Early Christianity

Many early Christians were merchants and others who had practical reasons for traveling to Asia Minor, Arabia, the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, and other regions.

[13] Diaspora Jews continued to make pilgrimage to the Temple, but they started forming local religious institutions called synagogues as early as the 3rd century BC.

[21] Most commonly, he was imagined to be an end times son of David going about the business of "executing judgment, defeating the enemies of God, reigning over a restored Israel, [and] establishing unending peace".

[42] Social and professional networks played an important part in spreading the religion as members invited interested outsiders to secret Christian assemblies (Greek: ekklēsia) that met in private homes (see house church).

[46][57] Later called the Council of Jerusalem, according to Pauline Christians, this meeting (among other things) confirmed the legitimacy of the evangelizing mission of Barnabas and Paul to the Gentiles.

It also confirmed that Gentile converts were not obligated to follow the Mosaic Law,[57] especially the practice of male circumcision,[57] which was condemned as execrable and repulsive in the Greco-Roman world during the period of Hellenization of the Eastern Mediterranean,[63] and was especially adversed in Classical civilization from ancient Greeks and Romans, who valued the foreskin positively.

[74] The main concern for the Apostle Paul, which he subsequently expressed in greater detail with his letters directed to the early Christian communities in Asia Minor, was the inclusion of Gentiles into God's New Covenant, sending the message that faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation.

According to the church historian Socrates of Constantinople,[90] Helena (with the assistance of Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem) claimed to have found the cross of Christ, after removing a Temple to Venus (attributed to Hadrian) that had been built over the site.

[110] The Second Epistle to the Corinthians from Macedonia was written around 56 as a fourth letter discussing his proposed plans for the future, instructions, unity, and his defense of apostolic authority.

Among the prominent Christians executed as a result of their refusal to perform acts of worship to the Roman gods as ordered by emperor Valerian in 258 were Cyprian, bishop of Carthage.

Carthage, in the Roman province of Africa, south of the Mediterranean from Rome, gave the early church the Latin fathers Tertullian[133] (c. 120 – c. 220) and Cyprian[134] (d. 258).

The ancient Roman city of Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic Sea, today one of the main archaeological sites of Northern Italy, was an early center of Christianity said to be founded by Mark before his mission to Alexandria.

Paul had been allowed passage from Caesarea Maritima to Rome by Porcius Festus, procurator of Iudaea Province, to stand trial before the Emperor.

Salona, the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, was an early center of Christianity and today is a ruin in modern Croatia.

[citation needed] Salona emerged as a center for the spread of Christianity, with Andronicus establishing the See of Syrmium (Mitrovica) in Pannonia, followed by those in Siscia and Mursia.

[citation needed] Early Christianity also spread from the Iberian peninsula south across the Strait of Gibraltar into Roman Mauretania Tingitana, of note is Marcellus of Tangier who was martyred in 298.

Gildas dated the faith's arrival to the latter part of the reign of Tiberius, although stories connecting it with Joseph of Arimathea, Lucius, or Fagan are now generally considered pious forgeries.

Although it has long been claimed that Armenia was the first Christian kingdom, according to some scholars this has relied on a source by Agathangelos titled "The History of the Armenians", which has recently been redated, casting some doubt.

According to the Acts, Thomas was at first reluctant to accept this mission, but the Lord appeared to him in a night vision and compelled him to accompany an Indian merchant, Abbanes (or Habban), to his native place in northwest India.

Thomas next proceeded overland to the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India, and ministered in what is now Chennai (earlier Madras), where a local king and many people were converted.

So according to the Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas, Mazdai, the local king at Mylapore, after questioning the Apostle condemned him to death about the year AD 72.

Anxious to avoid popular excitement, the King ordered Thomas conducted to a nearby mountain, where, after being allowed to pray, he was then stoned and stabbed to death with a lance wielded by an angry Brahmin.

However, these rulers also encouraged the revival of the ancient Persian dualistic faith of Zoroastrianism and established it as the state religion, with the result that the Christians were increasingly subjected to repressive measures.

Thence came to us in the 2nd century the famous Peshitta, or Syriac translation of the Old Testament; also Tatian's Diatessaron, which was compiled about 172 and in common use until St. Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa (412–435), forbade its use.

the establishment of an independent patriarchate with nine subordinate metropoli contributed to a more favourable attitude by the Persian government, which no longer had to fear an ecclesiastical alliance with the common enemy, Rome.

[153] Bardaisan, writing about 196, speaks of Christians throughout Media, Parthia and Bactria (modern-day Afghanistan)[154] and, according to Tertullian (c. 160–230), there were already a number of bishoprics within the Persian Empire by 220.

After the death of Constantine, Shapur II, who had been preparing for a war against the Romans for several years, imposed a double tax on his Christian subjects to finance the conflict.

Sozomen estimates the total number of Christians killed as follows: The number of men and women whose names have been ascertained, and who were martyred at this period, has been computed to be upwards of sixteen thousand, while the multitude of martyrs whose names are unknown was so great that the Persians, the Syrians, and the inhabitants of Edessa, have failed in all their efforts to compute the number.To understand the penetration of the Arabian Peninsula by the Christian gospel, it is helpful to distinguish between the Bedouin nomads of the interior, who were chiefly herdsmen and unreceptive to foreign control, and the inhabitants of the settled communities of the coastal areas and oases, who were either middlemen traders or farmers and were receptive to influences from abroad.

Christianity apparently gained its strongest foothold in the ancient center of Semitic civilization in South-west Arabia or Yemen (sometimes known as Seba or Sheba, whose queen visited Solomon).

In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, a treasury official of "Candace, queen of the Ethiopians" returning from a trip to Jerusalem was baptised by Philip the Evangelist: Ethiopia at that time meant any upper Nile region.