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First Century Christianity

By possum

An examination of Jesus as a historical figure was begun in an earlier diary.  To consider the origins of Christianity from a historical perspective one must begin by thinking of "histories" rather than a single story.  The very early beginnings are murky and subject to various interpretations.  In addition the surviving writings are for the most part from Church leaders and not from the ordinary people for whom Christianity offered a glimmer of hope for release from their otherwise dreary lives.  The limits on information are at no time in Christian history any worse than in the first century.  

To even begin to understand the origins of Christian belief and its organization into a focused religion, one must consider the times.  Jesus lived in a time of Roman rule of the entire region.  The Romans required the burning of incense before images of the emperor and encouraged worship of the various Roman gods.  Jesus and his followers refused to worship the emperor in favor of the one and only God of their beliefs.
The spread of Jesus' teachings was begun with the apostles who spread out across the land to preach the gospel.  Meetings of followers arose in the cities where there were larger numbers of people.  It is well to think of that early church as consisting of many small groups of people dedicated to sectarian activity with Jesus as the Messiah.  There was no real organization or central support as we know today.  

Constantine the Great

Spread to the rural areas was not well established until well into the third century around the time of Constantine.  Much of the increase in numbers of Christians came from the influence of individuals on their friends and neighbors.  Thus those discussions at the market, the barber shop, or other public places were more important in many ways than the formal meetings led by the apostles.

Catacombs, jaydoubleyougee, Flickr, Creative Commons

The earliest formal gatherings occurred in houses or in the catacombs (even this is debated by some historians as a myth).  People gathered in small groups in which participation was universal in those first years.  Gatherings in the catacombs were well known as a way of honoring the dead (especially those martyred in the cause of Christianity).

Catacombs, jaydoubleyougee, Flickr, Creative Commons

Catacomb Painting

The first followers of Jesus were Jews and so they remained.  They observed the sabbath and worshiped in the temple.  The Church took a long time to begin the spread to Gentiles.  By believing in Jesus as the Messiah Christians accepted Gentiles into the Abrahamic church as prophesied in the scriptures.  All were believed going to Zion through their following of the Messiah.

Early Christianity and Judaism

Early Christianity had no conflict with Judaism.  Quite the contrary.  Both sets of believers worshiped the one God.  Early Christians spread the word of Jesus arrival as the fulfillment of scriptural predictions for the saving of Israel with the coming of the Messiah.  For many Jews of the time Christianity was one more Jewish sect among many.

In early days the Christians began to gather for worship on Sunday, departing from the Jewish Saturday Sabbath and celebrating the first day of the week along with the resurrection of Jesus.  The meeting was one of celebration with food a part of the ceremony.  Communion was the act of blessing wine and bread at the end of the meal.  Only those baptized into the sect were allowed to participate in the ceremony of communion.  (Communion and Baptism and their respective places in early Christianity are the subjects of another treatise to follow one day in this series.)

Last Supper, Joos van Cleve, the origin of communion

A day of fasting and prayer was begun on Fridays to remember the crucifixion and death of Jesus.  The addition of a Wednesday fasting and commemoration was added for reasons which are not entirely clear.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls give us a glimpse of early Christianity.The scrolls were clearly meant to be read, but they are also clearly storage vessels for ideas.But the copies vary one to the next.  Those early scribes had a different thinking about the immutability of the Bible.Given the commonality of their early histories and the diversity of the "Judaean Religion" which spawned both of them, it is probably fair to say that Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are two sects of one common religion.  The differences are largely bound up in their differing responses to the cultural heritage of the Israelites.  Rabbinic Judaism was an exclusive religion limited to those who were descendants of Israelites who fled with Moses from Egypt or who had adopted the cultural standards of Judaean society through intermarriage.  The exclusion of the Samarians provides an example of how exclusive it eventually became.

The early Christian religion, in contrast, might be characterized as inclusive.  It made accommodations with the local heritage of the non-Israelite populations all over the Mediterranean basin.  Its inclusivity gave it a vast numerical advantage in its early efforts to establish itself and that advantage continues to this day.  The Christian sect had to give up most of its ties to the cultural heritage of the Israelites in order to present this inclusive appearance, however, and many of the differences between these two great religions have evolved from this one crucial early difference.

In the latter part of the first century, Christianity had at least three divisions:  Jewish Christianity, Pauline Christianity, and Gnostic Christianity.

Jewish Christianity

Apostle James, Rembrandt

St. James, iconographic art

Jewish Christians led by the Apostle James,believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. They viewed Jesus as a prophet and rabbi, but not as a deity.Their beliefs were not in the strict Jewish tradition as we see that religion today.  These believers likely arose from the Essene Nazarean Sect.They did not accept either the Old Testament, the Jerusalem Temple, the animal sacrifices, or even the celebration of Passover as we know of it today.In his time, Jesus and his followers were referred to as Nazarenes and not as Christians.

Pauline Christianity

Apostle Paul

Pauline Christianity derives its name from Saul of Tarsus who later changed his name to Paul.  From about 36CE until his execution by the Romans in the mid-60's Paul was perhaps the most active Christian missionary. Paul abandoned most of the Laws of Moses and rejected many of the Jewish behavioral rules that Jesus and his disciples had followed during his ministry. Paul taught that God had unilaterally abrogated his covenants with the Jews and transferred them to his own Christian groups.Paul believed salvation was a gift from God and not a result of individual action.

Gnostic Christianity

Gnosis in art

Christian beliefs were not uniform in the beginning.  Many adhered to an earlier belief system known as gnosticism.Gnostics believe that they have secret knowledge about God, humanity and the rest of the universe of which the general population was unawareUnder this thinking Jesus gave the apostles special knowledge which was not shared with others.They believed that they alone truly understood Christ's message, and that other streams of thought within Christianity had misinterpreted Jesus' mission and sayings.To the gnosticsknowledge had a redeeming and liberating function that helped the individual break free of bondage to the world.Salvation for the gnostics was attained by the gaining of special knowledge of individual spiritual essence.

Early Followers

Jesus traveled about the countryside mingling with people of little means for the most part.  His message brought a ray of hope into lives that were otherwise difficult.  The promise of a life after this current one was important to early believers.  The different sects which developed after the death of Jesus saw both life today and life in the hereafter in different ways.  But the fact remains, most early Christians were not from the wealthy classes.  In fact for many years the Church was to find difficulty in accepting the wealthy for baptism into Christianity.

Women in the early Church

Mary Magdalene, Sophia, and daughters, Varravagio

Women at the tomb

One more aspect of that inclusivity mentioned in the Scrolls is the place of women in the early church.According to one story, an unnamed Gentile woman taught Jesus that the ministry of God is not limited to particular groups and persons, but belongs to all who have faith (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28).Jesus was a frequent visitor at the home of Mary and Martha, and was in the habit of teaching and eating meals with women as well as men.Some scholars believe the early church included more women than men as members. This state was not to continue through later centuries.Every variety of ancient Christianity that advocated the legitimacy of women's leadership was eventually declared heretical, and evidence of women's early leadership roles was erased or suppressed.

Mary Magdalene, orthodox icon

The women of the gospel came to follow Jesus out of desperation at their plight in life.  Roman rule gave men all the rights of life and left women as not much more than property or slaves.  Women had very little control over their lives in first century Roman times.They needed healing, for their bodies and for their souls.  They needed to be relieved of whatever pressures had made them demoniacs or to be forgiven for sexual transgressions.  But once restored, they did not simply go home.  They joined the family of Christ, which anticipated the kingdom of heaven, where there would be no marriage or giving in marriage but all would be one.  The vagabond community whose members contributed their experiences to the compilation of the New Testament commemorated a band of equals.  In the aura of Jesus' love and power, other distinctions seemed to melt away.  Women and men traveled together freely, shared what they had, and helped one another bear their losses.  This ideal of syneisactism, women and men living together chastely without regard for gender differences, was the most deeply radical social concept that Christianity produced.

In the first century Christianity was still being made by its followers.  There were leaders who gathered groups together but there remained no central tenets which were common to all who called themselves Christian.Wherever Paul went, he converted numbers of leading women and their populous households, which formed a church in themselves and a nucleus for a larger community.

House churches were the rule in the first century and continued to flourish until well into the third century.  Based on the membership of the times we may suppose many of these early churches were led by women in the household.  Some of these women were no doubt married.  Others were either widowed, never married, or abandoned by their husbands.

Women were not included in the developing clergy.Their claim to continuing revelation from the Holy Spirit was profoundly incompatible with the clerical effort to establish a stable doctrine based on immutable scripture.As the women honored virginity a clergy composed of married men could find no way to include their presence.

The gnostic sects were found more attractive for many women.Women were attracted to their sects partly because they offered an active role for the initiates of both genders and possibly because revulsion for the seductions of the flesh was even stronger among them than among the misogynistic preachers who taught that woman was a creation of the devil along with the lower half of man.The extreme asectic sect called Encratites, who welcomed women as leaders, actively worked to end the world of the flesh by refusing to procreate.

Persecution of the Early Christians

Persecution in art

The first three centuries of Christianity were marked by various persecutions.  Earliest Christians were persecuted by fellow Jews for a variety of reasons including both politics and religion.  Expulsion of all the Jews from Rome may have come as a result of the ongoing strife between the Jewish sects (Christian and traditional Jewish).

Roman culture of the time--art, theatre, music, sports, and daily life--was so entwined with pagan beliefs that many Christians felt obligated not to participate.  This separation led to Roman thinking the Christians hated humankind.  And on this basis Nero began his persecutions in 64CE.

Emperor Nero, Roman art

Nero Claudius Caesar was a son of Agrippina the Younger, Claudius' third wife, from an earlier marriage and was adopted by Claudius by arrangement of Agrippina.  Using a great fire as the excuse to blame Christians Nero, in 64CE, set out to eradicate all believers from the empire.The cause of this fire is unknown, however for the Romans it was easy to blame the Christians, whom the Romans considered to be complete and utter reprobates. The second major factor was Nero himself.  Nero was insane.  The Emperor of Rome took pleasure in other people's pain; he delighted in the idea of wiping the Christians from the face of the Earth.

The first century was marked by both the beginnings of Christianity and by divisions in the belief systems held by its members.  As the church continues to expand its membership to include both larger numbers and greater numbers of Gentiles, the pressures to change will increase.  We will follow those changes in another installment.

Peace.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 25, 2009 (boomark / email).