Christianity RP Opt. 3

What separates early Christianity from the early church?

In the beginning, there was Judaism and this is the basis from which Christianity grew. Jesus of Nazareth was born into Judaism, and it was Jews to whom he initially preached and gained his following from. Judaism was a crucial part of the earliest Christianity, as the teaching of Jesus was new interpretation of the same covenant and scriptures. The earliest Christians were naught more than a small sect of Judaism who declared Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah. After his death, this small sect faced the reassessment of what the Messiah was and how to live by the teachings of Jesus. The original Christians were very much Jewish, except in their emphasis on practice of baptism and the Eucharist. In their attempts to live in accordance with their Messiah’s teachings they also lived by a kind of communism in which all class distinctions were eliminated and wealth was distributed based on need.

Christianity in a form recognizable today did not even begin to form until the sect first gained more formal organization and began recording the new interpretation. The early church developed out of the traditions of small communities, the leaders in these later becoming the leaders of the church. Many of these communities consisted of diverse groups of gentiles whom were converted by Paul. What allowed Christianity to move from being a small sect of Judaism to a religion in its own right was the incorporation of those who were not first Jewish into that system of beliefs. The inclusiveness that made Christianity accessible and the philosophies that made it an attractive religion in the first place allowed Christianity to grow into something more than just another branch of Judaism.