The Origin Of Christianity - Research Paper Example

The Origin Of Christianity Abstract Christianity is a religion that talked in the past and even now immensely about Jesus – one who was born in a murky village, born of a peasant woman and worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was about thirty. Then, for three years, he was a roving preacher who never wrote a book, never held an office and never had a family or owned a home. He had no credentials except himself. He was only thirty-three when the wave of public opinion turned against Him. His friends denounced him. He was handed over to his enemies in circumstances that expressed great mockery and intimidation. He was nailed to a cross between two serial thieves. As he was dying, his clothes were fought for, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a rented grave through the sympathy of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the entire human race. This paper explores the Rise of Christianity in the period between 350 B.C. and 1650 A.D. Introduction Davidmann bases the origin of Christianity on what Jesus really taught, whose standpoints are the social laws as they appear in the Torah. Early Christians followed those laws for they protected people from exploitation, subjugation and enslavement. He observes that this is what Jesus taught. However, he points out that Paul changed what Jesus originally taught and this is what finally Christianity’s official doctrine became. The knowledge was transmuted through scrolls from the biblical archaeology and what was written there constitute the events of the very first time. Davidmann further points that the Pauline ideologies were first resisted and for Christianity to thrive, the later gospel writers had to alter the records in favor of Paul. Using what he calls “the law of the excluded middle,” Jackson asserts that either Christianity is of divine origin or it is of human origin and not both. Because Christianity claims to be of sacred design, he focuses on a number of factors that argue for the sacred origin of the religious system initiated by Jesus Christ. Christianity had a remarkable point of beginning. There are no traces of its foundations in Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece or even Rome. Towards the spring of A.D. 30, Christianity was nowhere. Christianity was a momentous religious force – not only in the Mediterranean world, but also in inaccessible corners of the Roman Empire. Apparently, there is no exact place from where it came, yet gradually, it was everywhere. Nobody knows how that happened. It aroused the resentment of many Jews for the first forty years of its survival until the Jewish economy fell to the hands of the tyrannical Romans in A.D. 70 (Jackson, 1997). Christianity did not establish as a mighty movement but this religion of Jesus and a couple of his disciples exploded awfully in the society of the First Century. This was the inception of a gigantic Christian movement. Beyond that, the gospel hastily spread from Palestine into Africa Syria, Asia Minor and finally into Europe. Paul, who travelled tirelessly, cleared some twelve thousand miles, Christianizing people from Jerusalem to Rome and even Spain. In the second century A.D., he reached the frontiers of the west, which was Spain and by 50 A. D., he had travelled to Asia and Greece to preach the version of the Gospels that he had adopted (Parush, 1997). Then Christianity swept over the Roman Empire like a turbulent sea wave. Christians were heard all the earth and Trajan, the emperor said that they turned the world upside down. By A.D. 300, a quarter of the eastern section of the Roman Empire was Christian, and so was in estimation one twentieth of the western division. Christianity spread like a wildfire, which achieved even under the most adverse of circumstances. What led to this remarkable growth still beats the answers. The natural circumstances responsible for this have not been established yet. It is important to note that the initial impact of the gospel was within the Jewish community. Hebrew was the center of the early church. As it is provable, many thousands of Jews converted to Christianity. Think about the place from which Christianity rose: Jerusalem city became the capital of this faith through the Roman commander Pompey who conquered and subdued it in 63 B.C. The Jews had the disenchanted expectation of a political messiah who would free them from Roman rule that had for ages descended on them. Therefore, they yearned for a leader who would fight and reestablish an “Israel” evocative of David’s era and supplant the dictatorial Romans forever. How any ordinary man, seeking to institute a purely spiritual system could succeed in such an unstable environment is still a mystery. Because of Israel’s naivety, Canaan was a most unlikely place from which to create the world’s most dominant religion. Such a powerful force as Christianity emanating from such a humble and distressed background was unprecedented. Christianity had barely taken root when persecution took toll – a blood spattered reality. Violence upon violence was perpetrated upon the new converts. Martyrdom of Christians ensued at the Roman Circus leading to the death of Paul the apostle in A.D. 65. Peter and John were imprisoned. The Apostle Peter died in A.D 67 when he was crucified head down. Within this period also, the writing of the Gospels was completed (Fajardo-Acosta, 2001). Persecution of Christians started soon after the ascension of Jesus. Stephen was stoned when he gave a revelation (Acts 7:54ff), and James was decapitated with the sword (Acts 12:2). Some of the persecution Paul braved is precisely summed up in second Corinthians 11:24ff. However, we can understand that the blood of the martyrs became, and still is, the seed of the kingdom as emperor Trajan of A.D.98 had put it (Fajardo-Acosta, 2001). Christian persecution continued up to the times of the Dark ages, threatening them with capital punishment and sentencing them to death. This continued towards A.D. 420 leading to the death of Jerome (340-420), the Christian theologian, author of the Vulgate, a Latin edition and times of the translation of the Bible based upon Greek and Hebrew sources (ajardo-Acosta, 2001). Martin Luther published his 95 theses against Catholicism at Wittenberg, beginning of the reign of Protestant Reformation in A.D 1517. This was the onset of the times of Great Reformation. Consequently, he faced the famous Diet of Worms, the official condemnation of philosophies and Protestantism in A.D. 1521. Charles V presided over this unique event (Fajardo-Acosta, 2001).This was particularly so under the long rule of Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14). Even so, Christianity made a swift sweep in the Roman Empire during the times of Augustus. He made Christianity open to all and indeed, it happened to all, without regard to social distinctions. It welcomed the manual worker, the slave, the outcast, the ex-convict; and though it developed a strong hierarchic structure in that era, its chain of command provided an open careers to talents (Dodds ,n.d).     Christianity rose tremendously as a factory of virtues. For instance, loving one's neighbor was not seen as an exclusively Christian virtue, but the Christians practiced it much more profoundly than any other group. The society attributed Christianity to be the brainchild of this virtue and others. The Church provided social security: it took care of the widows and orphans, the old, the jobless and the impaired; it provided a funeral fund for the pitiable and a nursing service in time of epidemic. This made Christianity more and more popular. Even more important, I suppose, than these material paybacks were a way of sustaining the Christian community. In this regard, Christianity taught the people in Rome the need to belong and the unforeseen ways in which it can empower human behavior. It is therefore not surprising that the earliest and the most striking advances of Christianity were made in the great cities including Antioch, Rome and Alexandria. Christians were in a more than formal sense member’s one of another.  I think that was a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause of the spread of Christianity (Fajardo-Acosta, 2001). In 313 AD, Emperor Constantine endorsed Christianity as legitimate in the Roman Empire.  A religion established on the belief in the coming of the messiah. Even during the times of religious unrest, Constantine always won his battles and rewarded his cohorts by declaring that Christianity would from this time forth be tolerated (Nelson, n.d). Conclusion The world has seen that the benefits of becoming a Christian are not necessarily confined to the benefits one could reap in the next world. Christian congregations have established communities in a much fuller sense than any corresponding group. Its members are bound together not only by common ceremonies but also by a common way of life. In fact, Christianity has become a way of life and an attractive one at that. No wonder the rise of Christianity is very rapid. References Davidmann, M. (1994): Origin of Christianity and Judaism. Retrieved April 15, 2010 from http://www.solhaam.org/articles/origin.html Dodds, E. R. (n.d): The Appeal of Christianity. Retrieved April 15, 2010 from http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/uhs/website/courses/WC/Historiography/roman_empire_and_christianity.htm Fajardo-Acosta,F. (2001): Timeline of World History. Retrieved April 15, 2010 from http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/timeline-01.htm Jackson, W. (1997). The Origin of Christianity. Retrieved April 15, 2010 from http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/83-the-origin-of-christianity Nelson, L.H. (n.d). Lectures in Medieval History. Retrieved April 15, 2010 from http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/christianity_rise.html Parush, (1997). Esoteric Historic Timeline. Retrieved April 15, 2010 from http://www.angelfire.com/nb/alchemy/timeline.htm    Read More