Dr. Bart D. Ehrman is one of the most influential and controversial scholars of early Christianity. A professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ehrman has spent decades studying the origins of Christianity, the historical Jesus, and how early Christian beliefs evolved. Among his many works, Ehrman has frequently explored what the earliest followers of Jesus believed—especially in the critical period immediately following Jesus’ death.
What did Christianity look like one year after Jesus died? According to Ehrman, the movement that would eventually become the world’s largest religion started as a small, fractured, and profoundly Jewish sect—filled with grief, confusion, and, above all, conviction that something divine had happened.
Jesus’ Death: The Crisis Point
Jesus of Nazareth, a charismatic Jewish preacher, was crucified by the Romans—likely around the year 30 CE. This event should have marked the end of his movement. In the ancient world, a crucified messiah was a contradiction in terms. Crucifixion was a public, humiliating death reserved for criminals and rebels. According to Jewish expectations at the time, the messiah was supposed to be a triumphant figure—liberating Israel, restoring the kingdom, and ushering in God’s reign.
Instead, Jesus died in disgrace.
As Bart Ehrman emphasizes in his many writings (such as How Jesus Became God and Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium), Jesus’ death left his followers shattered. For a brief moment, the Jesus movement could have disappeared entirely—just another failed messianic group. And yet, something remarkable happened: within a year, Jesus’ followers were boldly proclaiming that he had risen from the dead and that he was, in fact, the Son of God.
The Birth of a New Faith
So what changed?
According to Ehrman, the key moment in the formation of Christianity was the belief in the resurrection. Whether or not one accepts it as historical fact, the resurrection was the turning point for Jesus’ earliest followers. Ehrman—who is personally an agnostic but approaches the material from a historical-critical perspective—argues that at least some of Jesus' disciples came to believe they had seen him alive after his death.
This belief, Ehrman says, is what gave birth to Christianity.
Within weeks or months of the crucifixion, Jesus’ followers, still primarily based in Jerusalem, began preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead by God. They interpreted his death not as a defeat, but as a divine plan—a necessary part of God's redemptive work. For them, the resurrection validated Jesus’ claims and transformed him from a failed prophet into a cosmic savior.
This reinterpretation of Jesus’ death was deeply Jewish in its framework. Ehrman notes that early Christians scoured the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians now call the Old Testament) to find prophetic “proof” that the messiah had to suffer and die. Passages from Isaiah, Psalms, and Daniel were reinterpreted in this light, helping early Christians explain the seemingly paradoxical fate of their messiah.
A Movement Still Within Judaism
One year after Jesus’ death, Ehrman emphasizes that the Jesus movement was not yet a separate religion. It was still a Jewish sect, perhaps best described as an apocalyptic renewal movement within first-century Judaism.
Jesus’ followers—like Jesus himself—were Jews. They observed Jewish laws, attended synagogues, and participated in temple rituals. Their belief was that Jesus was the Jewish messiah, sent by the God of Israel, to fulfill Jewish prophecies. The earliest Christians were not trying to create a new religion; they were trying to reform and reinterpret their existing faith in light of what they believed had happened.
Key figures in this early period, such as Peter, James (Jesus’ brother), and John, remained in Jerusalem and served as leaders of the small community. According to the Book of Acts and other early Christian writings, they preached openly about Jesus, attracting new followers and facing resistance from some Jewish authorities.
The Role of Visions and Apocalyptic Expectations
According to Ehrman, visions played a central role in this early period. The apostle Paul, writing just two decades after Jesus’ death, claims that hundreds of people saw the risen Jesus, including himself. Ehrman doesn’t take these accounts as literal fact, but he argues that early Christians genuinely believed these appearances were real.
Such visionary experiences were not unusual in the ancient world, where divine visitations, dreams, and revelations were commonly accepted. For Jesus' followers, these experiences served as powerful confirmations of their faith.
Furthermore, the earliest Christians believed that they were living in the final days. Ehrman often highlights this apocalyptic mindset in early Christianity. Jesus had preached that God’s kingdom was imminent—and his followers believed that his resurrection was the first sign of this cosmic transformation. They expected Jesus to return soon, defeat evil, and fully establish God’s kingdom on earth.
This imminent expectation shaped everything they did. They preached urgently, formed tight-knit communities, and awaited Jesus’ return—days, months, or at most a few years away.
No New Testament Yet
One of the most important things to understand, Ehrman emphasizes, is that there was no New Testament one year after Jesus died. The gospels had not yet been written. The letters of Paul had not yet been composed. What existed were oral traditions, passed along from memory in Aramaic and Greek, and told in house churches and marketplaces.
This was a storytelling faith, dependent on eyewitness testimony, preaching, and communal worship. It would be decades before the written gospels began to emerge—starting with Mark around 70 CE. This makes the earliest period both rich and mysterious, as historians must reconstruct what early Christians believed without any direct writings from that first year.
Conclusion: A Faith at Its Infancy
Bart Ehrman’s work gives us a vivid window into what Christianity looked like just one year after Jesus’ death. It was a tiny, persecuted, and Jewish sect, centered around a radical claim: that a crucified man had been raised from the dead and exalted by God. This belief—so counterintuitive to ancient Jewish and Roman ideas—sparked a movement that would, over time, become Christianity.
For Ehrman, the key takeaway is not theological but historical. Whether or not one believes in the resurrection, it is undeniable that the belief in the resurrection changed the course of history. From a small group of grieving disciples emerged a global religion that would reshape civilizations, cultures, and worldviews.
In its first year, Christianity was not an empire, not a creed, not even a set of scriptures. It was a group of ordinary people, convinced that death had been defeated—and that their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, was alive and divine.
And that, Ehrman argues, is how Christianity began.
No comments:
Post a Comment