All three projections demonstrate similar results. The first two projections suggest that the Gentile Christian population overtook Judeo-Christians in the third century and swamped them in the fourth. The implication of the third projection, an understated one, is that the Gentile Christian population overtook Judeo-Christians early in the second century, overshadowed them in the third century, and then swamped them in the fourth. The explosion in the Gentile Christian population in the third century helps explains the emergence of a developing Greco-Roman Christian literature during that period.

All three projections demonstrate the swamping of Judeo-Christianity by Greco-Roman Orthodox Christianity. The growth projections provided in Tables 4 and 5 above are likely the basic limits of the actual growth experienced by the ancient church. The question remaining is when Gentile Christians became the majority. The chart above, Christians in the World CE 30 - 400, above provides a convenient graphical illustration of the geometrical growth rate of early Christianity using the data in Table 4. It shows that Gentile Christians overtook Judeo-Christians about CE 225. In the projections in Table 5 they appear to have reached parity about CE 135. The truth lies in between, likely CE 180�20. This analysis suggests that Gentile Christians overtook Judeo-Christians late in the second century, overshadowed them in the third century, and swamped them in the fourth.

Gentile Christians certainly dominated Christendom by the year CE 300 and more likely not later than CE 250. This is consistent with the fact that the surviving literature of the ancient Church from the third century is that of Gentile Christian writers not Judeo-Christians. It is unlikely that Gentile Christians could develop a population base to challenge Judeo-Christianity until late in the second century. Nevertheless, the general absence of Judeo-Christian literature and the few negative references to them in the surviving literature of the Orthodox should not be understood as indicative of either the absence of sizable Judeo-Christian populations in the Roman empire, particularly in the East, or that Gentile Christians and Judeo-Christians were in fellowship with one another. 

The Greco-Roman Orthodox appear to tolerate the Judeo-Christians in their early literature until the time of Constantine. The fact that Judeo-Christianity was not problematic for Greco-Roman Orthodox writers until the fourth century is a non-issue. Why? It was only then that the Orthodox anathematized them, trashed them in Orthodox writings, aggressively destroyed their literature and seized their meeting places, and appropriated their history to give credence to their Orthodox notions of apostolic succession.

By CE 350 Gentiles overwhelmingly dominated Christianity as they made up over 90% of all considered Christians and 50% of the population of the Roman empire. Many sociocultural variables must be taken into account in attempting to explain this phenomenal growth. However, most conservative Christian scholars, some of them Evangelicals, take a more literal approach to such matters and see the growth of the early Christian community brought about by miracles and spiritual phenomena with which science cannot deal. For whatever reason the Judeo-Christian Church of God enjoyed an early success, with perhaps many thousands converted in its first decade, and this continued over three centuries until swamped by Gentile Christians and, from the Judeo-Christians view, their heretical orthodoxy.

In CE 70, in spite of the great disappointment, which presumably accompanied the failed return of Jesus of Nazareth in the CE 66-70 period, the Christian population was likely larger than the 2,744 Stark projected. While post-70 CE writings in the New Testament indicate discouragement, disruption, and heresy as problems within Judeo-Christian congregations during the late first century (Jude, II Peter, Revelation, and John�s Gospel and his three epistles) they continued to increase and flourish. Nevertheless, in the rise of the Orthodox, whose mission included the eradication all other forms of Christianity, Gentiles were able to successfully exercise their predomination. Indeed, their quest included engulfing the Roman empire.

Page last edited: 01/26/06 07:12 PM

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