A history of Christianity · c. 30 CE – present
The history of Christianity: how it evolved, and how we know.
Christianity was not founded in a day. It began as a Jewish movement in Galilee around a teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, whose followers expected God's kingdom to arrive within their lifetimes, and who proclaimed after his crucifixion that God had raised him. This series traces what happened next, chapter by chapter: Paul and the mission to non-Jews, the Gospels and the slow parting from Judaism, the many Christianities of the second century, Constantine and the councils, the churches of the East, the medieval West and the great schism, the Reformations, the missions that carried Christianity across the world, revival and criticism, the twentieth century, and the churches of today.
Much of what people take as given is a later layer. The word "Christianity" first appears around 110 CE; the first list of exactly the 27 books of the New Testament dates from 367; the Trinity was defined in the fourth century; Christmas on 25 December is first securely attested in Rome in 336; purgatory was set out in 1274, papal infallibility in 1870, and the Rapture in the 1830s. Each has a date and evidence, and the series tracks them one by one.
Every chapter names the letter, manuscript, inscription, council decree or study behind its claims and tags each one by how settled it is: consensus, majority, contested, speculative or political. Historians can date when Christians came to believe something; whether a belief is true, as with the resurrection, is outside what historical method can test, and the series does not adjudicate it. Where scholars disagree, both sides are stated at their strongest. Start with How We Know for the methods, or go straight to the period you want.
14 chapters, c. 30 CE – present, about 6 hours of reading.
Start reading: The World of Jesus
Or begin with How we know, on the evidence and the dating methods.
The whole span
Time axis compressed: each labelled interval gets equal width
01 The World of Jesus 02 The Historical Jesus 03 Paul and the Gentile Mission 04 After the Temple 05 Many Christianities 06 Constantine, the Creeds and the Councils 07 Beyond Rome 08 The Medieval West 09 Reformations 10 Mission and Empire 11 Revival, Reason and Criticism 12 The Twentieth Century 13 Christianity Today
Bars overlap where periods do: §7 Beyond Rome runs alongside §6 and §8 for about a thousand years, because Christianity had centres outside the Roman world from the start. That overlap is the actual history, not a rendering artefact.
The full timeline, era by era (free to embed)
All chapters
- Start here: the methods How We Know Letters, gospels, manuscripts, outside witnesses and stones: the reader's toolkit for early Christianity The oldest Christian writings are Paul's letters, from about 50–60 CE; the four Gospels followed between about 70 and 110 CE, and none of them names its author. Matthew and Luke copied much of Mark. Most scholars think they also shared a lost collection of sayings called Q; a strong minority thinks Luke used Matthew instead. 20 min read Majority view
- Chapter 1 c. 63 BCE – 30 CE The World of Jesus Rome and the Herods, a Jewish Galilee, the hope of a coming kingdom, and a Temple full of pilgrims Rome took Jerusalem in 63 BCE. Herod ruled as Rome's client king from 37 to 4 BCE; after him, Galilee went to his son Antipas, and Judea came under a Roman prefect in 6 CE. Galilee in Jesus' day was overwhelmingly Jewish: its villages have stone vessels, ritual baths and no pig bones, and a synagogue of his time has been excavated at Magdala. Roman Judea, Samaria, Galilee and Peraea, with the Decapolis and Philip's tetrarchy around them 24 min read Majority view
- Chapter 2 c. 6 BCE – 33 CE The Historical Jesus A Galilean Jew, a prophet of the coming kingdom, a Roman cross, and what his followers said next Almost all historians, Christian, Jewish and secular, agree that Jesus of Nazareth existed, was baptised by John the Baptist, and was crucified on the orders of Pontius Pilate, probably in 30 or 33 CE. He was a Galilean Jew who spoke Aramaic, had four named brothers and at least two sisters, gathered disciples called the Twelve, and was known as a healer and exorcist. Galilee and Judea, under Herod Antipas and the Roman prefects 23 min read Majority view
- Chapter 3 c. 30 – 64 CE Paul and the Gentile Mission A Pharisee's vision, letters to new churches, and the quarrel over whether non-Jews had to become Jews Paul's seven undisputed letters, written c. 50–60 CE, are the oldest Christian texts and the only first-hand account by an early Christian leader; Acts, written a generation later, sometimes contradicts them. Paul was a Pharisee who persecuted the Jesus movement, then had a vision of the risen Jesus, probably in the early to mid 30s, which he understood as a call to take the message to non-Jews. Jerusalem, Damascus and Antioch; the cities of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece; Rome 27 min read Majority view
- Chapter 4 c. 70 – 150 CE After the Temple Four Gospels, letters in Paul's name, the first bishops, and the slow parting from Judaism Rome's destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE is the backdrop to all four Gospels: Mark was written around then, Matthew and Luke about ten to twenty years later, John around 90–110. Each Gospel answers its own community's questions; Matthew's is still arguing with other Jews about the Law, John's speaks of believers 'put out of the synagogue' and of 'the Jews' as outsiders. Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome and Egypt, with Jerusalem in ruins 28 min read Majority view
- Chapter 5 c. 130 – 312 CE Many Christianities Marcion, the Gnostics, the making of the New Testament, the first Trinity words, and the Roman persecutions In the second century there was no New Testament yet. Marcion, in Rome around 144, made the first fixed list of Christian scripture: one Gospel and ten letters of Paul, and no Old Testament. Valentinians, Sethians and other groups later lumped together as 'Gnostics' wrote their own gospels; many scholars now doubt that 'Gnosticism' was ever one movement. The Roman Empire: Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Syria and Gaul 27 min read Majority view
- Chapter 6 c. 312 – 451 CE Constantine, the Creeds and the Councils An emperor's conversion, an argument about the Son, and the empire that made one Christianity official Constantine backed Christianity from 312, but he did not make it the state religion. Theodosius I did that, by law in 380 and by banning pagan sacrifice in 391–392. The Council of Nicaea in 325 did not choose the books of the Bible or vote Jesus divine for the first time. It ruled that the Son is 'of one substance' with the Father, against Arius, and set a common date for Easter. The Roman Empire, from Rome and Milan to Nicaea, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch 26 min read Majority view
- Chapter 7 c. 300 – 1400 CE Beyond Rome Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia, the Church of the East from Persia to China, the Thomas Christians, and Christians under Islam By the mid-fourth century three kingdoms outside the Roman Empire had Christian kings: Armenia (traditionally 301, more probably c. 314), Georgia and Aksum in Ethiopia. The largest church outside Rome was the Church of the East, centred in Persian Mesopotamia and writing in Syriac. By the eighth century it had bishops from Iraq to Central Asia, India and China. Armenia, Georgia and Aksum; Persian Mesopotamia; Central Asia; south India; Tang and Yuan China; Egypt and Syria under Islam 25 min read Majority view
- Chapter 8 c. 500 – 1300 CE The Medieval West Monks and popes, the conversion of the north, the split with the East, and a church that defined purgatory and pursued heretics There was no single moment when Catholics and Orthodox split. The excommunications of 1054 were one quarrel among many; the Crusaders' sack of Constantinople in 1204 made the division real, and the 1054 sentences were lifted only in 1965. Mary Magdalene became the repentant sinner of Western tradition, and later a former prostitute, through a sermon of Pope Gregory the Great in 591, which merged her with two other women of the Gospels and read her sins as sexual; the Catholic calendar separated them again in 1969. Latin Europe from Ireland to Poland, with Byzantium and the Crusader states 28 min read Majority view
- Chapter 9 c. 1517 – 1648 CE Reformations Luther's protest, the Swiss and the radicals, England's break, Trent's answer, and a century of religious war Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 31 October 1517 were an academic challenge on indulgences, not a call to leave the church; that he nailed them to a church door is first reported in print after his death and is still debated. Within a decade there were several reformations, not one: Lutheran, Swiss Reformed, Anabaptist and, from 1534, an English break with Rome driven by the crown, and they disagreed with each other as much as with Rome. Latin Christendom: the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, France, the Low Countries, England and Scotland, Italy and Spain 24 min read Majority view
- Chapter 10 c. 1492 – 1900 CE Mission and Empire Conquest and its critics, converts who made the faith their own, slavery, and the Protestant missionary century Between 1455 and 1514 the popes gave the kings of Portugal and Spain control of the church in the lands they conquered, so that mission and empire were legally bound together from the start. The sharpest Christian critics of the conquest were themselves friars: Antonio de Montesinos in 1511, Bartolomé de las Casas for fifty years, and Las Casas against Sepúlveda at Valladolid in 1550–51. The Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia; Japan and China; the Atlantic world; the British Empire 28 min read Majority view
- Chapter 11 c. 1650 – 1900 CE Revival, Reason and Criticism Pietists and Methodists, the Bible's critics, Darwin, infallibility, new churches and the Rapture From about 1675 to 1840, Pietism in Germany, Methodism in Britain and the Awakenings in America made personal conversion and a felt faith the centre of Protestant life, creating the evangelical movement. Over the same years critics from Spinoza (1670) to Strauss (1835) began reading the Bible as a set of human documents, and liberal theologians such as Schleiermacher rebuilt faith around experience rather than proof. Germany, Britain and Ireland, North America, Rome 27 min read Majority view
- Chapter 12 c. 1900 – 1990 CE The Twentieth Century Tongues of fire, fundamentalists, the churches under Stalin and Hitler, Vatican II and a southern turn Pentecostalism, which had several starting points, among them Topeka in 1901 and a mixed-race revival on Azusa Street, Los Angeles, from 1906, became the fastest-growing form of Christianity of the century. In the United States, Protestants split between modernists and fundamentalists in the 1920s; the Scopes trial of 1925 was a defeat in the press, not the end of the movement. Worldwide: the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union, Latin America, Africa and Asia 25 min read Majority view
- Chapter 13 c. 1990 – 2026 CE Christianity Today Where Christians live now, how they are counted, and the splits, scandals and shifts of the last thirty years Pew Research Center counted about 2.3 billion Christians in 2020, 29 per cent of the world; the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which counts differently, puts the figure at about 2.6 billion in 2025. Sub-Saharan Africa overtook Europe as the region with the most Christians between 2010 and 2020, with 31 per cent of the world's Christians against Europe's 22 per cent (Pew). Worldwide, with the centre of gravity in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America 21 min read Majority view
Questions, answered with the evidence
All 17 questions- Did Constantine make Christianity the state religion?
- Did Jesus exist?
- Did Martin Luther nail the 95 Theses to the church door?
- Did Paul invent Christianity?
- Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute?
- What are the Gnostic gospels?
- What happened at the Council of Nicaea?
- What is the Church of the East?
- When did Christianity reach India?
- When did the Trinity become doctrine?
- Where did Pentecostalism come from?
- Where did the idea of purgatory come from?
- Where did the idea of the Rapture come from?
- Who decided which books are in the Bible?
- Who wrote the Gospels?
- Why did the Catholic and Orthodox churches split?
- Why is Christmas on December 25?
Timeline 13 eras, c. 30 CE – present
Every chapter's date range, takeaways and dated firsts on one page. Free to embed and
reuse under CC BY 4.0.
View the timeline Glossary
The terms, defined from the evidence
People, councils, texts, movements and places, from the Pilate Stone and Q to the
filioque and Pentecostalism, each in a few sentences with a link to the chapter that covers it.
Open the glossary
Reading the confidence tags
- Consensus Broad agreement across the field
- Majority view Mainstream, with a real minority view
- Contested Open, with competing schools
- Speculative Worth stating, but thin evidence
- Politically contested Driven by modern politics as much as data
Where the field disagrees, the strongest version of each position is stated rather than resolved. See How we know for the inscriptions, manuscripts and source criticism behind the dates, and how this series treats the relation between faith and history, and Sources for every primary citation in the series plus the annotated bibliography behind it.