The Origin of Christianity
Speaking of “Christianity” is to refer to the primitive Christian system as
such existed in the first century. The influence of the kingdom of Christ
is seen, scattered around the globe, even in those movements that retain still
in today's world but a remnant of the Lord Jesus Christ's teaching. The
Christian movement was not a religious system that gradually evolved out of the
cultural elements of antique society. It had a dramatic point of beginning.
There are no traces of its roots in either Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece or
Rome. Prior to the spring of A.D. 30, Christianity did not exist. It had been in a state of intense
preparation for the more than three years that spanned the ministries of John
the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth. This was the fulfillment of Old
Testament (Mosaic) prophecy.
The Mosaic system was designed to prepare the way for the coming of
Christianity (Galatians 3:24-25), the religion of Jesus was so strikingly
different from that of the Hebrew regime, that it aroused the hostility of many
Jews for the first forty years of its existence until the Jewish economy fell to
the Romans in A.D. 70.
[Please note that the term "Jew" did not exist in Jesus' day. These people were called Hebrews or Israelites (families descended from Jacob who was renamed Israel by God; Genesis 32:28).]
The religion of Christ exploded on the landscape of first-century society. Jesus had only a handful of men (the apostles) who functioned as the leaders of his cause. From this tiny seed came the mighty Christian movement.
On the day of its birth the community of believers consisted of a minimum of three thousand persons (Acts 2:41). If the numeral three thousand constituted only those immersed that day, and not those disciples previously baptized by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:5-6) and the Lord’s disciples (John 4:1-2), the total was significantly larger. Within a relatively short period of time, the number of saints was computed at five thousand adult men (Acts 4:4), not to mention the thousands of women who likewise were added to the body of believers.
It has been estimated that by the time Stephen was martyred (Acts 7:60), the Jerusalem church consisted of no fewer than twenty thousand souls (Kistemaker 1990, 148). This represented more than one-third of the estimated fifty-five thousand citizens in Jerusalem at that time (Jeremias 1969, 83).
Christianity swept over the Roman Empire like a tidal wave. The New Testament pays tribute to this phenomenal growth. The Christians were charged with having “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). Their “sound went out into all the earth” (Romans 10:18); and was “bearing fruit” everywhere (Colossians 1:6).
Historian Will Durant (following the lead of Edward Gibbon) argued that by
A.D. 300, a quarter of the eastern segment of the empire was
Christian, while about one twentieth of the western division was similarly
identified (1944, 603). Those figures are now considered to be too conservative.
The initial impact of the gospel was within the Jewish community. The nucleus of the early church was Hebrew. As indicated above, many thousands of Jews converted to Christianity. It is an indisputable historical fact, however, that the Jews were strict monotheists. To them, there was but one deity. And yet, without controversy is the fact that Jesus made the claim of being divine (cf. John 5:18; 8:58; 10:30). Surely only the strongest sort of evidence would persuade a Jewish mind to acknowledge the humble Nazarene as “God” (cf. John 20:28).
In 63 B.C. the Roman commander Pompey conquered Jerusalem and
the Jews came under the invincible grip of Rome, “from which they were destined
never to escape as an independent nation” (Dana 1937, 91). The Jews of the first
century were a dangerous people. In A.D. 49/50, Claudius Caesar
expelled twenty thousand of them from Rome (cf. Acts 18:2).
The Jews had the disillusioned expectation of a “political messiah” who would overthrow the iron fist of Rome (cf. John 6:15) and reestablish an “Israel” reminiscent of David’s era. Bands of Hebrew cutthroats (called sicarii—Latin “daggermen”) roamed the land looking for Roman adversaries whom they could dispatch into eternity. In a word, Palestine was a smoldering explosive, ready to ignite at any time.
It was common ideology and practice in the Roman world to tolerate, and even accommodate, the philosophical notions and fleshly inclinations of the varying elements of society. The historian Edward Gibbon observed that in the world of the Caesars “most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected, each other’s superstitions” (n.d., 383).
The Christians, however, did not “go with the flow.” Rather, with their strong monotheistic convictions they refused to participate in the pagan ritualism that saturated every pore of heathen culture. They flexed their spiritual muscles and would not bow to the pressures of paganism. They taught that redemptive truth was associated exclusively with Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 4:11-12). Theirs was a “one Lord, one faith” system. A line was drawn in the sand which could not be compromised.
Being a Christian was the most dangerous enterprise in the Roman world. Christianity was barely launched when persecution became a bloody reality. The book of Acts presents a somber picture of the violence which was inflicted upon the new believers. Peter and John were imprisoned (Acts 4:3; 5:18), Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:54ff), and James was killed (probably decapitated) with the sword (Acts 12:2). Some of the persecution Paul endured is vividly summarized in 2 Corinthians 11:24.
The popular religions of Roman society catered to the basest of human passions. Drunkenness and sexual indulgence were common even as religious ritual! “Sacred” temples were virtual houses of prostitution.
For example, according to the ancient geographer, Strabo (8.6.20), in Corinth one thousand priestesses or slave girls of the Temple of Aphrodite were employed in religious harlotry, which was one of the city’s chief sources of revenue. But Christianity went against the grain of society, forbidding all sexual activity except that authorized within the bounds of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Paul’s first Corinthian letter emphasizes this repeatedly.
Those early believers had witnessed the miracles that Jesus and his apostles performed. Carefully examining the evidence, they knew that no person could work those “signs” unless empowered by God (John 3:1-2). Too, the Lord himself had been raised from the dead, and observed by many witnesses during that forty-day span between the time of his resurrection and his ascension back into heaven (Acts 1:1-3; 10:40-41; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8). It was, therefore, on the basis of these well-established, historical facts that the Christian movement was born. Its amazing commencement and expansion was divinely orchestrated!
Christianity is anchored in real history. It is reality, not religion.
Its facts are checkable.
One can embrace it with confidence, obediently surrender to it, and entertain all the blessings associated therewith.
j_b@holyscriptures.com
Source, in part: © 1997-2009 by Christian Courier Publications