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— John 3:16, NIV The Law and the Gospel by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1529); Moses and Elijah point the sinner to Jesus for salvation. Paul the Apostle, like Jews and Roman pagans of his time, believed that sacrifice can bring about new kinship ties, purity, and eternal life. For Paul, the necessary sacrifice was the death of Jesus: Gentiles who are "Christ's" are, like Israel, descendants of ...
The Eastern Mediterraneanregion in the time of Paul the Apostle. Early Christianity was in Gaul, North Africa, and the city of Rome. [75][76][77]It spread (in its Arian form) in the Germanic world during the latter part of the third-century, and probably reached Roman Britain by the third-century at the latest.
Spread. Christianity spread to Aramaic -speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire, [41] and beyond that into the Parthian Empire and the later Sasanian Empire, including Assyria and Mesopotamia, which was dominated at different times and to varying extents by these empires.
Christians have composed about 33 percent of the world's population for around 100 years. The largest Christian denomination is the Roman Catholic Church, with 1.3 billion adherents, representing half of all Christians. [56] Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western World, where 70% are Christians. [4]
Christianity became the official religion of Armenia in 301, [140] when it was still illegal in the Roman Empire. According to church tradition, [ 141 ] the Armenian Apostolic Church was founded by Gregory the Illuminator of the late third – early fourth centuries after the conversion of Tiridates III .
Catholicism – broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole. Catholic Church – also known as the Roman Catholic Church; the world's largest Christian church, with more than 1.3 billion members.
The 19th century saw the rise of Biblical criticism, new knowledge of religious diversity in other continents, and above all the growth of science. This led many Christians to emphasize the brotherhood, to seeing miracles as myths, and to emphasize a moral approach with religion as lifestyle rather than revealed truth.
Shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Nisan 14 or 15), the Jerusalem church is founded as the first Christian church with about 120 Jews and Jewish Proselytes (), followed by Pentecost (Sivan 6), the Ananias and Sapphira incident, Pharisee Gamaliel's defense of the Apostles (), the stoning of Saint Stephen (see also Persecution of Christians) and the subsequent dispersion ...