What can historians actually establish about Jesus of Nazareth and the first Christians? How fast did the early Church grow, when was the New Testament canon settled, and how did Rome's primacy develop? And why do Catholics and Orthodox, who share the first millennium, read the development of doctrine so differently? This post covers early Christian history from the historical Jesus to the East–West Schism. It separates the mainstream historical consensus from minority views and from Catholic and Orthodox readings, the three labels the notes behind it use throughout.
Part 6 of How did religion develop?. Previous: Did "Big Gods" build civilisation?. Next: Where did religion come from?.
The historical Jesus
Nearly all specialists, whatever their own religion, hold that Jesus existed, taught in Galilee as a Jewish teacher and prophet, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing about 116, says that "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus" (Annals 15.44). The passage is generally accepted as authentic, partly because its hostile tone ("a most mischievous superstition") is unlike a Christian insertion.
Josephus' longer passage on Jesus, the Testimonium Flavianum, is usually judged partly authentic but edited by Christians (overview). A 1980 survey by Louis Feldman, reported second-hand, counted scholars all the way from those who held it entirely genuine to those who held it a total interpolation, and the range has not closed. A 2025 Oxford book by T. C. Schmidt argues that the passage is substantially authentic (review), and other recent work argues that Josephus wrote none of it. His brief mention of the stoning of James, brother of Jesus called Christ, in 62 is far more widely accepted (Meier 1991, bibliographic). Pliny the Younger, a governor in Asia Minor about 112, reports that Christians met before dawn and sang to Christ as to a god. That is the earliest pagan evidence of Christian worship of Christ.
E. P. Sanders gave a widely cited list of almost indisputable facts (Sanders 1985, bibliographic): baptism by John; preaching and healing in Galilee; calling disciples and speaking of twelve; a controversy over the Temple; crucifixion by the Roman authorities outside Jerusalem; and a movement that continued after his death. The older "criteria of authenticity" for sorting individual sayings have been questioned. Scholars such as Dale Allison and James Dunn shift attention to memory and to the recurring patterns of what Jesus was remembered for (all bibliographic).
The resurrection is where the lenses split. Most historians affirm that soon after the crucifixion, some followers, and later Paul, sincerely believed they had seen Jesus alive. The list in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 is usually dated to within a few years of the events. Whether that belief had a supernatural cause is outside historical method; that is Bart Ehrman's stated position (2014, bibliographic). N. T. Wright argues that the empty tomb plus the appearances is the best historical explanation of early Christian belief (2003, bibliographic). Dale Allison's 2021 study, which a Church Times reviewer called rigorous and fair, concludes that the evidence fits more than one interpretation (Church Times). Gerd Lüdemann explains the appearances as visions arising from grief (1994, bibliographic).
Mythicism, the claim that Jesus never existed, is a fringe position among specialists. Ehrman argues that Paul's letters, written within about two decades, mention Jesus' brother James and Peter, whom Paul knew, and that a crucified messiah is not something anyone would invent (summary). Richard Carrier's Bayesian case for doubt (2014, bibliographic) is the main scholarly statement on the other side.
How early was Jesus worshipped?
Wilhelm Bousset (1913, bibliographic) argued that worship of Jesus as "Lord" arose later, in Gentile congregations influenced by the mystery cults. Since about 1990 many specialists have accepted instead that Jesus received cultic devotion (prayer, hymns, baptism in his name) within the first two decades, in Jewish-Christian circles. The Aramaic prayer maranatha (1 Corinthians 16:22) points to Aramaic-speaking believers calling on Jesus, which is hard to square with Bousset's model.
Larry Hurtado calls this worship of Jesus alongside the God of Israel a major "mutation" within Jewish monotheism. He notes that Jewish intermediary figures, such as angels and personified Wisdom, offer partial precedents, but none of them became the object of a cult. Richard Bauckham argues that texts such as 1 Corinthians 8:6, which reworks the Shema to include "one Lord, Jesus Christ", place Jesus within the unique divine identity (Kok 2015). Ehrman argues instead for a development from "exaltation" to "incarnation" Christology. His critics reply that his question assumes an evolutionary model (Zondervan excerpt). The two sides agree more than the popular framing suggests: both accept that Jesus was regarded as divine in some sense very early.
How fast did Christianity grow?
No ancient source counted Christians. Rodney Stark's widely cited model starts from about 1,000 Christians in 40 and reaches about 6 million by 300, roughly 10% of the empire. That requires about 40% growth per decade, or 3.4% a year (Psephizo). Keith Hopkins drew out what such a curve implies. Christians would have been statistically tiny for two centuries, on the order of 7,000 around 100 and about 200,000 around 200 (Ehrman Blog). Ehrman stresses that the starting figure is a guess and that growth would not have been steady (Ehrman Blog). Constantine's conversion in 312 came when Christians were still a minority, about 10% on most models, and most of the empire became Christian after imperial patronage began.
Canon, bishops and Rome
Athanasius' Festal Letter of 367 gives the first exact list of the 27 New Testament books, "the books included in the Canon, and handed down, and accredited as Divine". It also lists books "not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read", among them the Didache and the Shepherd (Festal Letter 39). The four Gospels and Paul's letters were widely accepted by the late second century. The date of the Muratorian fragment, another early list, is genuinely disputed. Some put it in second-century Rome and others in the fourth-century East, and Bruce Metzger judged that Everett Ferguson had "sufficiently refuted (not to say demolished)" the late date (Hill 1995). Neither date should be presented as settled.
Ignatius of Antioch, about 110, insists on one bishop per city with presbyters and deacons. His letter to the Romans names no bishop of Rome, and with other evidence this suggests Rome was led by a college of presbyters until the mid-second century (Lampe 2003, bibliographic). The Catholic historian Eamon Duffy accepts a late emergence of a single bishop in Rome while defending the antiquity of Roman pre-eminence and the strength of the Petrine tradition there (1997, bibliographic). Rome's early prestige, other churches' appeals to it, and its place first in rank are well attested. Whether this amounted to jurisdiction by divine right is a theological judgement the sources do not settle.
How does doctrine develop? Three answers
- Corruption (Harnack). Adolf von Harnack (1886–90, bibliographic) described dogma as the work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel, a departure from Jesus' simple message. Few patristic scholars now hold the strong form. Gavrilyuk and Pelikan argue that the Fathers transformed Greek metaphysics as much as they adopted it (bibliographic).
- Development (Newman). John Henry Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845, revised 1878) gives seven "Notes" that distinguish a true development from a corruption, beginning with "Preservation of Type" and "Continuity of Principles" and ending with "Chronic Vigour". A corruption, he writes, is a development "in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb" what came before (Newman Reader, ch. 5). Vatican II later spoke of tradition that develops and understanding that grows (Dei Verbum §8, bibliographic).
- Living continuity (Florovsky). Georges Florovsky called in 1936 for a "neopatristic synthesis", a creative re-reception of the Fathers' mind addressed to the present, not repetition (Zizioulas Foundation). Orthodox writers such as Lossky and Ware present Tradition as the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church: doctrine is defined against heresy but not "developed" in content (bibliographic). Many argue that Catholic dogmas such as papal infallibility (1870) and the Immaculate Conception (1854) fail Newman's own first note. Critics note that Florovsky never defined his method rigorously.
The notes suggest that the Newman–Florovsky contrast is partly about vocabulary. Both reject Harnack and both appeal to the Fathers. The real disagreement is over criteria (does the Roman see guarantee a development?) and over specific dogmas defined after the split.
The Schism
Historians now treat 1054 as a symbolic marker in a gradual estrangement from about 800 to 1204, not a single break (Chadwick 2003; Runciman 1955, bibliographic). The causes ran together: the filioque ("and the Son") added to the Creed in the West, papal claims, disputes over unleavened bread, and drift in language and politics. In 1054 the legate Cardinal Humbert excommunicated Patriarch Michael Cerularius, and was anathematised in turn. The pope who sent him had already died, and the sentences struck persons, not churches. The sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 is widely seen as the event that turned estrangement into lasting popular schism. The Council of Florence (1439) produced a union that the Eastern faithful rejected.
In 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras regretted "the offensive words, the reproaches without foundation, and the reprehensible gestures" of 1054 and removed the excommunications "from memory and from the midst of the Church", while stating that this "is not sufficient to end both old and more recent differences" (Common Declaration). The joint commission's Ravenna document (2007) recorded agreement that Rome held first place among the patriarchal sees in the first millennium and left open how that primacy should be exercised. Rome's text notes that it is a commission document and "not an official declaration" of either Church (Ravenna text).
Through the lenses
Historical criticism
The independent pagan evidence confirms only an outline: Jesus existed, was executed under Pilate, and left a movement whose members worshipped him by about 112. Almost all detail comes from Christian sources, and the case for historicity rests mainly on Paul and on the several independent strands of Gospel tradition. On the resurrection, historians can establish the early belief. The inference to a miracle is a philosophical or theological step, not a historical-critical result.
Sociology
Stark's model makes Christian growth ordinary compounding: networks, fertility, care during epidemics. That requires no miracle. It explains the arithmetic, but its inputs are guesses, and it leaves open why this movement, among many, compounded.
Catholic theology
The early-worship findings are congenial: they imply that Nicaea (325) articulated a devotional pattern already present in the 30s–50s rather than inventing one. The careful version is narrower. The practice of worship was early, and the ontological clarification took three centuries and was contested. Newman's theory gives Catholics a criterion for later doctrine. A traditional reader can accept Stark's arithmetic and still read growth under persecution as providential, in the spirit of Tertullian's remark that martyrs' blood is seed. Those are two levels of explanation, not rival data. Where the lens strains: Rome's early leadership by presbyters and the absence of a named Roman bishop in Ignatius require the developmental account to do real work.
Orthodox theology
Nicholas Afanasiev's eucharistic ecclesiology holds that each local Eucharist is the whole Church, and that Rome's early priority was one of presiding in love, not jurisdiction (OrthodoxWiki). John Meyendorff argued that East and West shared a primacy that the West came to treat as divinely instituted jurisdiction (1974, bibliographic). The first-millennium evidence of conciliar, collegial authority fits this lens well. Where it strains: Rome's appellate role and pre-eminence are also early. And a question the lens has to answer, rather than a published critique the notes record: a rejection of "development" has to explain how conciliar definitions such as homoousios or Theotokos were not, in some sense, new.
The notes add a lens note of their own. "Seven ecumenical councils" is a Chalcedonian count. The Oriental Orthodox accept three, and the Church of the East two.
What we can say with confidence
- Jesus existed and was crucified under Pilate. His followers soon believed he had risen.
- Many specialists now accept that Jesus received cultic devotion in Jewish-Christian circles within about two decades. Some, such as Dunn, distinguish this reverence from full worship.
- Christians were a small minority until the fourth century, and most conversion followed Constantine.
- The 27-book New Testament list is first attested exactly in 367.
- Rome had a college of presbyters before a single bishop, and its primacy of honour is early.
- 1054 was one moment in a long estrangement, and the 1965 declaration lifted its sentences without ending the division.
What remains open
- How much of the Testimonium Flavianum is authentic.
- What caused the resurrection belief; that is outside historical method.
- What kind of divinity the earliest worship implied.
- The date of the Muratorian fragment.
- Whether Rome's early primacy meant jurisdiction, which is the central Catholic–Orthodox question.
Sources
- Afanasiev, N. The Church Which Presides in Love, in Meyendorff (ed.), The Primacy of Peter. OrthodoxWiki
- Allison, D. C. (2021). The Resurrection of Jesus. Church Times review
- Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (367). newadvent.org
- Bousset, W. (1913); Carrier, R. (2014); Chadwick, H. (2003); Duffy, E. (1997); Ehrman, B. (2014); Harnack, A. (1886–90); Lampe, P. (2003); Lüdemann, G. (1994); Meier, J. P. (1991); Meyendorff, J. (1974); Runciman, S. (1955); Sanders, E. P. (1985); Wright, N. T. (2003) (all bibliographic).
- Common Declaration of Paul VI and Athenagoras I (1965). vatican.va
- Ehrman, B. Did Jesus Exist? (2012), summary; on growth rates, Ehrman Blog and Hopkins summary
- Florovsky's neopatristic synthesis. Zizioulas Foundation; Ortodoksia
- Hill, C. E. (1995). The Debate over the Muratorian Fragment. WTJ 57.2. PDF
- Josephus on Jesus, state of opinion. Wikipedia; Feldman's survey via Kirby
- Joint International Commission (2007). Ravenna document. Dicastery PDF
- Kok, M. (2015), on Hurtado and Bauckham. Bible & Interpretation
- Newman, J. H. (1845/1878). Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, ch. 5. Newman Reader
- Schmidt, T. C. (2025). Josephus and Jesus. Review
- Stark, R. (1996). The Rise of Christianity, as summarised in Psephizo
- Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Perseus
- Bird, M. F. et al. (2014). How God Became Jesus. Zondervan excerpt
The notes behind this post: 06_early_christianity.md.
Part 6 of How did religion develop?. Previous: Did "Big Gods" build civilisation?. Next: Where did religion come from? Classic theories and the Church's own frameworks.
Produced with AI assistance (Claude) from the cited notes in the religion-origins project.