Origins and Diffusion of Christianity

Christianity began as a Jewish messianic movement centered on Jesus of Nazareth, whose public ministry in Roman Judea and Galilee is traditionally dated to roughly 27-30 CE and who was executed by crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. The earliest surviving accounts of his life and teaching, the four canonical Gospels, were composed within several decades of his death and circulated alongside oral tradition among his followers. The movement's most consequential early expansion is credited to Paul of Tarsus, a former persecutor of Christians whose conversion experience on the road to Damascus is recounted in the Acts of the Apostles; Paul undertook several missionary journeys across Asia Minor, Greece, and eventually Rome, and his surviving letters (epistles) to the communities he founded form a substantial portion of the New Testament. Initial diffusion proceeded largely through the Jewish diaspora's network of synagogues scattered across the eastern Mediterranean, drawing in Greek-speaking Gentile sympathizers known as "God-fearers" who attended synagogue worship without full conversion to Judaism, providing Paul's preaching with an existing audience receptive to monotheism.