Christianity by the Century: The First Century CE (0 – 100 CE)

The life and death of Jesus of Nazareth stand as the most consequential events for Christian history. However, the story itself was not yet a Christian one. Jesus, his family, and his apostles were all Jews. But even as Jesus’ life and death became the cornerstone of Christian faith, the turmoil across Judaism in the following decades created the conditions for Christianity to spread as it did in later centuries, even as it obscures some of our understanding of what actually occurred during the century.

Life under Roman rule

For important context, throughout the century, Jews lived under the oppressive and turbulent rule of Roman occupation. From Caesar Augustus, who died in 14 CE, through the Emperor Titus, who oversaw the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE before becoming emperor himself, there were eight different emperors, including Caligula, Claudius and the infamous Nero (who is believed to have had Peter crucified).   By the time the century had ended, Rome had crushed the famed Jewish rebellion, destroyed their Temple, and implemented a crushingly oppressive Jewish tax.  Their messiah had been brutally executed decades earlier, and there was little to hope for.

Daily life and social division

Even at the start of the century, when Jesus was born, the plight of the Jews was grim, as Roman rule had little tolerance for Jewish monotheism.  Living conditions were harsh everywhere, even in Nazareth, which was far from the Jewish hub in Jerusalem (and Bethlehem) where Herod ruled as a client king for Rome.

Poverty, famine, and unrest were the norm for the period, especially for the lower class. Daily life was difficult, largely a function of Roman opposition to Jewish laws and customs.*  The paterfamilias social system for Roman society functioned in a strong patriarchal order, with loyalty, obedience and honor due first to the emperor and patterned in the same way within individual households. In contrast, the covenant between God and the people held Jewish families and community together.

Although Roman authorities tolerated many religions and the worship of many gods, which was key to their assimilation of many cultures and civilizations, they did require the worship of the Roman gods and emperor, which conflicted with the Jewish commitment to one God. Some local Roman rulers were more tolerant and even relatively supportive of Jewish customs, but the taxes and lack of social security took a major toll. Disobedience and unrest turned to revolt from time to time, which would sometimes result in crucifixion and other forms of violent punishment.

Jews were divided in their opinions about how best to respond to the Roman world, fiercely debating how to practice faithful Judaism and simultaneously respond to Rome. Impoverished lower class Jews resented upper class Jewish compliance with Rome, resulting in fear and tension especially among the majority lower classes. Thanks to the twentieth-century discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have some insight into the ways various factions—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots—contended over what it meant to be faithful. Yet most shared a common longing for deliverance—a Messiah who could free them from Roman domination.

Impact of Jesus’s life and death

Although Jesus was born in the royal Davidic line, he grew up in this tense and oppressed world, aware of both his own Jewish royal heritage and its dangerous tension with the emperor’s claims to divinity and absolute authority. Jesus spoke out, too, although his language was often couched in allegorical opposition to Rome. Many Jews and Romans knew that Jesus was thought to be the savior (Messiah), and ultimately it was the Romans—not the Jews—who crucified him. His leadership and opposition became too apparent.

For many Jews who had hoped he was the Messiah, Jesus’s death was shattering. That grief deepened as frustration mounted, finally erupting into open revolt in 66 CE. Two years later, the new emperor Vespasian crushed the rebellion in Galilee and elsewhere, and after a long siege, his son Titus captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 70 CE.

The catastrophic loss of Jerusalem and its Temple marked both a spiritual and cultural collapse. Sacrificial worship ended abruptly, and Rabbinic Judaism emerged, centered instead on Torah study, prayer, and moral practice. Those who also mourned the loss of Jesus now faced a double crisis—seeking meaning in both his death and the destruction of their sacred center. Tensions continued to mount between upper and lower classes of Jewish communities.

Rewriting the story and seeking new meaning

Whether due to the turmoil of the period or the lack of interest in keeping written records, a great deal of misunderstanding of the immediate aftermath these double catastrophes remains—misunderstanding stemming in part from the way that some factions of early Christians altered the narrative of the years after Jesus’ death to better fit their answers to the hard questions. We do know that Jesus’s death and the destruction of the temple some thirty years later prompted deep soul-searching and theological struggle. It resulted in massive transformation among all the Jewish factions, including those who followed Jesus. Hopes and expectations of the previous few millennia had been so thoroughly crushed, the most difficult questions about God’s relationship to the people of God needed new answers.

The last third of the first century remains a puzzle for historians attempting to trace the beginnings of what would later be called Christianity. Information about these decades has become increasingly unreliable, as scholars continue to probe the few extant sources available. Tradition holds that Paul, a contemporary of Jesus, became a follower after his crucifixion and boldly spread Jesus’s message beyond his Jewish community to the gentile world.

Yet recent scholarship calls this into question. Historical evidence for Paul’s missionary work does not appear outside the Bible until the second century—long after Paul’s supposed lifetime. Some scholars theorize that the letters attributed to him were, in fact, composed many decades later to promote the growing story of Jesus among non-Jews and to develop its theological message.**

So little historical evidence

A similar uncertainty surrounds Jesus’s disciples. Very little reliable evidence of their activities survives, though later apocryphal traditions remember them as miracle-working missionaries who carried Jesus’s message in all directions. Most of these stories derive from the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, whose vivid, sometimes fantastical narratives seem to serve the purpose of proving apostolic authority and power rather than historical accountability.

Adding to the mystery, there are no known artistic depictions of Jesus—or of scenes from his life and teachings—until long after the first century. The canonical Acts of the Apostles—the only story that purports to tell the story of the apostles after Jesus—is inconsistent with the letters of Paul, so the value of the book lies in the meaning of the stories rather than the historical accountability.

Memory and transformation

What is clear from the scraps of history available to us now is that Jesus was remembered as a towering moral and spiritual presence amid a century of turmoil. The memory of Jesus as victor—not as a defeated Jew—became the defining theme for centuries to come. Memories of his message sprang from his Jewish foundation in covenant and faith, but they offered meaning where despair had seemed inevitable. Death did not silence Jesus, nor did it destroy his mission. His healing insight and spiritual power pointed to the continuing reality of God’s work in the world.

* See Joan Taylor, Boy Jesus: Growing Up Judean in Turbulent Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2025).
** See Nina E. Livesey, The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

This is the sixth in a series of Bible and Beyond blog posts, Christian History by the Century, focusing on the key developments that influenced Christianity, century by century. Beginning with the fifth century BCE, we have traced historical events and ideas that influenced future generations of those who came to identify themselves as Christian.