Information AboutEarly Christian |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT EARLY CHRISTIANITY | |
| patristics | |
| ancient roman christianity | |
| christian history | |
| judeo-christian topics | |
| new testament | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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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. ORIGINS AND HISTORY Christianity started out as a 1st Century Jewish sect ( Acts ; ; ; ; ; ) around the followers of Jesus Christ , including the Apostles and Elders and relatives of Jesus, and quickly expanded to include non-Jews, called Gentile s. As an Eschatological movement, it anticipated Gentile interest in the God Of Abraham , as for example Prophesied in . It spread around the Mediterranean Basin , while enduring Persecution by the Roman Emperors. As Christianity expanded beyond Palestine, it also came into increased contact with Hellenistic culture; Greek Philosophy , especially Platonism , became a significant influence on Christian thought through theologians such as Origen and later Church Fathers such as Augustine Of Hippo and the Cappadocian Fathers . For the first three or four centuries there was as yet no Orthodoxy or Orthopraxy established. bust showing early use of wearing a Cross (3D image)]] Walter Bauer , in his ''Rechtgläubigkeit und ketzerei im altesten Christentum'' ( Tübingen 1934; translated as ''Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity'' 1971), developed the thesis that in earliest Christianity, Orthodoxy and Heresy do not stand in relation to one another as primary to secondary, but in many regions heresy is the original manifestation of Christianity. Bauer reassessed as a historian the overwhelmingly dominant view that for the period of Christian origins, ecclesiastical doctrine already represented what is primary, while heresies, on the other hand somehow are a deviation from the genuine (Bauer, Introduction). A similar view is put forward by Bentley Layton , that different versions of Christianity flourished side by side, each holding to its own beliefs as the true version. Professor 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 , from which some draw parallels to Pentecostalism . 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 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 Christian orthodoxy 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 fourth 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 mandating the tradition of general religious toleration, legalising Christianity but also giving the church a privileged place in society. Licinius reverted some of these gains in 320 by dismissing Christians from the military and civil service in the part of the empire that he controlled, and the empire briefly resumed a policy of persecuting Christians in the mid-fourth century under the reign of Julian The Apostate . However, the Christian orthodox emperor, Theodosius I adopted it as the State Religion in 390 and established Nicene Christianity as the official and, except for Judaism, the only legal religion of the Roman Empire. Leo I The Thracian (401-474) took further steps, in his ''New Constitutions of Leo'' {Link without Title} , LV: "Jews shall live in accordance with the rites of Christianity". 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." 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. 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 included other Christians as well. 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. In commenting on the particular intolerance of the established orthodox version of Christianity onces it assumed state power, Richard Rubenstein , Professor of religious studies, notes that the Arians were better able to “tolerate a variety of theological perspectives without declaring their opponents agents of the Devil.” SIGNIFICANT EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS SIGNIFICANT EARLY CHRISTIAN TEXTS OF DISPUTED AUTHORSHIP REFERENCES SEE ALSO Scholars
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