Gilbert held that in CE 300 there were probably at least three million Jews living in the Roman empire of whom a million resided west of Macedonia (Gilbert 1992:17). If Gilbert was accurate, then a plausible hypothesis for explaining the change in Jewish population in the empire, from 6 million to 3 million over the course of 250 years, would include the conversions of significant numbers of Jews to Judeo-Christianity.

Stark, who opts for this phenomenon, argues that Jews as a population were the primary source of Christian converts well into the second century and they remained a viable source of converts well into the late fourth or early fifth centuries (Stark 1996:138). He stressed that Jewish Christianity: "...played a central role until much later in the rise of Christianity�that not only was it the Jews of the Diaspora who provided the initial basis for church growth during the first and early second centuries, but that Jews continued as a significant source of Christian converts until at least as late as the fourth century and that Jewish Christianity was still significant in the fifth century" (Stark 1996:49). 

The implication is that by CE 300 about 3 million ethnic Jews were at that time Judeo-Christians rather than observant Jews. The Judeo-Christian message was alluring to Diasporan Jews because they could retain their Jewish culture while remaining free to live in a Gentile world free of the restrictions of the Mosaic Code and the rules of rising rabbinic Judaism.

Stark held that 10% of the population of the Roman world, roughly 5�7.5 million, became Christians by CE 300 and probably over 50% by CE 350 (Stark 1996:6-7, 10). David Edwards also placed the early fourth century population of the Church at about a tenth of a Roman world population of 60 million (Edwards 1997:70). 

Stark developed projections for the Christian population of the Roman empire for the period CE 40�350 by assuming an initial Christian population as 1,000 in CE 40, downplaying the conversion figures provided in Acts, and projecting a uniform 40% growth rate per decade for 300 years. These figures, however, were for the Roman empire not for other regions such as India, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Ethiopia.

Column 3 in Growth Projection 1, provides population projections for the number of Christians in the Roman empire at a 40% per decade growth rate, based upon Stark�s methodology.^F1 The nature of this Christian population is problematic yet there is sufficient information to explore issues pertaining to the growth of the Church of the Circumcision (the Judeo-Christians) and the Church of the Gentiles (the Greco-Roman Gentile Christians).

For the population of Judeo-Christians, continually drawing upon a declining population pool of Jewish stock, to increase from 1,000 in CE 40 to 3 million by CE 300, required a growth rate of 36.0% per decade. These data appear at Column 4 in Growth Projection 1. Imputation of the corresponding Gentile Christian population projections result from the differences between the figures in Column 3 and Column 4. The comparison of these population projections suggests that Gentile Christians overtook Judeo-Christians late in the third century and swamped them in the fourth. The data show that if one downplays the number of Judeo-Christians then the Gentiles predominated Christendom from the middle of the second century by an even greater margin.

Stark took a cautious approach when he assumed merely 1,000 Christians in 40 CE. Acts suggests that there were at least 1,000 Christians in 30 CE and that is the paradigm followed In the World section.

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^F1The mathematical formula for the computations of the projections provided in Tables 3,4, and 5 is Pⁿ = P⁰(1 + r/100)ⁿ with Pⁿ = population projection for decade P⁰ = initial population n = decade r = percent growth per decade.

Page last edited: 01/29/06 08:16 AM

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