Download Chapter 3 * The Lasting Legacy of the Apostles

Chapter 3 – The Lasting Legacy of
the Apostles
Major Concepts
Small Christian Communities
The Christian Testament
The Final Break with Judaism
Small Christian Communities
• Missionaries spread the Gospel around the
Roman Empire
• Paul in particular had spdecial success ith the
Gentiles
• Gentiles found Christianity especially
appealing:
– Salvation open to all peoples
– One God who loved them & wanted them to love
each other
– Jesus made Christianity human
– Not required to follow Jewish law in its entirety
What was Worship in a Small
Community like in the early Church?
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Held in members’ homes
Broke bread together
Shared God’s word
Crisis between Christians and Jews followed by
Roman persecution of Christians kept
communities decentralized
• Peter and Paul both died under Nero’s
persecution of Christians
• No Christian equivalent of Synagogue let alone
the Temple
The Discussion of Different Religions and How
They Might Have Made Their Adherents More
or Less Open to the Message of Christianity
• Judaism – to busy to think openly?
• Hellenistic – similar to some aspects of
Christianity
• Roman – appealed to lower Roman classes
many of whom were actually foreign
• Northern Africa – a compilation of small, local
religions
• Western Europe outside the Roman Empire –
Celts, Druids, etc. – cultures of human sacrifice
Christianity becomes a “Movement”
• A “movement” is generally considered to be a
group formed around a belief in a new way, a
new lifestyle
• Movements usually forms because of some
perceived need in people
• Christianity meet the need of people for hope –
if not in this world then in the next: salvation was
open to all people
Christianity: A religion not a Cult
See handout on Soothsayers,
Astrologers and Magicians
The Movie on Paul
• Ended with Paul at the gates of Rome
• Paul was under house arrest for two years
before he appeared before the Emperor for trial
• He was found guilty and as a Roman citizen
beheaded
• Paul seems to have somehow continued his
ministry while under house arrest
• But the Roman protection of Paul, per his rights
as one of their own citizens, further angered
Jewish authorities in both Jerusalem and Rome
• From Rome’s point of view, angering the Jews
might have been considered a good thing
Religion and Politics
• In Rome, Christians were considered traitors
because they would not worship Roman gods
• Yet only a few hundred years later an Emperor,
Constantine, would make Christianity the state
religion of Rome when he needed the church to
keep the Empire from barbarians
• From 325 AD to 1870 AD the Church was in fact
a secular ruler making the Church both a religion
and a world power
• Today the Vatican is still active in global politics
but only as a moral influence
The Christian Testament
• During his 2nd missionary journey Paul began to
write letters of advice to communities he had
helped establish
• As the apostles died off, and as many documents
circulated which incorrectly depicted Jesus’
message, the gospels were written to document
the primary sources (the Apostles) and to assure
all converts were taught one form of Christianity –
finalized around 100 AD
• The Christian canon refers to the 27 books now
known as the Chrisitan (New) Testament
Paul and his writings
• Each of Paul’s letters deals with a specific
concern
• His main themese are that only One God exists
and this God has always loved people faithfully,
even sending Jesus to give human form to God’s
love.
• Paul stresses that it is belief in Jesus, not
adherence to the Law of the Old Testament, that
saves
• With so few documents circulating in the early
Church, Paul’s letters were copied & passed on
How the Gospels were composed
• Most of the original apostles were themselves
probably illiterate
• Local communities visited by the aspostles
(primary sources) or their disciples (secondary
sources) wrote down Jesus’ life in order to
preserve the earliest evidence of the apostles
experiences with Jesus
• Culture of time and cost of writing limited
documents to stating only the important stuff –
personal lives were not document in that period
• These documents evolved into the 4 gospels
How the Gospels were composed continued
• Compilation of oral histories
• Authors and exact dates unknown but all
finalized before 100 AD
• These gospels required literate authors to
compile them – maybe dictated by the
remaining original apostles in some cases?
• Pseudepigraphic documents – the practice of
the time of someone writing a document and
attributing it to some well known person to
gain greater acceptance and distribution
How the Gospels were composed continued
The Step of Finalizing the contents of the New Testament
• Both legitimate and erroneous documents in
the circulating early Christian documents were
pseudepigraphic
• The Church decided what to include in the
Testament based on internal consistency
among documents and the appearance of
doctrine that clearly did not stem from known
Jesus teachings: ex. “The Gospel of Judas”
• New Testament finalized around 100 AD
How the Gospels were composed continued
• Paper was expensive, ink was hand-made, pens
were made out of continually re-sharpened cut
reeds and someone literate had to be paid to do it
accurately: writing a document was expensive
• Yet the New Testament was widely copied and
circulated – if it hadn’t been we might had have
hundreds of local versions of Christianity instead of
the singular, universal church we have today
• Those documents excluded from the official canon in
100 AD were almost all “gospels,” not letters, and
are still largely in existence: today they are referred
to as the Gnostic gospels