The first communities
- When
- 30–33 AD
- Where
- Jerusalem
- Kind
- Founding
Followers of Jesus form a distinct movement within Judaism, meeting in homes and synagogues.
What the movement had at this point was not an institution but a practice: meeting in houses, breaking bread, holding goods loosely, and continuing to attend the temple and the synagogues. Its members were Jews who believed the messiah had come, and no one yet had a word for anything else — "Christian" is first recorded at Antioch some years later, and Acts reports it as a name given from outside. There was no canon, no creed and no clergy in any later sense.
Bodies it bears on
Began here
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.