A brief history of early Christianity

Jewish orgins

Jesus, his twelve Apostles, and essentially all of his early followers were Jewish or Jewish Proselytes. Although Jesus accepted such fundamental doctrines of Judaism as monotheism and the belief in a messiah, the Jewish religious leaders saw his teachings as incompatible with Judaism.

In the account in John 5:1-15, Jesus returned to Jerusalem on the Sabbath and came across crowds of sick people lying on five covered porches. He pitied a man that had been sick for thirty-eight years and healed him. Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk!” (John 5:8, NLT) The Jewish leaders saw the man walking with his sleeping mat and objected. “You can't work on the Sabbath! It's illegal to carry that sleeping mat!” (John 5:10, NLT) The man told the Jewish leaders that Jesus had healed him and told him to do so. “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18, ESV) In a New Testament account which is contested by many Jews as being false, the temple priesthood and the Sanhedrin (the supreme religious and civic court of Jerusalem) conspired to have Jesus put to death by the Roman authorities.

From the time of his crucifixion forward, the Jewish leaders are said to have attempted to suppress those who followed his teaching. But, after his death and resurrection, according to the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles formed a community, a church distinct from other Jews and Greeks, into which they allowed uncircumcised Gentiles to enter by baptism, while openly declaring Jesus to be the Christ, and they began to be called Nazarenes and Christians.

Christians continued many of the traditions found in Judaism at that time, such as adapting the liturgical form of worship of the synagogue to church parishes, prayer, use of sacred scriptures, a priesthood, a religious calendar in which certain events and/or beliefs are specifically commemorated on certain days each year, use of music in hymns and prayer, giving tithes to the Church, and ascetic disciplines such as fasting and almsgiving. Christians initially adopted the Greek translations of the Jewish scriptures, known as the Septuagint, as their own Bible, and later also canonized the books of the New Testament.

Divisions in early Christianity

Acts of the Apostles 1:15 says Christianity began among about 120 Jews and Jewish Proselytes. The 3,000 converts on the Pentecost following the Crucifixion described in Acts of the Apostles 2 were also all Jews and Proselytes. The Roman officer Cornelius is traditionally considered the first Gentile convert to Christianity. The major divisions in Christianity prior to that time were Hellenistic, non-Hellenistic Jews and Aramaic speakers. However, after the conversion of Cornelius and his acceptance as a Christian, there was now another group — Gentile Christians.

Christianity legalized in the Roman Empire

The Emperor Constantine I was, like emperors before him, high priest of the Mithraic religion. However, he was also interested in creating unity for the sake of ease of governance. Constantine mitigated some differences between orthodox Christianity and its main competitor, the official religion of Sol Invictus. For example, he moved the date of celebration of Jesus' birth to December 25th (since this was the celebration date for the birth of Mithras and Bacchus, and also the date of other winter solstice festivals such as Saturnalia). In addition, Constantine instituted use of the Chi-Rho symbol, representative of Christianity, also alleged by some scholars to have had use as an obeloi for "auspicious" thus serving both Christian and non-Christian purpose simultaneously. Popular legend holds that Constantine I was Christian; however, he never publicly recanted his position as high priest of Mithras Sol Invictus, and the only alleged occurrence of Constantine I converting was on his deathbed (as reported by later Church Fathers), which is impossible to verify. However, it was not that unusual for people in the fourth century to avoid fully converting to Christianity until quite late in life, because of the strong warnings against continuing in sin after having converted and the spiritual consequences thereof.

Print resources

• Gonzales, Justo. The Story of Christianity: Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Reformation. San Francisco: Harper, 1984. ISBN 0060633158.
• Gonzales, Justo. The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day. San Francisco: Harper, 1985. ISBN 0060633166.
• Latorette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity, (2 volumes).
• Shelley, Bruce L. (1996) Church History in Plain Language (2nd edition) ISBN 0849938619.

This article is licensed under the Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “History of Christianity.”