Christianity began as a tiny Jewish sect meeting in private homes
By AD 100, one historian estimates, there were only about 7,000 Christians in a Roman Empire of 60 million people, roughly one in ten thousand. They met in ordinary houses, kept in touch by letter, and in Jerusalem still kept the Sabbath and worshipped at the Temple.
The movement grew out of Second Temple Judaism, the era that ran from the return from Babylonian exile to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. Centuries of Persian, Greek and then Roman rule fed apocalyptic hopes that God would soon step in, often through an anointed deliverer; messiah literally means anointed. Jews scattered around the Mediterranean spoke Greek, and the Septuagint, a Greek Hebrew Bible made in Alexandria, became the scripture early Christians read.
Jesus of Nazareth, who lived from about 4 BC to about AD 33, wrote nothing himself. He preached the coming Kingdom of God, mostly to rural Jews in Galilee, and chose twelve disciples to stand for the twelve tribes. The oldest Christian writings are Paul's letters from the 50s, including the earliest account of the resurrection; the gospels followed from around 70 onward. Outside witnesses are few: Josephus mentions Jesus in a passage later altered by Christian copyists, and Tacitus records his execution under Pontius Pilate.
Followers first formed groups in Jerusalem, led by Peter and John and later James, the brother of Jesus. Believers in Antioch, a major city of Roman Syria, were the first to be called Christians. Paul carried the message through Asia Minor into Macedonia and Greece, and his letter to the Romans shows groups already existed in the capital. By 100 more than 40 communities had formed, and the faith had reached Ethiopia, Armenia and Alexandria. The Greek word ekklesia, rendered as church, simply meant an assembly.
Merchants spread it along trade routes, and friends drew friends into secret gatherings. Paul's line that there is neither slave nor free, male nor female in Christ appealed to people on the margins, and communities cared for the sick, poor and widowed. Fast days moved from Mondays and Thursdays to Wednesdays and Fridays. James was killed in 62, and eight years later the Temple itself was destroyed.
Source: Early Christianity
