Christianity in the 1st century
(
Early Christianity And Judaism
)
- Etymology
- Origins
- Jewish Christianity
- Emerging church – miss..
- Persecutions
- Development of the Bibli..
- Early orthodox writings ..
- Split of early Christian..
- Timeline
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Sources
- Further reading
- External links
Christianity in the 1st century covers the formative history of Christianity from the start of the ministry of Jesus (–29 AD) to the death of the last of the Twelve Apostles () and is thus also known as the Apostolic Age. Early Christianity developed out of the eschatological ministry of Jesus. Subsequent to Jesus' death, his earliest followers formed an Apocalypticism Messianism Jewish sect during the late Second Temple period of the 1st century. Initially believing that Jesus' resurrection was the start of the end time, their beliefs soon changed in the expected Second Coming of Jesus and the start of God's Kingdom at a later point in time.
Paul the Apostle, a Pharisees Jew, who had persecuted the early Christians of the Roman Province of Judea, converted –36 and began to Proselytism among the Gentiles. According to Paul, Gentile converts could be allowed exemption from Mitzvah, arguing that all are justified by their faith in Jesus. This was part of a gradual split between early Christianity and Judaism, as Christianity became a distinct religion including predominantly Gentile adherence.
Roman Jerusalem had an early Christian community, which was led by James the Just, Peter, and John. According to Acts 11:26, Antioch was where the followers were first called Christians. Peter was later in Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire. The apostles went on to spread the message of the Gospel around the classical world and founded around the early centers of Christianity. The last apostle to die was John in . Zahn, Theodor. "John the Apostle", The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. VI, (Philip Schaff, ed.) CCEL
Etymology
Origins
Jewish–Hellenistic background
Christianity "emerged as a sect of Judaism in Roman Palestine" in the Hellenistic world of the first century AD, which was dominated by Roman law and Greek culture. A major challenge for Jews during this time was how to respond to Hellenization and remain faithful to their religious traditions. During the early 1st century AD, there were many competing Jewish sects in the Holy Land, including Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and other groups. Each group adopted different stances toward Hellenization.
In this context of foreign domination, Jewish apocalypticism became widespread. Apocalypticism is the belief that God would soon destroy the cosmic forces of evil currently ruling the world and establish an eternal kingdom. To accomplish this, God would send a savior figure or messiah. Messiah (Hebrew language: meshiach) means "anointed" and is used in the Bible to designate predominantly the "son of man" epithet found in hebrew literature such as the dead sea scrolls, and in particular the book of enoch. It also sometimes referred to Jewish kings and in some cases Kohen and prophets whose status was symbolized by being anointed with holy anointing oil. It can refer to people chosen by God for a specific task, such as the whole Israelites nation (1 Chronicles 16:22; Psalm 105:15) or Cyrus the Great who ended the Babylonian captivity (). The term is most associated with King David, to whom God promised an eternal kingdom (). After the destruction of David's kingdom and lineage, this promise was reaffirmed by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who foresaw a future Davidic line king who would establish and reign over an idealized kingdom.
In the Second Temple period, there was no consensus on who the messiah would be or what he would do. Most commonly, he was imagined to be an Endtimes son of David going about the business of "executing judgment, defeating the enemies of God, reigning over a restored Israel, establishing unending peace". The messiah was often referred to as "King Messiah" () or malka meshiḥa in Aramaic. Yet, the christian faith idealized the perfect priest or the celestial Son of Man who brings about the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. The concept has its root in the apocalyptic literature of the 2nd century BC to 1st century BC.
Life and ministry of Jesus
Sources
Non-Christian sources that are used to study and establish the historicity of Jesus include Jewish sources such as Josephus, and Roman sources such as Tacitus. These sources are compared to Christian sources such as the Pauline epistles and the Synoptic Gospels. These sources are usually independent of each other (e.g. Jewish sources do not draw upon Roman sources), and similarities and differences between them are used in the authentication process.
Historical person
There is widespread disagreement among scholars on the details of the life of Jesus mentioned in the gospel narratives, and on the meaning of his teachings. Concerning the accuracy of the accounts, viewpoints run the gamut from considering them inerrant descriptions of Jesus's life, to doubting whether they are historically reliable on a number of points, to considering them to provide very little historical information about his life beyond the basics. According to Bart Ehrman, the gospels are "filled with nonhistorical material, accounts of events that could not have happened", and contradictory accounts of the same events. As historical sources, the gospels have to be "weighed and assessed critically". Scholars often draw a distinction between the Historical Jesus and the Christology, and two different accounts can be found in this regard.
Academic scholars have constructed a variety of portraits and profiles for Jesus. Contemporary scholarship places Jesus firmly in the Jewish tradition,Theissen, Gerd and Annette Merz. The historical Jesus: a comprehensive guide. Fortress Press. 1998. translated from German (1996 edition) and the most prominent understanding of Jesus is as the enochian Jewish apocalyptic prophet or eschatological teacher. Other portraits are the charismatic healer, the Cynic philosopher, the Jewish Messiah, and the prophet of social change.
Ministry and eschatological expectations
The Gospel of Luke () states that [[Jesus]] was "about 30 years of age" at the start of his ministry.Paul L. Maier "The Date of the Nativity and Chronology of Jesus" in ''Chronos, kairos, Christos: nativity and chronological studies'' by Jerry Vardaman, Edwin M. Yamauchi 1989 pp. 113–29 A chronology of Jesus typically has the date of the start of his ministry estimated at AD 27–29 and the end in the range AD 30–36.
In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jewish eschatology stands central. After being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus teaches extensively for a year, or maybe just a few months, about the coming Kingdom of God (or, in Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven), in and , using and figures of speech. In the Gospel of John, Jesus himself is the main subject.
The Synoptics present different views on the Kingdom of God. While the Kingdom is essentially described as eschatology (relating to the end of the world), becoming reality in the near future, some texts present the Kingdom as already being present, while other texts depict the Kingdom as a place in heaven that one enters after death, or as the presence of God on earth.. Jesus talks as expecting the coming of the "Son of Man" from heaven, an Apocalypse figure who would initiate "the coming judgment and the redemption of Israel." According to Davies, the Sermon on the Mount presents Jesus as the new Moses who brings a New Law (a reference to the Law of Moses, the Messianic Torah.
Death and resurrection
Conservative Christian scholars (in addition to apologists and theologians) generally present these as being descriptions of real appearances of a resurrected and transformed physical body. CraigMichael Morrison The Resurrection of Jesus: A History of Interpretation According to N.T. Wright, there is substantial unanimity among the early Christian writers (first and second century) that Jesus had been bodily raised from the dead.Wright, N.T. (2003), The Resurrection of the Son of God, pp.9–10 Craig L. Blomberg argues there are sufficient arguments for the historicity of the resurrection.Blomberg, Craig L. (1987), The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 2nd Ed, 2007. In secular and Liberal Christian scholarship, these appearances are argued to be descriptions of visionary post-mortem experiences of Jesus. According to this view, Jesus' death was reinterpreted as an eschatological event, feeding ecstatic experiences of Jesus, and the sense of Jesus being alive "signalled for earliest believers that the days of eschatological fulfilment were at hand."Larry Hurtado (December 4, 2018), ″'When Christians were Jews': Paula Fredriksen on 'The First Generation'″ Gerd Lüdemann argues that Peter had a vision of Jesus, induced by his feelings of guilt for betraying Jesus. The vision elevated this feeling of guilt, and Peter experienced it as a real appearance of Jesus, raised from dead. Gerd Lüdemann on the Resurrection of Jesus
The belief in the resurrection of Jesus gave the impetus in certain Christian sects to the exaltation of Jesus to the status of divine Son and Lord of God's Kingdom and the resumption of their missionary activity. His followers expected Jesus to return within a generation and begin the Kingdom of God.
Jewish Christianity
The Jerusalem ekklēsia
According to a tradition recorded by Eusebius and Epiphanius of Salamis, the Jerusalem church fled to Pella at the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War (AD 66–73).Eusebius, Church History 3, 5, 3; Epiphanius, Panarion 29,7,7–8; 30, 2, 7; On Weights and Measures 15. On the flight to Pella see: ; P. H. R. van Houwelingen, "Fleeing forward: The departure of Christians from Jerusalem to Pella," Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003), 181–200.
The Jerusalem community consisted of "Hebrews," Jews speaking both Aramaic and Greek, and "Hellenists," Jews speaking only Greek, possibly diaspora Jews who had resettled in Jerusalem. According to Dunn, Paul's initial persecution of Christians probably was directed against these Greek-speaking "Hellenists" due to their anti-Temple attitude. Within the early Jewish Christian community, this also set them apart from the "Hebrews" and their Tabernacle observance.
Beliefs and practices
Creeds and salvation
The texts contain the earliest Christian creeds expressing belief in the resurrected Jesus, such as :
The creed has been dated by some scholars as originating within the Jerusalem apostolic community no later than the 40s, and by some to less than a decade after Jesus' death, while others date it to about 56. Other early creeds include 1 John 4 (), 2 Timothy 2 (),Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament vol 1, pp. 49, 81 Romans 1 () and 1 Timothy 3 ().
Christology
The "low Christology" or "adoptionist Christology" is the belief "that God exalted Jesus to be his Son by raising him from the dead," thereby raising him to "divine status." According to the "evolutionary model" c.q. "evolutionary theories," the Christological understanding of Christ developed over time,Bart Ehrman, How Jesus became God, Course Guide as witnessed in the Gospels, with the earliest Christians believing that Jesus was a human who was exalted, c.q. Adoptionism as God's Son, when he was resurrected.Geza Vermez (2008), The Resurrection, pp. 138–39 Later beliefs shifted the exaltation to his baptism, birth, and subsequently to the idea of his eternal existence, as witnessed in the Gospel of John. This evolutionary model was very influential, and the "low Christology" has long been regarded as the oldest Christology.
The other early Christology is "high Christology," which is "the view that Jesus was a pre-existent divine being who became a human, did the Father's will on earth, and then was taken back up into heaven whence he had originally come," and from where he Christophany. According to Hurtado, a proponent of an Early High Christology, the devotion to Jesus as divine originated in early Jewish Christianity, and not later or under the influence of pagan religions and Gentile converts. The Pauline letters, which are the earliest Christian writings, already show "a well-developed pattern of Christian devotion ... already conventionalized and apparently uncontroversial."
Some Christians began to worship Jesus as Lord.
For the early Christians, the Holy Kiss "was associated with the peace and unity given by the Holy Spirit to the congregation." To guard against any abuse of this form of salutation, women and men were required to sit separately, and the kiss of peace was given only by women to women and by men to men, with closed mouths. Apostolic Tradition specified with regard to catechumens: "When they have prayed they shall not give the kiss of peace for their kiss is not yet holy" (18:3). As such, the Holy Kiss was distinguished as a ritual only to be partaken of by baptism, with catechumens and non-Christians not being greeted this way (18:4).
At first, Christians continued to worship alongside Jewish believers, but within twenty years of Jesus' death, Sunday (the Lord's Day) was being regarded as the primary day of worship.
The scope of the Jewish-Christian mission expanded over time. While Jesus limited his message to a Jewish audience in Galilee and Judea, after his death his followers extended their outreach to all of Israel, and eventually the whole Jewish diaspora, believing that the Second Coming would only happen when all Jews had received the Gospel. Apostles and preachers traveled to Jewish Diaspora around the Mediterranean Sea, and initially attracted Jewish converts. Within 10 years of the death of Jesus, apostles had attracted enthusiasts for "the Way" from Jerusalem to Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Cyprus, Crete, Alexandria and Rome. Over 40 churches were established by 100,Hitchcock, Geography of Religion (2004), p. 281 most in Asia Minor, such as the seven churches of Asia, and some in Greece in the Roman era and Roman Italy.
According to Fredriksen, when early Christians broadened their missionary efforts, they also came into contact with Gentiles attracted to the Jewish religion. Eventually, the Gentiles came to be included in the missionary effort of Hellenised Jews, bringing "all nations" into the house of God. The "Hellenists," Greek-speaking diaspora Jews belonging to the early Jerusalem Jesus-movement, played an important role in reaching a Gentile, Greek audience, notably at Antioch, which had a large Jewish community and significant numbers of Gentile "God-fearers." From Antioch, the mission to the Gentiles started, including Paul's, which would fundamentally change the character of the early Christian movement, eventually turning it into a new, Gentile religion. According to Dunn, within 10 years after Jesus' death, "the new messianic movement focused on Jesus began to modulate into something different ... it was at Antioch that we can begin to speak of the new movement as 'Christianity'."
Christian groups and congregations first organized themselves loosely. In Paul's time there were no precisely delineated territorial jurisdictions for bishops, elders, and .Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.
Paul was in contact with the early Christian community in Jerusalem, led by James the Just. According to Mack, he may have been converted to another early strand of Christianity, with a High Christology. Fragments of their beliefs in an exalted and deified Jesus, what Mack called the "Christ cult," can be found in the writings of Paul. Yet, Hurtado notes that Paul valued the linkage with "Jewish Christian circles in Roman Judea," which makes it likely that his Christology was in line with, and indebted to, their views. Hurtado further notes that "it is widely accepted that the tradition that Paul recites in 1 Corinthians 15:1–7 must go back to the Jerusalem Church."
Paul objected strongly to the insistence on keeping all of the Jewish commandments, considering it a great threat to his doctrine of salvation through faith in Christ. According to Paula Fredriksen, Paul's opposition to male circumcison for Gentiles is in line with the Old Testament predictions that "in the last days the gentile nations would come to the God of Israel, as gentiles (e.g., ), not as proselytes to Israel." For Paul, Gentile male circumcision was therefore an affront to God's intentions. According to Larry Hurtado, "Paul saw himself as what Munck called a salvation-historical figure in his own right", who was "personally and singularly deputized by God to bring about the predicted ingathering (the "fullness") of the nations ()."
For Paul, Jesus' death and resurrection solved the problem of the exclusion of Gentiles from God's covenant, since the faithful are redeemed by participation in Jesus' death and rising. In the Jerusalem ekklēsia, from which Paul received the creed of , the phrase "died for our sins" probably was an apologetic rationale for the death of Jesus as being part of God's plan and purpose, as evidenced in the Scriptures. For Paul, it gained a deeper significance, providing "a basis for the salvation of sinful Gentiles apart from the Torah." According to E. P. Sanders, Paul argued that "those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and thus they escape the power of sin ... he died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him."E.P. Sanders, Saint Paul, the Apostle, Encyclopedia Britannica By this participation in Christ's death and rising, "one receives forgiveness for past offences, is liberated from the powers of sin, and receives the Spirit." Paul insists that salvation is received by the grace of God; according to Sanders, this insistence is in line with Second Temple Judaism of until 200 AD, which saw God's covenant with Israel as an act of grace of God. Observance of the Law is needed to maintain the covenant, but the covenant is not earned by observing the Law, but by the grace of God.Jordan Cooper, E.P. Sanders and the New Perspective on Paul
These divergent interpretations have a prominent place in both Paul's writings and in Acts. According to and Acts chapter 15, fourteen years after his conversion Paul visited the "Pillars of Jerusalem", the leaders of the Jerusalem ekklēsia. His purpose was to compare his Gospel with theirs, an event known as the Council of Jerusalem. According to Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, they agreed that his mission was to be among the Gentiles. According to Acts, Paul made an argument that circumcision was not a necessary practice, vocally supported by Peter.McManners, Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (2002), p. 37
While the Council of Jerusalem was described as resulting in an agreement to allow Gentile converts exemption from most Mitzvot, in reality a stark opposition from "Hebrew" Jewish Christians remained, as exemplified by the Ebionites. The relaxing of requirements in Pauline Christianity opened the way for a much larger Christian Church, extending far beyond the Jewish community. The inclusion of Gentiles is reflected in Luke-Acts, which is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it.
Only for approximately ten out of the first three hundred years of the church's history were Christians executed due to orders from a Roman emperor. The first persecution of Christians organised by the Roman government took place under the emperor Nero in 64 AD after the Great Fire of Rome. There was no empire-wide persecution of Christians until the reign of Decius in the third century.Martin, D. 2010. "The 'Afterlife' of the New Testament and Postmodern Interpretation" ( lecture transcript ). Yale University. The Edict of Serdica was issued in 311 by the Roman emperor Galerius, officially ending the Diocletianic persecution of Christianity in the East. With the passage in 313 AD of the Edict of Milan, in which the Constantine the Great and Licinius legalised the Christianity religion, persecution of Christians by the Roman state ceased.
Books not accepted by Pauline Christianity are termed biblical apocrypha, though the exact list varies from denomination to denomination.
Perhaps the earliest Christian canon is the Bryennios List, dated to , which was found by Philotheos Bryennios in the Codex Hierosolymitanus. The list is written in Koine Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew language.published by J. P. Audet in JTS 1950, v1, pp. 135–54, cited in The Council of Jamnia and the Old Testament Canon , Robert C. Newman, 1983. In the 2nd century, Melito of Sardis called the Jewish scriptures the "Old Testament" A dictionary of Jewish-Christian relations, Dr. Edward Kessler, Neil Wenborn, Cambridge University Press, 2005, , p. 316 and also specified an early canon.
Jerome (347–420) expressed his preference for adhering strictly to the Hebrew text and canon, but his view held little currency even in his own day.
Writings attributed to the Apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating, perhaps in collected forms, by the end of the 1st century AD.
Taken as a whole, the collection is notable for its literary simplicity, religious zeal and lack of Hellenistic philosophy or rhetoric. They contain early thoughts on the organisation of the Christian ekklēsia, and are historical sources for the development of an early Church structure.
In his letter 1 Clement, Clement of Rome calls on the Christians of Corinth to maintain harmony and order. Some see his epistle as an assertion of Rome's authority over the church in Corinth and, by implication, the beginnings of papal supremacy. Clement refers to the leaders of the Corinthian church in his letter as bishops and interchangeably, and likewise states that the bishops are to lead God's flock by virtue of the chief shepherd (presbyter), Jesus Christ.
Ignatius of Antioch advocated the authority of the apostolic episcopacy (bishops).Magnesians 2, 6–7, 13, Trallians 2–3, Smyrnaeans 8–9
The Didache (late 1st century) is an anonymous Jewish-Christian work. It is a pastoral manual dealing with Christian lessons, rituals, and Church organization, parts of which may have constituted the first written catechism, "that reveals more about how Jewish-Christians saw themselves and how they adapted their Judaism for Gentiles than any other book in the Christian Scriptures."
The destruction of Jerusalem and the consequent dispersion of Jews and Jewish Christians from the city (after the Bar Kokhba revolt) ended any pre-eminence of the Jewish-Christian leadership in Jerusalem. Early Christianity grew further apart from Judaism to establish itself as a predominantly Gentile religion, and Antioch became the first Gentile Christian community with stature.
The hypothetical Council of Jamnia is often stated to have condemned all who claimed the Messiah had already come, and Christianity in particular, excluding them from attending synagogue. However, the formulated prayer in question (birkat ha-minim) is considered by other scholars to be unremarkable in the history of Jewish and Christian relations.
There is a scarcity of evidence for Jewish persecution of "heretics" in general, or Christians in particular, in the period between 70 and 135. It is probable that the condemnation of Jamnia included many groups, of which the Christians were but one, and did not necessarily mean excommunication. That some of the later church fathers only recommended against synagogue attendance makes it improbable that an anti-Christian prayer was a common part of the synagogue liturgy. Jewish Christians continued to worship in synagogues for centuries.
During the late 1st century, Judaism was a legal religion with the protection of Roman law, worked out in compromise with the Roman state over two centuries (see Anti-Judaism in the Roman Empire for details). In contrast, Christianity was not legalized until the 313 Edict of Milan. Observant Jews had special rights, including the privilege of abstaining from civic pagan rites. Christians were initially identified with the Jewish religion by the Romans, but as they became more distinct, Christianity became a problem for Roman rulers. Around the year 98, the emperor Nerva decreed that Christians did not have to pay the Fiscus Iudaicus, effectively recognizing them as distinct from Rabbinic Judaism. This opened the way to Christians being persecuted for disobedience to the emperor, as they refused to worship the state pantheon.
From onwards a distinction between Christians and Jews in Roman literature becomes apparent. For example, Pliny the Younger postulates that Christians are not Jews since they do not pay the tax, in his letters to Trajan.
There was a post-Nicene "double rejection" of the Jewish Christians by both Gentile Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. The true end of ancient Jewish Christianity occurred only in the 5th century. Gentile Christianity became the dominant strand of orthodoxy and imposed itself on the previously Jewish Christian sanctuaries, taking full control of those houses of worship by the end of the 5th century.
Eschatological expectations
Angels and Devils
Practices
Baptism
Lovefeast and Eucharist
Holy Kiss
Headcovering
Footwashing
Liturgy
Emerging church – mission to the Gentiles
Growth of early Christianity
Paul and the inclusion of Gentiles
Conversion
Inclusion of Gentiles
Persecutions
Development of the Biblical canon
Old Testament
New Testament
Early orthodox writings – Apostolic Fathers
Split of early Christianity and Judaism
Split with Judaism
Later rejection of Jewish Christianity
Timeline
See also
Notes
Sources
Printed sources
Web-sources
Further reading
Books
Book series
External links
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