CHRISTIANITY arose out of Jewish apocalyptic—esoteric revelations of the coming Kingdom; it derived its impetus from the personality and vision of Christ; it gained strength from the belief in his resurrection, and the promise of eternal life; it received doctrinal form in the theology of Paul; it grew by the absorption of pagan faith and ritual; it became a triumphant Church by inheriting the organizing patterns and genius of Rome.
The apostles were apparently unanimous in believing that Christ would soon return to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.I “The end of all things is near,” says the first epistle of Peter; “be serious and collected, therefore, and pray.”3 “Children,” says the first epistle of John, “it is the last hour. You have heard that Antichrist was coming, and many Antichrists” (Nero, Vespasian, Domitian?) “have indeed appeared. So we may be sure that it is the last hour.”4 The belief in the Messianic mission, bodily resurrection, and earthly return of Christ formed the basic faith of early Christianity. This creed did not prevent the apostles from continuing to accept Judaism. “Day after day,” says Acts, “they all went regularly to the Temple”; 5 they obeyed the dietetic and ceremonial laws; 6 they proclaimed their faith at first only to Jews, and often preached it in the Temple courts.7
They believed that they had received from Christ or the Holy Spirit miraculous powers of inspiration, healing, and speech. Many sick and infirm persons came to them; some were cured, says Mark,8 by anointing with oil—always a popular treatment in the East. The author of Acts draws a touching picture of the trustful communism in which these early Christians lived:
There was but one heart and soul in the multitude who had become believers, and not one of them claimed anything that belonged to him as his own, but they shared everything they had with one another. . . . No one among them was in any want, for any who owned lands or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds and put them at the disposal of the Apostles; then they were shared with everyone in proportion to his need.9
As the number of proselytes increased, the apostles, by a laying on of hands, ordained seven deacons to administer the affairs of the community. For some time the Jewish authorities tolerated the sect as small and harmless; but as the “Nazarenes” multiplied in a few years from 120 to 8000,10 the priests became alarmed. Peter and others were arrested and questioned by the Sanhedrin; the Sadducees wished to condemn them to death, but a Pharisee named Gamaliel—probably the teacher of Paul—advised a suspended judgment; as a compromise the prisoners were flogged and released. A little later (A.D. 30?) Stephen, one of the ordained deacons, was summoned before the Sanhedrin on the charge that he had “used abusive language about Moses and about God.”11 He defended himself with reckless vehemence:
You stubborn people, with heathen hearts and ears, you are always opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your forefathers did! Which of the prophets did not your forefathers persecute? They killed the men who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and killed—you who had the Law given you by angels, and did not obey it! 12 II
The Sanhedrin, in a rage, had him dragged outside the city and stoned to death. A young Pharisee named Saul aided the attack; thereafter he went from house to house in Jerusalem, seized adherents of “the Way,” and put them in jail.13
The Jewish converts of Greek name and culture, who had had Stephen as their leader, fled to Samaria and Antioch, where they established strong Christian communities. Most of the apostles, apparently spared in this persecution because they still observed the Law, remained in Jerusalem with the Judaic Christians. While Peter carried the Gospel to the towns of Judea, James “the Just,” “the brother of the Lord,” became the head of the now reduced and impoverished church in Jerusalem. James practiced the Law in all its severity, and rivaled the Essenes in asceticism; he ate no meat, drank no wine, had only one garment, and never cut his hair or beard. For eleven years, under his guidance, the Christians were left undisturbed. About 41 another James, the son of Zebedee, was beheaded; Peter was arrested, but escaped. In 62 James the Just was himself put to death. Four years later the Jews revolted against Rome. The Jerusalem Christians, too convinced of the coming “end of the world” to care about politics, left the city and established themselves in pagan and pro-Roman Pella, on the farther bank of the Jordan. From that hour Judaism and Christianity parted. The Jews accused the Christians of treason and cowardice, and the Christians hailed the destruction of the Temple by Titus as a fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy. Mutual hatred enflamed the two faiths, and wrote some of their most pious literature.
Thereafter Judaic Christianity waned in number and power, and yielded the new religion to be transformed by the Greek mind. Galilee, where Christ had lived nearly all his life, and where the Magdalene and the other women who had been among the first to follow him were now lost in obscurity, turned a deaf ear to the preachers who proclaimed the Nazarene as the Son of God. The Jews, who thirsted for liberty, and reminded themselves daily that “the Lord is One,” were repelled by a Messiah who ignored their struggle for independence, and were scandalized by the announcement that a god had been born in a cave or stable in one of their villages. Judaic Christianity survived for five centuries in a little group of Syriac Christians called Ebionim (“the poor”), who practiced Christian poverty and the full Jewish Law. At the end of the second century the Church condemned them as heretics.
Meanwhile the apostles and disciples had spread the Good News, chiefly among the Jews of the Dispersion,14 from Damascus to Rome. Philip made converts in Samaria and Caesarea, John developed a strong church in Ephesus, and Peter preached in the cities of Syria. Like most of the apostles, Peter took a “sister” with him on his missions to serve as his wife and aide.15 He healed the sick so successfully that at Samaria a magician, Simon Magus, offered him money for a share in his mysterious powers. At Joppa he raised Tabitha from apparent death; at Caesarea he won a Roman centurion to Christianity. A vision, says the Book of Acts, convinced him that he should accept pagan as well as Jewish converts; and from this time forward, with some amiable vacillations, he contented himself with baptizing, rather than also circumcizing, non-Jewish proselytes. We feel some of the ardor of these early missionaries in the first epistle of Peter:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those [Christian Jews] who are scattered as foreigners over Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia . . . God bless you and give you perfect peace. . . . My dearly beloved, I pray you as aliens and exiles, to live upright lives among the gentiles so that . . . they may, from observing the uprightness of your conduct, come to praise God. . . . Submit to all human authority for the Master’s sake. . . . Live like free men, but do not make your freedom an excuse for wrong doing. . . . Servants, be submissive to your masters, and perfectly respectful to them; not only to those who are kind and considerate, but also to those who are unreasonable. You married women, likewise, must be submissive to your husbands, so that any who refuse to believe . . . may be won over when they see how chaste and submissive you are. You must not adopt the external attractions of arranging your hair or wearing jewelry; you must be a quiet and gentle spirit. You married men also must be considerate to your wives; show deference to women as the weaker sex, sharing the gift of life with you. . . . Return not evil for evil. . . . Above all keep your love for one another strong, for love covers a multitude of sins.16
We do not know when and by what stages Peter made his way to Rome. Jerome (ca. 390) dates his first arrival there as early as 42. The tradition that he played a leading role in establishing the Christian community in the capital has survived all criticism.17 Lactantius speaks of Peter’s coming to Rome in Nero’s reign;18 probably the apostle visited the city on divers occasions. He free and Paul in prison labored as rivals to win converts there, until both of them suffered martyrdom, perhaps in the same year 64.19 Origen reports that Peter “was crucified head downward, for he had asked that he might suffer that way,”20 perhaps hoping that in that position death would come sooner, or (said the opinion of the faithful) holding himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Christ. Ancient texts testify that his wife was killed with him and that he had to see her led to execution.21 A later story named Nero’s Circus, on the Vatican field, as the place of his death. Over the site the Cathedral of St. Peter rose, and claimed to enshrine his bones.
His missions in Asia Minor and Rome must have helped to preserve many Judaic elements in Christianity. Through him and the other apostles it inherited Jewish monotheism, puritanism, and eschatology. Through them and Paul the Old Testament became the only Bible that first-century Christianity knew. Till 70 Christianity was preached chiefly in synagogues or among Jews. The form, ceremony, and vestments of Hebrew worship passed down into Christian ritual. The Paschal lamb of sacrifice was sublimated in the Agnus Dei—the expiatory Lamb of God—of the Catholic Mass. The appointment of elders (presbyteri, priests) to govern the churches was adopted from Jewish methods of administering the synagogue. Many Judaic festivals—e.g., Passover and Pentecost—were accepted into the Christian calendar, however altered in content and date. The Jewish Dispersion aided the rapid dissemination of Christianity; the frequent movement of Jews from city to city, and their connections throughout the Empire, co-operated with commerce, Roman roads, and the Roman peace, to open a path for the Christian faith. In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.