Introduction:

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, for more than one third of the world population is Christian. Christianity spread in the Middle East around the first century A.D. by the apostles of Jesus who dedicated their lives to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus was not considered a teacher, a Shaman, or a Prophet, but he is more than that, he is the incarnation of God.

Most of what we know about Jesus comes from the New Testament, which includes the epistles of the apostles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the four gospels. The four gospels contain some factual description, myth, and a mixture of both.

Most fundamentalists believe that the three gospels; Mark, John, and Mathew were written by Mark, John, and Mathew, but that is not true. Many scholars believe that the accounts of the gospel were written at least fifty years after the ascension of Jesus.

As  for sure, the gospel of Luke, it was written at least a hundred years after the ascension of Jesus.

Early Christianity

We do not know much about the youth of Jesus; but from the gospels, we know that he was raised up as a Jew. About the year 27 A.D., he started his career as a preacher and a healer. He called for spiritual renewals as john the Baptist did. He criticized the hypocrisy of the Jewish priests. His followers and his disciples considered him God or the son of God, he was considered to be the Messiah awaited by the Jews, but the majority of the Jews did not accept him as their messiah.

Paul the Pharisee

He played a great roll in early Christianity, we learn from the accounts of the acts that he was a pharisaic Jew who converted to the new faith on his way to Syria. After his conversion, he was trying to prove to his fellow Jews that Jesus is the messiah.

Paul made of the gospel a universal religion adopted by the Jews and the gentiles alike. By the end of the first century, Paulian Christianity dominated the ancient world. Paul’s theology influenced the shape of Christianity as we know it today. During the second and the third century, Paulian Christianity continued growing in the Roman Empire despite the hatred of the roman authority towards that new religion.

Early threats to Christianity;

Throughout the early Christian history, there were lots of cults emerged from Christianity;

Gnosticism is considered as another Hellenistic mystery cult, it blended the Hellenistic notion of divine emanation, mystery religion notions about salvation, and Jewish notions of sin and redemption. 

Manicheanism which started by Mani 216-276 A.D. , he blended Zoroaster, Buddhism, and Christianity.

Docitism which proclaimed that Jesus was the pure man of light brought salvation from the material darkness.

Montanism; they saw the return of Jesus was imminent and they set a date for his return, and stopped tilling their fields and sold their possessions. But it was considered a heresy.

The Catholic Church:

The original roman church became the Catholic and the dominant church in the ancient world, it is different from orthodox church in many ways ;

1-Sacramentality, there are seven sacraments in which catholic Christian believes;

·       Baptism: or the wash of the new born from the eternal sin, inherited from Adam when he disobeyed God.

·       Purgatory: Catholics believe in a place of punishment for those who commit venial sins after baptized. This place is somewhere after death and before going to God’s kingdom in heaven. This place is called Purgatory.

·       Confirmation or initiation: This transforms the catholic person into a soldier of Christ. It is done by making the sign of the cross with oil on the forehead.

·       Confession: This is a public confession of sin to the rest of the catholic community, or the pope.

·       Eucharist: that is the last supper of the lord or the Holy Communion, which must be done every week and sometimes everyday. Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the body of Jesus Christ. Communion helps the connection between the members of the community. In other words, you can not be a catholic by yourself; you have to work in a group to be one.

·       Ordination of the church ministers: the appointment of the ministers is considered to be one of the sacraments.

2- Mediator, Catholics believe in the ability of saints to intermediate between man and God.

3- Marriage inside the Catholic Church: is one of the important catholic principles, which is done once life time; in other words, the individual will not be allowed to repeat again with another wife unless the first one died.

The Orthodox Church:

Orthodox means keeping traditional doctrine and rituals, and that is how the Orthodox Church looked at itself.  From the ninth to the fifteenth century, separation started to take place between Byzantine or Eastern Church and the Roman Christian church resulted in the separation. some of the reasons behind the separation were

·       The fall of the eastern Roman Empire

·       The failure of the crusade,

·       The growing antagonism of Islam,

·       The growth of the papacy,

·       The rivalry between Russia and Western Europe,

·       And finally the orthodox did not appease the idea of celibacy of the catholic priests as the orthodox priests could marry.

The two churches separated totally at 1054 A.D., during the medieval period, many more sects emerged in Europe and the new world of the Americas. The latest one is the church of Jesus Christ of later day’s saints which started at 1825 by Joseph Smith. They moved around the country and finally, they settles in Utah.

In all the different Christian sects and philosophy, god in Christ dominated their thoughts, self, and society. God in Christ was their goal. therefore, they obeyed his laws by loving god from all their heart, soul, and mind, and to love one another as their own selves.

At the end, I would like to mention the most important dates in the Christian history;