A History of Christianity episode 1 – The First Christianity

History of Christianity episode 1

A History of Christianity episode 1: professor Diarmaid MacCulloch – reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian.


 

 



A History of Christianity episode 1 – The First Christianity

 

When Diarmaid MacCulloch was a small boy, his parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life’s work. In a series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity’s forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.

The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then western Christianity would have been very different.

The earliest followers of Jesus composed an apocalyptic, Second Temple Jewish sect, which historians refer to as Jewish Christianity. The first part of the period, during the lifetimes of the Twelve Apostles, is called the Apostolic Age. In line with the Great Commission attributed to the resurrected Jesus, the Apostles are said to have dispersed from Jerusalem, and the Christian missionary activity spread Christianity to cities throughout the Hellenistic world and even beyond the Roman Empire. The relationship of Paul the Apostle and Judaism is still disputed although Paul’s influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than any other New Testament author.

Early Christians suffered under sporadic anti-Christian policies in the Roman Empire as the result of local pagan populations putting pressure on the imperial authorities to take action against the Christians in their midst, who were thought to bring misfortune by their refusal to honour the gods.

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