In the ancient Christian village of Malula, in Syria, the old men still speak the language that Jesus spoke – Aramaic. In his time this was the common language of the Middle East. It remained so for centuries, until Arabic replaced it, and it stretched eastwards from Palestine over a vast area, right into the Persian Empire. But that was not, as it turned out, the direction that Christianity was to take. Nor was Aramaic the language in which it would spread.
The first Christians believed Jesus was God; and that this faith gave them the strength to spread a new religion, eventually throughout the world. But apart from their faith, the disciples were not particularly well equipped for the task. St Peter would have a lot in common with the people of Malula. Like them he spoke Aramaic, an eastern language. But Christianity was to have its most lasting success moving westwards; converting people in the cities; and using European languages, first Greek and then Latin. For that a different type of apostle was needed, and Christianity found precisely the man in St Paul.
Paul – or Saul in the Hebrew version of his name – was born both a Jew and a Roman citizen. He had grown up in Tarzus, (a city in Turkey) which had long been part of the Greek world. So legally he was Roman, intellectually he was a Greek, spiritually he was a Jew. Three trump cards for someone hoping to spread any faith through the Roman Empire.
The irony was that Paul was Pharisee, a Jewish sect that Jesus had often criticized, and one that had done much to bring about his death.
Paul had come to Jerusalem to study as a rabbi. He was eager as anyone to root out this new heresy of Christianity. It is easy to see their point of view. When the Messiah came, the Jews believed it would be to restore their promised land. But the Christians said the Messiah had come; and had been
crucified, among criminals, at the request of
the rabbis. A scandalous suggestion. Paul was on his way to suppress those in Damascus who were spreading this sort of subversive rumour, when he experienced his sudden conversion.
Instead of using Jewish law to convict the local Christians, Paul preached that the Messiah had arrived. Eventually the Jewish authorities laid plans to rid themselves of this heretic, much as they had with Jesus. Paul got away when his friends lowered him in a basket from the walls. It was the first of many clashes with synagogues on his travels through the Roman Empire.
The empire was already vast. You could march all round the Mediterranean without ever leaving Roman soil. In this huge area little Palestine was an unimportant outpost, yet a minor heresy from that one small area was to become the religion of the empire. Much of how Christianity spread is only tradition and guesswork but the missionary travels of St Paul are authentic history, and are amazing.
His three great journeys would be hard work even today. His letters are the earliest writings in the New Testament and they give a vivid picture of his life as a missionary.
At Athens, Paul the Greek intellectual was able to debate in classic style, among equals, but his principle was to go to the synagogues first. After all, he was a Jew preaching about a Jew, but when they ejected him, he would reply: ‘My conscience is clear; now I shall go the gentiles.’ Gentiles included everyone outside the Jewish faith – the rest of the world. It was a significant new direction for Christianity, which thus became free to take its place as one of the many religions filtering through the empire, spreading along those convenient Roman roads and competing for converts.
Paul’s last great journey was to Rome; but he came as a prisoner. The Jewish authorities in Jerusalem had complained of him, just as they had of Jesus – and the words of the New Testament make it plain that they still regarded Christianity as a dangerously radical movement.
“We have found this man a pestilent fellow, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
It was a tribute, at least of Paul’s effectiveness. At his own request, as a Roman citizen, he was sent to Rome for his trial.
He found a small community of Christians already there. We don’t know how they had got there. Some perhaps had been brought from the east as slaves. Others may have heard the news from traders, who have always carried ideas from place to place along with silks and spices. The early Christians in Rome spoke Greek – it remained the language of the Roman church until the third century – and they were almost all from the poorest classes. They ran a tiny welfare state among themselves, looking after widows and orphans.
Nor do we know what judgement was passed on Paul himself, because the Acts of the Apostles comes to a sudden end without telling us. It is generally assumed that Paul died in Rome, somewhere around the year 63.
Traditions add that Peter came to Rome too and was martyred here – crucified upside down. So the capital of the empire was able to claim the two greatest saints of the early church. They were to give Rome its special position once the original church in Jerusalem had collapsed. In the year 70, Palestine rose against Roman rule and Roman soldiers destroyed the Jewish city.
With Jerusalem gone, Christians would increasingly look to Rome and would come to think of Peter as its first Pope.
By the third-century Rome had been gradually reduced by emperors as strong as Aurelian and Diocletian. Constantine finally brought it to an end. The god that Constantine chose to help him in battle was the Christian god. With his conversion Christianity turned the crucial corner from heresy to orthodoxy.
Excerpt from ‘The Christians’ by Bamber Gascoigne courtesy of Jonathan Cape Ltd
This volume tells the story of Christianity through the individual men and women who shaped it. It is a story of colossal undertakings and spectacular successes as well as ferocious intolerance, greed and bloodshed. Bamber Gascoigne traces a clear path through a complicated history, exploring the motives, the passions, the fears and the achievements of the Christians. His approach is objective and he writes in a conversational style, focusing on moments of significant detail and a vast and varied cast of characters.
Barnabas and Paul’s first missionary journey to Cyprus
It is a little known fact that by the time Barnabas and Paul (then still Saul) arrived in Cyprus on their first missionary journey, there was already an established Christian community on the island, and had been for about a decade, preaching only to the Jews. In actuality, it was from Cyprus and Cyrene (Libya) that early Christians first set out to convert the Greeks of Antioch (southern Turkey).
The ancient city of Antioch had an eclectic population of Jews and Greeks who would come together, to create a major Christian Church centre.
And although this, and other, information about early church history is readily available for anyone to read, it is usually overlooked, because the passages relating to Cyprus are thought to be devoid of important events, when they are in fact crucial to laying the foundation for Barnabas and Paul’s mission to spread the Word of Christ among the Gentiles in foreign lands.
Though few people realise it, the story of the first missionary journey to Cyprus actually begins on the island itself a few years before Barnabas and Saul ever set foot there, for “there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus” [Acts 11:20]. It would seem that the conversion carried out by these men met with unprecedented success. So great was the rate of conversion to Christianity at Antioch, that news soon reached the Church of Jerusalem, and Barnabas was dispatched to Antioch as a result.
There he found the reports to have been true and rejoiced in the Lord’s grace for some time before leaving for Tarsus, most probably by sea, to find Saul and bring him back to carry out the divine work.
Upon their return to Antioch, the pair spent an entire year preaching to both the city’s Jews and Gentiles, and it was there, at some stage during this year, that the term Christian was first applied to the Followers of the Way. This was a truly monumental development for the Faith, since it completely nullified the distinction between Jewish Follower and Gentile Follower, and instead enabled ALL Followers of the Way, regardless of previous beliefs, to proclaim themselves as Christians.
