In AD 33, the geographic extent of Christianity was
limited to one large room in Jerusalem.
By AD 100, Christianity had spread north and south from
Jerusalem to other cities located mostly in eastern Olympia. Some were near the
eastern Mediterranean coast. Other cities lay southwest in Egypt and northwest
in Anatolia, Hellas, and finally Italia. In spreading, Christianity jumped from
one city to another along coastal trade routes rather than moving from one city
to the towns and villages surrounding it.
The church in Jerusalem lost its central role in
Christianity after the council of Christian leaders held in that city in AD 52.
By 70, the church in Jerusalem had moved to Pella to escape troubles in
Jerusalem caused by the Jewish rebellion against Rome which began in 66. The
church’s move to geographic marginality was paralleled theologically. The church
in Pella remained Jewish. Following the impact of Paul’s preaching, members of
other churches were increasingly people who had not been Jewish before they
became Christians and who did not become Jewish afterward.
By 100, Anatolia had the greatest number of churches. The
most important churches, however, were located in the cities of Antioch
(Syria), Alexandria (Egypt), and Rome (Italia). Strange that, aside from Antioch,
churches we hear much about in the New Testament—Jerusalem, Corinth, Thessalonica—did
not remain important to the movement as a whole.
