Who were the first Christians?
Two thousand years ago, a Galilean preacher was executed by Rome as a provincial troublemaker. His followers insisted he had risen from the dead — and built, on that conviction, the largest faith in human history.
Last updated: October 2026
MEDITERRANEAN SEA Jerusalem ★ Antioch Alexandria Rome Constantinople Heartland: the Levant — early spread across the empire · stylized map 30–33 CE Crucifixion (tradition) 313 Edict of Milan 1054 Great Schism 1517 Reformation 1648 Westphalia 1965 Vatican II Rise · zenith · renewal Christians by tradition (approximate) Catholics 1.4 billion Protestants & independents 900 million Orthodox 300 million Two millennia, three great branches — figures stated in the article Origins The story begins in a backwater of the Roman Empire. Jesus of Nazareth preached in Galilee and Judea for — tradition suggests — some three years, gathered twelve apostles, and was crucified under the prefect Pontius Pilate; tradition places his death at about 30–33 CE. Within days, his followers claimed he had risen — and the claim, not the execution, became the story. At Pentecost, as tradition tells it, the apostles preached in Jerusalem to pilgrims from across the known world, and the first Christian community was born.
The first Christians were Jews. Jesus of Nazareth, a preacher from Galilee in the north of the Roman province of Judaea, taught in the 20s and 30s of the first century CE, in a land steeped in Jewish scripture, law, and expectation. His earliest followers were Jewish men and women, and the movement he left behind began as a current within Judaism, not a separate religion. Its members continued to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem, observe Jewish festivals, and argue about the Jewish law, even as they gathered in his name.
According to the Christian accounts, Jesus was executed by crucifixion under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and his followers came to believe that he had risen from the dead. That belief, the resurrection, became the centre of the new faith. Christians hold that in Jesus, God had entered human life, died, and defeated death itself, and that those who trusted in him would share in a life beyond death. The movement's first leaders were the apostles, above all Peter, and James, described as the brother of Jesus, who led the community in Jerusalem.
At Pentecost, the Jewish festival that fell fifty days after Passover, the apostles, as the Christian tradition tells it, preached in Jerusalem to pilgrims from across the known world, and the first Christian community was born. From the beginning, the movement faced a question that would decide its future: must a follower of Jesus first become a Jew, observing circumcision and the food laws? The answer, championed above all by Paul of Tarsus, was no. Paul, who had persecuted the movement before his conversion, carried the message across the eastern Roman Empire, founding communities in Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and Rome itself.
Paul's letters, written in the 50s and 60s CE, are the earliest Christian writings that survive, older than the Gospels, and they show a movement already arguing about its own meaning: about faith and law, about rich and poor, about the place of women, about what would happen at the end of the world. The Gospels, accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus, were written in the decades that followed, and the book of Acts tells the story of the movement's first expansion. By the end of the first century, Christian communities existed in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Egypt, and North Africa, and the movement was drawing members from every class, including slaves, merchants, soldiers, and aristocrats.
The Roman Empire was, for the most part, tolerant of new religions, but Christians stood out. They refused to sacrifice to the emperor or to the gods of Rome, a refusal Roman authorities read as disloyalty, and they met in private, which fed suspicion. The historian Tacitus records that after the great fire of Rome in 64 CE, the emperor Nero blamed the Christians and had them executed in cruel spectacles. Sporadic, local persecutions followed for two centuries, culminating in the empire-wide persecution under the emperor Diocletian at the start of the fourth century.
The turning point came in 313, when the emperor Constantine, who had come to favour Christianity, issued the Edict of Milan with his co-emperor Licinius, granting religious tolerance across the empire. In 325 Constantine called the Council of Nicaea, the first empire-wide council of bishops, which affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that God is one being in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In 380, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. A persecuted minority had become the faith of an empire, a reversal that would shape Europe and the world for the next sixteen centuries.
Christians of the first centuries held, as Christians still hold, that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, promised in the Jewish scriptures; that he died for human sin; and that he rose again. They marked entry into the community by baptism, immersion in or pouring of water, and they shared communal meals in memory of Jesus's last supper, the meal that became the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. They gathered in private houses, house churches, before purpose-built churches appeared in the third and fourth centuries.
Their common life was marked by two things that struck outsiders: mutual aid and charity. Christians pooled resources to support widows, orphans, prisoners, and the poor, and during plagues they stayed to nurse the sick when others fled, a conduct that later historians believe helped the movement grow. They also argued, fiercely and continuously, about doctrine, discipline, and the shape of the church, and the first centuries are full of rival teachers, rival gospels, and councils convened to settle disputes. Out of those arguments came the creeds, the canon of the New Testament, and the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon that still structure most Christian churches today.
- The New Testament, in particular the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul.
- Tacitus, Annals, on the persecution under Nero.
- Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, on the early church.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, entries on Christianity, Jesus, and the early church.
- Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press.