The Early Christians: Christians, Jews or Both?

This project began with a single question. Initially, I thought only to answer that question in a short article of less than 1,500 words. The research that I did to write that article helped me to understand the dating of the events chronicled in the Book of Acts and the many questions that surround what is known about when these early Christian documents were first written. For instance, the Book of Hebrews is estimated to have been written between 60 and 95 CE. That wide window could either prove the continuing endurance of Christians’ Jewish identity nearly to the end of the first century CE, or it could show a timeline more in keeping with what the history in the Book of Acts already indicates, that is that Christians were already leaving behind their Jewish roots in the early sixties. Questions like the dating of Hebrews quickly revealed that the larger issue cannot be answered without careful attention to chronology.

My experience of writing that first article also indicated to me that I knew very little about the subject, and yet I also was beginning to have a framework for how to proceed. I would use what I learned from each article to narrow my focus. This led me to envision a series of articles focused on one event, document or historical moment from various perspectives—Roman, Jewish or Christian—to shed light on the larger question. Rather than presenting a single sustained argument, I would continue to use the question of “When?” to organize my study around the question of when early Christian identity shifted away from being a Jewish sect within a larger Jewish tradition to being a distinct religious entity with Jewish roots.