The mission to the Gentiles
- When
- 35–60 AD
- Where
- Antioch and Asia Minor
- Kind
- Migration
The movement spreads beyond Jewish communities. The Jerusalem council settles that Gentile converts need not keep the whole law.
The decisive turn was not geographic but social: the movement began admitting Gentiles without requiring them to become Jews first. Antioch rather than Jerusalem became the base for it, and Paul's journeys followed the roads and shipping lanes of the empire, planting congregations in cities and writing back to them — correspondence that became most of the New Testament. The question of what the law required of these converts was the first thing the church had to decide collectively, and it went to a council to do it.
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.