--Critical Perspectives
from the Word of God

While some authors end the Apostolic Age with the CE 70 destruction of Jerusalem we mark it with the CE 135 destruction of the city. This century long era extended from the ca. CE 30 founding of the Church of God to the CE 135 destruction of Jerusalem in the aftermath of the second Jewish revolt (CE 132–135) against imperial Rome. The Apostolic Age consisted of two distinctive stages or phases.

The first stage, the forty-year period of the early church led by the apostles themselves, came to a close with the CE 70 collapse of the first Jewish rebellion (CE 66–70) against the Romans. This period was a time of rapid growth and development wherein early Christians of Jewish origin became more and more aware they were not part of Judaism anymore. 

In the early years the church displayed a religious and cultural uniqueness, derived from the Hebrew Scriptures and the heritage of Israel, which from the first irrevocably separated it from all forms of Judaism. Nevertheless, the first Christians saw themselves as the new Israel of God, the eschatological congregation of God (see qehal'el), and the logical heirs of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

As the primitive church came to understand, in a religious sense, that as Christians they were neither observant Jews nor bound to the Mosaic covenant with its Law of Moses they came to let go of its symbolism. The intent of such symbolism, e.g., ritual circumcision, ritual washings, animal sacrifices, and the like, was, according to early Christian belief, to lead them to Jesus of Nazareth as "Christ," that is, "the Messiah."

By CE 70 this phenomenon, slowed in the Jewish homeland by cultural restraints and speeded in the Hellenistic Dispersion by the integration of Christian Jews (ethnic Jews who were Christians) and Christian Greeks through social intercourse and intermarriage among believers, led to the rise of two distinct groups. Cultural heritage and language divided them. 

The Hebrews consisted of a Mishnaic Hebrew speaking church in Eretz Israel (the homeland of Israel) marked by a tendency to preserve established traditions. The Hellenists were a Greek speaking church in the Hellenistic Dispersion (or the Diaspora) marked by more tolerant views and less inclined to adopt or retain Jewish culture and often were ignorant of it. Nevertheless, the cultural heritage and praxis of the ancient church during this Judeo-Christian period (CE 30–70) remained predominantly Jewish.

The second stage, the conclusion of the Apostolic Age, extended from the end of the Jewish rebellion of CE 66–70 to the CE 135 Roman destruction of Jerusalem at the time of Simon Bar Kochba (or Bar Kokhba). This constituted a transitional period leading to the second major period in the history of the church, the Period of the Great Separation. Persecution and the separation of Judeo-Christians from Gentile Christians and "christianized" Gentile groups characterized the period. The culture of the church during this transitional period (CE 70–135), marked by the decline of Jewish lifeways and the evolving of a new Christian way of life, emerged as neither distinctly Jewish nor pagan Gentile but as that of a separate religion within the cultural framework of Hellenistic Judaism (Frend, 1984, p. 137). 

Moreover, as the ancient church fragmented hundreds of independent, often opposing, and heretical, groups arose. The rise of Latin and Greek bishops, and the loss of shared vision, shared goals, and shared leadership, during the Period of the Great Separation, further fragmented and divided ancient Christianity.

The church entered the Apostolic Age as a Jewish institution under the leadership of the apostles. It first developed into an extended Judeo-Christian community oriented toward Jerusalem and then into a monotheistic religion in its own right. By the end of the Apostolic Age it was on its way to becoming a Gentile institution.

Church governance had shifted from the somewhat centralized shared authority of the apostles and their immediate successors to the local overseers, that is the bishops, resulting in a fragmenting of the church into hundreds of independent groups. This independence, arising from the autonomy of the bishops, and the cultural division existing in the church, led to the morass of theological controversies to follow and the rise of Greco-Roman Christianity.

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Page last updated: 05/18/00 06:35 PM.