Keywords

Early Christianity, Christianity, Religious Studies

Abstract

As Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives at the end of his forty-day resurrected ministry, he directed his apostles to be witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8; see also Matthew 28:19–20). In giving this direction, he rescinded the command he gave when he first called them to “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans” (Matthew 10:5). The shift in emphasis and direction brought significant challenges for the fledgling church. It is in the church’s response to meet those challenges that we see many developments that transformed a small, post-resurrection group of believers in a remote part of the Roman Empire into a force that eventually would take over the Empire, all within the space of just three hundred years.