Christianity arose within Judaism in the first half of the 1st century AD. About the historical Jesus of Nazareth, not very much is known with any degree of certainty, since the sources (the Gospels and the letters by the apostle Paul) leave room for different interpretations and reconstructions of his person and his message. In all probability, he was convinced that God had entrusted him with a decisive role in the establishment of the promised messianic “Kingdom of God” on earth. His preaching worried the official Jewish priesthood as well as the Roman authorities, and after a relatively short career as a messianic prophet he was crucified as a rebel by the Roman governor. His closest followers interpreted Jesus’ death as an event with far-reaching consequences, although from the very beginning there must have been various interpretations of the meaning of his death. In most of these, though, he was seen as the promised messiah, the “anointed one” (in Greek, Christos) whose death had not been real, since he was thought to have risen from the grave and ascended to heaven. His resurrection and ascent to heaven for many followed from the divine nature of his person, since he was seen as the Son of God. In Jewish tradition, that was probably not much more than a metaphor for someone exceptionally loved or favored by God, but according to Greek ideas he must have been in a supernatural way really the “son” of God and therefore a divine being himself, who proved his divinity by his resurrection. According to the apostle Paul, though, who had not himself known Jesus but had converted to the early Christian movement, Jesus’ death had been a redeeming sacrifice that had averted God’s justifiable punishment from falling on humanity. All human beings deserved the punishment of death because of their sins, but Jesus had taken that punishment over onto himself and thus saved those of humankind who believed in him. This interpretation was probably not the prevailing one amongst early Christians but would become so gradually in the 4th century and later. For most of the early Christians, Jesus Christ was primarily the wise teacher who had shown humankind the true religion of the one and only God and who defeated the devil, who had wanted to silence him on the cross, by his resurrection and ascent to heaven. All Christians believed that “at the end of time” Christ would come back to Earth to usher in the Kingdom of God, in which the redeemed would live forever, whereas the sinners who had rejected his message would forever burn in hell.
Among the Jews in Judea and Galilee, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth had been the promised messiah or Christ was mostly not favorably received, but among the Jews in the diaspora and pagan sympathizers with Judaism it found more support. Under the influence of the apostle Paul, who was one of the strongest characters among the first generation
Of “Christians,” as they came to be called, those who accepted Jesus as the messiah or Christ did not have to follow the traditional Jewish customs, such as circumcision, since Christ was now presented as the Son of God who had come to save all people, not only the Jews. Instead, the Christians developed their own rituals and rules, such as baptism, which Paul expressly presented as a substitute for circumcision. As a result, the followers of Paul and other apostles now more and more set themselves apart from the Jews and began to form an independent movement. Some Christian groups, though, followed Jewish customs and considered themselves as “Jews” who believed that the promised messiah had indeed come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But these “Judeo-Christians” would eventually disappear, and the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity as two separate religions would gradually harden in the course of the first centuries AD. Within Christianity, it would eventually be the line of Paul and his interpretation of Jesus and his death as a redeeming act for all humankind that would become the most widespread (or “catholic,” “righteous,” or “orthodox”) form of Christianity.
Paul was a man with a mission, someone who wandered from city to city to preach his message to the Jewish communities and their pagan sympathizers in Asia Minor, Greece and finally in Rome. The Christian movement that sprang up as a result of his preaching and that of other apostles was an urban phenomenon. For a considerable time to come, Christianity would remain urban, hardly touching the masses of the people in the countryside. In the cities, the Christian communities constituted small groups of people from practically all ranks and classes of the population, with the exception, generally, of the elites. They assembled on Sundays in the morning and the evening in the houses of well-to-do members of the community. In general, Christians seem to have led a life withdrawn as much as possible from “the world,” which they saw as sinful, expecting instead a speedy return of Christ, who would usher in the end of the existing world and the establishment of “God’s Kingdom”. But gradually they came to realize that the second coming of Christ would probably not occur in the immediate future, and they increasingly accepted the world as it was, especially the Roman Empire, which they believed God had created in order that the Christian message might spread easily among the nations. Only the worship of the many gods and divine powers of polytheism was unacceptable. From their Jewish heritage, the Christians had revived as their core conviction that the True and Only God abhorred the worship, especially in the form of bloody sacrifices, of all other so-called gods. For Christians and non-Christians alike, the refusal to sacrifice was the defining characteristic of being a Christian. Polytheism was therefore for Christians the stumbling block. As long as they remained small groups, the Christians distanced themselves as much as possible from pagan festivities with their processions, sacrifices, common meals, and games. Consequently, in the eyes of the rest of the population the Christians were seen as anti-social and “atheist,” for they did not honor the gods and thereby risked provoking the wrath of the gods that could affect the whole community. In the first two centuries, the enmity of the Jews also played a role, since in Jewish eyes the Christians were apostates from Judaism, blasphemous, and at the same time dangerous competitors for the adherence of those pagans who had some sympathy for the monotheistic ideas and moral standards of both groups.
World History
