Christianity: Details about 'Early Christianity'
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The Early Christians were the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth and his Twelve Apostles before the First Council of Nicaea in 325. The term largely refers to the Christians of the early period of Christianity who were baptized by the apostles and their immediate successors. Significant early Christian writers:
The authors of the books of the New Testament are also included among early Christian writers, though less often. Significant early Christian texts of disputed authorship: Significant early Christians condemned for heresy:
Origins and HistoryChristianity started out as a Jewish sect around the followers of Jesus Christ, and quickly expanded to include non-Jews. It spread around the Mediterranean Basin, while enduring persecution by the Roman Emperors. Some early Christian theologians such as Origen and later Church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and the Cappadocian Fathers helped to create a synthesis between Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, and Christianity, developing a distinctly Christian theology. For the first three of four centuries there was as yet no orthodoxy established. Instead, there were different versions that flourished side by side, each holding to its own beliefs as the true version. As professor Bentley Layton writes, 'the lack of uniformity in ancient Christian scripture in the early period is very striking, and it points to the substantial diversity within the Christian religion.' Some scholars believe that there were at least three distinct divisions within the Christian movement of the 1st century AD: the Jewish Christians (led by the Apostle James the Just, with Jesus' disciples, and their followers), Pauline Christians (followers of St. Paul) and Gnostic Christians (people who generally believed that salvation came through secret knowledge). Gnosticism in turn was made up of many smaller groups, some of which did not claim any connection to Jesus or Christ. A minority of scholars have theorized that Christianity was also strongly influenced by the many mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world and the Near East in which it developed, such as the mystery religions of Mithraism, Therapeutae, Dionysus, and Osiris. It was not until the the Council of Nicaea in 325 (convened during the reign of the Emperor Constantine; 272–337) and the 3rd Synod of Carthage in 397, which progressively cemented Christianity as the officially sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire, that a structurally coherent and crystallized form of orthodox Christianity began to emerge. Central to the formation of orthodoxy was the creation of a binding and coherent scriptural 'canon', which was to be strictly observed by the adherents of that church. A church hierarchy seems to have been in development at least by the time of the writing of the Pastoral Epistles in the latter half of the first century, and these structures were certainly formalized by the third century. Christianity also continued many of the patterns found in Judaism at that time, such as adapting the liturgical form of worship of the synagogue to church parishes, prayer, use of sacred scriptures, a priesthood, a religious calendar in which certain events and/or beliefs are specifically commemorated on certain days each year, use of music in hymns and prayer, giving tithes to the Church, and ascetic disciplines such as fasting and almsgiving. Christians initially adopted the Greek translations of the Jewish scriptures, known as the Septuagint, as their own Bible, and later also canonized the books of the New Testament. The emperors Constantine the Great and Licinius by the Edict of Milan in 313 introduced general religious toleration and thus legalised Christianity. Emperor Theodosius I adopted it as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 390. Licinius reverted to mild persecution in 320 by dismissing Christians from the military and civil service in the part of the empire that he controlled, and the Roman Empire briefly resumed a policy of persecuting Christians in the mid-fourth century under the reign of Julian the Apostate. Under Theodosius I, programs were enacted to oppress, exile or exterminate both Pagans and Gnostic Christians. The state issued a series of decrees to "suppress all rival religions, order the closing of the temples, and impose fines, confiscation, imprisonment or death upon any who cling to the older Pagan religions."1 Included were laws making heresy punishable by death. These groups, exiled and persecuted, with their property taken, their sacred literature banned and destroyed, were condemned as heretics. After the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the new Christian Church became increasingly intolerant of dissent such as that of the Manicheans and Arians, even tolerating violence against Jewish synagogues.2 According to American religious scholar Kaufmann Kohler, the resulting orthodoxy "emphasised faith, produced a thinking that deprecated learning, as was shown by Draper ("History of the Conflict between Science and Religion") and by White ("History of the Warfare of Science with Theology"), a reliance on the miraculous and supernatural, under the old pagan forms of belief. In the name of the Christian faith reason and research were condemned, Greek philosophy and literature were exterminated, and free thinking was suppressed." The violence that resulted from such intolerance included other Christians, and was so extensive that historian Will Durant argued that more Christians died at the hands of other Christians in a single year, 343, than during all of the persecutions suffered by Christians at the hands of pagan Roman authorities. Professor of religious studies, Richard Rubenstein, notes that the Arians (branded as “heretics”) were better able to “tolerate a variety of theological perspectives without declaring their opponents agents of the Devil.”3 References
See also
Cristianism primitivo Christianisme primitif 原始キリスト教 Kristendomen: Urkristendom
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