The Emergence of Christianity

[ryanames]

This is the area in my Western Civ. that we're studying right now: rise of Christianity. The overview of Christ's teaching and Paul's influence are no new grounds of knowledge for me, but I am learning about seeing it from more of a historical/cultural perspective. I'm really interested in the life of the early Christians under the rule of Nero and Diocletian as they were very much sought out to be killed. Did you kow that Romans spread rumors at that time believing that Christians were cannibals who had incest orgies???!!!!? (they believed this because of the sacraments and the incest comes from everyone calling each other brother/sister/father/mother and meeting together all the time) Many christians underwent horrific pain and we see the rise of marytrs a bit. Another aspect that's intresting is trying to weed out all of the heritics that early Christianity had been involved or at least associated with. There were many believers in Jesus who varied widely on certain issues. It was approximately 200 years before an official collection of books were gathered by Constantine ( who was not actually a Christian until his death bed ( much later) which is kind of strange) in Niceanea. Therefore you get the Nicene creed as well as the bible. I don't know, I really want to find out more about this period ( between Christ's ressurection and before the Church was fully established). If anyone has some tid bits of info, send it my way.

P.s. I think I know what I'm going to do as far as my carrer, go to like Rochester College (by Detroit) or maybee Calvin college ( Grand Rapids, which I'm going to tommorrow: yay) for a BRE in Biblical Studies and then go on to get a masters ( hopefully at somewhere like Trinity in Chicago) so I can teach religion calsses such as systematic theology or minor prophets on a college level.