TIMELINE (REL 212, Reed)
BRIEF TIMELINE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY FOR QUIZ #2
31 BCE – Fall of the Roman Republic; rise of the Roman Empire
6 CE – Birth of Jesus of Nazareth
26-30 CE – Mission of John the Baptist
30 CE – Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth
35-36 CE – The Pharisee Saul (a student of Rabbi Gamaliel) joins the Jesus Movement, after a revelation on the road to Tarsus, and becomes the Apostle Paul, begins his missionary activities to the gentiles
49-60 CE –Pauline Epistles written
60-65 CE – Death of Paul
66-70 BCE – Jewish Revolt against Rome
70 CE – Roman Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
70-110 CE –Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and JOHN written
112-113 CE – Pliny, the Roman governor of Pontus-Bithynia writes to the emperor Trajan seeking advice regarding the persecution of Christians. The emperor tells Pliny that persecuting people on unproven charges is "contrary to the spirit of our times."
132-135 CE – Jewish messianic uprising lead by “Bar Kokhba,” brutally quelched by Rome
249-251 CE - First major Persecution of Christians under emperor Decius
257-260 CE - Persecution resumes under emperor Valerian
303 CE - Persecution begins under Diocletian
Some Important Proto-Orthodox Christian Writers before Constantine
Ignatius – Early Martyr
Justin Martyr – Philosopher, Apologist, Martyr, also wrote on relationship between Christians and Jews
Clement of Alexandria – Philosopher, Apologist
Tertullian – Apologist, Heresiologist (against Marcion), first proto-orthodox “Church Father” to write in Latin
Irenaeus – Heresiologist (against Gnostics)
312 CE - Battle of Milvian Bridge; the Roman general Constantine adopts Christ as his patron and defeats his rival Maxentius to become sole ruler of Italy, Africa, and the entire western half of the empire.
313 CE - Edict of Milan. Constantine assures full restitution of all confiscated Christian property and full rights for Christian worship in both halves of the Roman empire.
324 CE - Constantine defeats Licinius in a battle near Adrianople. He now becomes ruler of the entire Roman Empire.
325 CE - Council of Nicea; KEY ISSUE: Was Christ begotten (Arian position) or unbegotten and thus coeternal with God (Athanasius’ position)? RESULT: Athanasius’ position won out, and Arians were denounced as “heretical.” NICENE CREED composed, laying out the basic foundation of Christian belief in a manner that excluded all so-called “heretics” (gnostics, Marcionites, Docetists, Jewish-Christians, &c.) from the imperially-sanctioned “orthodoxy” of the Church.
367 CE – Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, draws up an official list of the texts in the “Old Testament” and “New Testament” Canon
390-405 CE – Jerome translates the Hebrew Bible into Latin (= the Vulgate), to replace the older Latin translation (“Vetus Latina”), which was a Latin translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (i.e. the Septuagint); in the Latin West, the Vulgate would come to be the official version of the “Old Testament,” whereas the Greek East continued to use the Septuagint.
395 CE - The Roman Empire is divided into eastern and western portions under Arkadios and Honorius, the sons of Emperor Theodosius I, underlining differences in language and culture between the Church in the Latin West (which would become the Catholic Church) and the Greek East (which would become the Eastern Orthodox Church).
431 CE -- Council of Ephesus; Key issue: Is Mary Theotokos (Mother of God) or just Christotokos (Mother of the Messiah)? Result: Nestorius, who held that Mary was just Christokos, was condemned and banished, after the Council decided that she was Theotokos. He and his followers (Nestorians) moved eastwards, away from the Roman Empire and into the Sassanian Persian Empire. Nestorians would eventually preach the gospel as far east as China! Today, there are about 200,000 Nestorian Christians, often called “Assyrian Christians,” and they live mostly in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.
451 CE – Council of Chalcedon; Key issue: Christ is one “person,” but does he have one “nature” (divine) or two “natures” (divine and human)? Result: The Council decided that Christ has two natures, thus shaping the Christology of the dominant Church of the Roman Empire, both in the Latin West and Greek East. Those who disagreed went their separate ways, i.e. the Monophysite Churches (“monophysite” literally means “one [= mono] nature [= physis]”): Coptic Church (in Egypt, scriptures and liturgy in Coptic, a Christian language influenced both by Greek and by older Egyptian languages like Demotic), Syrian Orthodox Church (in Syria, scriptures and liturgy in Syriac, a Christian dialect of Aramaic), Ethiopian/Abyssinian Church (in Ethiopia, scriptures and liturgy in Ge’ez), and Armenian Church (in Armenia, scriptures and literature in Armenian). There are about 30 million members of these Monophysite Churches today.
Some Important Early Christian Writers who wrote in the fourth and fifth centuries
Eusebius – Historian, wrote about Constantine and Christianization of the Roman Empire as sign of Christianity’s triumph over Judaism
Athanasius – Bishop of Alexandria, first to draw up a full list of authoritative, canonical Christian Scriptures; debated with Arius (leader of Arians) at the Council of Nicea
Augustine – Ex-Manichee, Theologian, Bishop of Hippo (North Africa), originator of doctrine of Original Sin
Jerome – Made the Latin translation of “Old Testament” from the original Hebrew (= Vulgate)
637 CE – Arab Muslims capture Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire (i.e. the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, after it split into two).
867 CE – Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, objects to insertions in the Creed by the Bishop of Rome, marking a key moment in the increasing division between the Churches in the Greek East (Byzantine Empire, centered in Constantinople) and Latin West (centered in Rome)—essentially a question of authority: Christians in the Greek East thought that all decisions about doctrine should be agreed upon by the bishops of the five major centers of Christendom (i.e. Patriarchs = Bishops of Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandra), but Christians in the Latin West thought that the Bishop of Rome (= Pope) had more authority than the rest, claiming that Christ had established the Church through Peter alone, above the rest of the apostles.
1054 CE – Formalization of Split between Churches in Greek East (i.e. Byzantine Empire) and Latin West, which had been brewing for quite some time. The Churches in the Greek East took the name “orthodox” (meaning “right doctrine”), whereas the Church in the Latin West took the name “catholic” (meaning “universal, common”). Today, there are about 900 million Catholics and about 150 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in the world.
1071 CE – Jerusalem captured by Seljuk Turks (also Muslims, but less accommodating to Christian pilgrims)
1095 CE – Beginning of Christian “Crusades” to “free” (in their eyes) the “Holy Land” from Muslim rule, which continued on and off until 1291 (ten Crusades total).
1099 CE – Crusaders capture Jerusalem
1187 CE – Crusaders driven out of Jerusalem by Saladin