The Beginnings of the Church in Rome

History of the Church in Rome, part 1

This is the start of a series on the development of the church in Rome. Become a paid subscriber to view the full version of this post and later posts.

A reconstruction of what remains of the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum, with the Capitoline hill on the right.

Context

The city of Rome underwent a thorough renewal just before and at the beginning of the Christian era. By the year 731 AUC (Roman dating, from the founding of the city Ab Urbe Condita; what we date now as 29 BCE), the dust had settled in the battles raging after the assassination of Julius Caesar, and his heir Octavian was recognized as sole ruler, in general going by the name of Augustus Caesar. This was the beginning of a shift in the form of government, what came to be the Roman Empire. Augustus ruled until 766 AUC (14 CE), and by that time had remade the city into a new seat of empire. He was succeeded by Tiberius, who ruled until 789 AUC (37 CE).

During the time of these two emperors, momentous things were happening in province of Judea. A young man named Jesus was growing up in the town of Nazareth, born around 746 AUC (6 BCE) – he would have dated his birth according to the Hebrew calendar, calculated to number the years since creation, or something like AM 3754.

Dates

A note on dating: it is important to remember that our current system of dating, where year 1 intends to be the year of the incarnation of Jesus, was a later development, being calculated (slightly wrongly) and put into place only in 525 AD. Christians in Palestine would have followed both the Hebrew calendar and the Roman calendar, and Christians in Rome would have organized their life according to the Roman calendar. I have used all the dates here to make this point, but from now on, I will use our more conventional dating. Additionally, it has become customary in the writing of history to use the designation Common Era for the current calendar dating, intending to recognize that non-Christians accept the dating arranged according to the incarnation of Jesus without affirming that history changed with this event. Thus, years before the birth of Christ are designated BCE (before the common era) and those after the birth of Christ CE (common era). Since what I write here is intentionally from a Christian perspective, and since the older forms are more common, I will continue to use BC for the years prior to the then-calculated incarnation of Christ and AD (Anno Domini – in the year of our Lord) for the years from that point forward.

Christianity

Jesus began his public ministry in the late 20s and early 30s and was crucified in 30 or 33. After his resurrection and ascension, his closest disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and began preaching a new development in the promises that God had made to the people of Israel, proclaiming this first in Jerusalem and then spreading out to the neighboring areas. New communities of believers in Jesus were established throughout the Mediterranean world in these decades as the apostles went out to preach the message following Jesus’s commandment reported in Matthew: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:19-20)

The New Testament, in the letters of Paul and in the Acts of the Apostles, tell us about the founding of some of these communities, or churches. Some of Paul’s letters are addressed to churches he founded himself, like Corinth, others to places that he had heard from but not yet visited, like Rome. While Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome, which scholars date to the year 57 or 58, he does not tell us about the origins of that church, nor about how it was established. Acts concludes with Paul’s arrival in Rome, greeting by the Christians there, but neither does it tell us about the first Christians in Rome. It also mentions that there was a Christian community at the Italian port of Puteoli (today Pozzuoli), near Naples, where Paul disembarked from his sea journey.

First Christians in Rome

What we can tell from the New Testament evidence is that the Roman church was well established by the late 50s and that it was not established by Paul. It is safe to say, despite later legends, that it was not established by Peter either since it would seem that Acts would have mentioned this and that certainly Paul would have mentioned Peter’s prior or current presence there in a letter to the community. We thus have to turn to other sources for clues.

From the records of the time, we can say a few things about the early days of the church in Rome. We know that there was a very large population of Jewish people in Rome in the mid-first century. After the time of the Maccabees in the 2nd century BC there had been a Jewish presence in the city, which increased significantly during the time of Herod, who had a close political relationship with Augustus. According to one estimate, there were 40,000-50,000 Jews in Rome as the church began to spread from Jerusalem.^[1] When Christians began to preach the gospel, the good news that they wanted to communicate was centrally that God’s promises to Israel were being fulfilled. It wound have been natural that early recipients of this message would have been other Jews living outside Palestine. It is not hard to imagine that one or two of these early disciples would have been sent to visit their relatives in Rome to share with them the exciting news. If some were going out to the Syrian city of Antioch, why not send others to tell Aunt Martha and Uncle Benjamin who had recently emigrated to Rome? It stands to reason, then, that the Jewish community in Rome would have heard the message of Jesus rather quickly and that an initial community of Jewish followers of Jesus would have formed there.

I now turn to the difficult issue of determining who founded the church in Rome. I then describe the characteristics of the Christian community and conclude by reflecting on why they so often got into trouble with the Roman government. But you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to access this (plus in doing so you provide me needed support in continuing this work).