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Early Christianity, otherwise called the Early Church or Paleo-Christianity, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant , across the Roman Empire , and beyond.
It is a pastoral manual dealing with Christian lessons, rituals, and Church organization, parts of which may have constituted the first written catechism, "that reveals more about how Jewish-Christians saw themselves and how they adapted their Judaism for Gentiles than any other book in the Christian Scriptures." [213]
Christianity has been intricately intertwined with the history and formation of Western society.Throughout its long history, the Church has been a major source of social services like schooling and medical care; an inspiration for art, culture and philosophy; and an influential player in politics and religion.
New Testament texts were written and church government was loosely organized in its first centuries, though the biblical canon did not become official until 382. Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor to declare himself a Christian. In 313, he issued the Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions.
Ferdinand Christian Baur applied Hegelian philosophy to church history and described a 2nd-century Christian community fabricating the gospels. Adolf Harnack was the leading expert in patristics, or the study of the Church Fathers , whose writings defined early Christian practice and doctrine.
The Christian church was modeled on the synagogue. Christian philosophers synthesized their own views with Semitic monotheism and Greek thought. The Old Testament gave the new religion of Christianity roots reaching back to antiquity. In a society which equated dignity and truth with tradition, this was significant. [367]
Social scientist Edwin A. Judge has written a detailed study showing a fully organized church system existed before Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. From this, Judge writes that "the argument Christianity owed its triumph to its adoption by Constantine cannot be sustained". [ 38 ]
The history of the Catholic Church is the formation, events, and historical development of the Catholic Church through time.. According to the tradition of the Catholic Church, it started from the day of Pentecost at the upper room of Jerusalem; [1] the Catholic tradition considers that the Church is a continuation of the early Christian community established by the Disciples of Jesus.