalcedonian tradition, there are separate chapters on the Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek (divided into two chapters, Byzantine and post-1453), Georgian, Romanian, Russian and Serbian traditions. Given the massive emigration to the west of many members of all these Churches it is very welcome to have an informative chapter on ‘Eastern Christianity in the United States’ (T. Fitzgerald); although this includes a brief mention of the large Oriental Orthodox diaspora in the States, nothing is said of the equally large diaspora of the Church of the east. An unexpected chapter title is ‘Eastern Christianity in China’ (J. Norman); this is almost entirely devoted to the intriguing history of the Russian Orthodox mission there, going back to the seventeenth century (the earlier Syriac presence only receives token mention; neither is the Russian Orthodox mission to Japan covered anywhere). Each chapter is provided with a short list for further reading, and there is a laudably full index.

In the chapters on the individual Churches keeping the balance between past history and the present situation has obviously not always been easy. Among the most successful chapters in this respect are those on ‘Georgian Christianity’ (S. Rapp) and ‘Russian Christianity’ (B. Lourié). The awkward relationship between the eastern Churches and ethnicity is brought out especially in the chapter ‘Greek Christianity after 1453’ (V. Karalis); here amply justifiable critique at times almost verges on polemic. A different sort of problem is provided by the chapter entitled ‘Arab Christianity’, which might have been expected to cover a number of Middle Eastern Churches of very different ecclesiastical traditions: here, however, D. Thomas almost entirely confines himself to the pre-Ottoman period, with very little on the modern situation, with the consequence, for example, that no mention is made of Jean Corbon's influential L'Église des arabes (1977). While it is natural that in a work of this sort the lists for further reading should concentrate on English titles, it is a pity that, for this and for a few other chapters, the list is restricted solely to them, thus leaving the reader unaware of the existence of certain basic reference works (in the case of this chapter, the histories of Christian Arabic literature by G. Graf and J. Nasrallah).

Needless to say, it is not difficult to think of several further aspects that might have deserved inclusion, but there is certainly enough here to make this a worthwhile collection, and one that should prove useful in helping to remedy the woeful ignorance of eastern Christianity that all too often manifests itself in the contemporary western world. The volume also happens to complement quite well the recent volume in the Cambridge History of Christianity, volume v, Eastern Christianity, edited by M. Angold (2006).