Early Christianity

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Early Christianity was a movement so small that the historian Keith Hopkins estimated only around 7,000 Christians in the year AD 100. Set against an empire of about 60 million people, that is roughly 0.01 percent. Yet by the time bishops met at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the faith had communities from Spain to Persia and from Britain to the upper Nile.

  The story begins inside a Jewish world that had spent centuries under foreign rulers. The movement had no army and no state behind it. Its early members met in ordinary homes.

  How does a minor sect within Judaism end up in Armenia, India and Nubia? Who carried it along the roads and sea lanes, and what did it cost them? And what happened when the faith's Jewish roots and its growing Gentile membership pulled in different directions?

  67965228

• 2. A World Under Empires

  ›

  Around 516 BC, the Persian Empire ended the Babylonian captivity and let exiled Jews return home to rebuild the Temple. No Jewish king came back with them. Political power passed to the high priest, who stood between the Jewish people and their imperial rulers. That arrangement survived the conquests of Alexander the Great, who lived from 356 to 323 BC.

  Alexander's armies brought Greek culture across the Near East, and Judaism was pulled into that world. The pull was strongest among Jews living abroad. In Alexandria, Jewish scholars produced the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that early Christians later adopted as their Old Testament. As early as the 3rd century BC, these communities were also building local meeting places called synagogues, while still making pilgrimages to the Temple.

  In 167 BC, the anti-Jewish policies of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes set off the Maccabean Revolt. It produced an independent Judea under the Hasmoneans, who ruled as both kings and high priests. That independence lasted until 63 BC, when Judea became a client state of the Roman Empire.

  The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had foreseen a future king from the House of David, and resistance to Greek and Roman rule gave that hope a sharper edge. Apocalyptic writers believed they were living in the end times. They expected God to step into history, end the suffering, and restore his kingdom, often through a savior who would win a final battle against evil. The Hebrew word meshiach means "anointed." It was used for kings, and sometimes for priests and prophets, marked with holy oil. King David was the figure most closely tied to it, because God had promised him an eternal kingdom in 2 Samuel 7:11-17.

  The man who would test that hope came from a village in Galilee called Nazareth.

  7728667

• 3. The Evidence for Jesus

  ›

  Jesus left no writings of his own, so everything we know comes from other people. The earliest surviving texts are the letters Paul the Apostle sent to Christian congregations in the 50s AD. The four canonical gospels came later: Mark around AD 70, Matthew and Luke around AD 80, and John at the end of the 1st century. All four are ancient biographies of his life.

  At around 30 years old, Jesus began a public ministry that took him through Galilee and the Decapolis and on to Jerusalem. He spoke mainly to the rural people of Israel about the coming Kingdom of God and urged them to repent. His ethical teaching is summed up in the Lord's Prayer and in the Great Commandment to love God and to "love your neighbor as yourself," found in Matthew 22:37-39. He chose twelve disciples to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, a sign of the full restoration of Israel, including the Ten Lost Tribes.

  After three years of ministry, Jesus was crucified as a messianic pretender and insurgent. About 20 years later, Paul wrote the earliest surviving account of the resurrection, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. The gospels add their own narratives and end with the ascension into Heaven. Victory over death became the central belief of the movement. For his followers, it opened a New Covenant between God and his people.

  Evidence from outside the Christian texts is thinner. The Jewish historian Josephus mentioned Jesus in his Antiquities of the Jews, written around AD 95. That passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, was altered by later Christian additions. The first Roman author to refer to Jesus was Tacitus, who wrote that Christians "took their name from Christus who was executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate."

  Tacitus had a harsher verdict on Christians themselves, and it tells us how ordinary Romans saw them.

  5427667

• 4. Houses, Roads and Letters

  ›

  At Antioch, capital of Roman Syria and one of the most important cities in the empire, the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. Acts 11:26 records the Greek word, Christianoi. Before that, they described themselves as brethren, disciples or saints. The movement had already spread from Jerusalem to Damascus, and Antioch became its next hub.

  Paul carried the faith much farther. He spent time in Arabia, preached in Syria, and then turned to the cities of Asia Minor. By the early 50s he had crossed into Europe, stopping at Philippi and Thessalonica in Roman Macedonia, and then at Athens and Corinth. From Corinth he wrote his Epistle to the Romans, which shows that Christian groups already existed in Rome. Some had been started by his missionary associates Priscilla, Aquila and Epainetus.

  The gatherings themselves were small and held in private houses. The Greek word ekklesia, literally "assembly," is the word English Bibles translate as "church," and a whole city's Christians could be called a single church. Members invited interested outsiders through social and professional networks. Traders and other travelers carried the faith to Asia Minor, Arabia, the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. By the year 100 there were more than 40 such communities, many in Anatolia, including the Seven churches of Asia.

  A line from Galatians 3:28 captured the movement's appeal to people at the margins of Roman life: "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free." Women and slaves were among those drawn in, and women served as disciples and missionaries. Christians also gave practical help to the poor, the sick and widows.

  Letters like those of Paul kept distant communities in touch, along with visits from traveling preachers and shared texts, some of which later formed the New Testament. By the end of the first century, the faith had reached Rome, Ethiopia, Alexandria, Armenia, Greece and Syria.

  2852677365

• 5. Law and the Gentiles

  ›

  According to the Book of Acts, Jerusalem was the first center of the church. The apostles lived and taught there after Pentecost, and Peter and John stood foremost among them. When Peter left after Herod Agrippa I tried to kill him, James, the brother of Jesus, became the leader. Clement of Alexandria, who lived around 150-215 AD, called James the Bishop of Jerusalem.

  The Jerusalem believers still looked like a Jewish sect. They kept the Sabbath and worshipped at the Temple. They fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, as Jewish custom prescribed, and gathered on Sunday for a communion meal in memory of the resurrection. Later the Christian fast days moved to Wednesdays and Fridays, to recall Judas' betrayal and the crucifixion.

  The first Gentiles to join, such as Cornelius the Centurion, were God-fearers who believed in Judaism's truth but had not formally converted. Their arrival raised a sharp question about food laws, male circumcision and Sabbath observance. Some Christians demanded that Gentiles become Jews. Paul held that the Torah no longer bound anyone after Jesus' death and resurrection. Others took a middle path, asking Gentiles to follow some of the law but not all.

  Around 48-50 AD, Barnabas and Paul went to Jerusalem to meet three men later called the Pillars of the Church: James the Just, Peter and John. This meeting, later named the Council of Jerusalem, confirmed their mission to the Gentiles. It also freed Gentile converts from the Mosaic Law, above all from circumcision, a practice the Greek and Roman world found repulsive. The Apostolic Decree in Acts 15 recorded the outcome. Around the same time, rabbinic authorities made the circumcision rule for Jewish boys even stricter.

  The quarrel did not end there. Galatians 2:11-14 describes "people from James" arriving in Antioch and causing Peter and other Jewish Christians to stop eating with Gentiles. The scholar Joel Marcus suggests Peter stood somewhere between James and Paul, though probably closer to James. This began a split between Jewish Christianity and Gentile, or Pauline, Christianity. Jewish Christianity stayed important for centuries but was gradually pushed to the margins. Early Rabbinic Judaism opposed it as well.

  In AD 62, the high priest ordered James killed. The church historian Hegesippus later wrote that the Sanhedrin martyred him. Simeon, another relative of Jesus, took over the Jerusalem church. Four years later the Jews revolted against Rome, and after a brutal siege Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed in AD 70.

  Eusebius and Epiphanius of Salamis recorded a tradition that the Jerusalem church fled to a town called Pella just as the revolt began. Modern scholars question it, partly because rebels sacked Pella early in the war. The community may instead have been killed, captured or removed, or it may have surrendered and been resettled. By AD 135 the church was back in Jerusalem, but its influence among Christians had weakened.

  The emperor Hadrian then rebuilt the city as a pagan one called Aelia Capitolina, with statues of Jupiter and himself on the Temple Mount. Between AD 132 and 136, Bar Kokhba led a failed revolt as a claimant to be the Jewish Messiah, and Christians refused to accept him. After his defeat, Hadrian barred Jews from the city except on the day of Tisha B'Av. For the first time, Jerusalem's bishops were Gentiles.

  Interest in the city revived only around 326-328, when the Empress Helena made a pilgrimage and claimed to have found the cross of Christ.

  2025141238

• 6. Rome's Suspicion

  ›

  The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that Christians were despised for their "abominations" and their "hatred of humankind." The second charge may refer to their refusal to join social life tied to pagan worship, which covered the theater, the army, sports and classical literature. Like Jews, they also would not worship the emperor. Rome was still more lenient toward Jews than toward Gentile Christians. Celsus even called Jewish Christians hypocrites for claiming a Jewish heritage, and others accused Christianity of apostasy from Judaism.

  Emperor Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of AD 64 and persecuted them in Rome. Peter and Paul may have been martyred at this time. When Nero was deposed in AD 68, the persecution stopped. Vespasian, who ruled from 69 to 79, and Titus, who ruled from 79 to 81, largely ignored Christians. Domitian, who ruled from 81 to 96, authorized a new persecution, and the Book of Revelation was written by John of Patmos during those years.

  Later waves were more organized. In 177, a persecution struck Lyon. In 258, Valerian ordered the empire to perform acts of worship to the Roman gods, and Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was among those executed for refusing. The last and most severe imperial persecution came under Diocletian in 303. In Rome and the wider West it ended with the accession of Maxentius in 306.

  The martyrs of Diocletian's reign left names in many provinces. St. Alban of Verulamium and Julius and Aaron of Caerleon were the first recorded martyrs in Britain. In Seville, Justa and Rufina were put to death in 303 for refusing to worship an idol called Salambo. Quirinus, bishop of Siscia, also died a martyr in 303, and Marcellus of Tangier was killed in 298.

  After the Edict of Milan in 313, Evodius became bishop of Seville and set about rebuilding the churches that persecution had damaged.

  9092672815

• 7. Cities of Authority

  ›

  Antioch, the third-most important city of the Roman Empire, gave the church one of its great centers of learning. Tradition says Peter founded its church, and Ignatius of Antioch was its third bishop. The School of Antioch, founded in 270, was one of two major centers of early church learning. The Gospel of Matthew may have been written there.

  Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, and its famous libraries made it a center of Hellenistic learning. It gave the church Clement, Origen and Athanasius, and the historian Edward Gibbon credited it with major contributions to Christian theology. At Nicaea, canon VI confirmed Alexandria's traditional authority over Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis. It probably also gave Alexandria the right to announce a universal date for Easter.

  In Asia Minor, most critical commentaries place the writing of John's gospel in Ephesus, around 90-110. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, reportedly knew the Apostle John personally. Of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch regarded as authentic, five of seven went to Anatolian cities and a sixth to Polycarp. In 110, the governor Pliny wrote about Christians in Pontus. Later, in 330, the emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium, and the first seven ecumenical councils met in western Anatolia or in Constantinople.

  Caesarea, on the coast northwest of Jerusalem, held Paul prisoner for two years. Origen compiled his Hexapla there, and its library drew scholars including St. Jerome. Eusebius of Caesarea, bishop from about 314 to 339, became the first major church historian.

  In Rome, Paul's Epistle to the Romans, written around 58, greeted some fifty people by name but not Peter. That silence leads many historians to think Peter arrived only in the 60s. Irenaeus of Lyons recorded that Peter and Paul founded the Roman church and appointed Linus as bishop, though he never called either of them bishop. The Lutheran scholar Oscar Cullmann rejected the claim that Peter began a papal succession.

  The earliest Bishops of Rome spoke Greek. Clement I, who served around 88-97, wrote to the church in Corinth. Anicetus, who served around 155-160, received Polycarp and discussed with him the dating of Easter. Victor I, who served from 189 to 198, is the first church writer known to have written in Latin. Rome also drew teachers with very different views, such as Marcion and Valentinius.

  Across the sea, Carthage gave the church Tertullian, a theologian of part Berber descent who was the first to use Latin extensively in theology. He has been called "the father of Latin Christianity." Saint Perpetua and Saint Felicitas died there around 203. Carthage remained a center of the faith until it fell to Islam in 698.

  Around AD 60, Acts says Paul was shipwrecked on an island some scholars identify as Malta. He is said to have been bitten by a poisonous viper and survived. Catacombs in Rabat show an early Christian community on the islands.

  In Gaul, Irenaeus, who came from Smyrna, was Bishop of Lyon near the end of the 2nd century. The Council of Arles in 314 is considered a forerunner of the ecumenical councils, and it was attended by Restitutus, Bishop of London, along with the bishops of Lincoln and York. After the Romans left Britain around 410, that early faith deepened into Celtic Christianity.

  7884899192

• 8. Beyond the Empire

  ›

  In 301, the Kingdom of Armenia made Christianity its official religion, years before the faith was legal in Rome. King Tiridates III, who ruled from 298 to 330, became the first Christian king there. Tradition credits Gregory the Illuminator with founding the Armenian Apostolic Church. Some scholars now doubt the claim that Armenia was first, because it rests on a history by Agathangelos that has recently been redated.

  Georgia followed. In 319, Kartli, also called Iberia, adopted the faith as its state religion, and tradition credits a Greek woman, St. Nino of Cappadocia, with the conversion. In the 5th century, the Georgian alphabet was developed so the Bible could be translated into Georgian.

  Edessa, in northwestern Mesopotamia, was the main center of Syriac-speaking Christianity. A legend recorded by Eusebius says King Abgar V wrote to Jesus asking to be healed and received a reply. After the resurrection, Thomas is said to have sent Addai, who became the city's first bishop. A council met at Edessa as early as 197. Tatian's Diatessaron, which wove the four gospels into one narrative, was compiled about 172. It was widely used until Bishop Rabbula forbade it between 412 and 435.

  By the second half of the 2nd century, Christians were living across Media, Persia, Parthia and Bactria. Many of the bishops were itinerant missionaries who supported themselves as merchants or craftsmen. The seat of the church moved to the twin cities of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, on the trade routes between East and West. A council there in 424 elected the first patriarch with authority over the whole Church of the East.

  Persian rulers at first tolerated Christians. Shapur II turned hostile after Constantine's conversion, because he began to see Christians as agents of Rome. He imposed a double tax, which the patriarch Shemon Bar Sabbae refused to pay. Shapur then pressed Shemon and his clergy to convert to Zoroastrianism, and they refused. The church's "cycle of the martyrs" began. The historian Sozomen wrote that the named martyrs had been counted at "upwards of sixteen thousand," with many more unnamed.

  The Acts of Thomas, a Syriac work from the early 3rd century, tells how Thomas reluctantly accepted a mission to India after a night vision. He traveled with the merchant Abbanes to serve the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares in the northwest. According to the tradition, he later landed at the port of Muziris in 52 and preached along the Malabar Coast, gaining about 170 converts. Stone crosses marked the churches he founded. The same account says King Mazdai had him killed near Mylapore around AD 72, after angry Brahmins objected to his work.

  The Al-Jubail Church in what is now Saudi Arabia was built in the 4th century, and Christianity gained its strongest foothold in Yemen. Eusebius says a missionary named Pantaneous was sent from Alexandria around AD 190 to the nations of the East, including southwest Arabia, on his way to India.

  In the upper Nile region, the New Testament records Philip the Evangelist baptizing a treasury official of "Candace, queen of the Ethiopians." Candace was the title of the Kushite queens of Meroe. By the fourth century, Athanasius of Alexandria had consecrated Marcus as bishop of Philae. John of Ephesus records that the kingdoms of Nobatia and Alodia converted around 545 and 569. Makuria later grew strong enough to halt Islam's advance south after the Arabs took Egypt. A treaty held for six hundred years, until Islam gradually replaced Christianity. The last recorded bishop was Timothy, at Qasr Ibrim in 1372.

  9952679698