Christianity is one of the three so-called world religions (along with Buddhism and Islam). It has three main branches: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism. It is based on the belief in Jesus Christ as the God-man, the Savior, and the incarnation of the 2nd person of the triune Godhead (the Trinity). Communion of believers to divine grace occurs through participation in the sacraments. The source of Christianity’s doctrine is Sacred Tradition; its main source is Sacred Scripture (the Bible), as well as the “Creed”, the decisions of ecumenical and some local councils, and the individual works of the church fathers.
Christianity began in the 1st century A.D. among the Jews of Palestine and immediately spread among other peoples of the Mediterranean. In the 4th century it became the state religion of the Roman Empire. By the 13th century all of Europe had been Christianized. In Russia, Christianity spread under the influence of Byzantium in the 10th century. As a result of schism (division of churches) Christianity in 1054 has split on Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Protestantism emerged from Catholicism during the Reformation in the 16th century. The total number of Christians in the world is more than 1 billion.
Christianity [from the Greek Christ – Anointed One, Messiah; according to the New Testament text of Acts 11:26, formed on the basis of the Greek language with the use of the Latin suffix noun christianoi – adherents (or followers) of Christ, Christians, first came into use to refer to supporters of the new faith in the Syrian-Hellenistic city of Antioch. Antioch in the 1st century], one of the world religions (along with Buddhism and Islam), one of the so-called “Abrahamic” (or “Abrahamic”) religions, succeeding biblical monotheism (along with Judaism and Islam).
The Cultural Context of Initial Christianity
Christianity emerged in 1st century Palestine in the context of the messianic movements of Judaism, with which, however, it soon found itself in conflict (exclusion of Christians from synagogue life after 70, culminating in the drafting of formal curses against Christians as “heretics”). Initially it spread among the Jews of Palestine and the Mediterranean diaspora, but from the first decades it gained more and more followers among other peoples (“Gentiles”). Until the end of the Roman Empire Christianity spread mainly within the empire, with a special role played by the eastern suburbs – Asia Minor, the land of the seven churches, which in the Revelation of John the Evangelist (ch. The importance of the “buffer” territories between the Roman Empire and Iran (Parthian, later Sassanian Empire), such as Armenia (which officially adopted Christianity somewhat earlier than the famous Edict of Milan 313 of the Roman Emperor Constantine), should also be noted.)
The linguistic situation of early Christianity was complicated. Jesus preached in the spoken language of Palestine, Aramaic, which belonged to the Semitic group and was very close to Syriac (there is information about the Aramaic original of the Gospel of Matthew; Semitic scholars tend to think that the ancient Syriac version of the Gospels is only partly a translation from Greek, but partly retains memories of the original form of Jesus’ words (cf. Black M. An Aramaic approach to the Gospels and Acts. 3rd edition. Oxford, 1969). However, the language of inter-ethnic communication in the Mediterranean area was a different language, Greek (the so-called koine); it is in this language that the texts of the most sacred book of Christianity, the New Testament, are written. Therefore, the history of Christian culture (in contrast to that of Islam) begins at the border of languages and civilizations; characteristically, the ancient legend says that the apostle Peter preached with Mark (the future evangelist) as his interpreter. In Rome, Christian literature was long produced in Greek, which characterizes the cosmopolitan environment of the early Christian community, which was dominated by natives from the East (Christian Latin, which was to become the sacred language of the Catholic branch of Christianity in a symbolic connection with papal Rome, took its first steps not so much in Rome as in North Africa).