Joan of Bark

Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) is the other (although some try to make the claim that one of the lovers is God -- a bit of a stretch, methinks).

Chunk

Do we know anything about the development of early Christianity at all?

The fact that Paul is writing to people in certain places, surely gives us some information about how Christianity had spread.

If we take it that Paul is speaking about something different to that shown in the gospels, is there any evidence at all to show what Paul believed in existed before the time of Jesus life?

Similarly, if Paul is talking about the same thing as the gospels, how was he able to get the message to spread so quickly? (Or did he? Was the Christian movement still tiny for may years after Jesus?)

nygreenguy

im watching this PBSFrontline movie "From Jesus to Christ" its great. About 5 hours long, but it tells the development of jesus the human into jesus the christ.

Julian

We know quite a bit about early christianity. It is a big topic so I will just give you the briefest of overviews. The picture changes depending on whether or not one believes in the Q community development. It is certain that christiany, as far back as we can see, was fragmented. There were Jewish christians and the salvation through faith kind. Almost certainly the gnostics were on the scene more or less immediately. Actually, a bewildering assortment of christians seem to have sprung, some whom we not even call christians by today's standards despite the variety we have. We can also see evolution playing a part in the gospels as they get more and more sophisticated.

Paul almost certainly did not start the movement to the gentiles but he was probably a strong force in its spread. Another important question is how much we can trust the book of Acts. That will vary from scholar to scholar. There are as many theories as there are scientist who do work in this field.

Paul didn't have any gospels as we know them. He used the OT as his scripture.

Alvar Ellegard has a book about christianity starting 100 years before what the bible says.

Christianity was a very small movement and remained quite small for a long time.

Not a great post on my part but try to refine your questions with a narrower scope.

Julian

triffidfood

I wonder about that too .. do we actually know whether there were really 'congregations' (of any size) scattered about in the mid 1st century, or whether 'Paul' was simply zapping off epistles to very small groups of 'Jesus believers' .. or even whether his 'epistles' were letters at all, as opposed to fanciful works of fiction intended to convey the impression of some sort of 'movement'? (That's a rhetorical question, I think - the answer is we don't actually know, isn't it?..... )

On the other hand, the writer of 'Paul' does mention the problems he's (apparently) having with rival "apostles of Christ", who he says have "another Jesus" & a "different gospel" from him (2 Cor. 11 --) .. maybe this is telling us that there were a whole load of different 'Jesus' groups with very different agendas & beliefs, which had simply sprung up around similar ideas circulating in the culture of 1st century Palestine at the time?

Chunk

Sorry. My question was this. If Paul didnt spread the Christian movement to various places, then how did "Christians" in those areas come about.

Also, if they had been there for a while (pre Paul), then why is there no evidence of them being so?

Is it pretty much taken as a given tha Paul was responsible for spreading the message to the places he did? Is whats in question the fact that Pail was spreading something different to what the gospels say?

Toto

Good question.

Paul's letters indicate that there were Jewish Christians before he started preaching, but that he felt called to preach to the gentiles. In the Roman Empire, Jews proselytized and made converts, so it seems likely that Paul was not the first Jewish Christian who tried to convert gentiles to his brand of Judaism.

Acts refers to Paul and others preaching in the synagogues - presumably to Jews and god-fearers (gentiles who accepted the ethical parts of Judaism, but were not full converts.) While I would not trust Acts as a historical source in general, it is likely that there are some historical facts recorded there (as you could use Gone with the Wind as a source for the social history of the time.)

If this is the case, it appears that Christianity evolved out of a sect of Judaism. So there would no evidence of Christianity as a separate religion in the early days, but there were Jews/god-fearers who later Christians could see as their predecessors, or proto-Christians. Some of these proto-Christians would be connected to a synagogue or look for new converts in the local synagogue, but also meet in a house church. Paul's letters appear to have been written to these house churches.

But since it is impossible to date Paul's letters, it is hard to know when this happened.

pink_freud

This has been a very useful and interesting thread. I'd like to ask a few more questions if that's OK:

- Is there a school of thought that the Gospel of Thomas and Q are one and the same, and if so how widespread is that theory? Is it possible that the original gospel authors displayed gnostic or other non-orthodox tendencies that have been redacted?

- What's the oldest extant canonical NT manuscript? i.e. how far back can we go before we have to worry about what's been filtered by the church?

- How widespread was the variety of christianity that ended up being the orthodoxy before it was pushed by the Empire? Was it predominant or merely just the minority strain that was the most amenable to political co-option?

Julian

There is some overlap between GoT and Q but not enough to make them the same document.
The oldest fragment we have is P52 which is dated to the 2nd century, possibly the first half. It contains a segment of John.
It was just another sect. It was in the minority in a number of places. They eventually got the upper hand, probably largely because of their appeal to antiquity, i.e. they accepted the OT unlike the Marcionites, for example, who did not.

Julian

Chunk

So the only contempory non-christian sources that mention Jesus (at best) are Josephus and Tacitus.

Is this strange? How many works survive from that time that should (within reason) mention Jesus if he actually existed and performed all these miracles?