Timeline

A timeline of Christianity, from Jesus to the present day

13 eras, each with its dated firsts. Dates are first datable attestations; each era links to the chapter with the evidence.

  1. c. 63 BCE – 30 CE Chapter 1 Majority view

    The World of Jesus

    Rome and the Herods, a Jewish Galilee, the hope of a coming kingdom, and a Temple full of pilgrims

    Roman Judea, Samaria, Galilee and Peraea, with the Decapolis and Philip's tetrarchy around them

    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • There was no single Jewish expectation of a messiah. Some texts look for a king from David's line, some for a priestly and a royal messiah, some for a heavenly 'Son of Man', and many for none at all.
    • Josephus describes a string of popular prophets and would-be kings between 4 BCE and 70 CE; Rome usually met them with force.
    • Pontius Pilate, prefect from 26 to 36 CE, appears in Jewish sources as provocative and harsh; some historians think those sources exaggerate.

  2. c. 6 BCE – 33 CE Chapter 2 Majority view

    The Historical Jesus

    A Galilean Jew, a prophet of the coming kingdom, a Roman cross, and what his followers said next

    Galilee and Judea, under Herod Antipas and the Roman prefects

    • within a few years of c. 30–33 CE A crucified Messiah raised from the dead. The oldest datable statement of Christian belief: Christ died, was buried, was raised and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, James and others. The belief is dated; the event is outside historical method. 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, a creed Paul says he "received"
    • c. 54 CE The words over the bread and cup. Paul's account of the last meal, introduced as a tradition he had received, is older than any Gospel. 1 Corinthians 11:23–26
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • Most scholars think he preached that God's kingdom was about to arrive within his followers' lifetimes; a significant minority read him as a teacher of wisdom without an end-time message.
    • The birth stories in Matthew and Luke disagree with each other, and Luke's census under Quirinius took place about ten years after Herod's death.
    • Within a few years of his death his followers were proclaiming that God had raised him; historians can date that belief, but not test whether it is true.

  3. c. 30 – 64 CE Chapter 3 Majority view

    Paul and the Gentile Mission

    A Pharisee's vision, letters to new churches, and the quarrel over whether non-Jews had to become Jews

    Jerusalem, Damascus and Antioch; the cities of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece; Rome

    • c. 48–49 CE Gentile believers without circumcision. The Jerusalem "pillars" agree that Paul's gentile converts need not be circumcised; the Antioch quarrel that follows shows how much was left unsettled. Galatians 2:1–10
    • by c. 50 CE (formula older) Jesus addressed in prayer as Lord. An Aramaic prayer left untranslated in a Greek letter, so it goes back to Aramaic-speaking followers. How early this amounts to worship of Jesus as divine is debated. 1 Corinthians 16:22: maranatha, "Our Lord, come!"
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • At a meeting in Jerusalem around 48–49 CE, James, Peter and John agreed that gentile converts need not be circumcised; a quarrel at Antioch soon afterwards showed how much was left unsettled.
    • Paul's churches met in houses, mixed rich and poor, and had women in leading roles: Phoebe was a deacon, and Junia is called 'prominent among the apostles'.
    • Within about a generation of their deaths, Christians in Rome remembered Peter and Paul as martyrs there, probably under Nero in the 60s; the New Testament itself does not narrate either death.

  4. c. 70 – 150 CE Chapter 4 Majority view

    After the Temple

    Four Gospels, letters in Paul's name, the first bishops, and the slow parting from Judaism

    Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome and Egypt, with Jerusalem in ruins

    • c. 66–74 CE A written Gospel. The first narrative of Jesus' life, written around the Roman destruction of the Temple; Matthew and Luke later used it. The Gospel of Mark
    • Acts, c. 80–90 CE (event earlier) The name "Christians". Christianoi, "Christ people", is attached to Antioch by Acts; the movement was still a Jewish group when the name appeared. Acts 11:26: "in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians"
    • c. 110 CE "Christianity" set against "Judaism". The word Christianismos is first attested here, as the opposite of Ioudaismos. Ignatius of Antioch, To the Magnesians 10
    • c. 110 CE One bishop over each city's church. Ignatius' letters are the first to insist on a single bishop at the head of each church and the first to speak of the "catholic church". Ignatius of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans 8
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • Most critical scholars think at least four of the thirteen letters in Paul's name, the Pastorals and Ephesians, were written after his death, many think the same of Colossians and 2 Thessalonians, and 2 Peter, from the early second century, is probably the latest book of the New Testament.
    • Single bishops ruling each city appear first in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, around 110 CE; in Rome, leadership by a group of presbyters probably lasted until the mid-second century.
    • By the mid-second century Christian writers claimed to be the true Israel, and Melito of Sardis accused 'Israel' of murdering God, a charge with a long and lethal afterlife.

  5. c. 130 – 312 CE Chapter 5 Majority view

    Many Christianities

    Marcion, the Gnostics, the making of the New Testament, the first Trinity words, and the Roman persecutions

    The Roman Empire: Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Syria and Gaul

    • c. 144 CE A fixed list of scripture. Marcion, in Rome, made the first fixed collection of Christian scripture, with no Old Testament; the church's own lists followed. Marcion's canon: one Gospel and ten letters of Paul
    • c. 150–155 CE A Sunday service of readings and Eucharist. The first description of a Sunday gathering: the "memoirs of the apostles" and the prophets are read, then bread and wine are shared. Justin Martyr, First Apology 67
    • c. 180 CE God called a trias. The first use of the Greek word for a triad of God, his Word and his Wisdom; the doctrine was defined only in the fourth century. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.15
    • c. 213 CE Trinitas: three persons, one substance. The Latin vocabulary of the later doctrine appears in an argument against Monarchians. Tertullian, Against Praxeas
    • 367 CE The 27 books of the New Testament. The first list of exactly the 27 books; no council of the whole church chose them. Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • No council chose the 27 books. They emerged by use over about three centuries; the first list of exactly the 27 is Athanasius' Easter letter of 367, and regional synods in North Africa ratified it in 393 and 397.
    • The words 'Trinity' first appear around 180 (Greek trias) and 213 (Latin trinitas), more than a century before the doctrine was defined.
    • Persecution was local and sporadic until 250; empire-wide campaigns came under Decius, Valerian and Diocletian. Christians were perhaps 5–10 per cent of the empire by 300, though every estimate is contested.

  6. c. 312 – 451 CE Chapter 6 Majority view

    Constantine, the Creeds and the Councils

    An emperor's conversion, an argument about the Son, and the empire that made one Christianity official

    The Roman Empire, from Rome and Milan to Nicaea, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch

    • 325 CE The Son "of one substance" with the Father. Nicaea adopted a non-biblical word to exclude Arius; the post-Nicene struggle over it lasted another half century. The Creed of Nicaea (homoousios)
    • 336 CE (in the Chronograph of 354) Christ's birth on 25 December. The first secure attestation of the date as a feast in Rome; an earlier mention in Hippolytus is disputed, and why the date was chosen is contested. The Depositio martyrum of the Chronograph of 354
    • 380 CE Nicene Christianity as the religion of the empire. Addressed to Constantinople and aimed at rival Christians, the edict was later read and codified as establishing Nicene Christianity across the empire. Theodosius I, Cunctos populos
    • 431 CE Mary as Theotokos, "God-bearer". The council deposed Nestorius and affirmed the title Theotokos for Mary. Council of Ephesus
    • 451 CE Christ "in two natures". The formula that split the East into Chalcedonian, Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East families. Definition of the Council of Chalcedon
    Key takeaways
    • 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 creed most churches call 'Nicene' is a longer text linked to the Council of Constantinople in 381, which added the article on the Holy Spirit.
    • Christmas on 25 December is first securely attested in Rome in a list dated to 336. Whether the date was chosen to replace a sun festival or was calculated from the date of the crucifixion is still argued over.
    • The councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) split the Eastern churches into three families that still exist: the Chalcedonian Orthodox and Catholic churches, the Oriental Orthodox, and the Church of the East.

  7. c. 300 – 1400 CE Chapter 7 Majority view

    Beyond Rome

    Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia, the Church of the East from Persia to China, the Thomas Christians, and Christians under Islam

    Armenia, Georgia and Aksum; Persian Mesopotamia; Central Asia; south India; Tang and Yuan China; Egypt and Syria under Islam

    • 635 CE arrival; stele 781 Christianity in Tang China. Alopen of the Church of the East reached Chang'an in 635; the stele erected in 781 tells the community's story. The Xi'an Stele
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • The tradition that the apostle Thomas founded the church in Kerala cannot be proved; firm evidence for Christians on India's south-west coast begins around 550, and a copper-plate grant of 849 shows them well established.
    • A Persian monk named Alopen reached the Chinese capital in 635; a stone erected in 781 records the 'Luminous Teaching', but Chinese Christianity faded twice, after 845 and again after the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in 1368.
    • After the Arab conquests of the 630s–640s, Christians remained the largest community in Egypt and Syria, and numerous in Iraq, for centuries; when and how they became minorities is still debated.

  8. c. 500 – 1300 CE Chapter 8 Majority view

    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

    Latin Europe from Ireland to Poland, with Byzantium and the Crusader states

    • c. 530 CE A Rule for monks. Benedict's Rule, drawing heavily on the anonymous Rule of the Master, became the standard of Western monasticism. The Rule of Benedict
    • 591 CE Mary Magdalene as the repentant sinner. Gregory merged her with the sinful woman of Luke 7 and Mary of Bethany and read her sins as sexual; the Roman calendar separated them again in 1969. Gregory the Great, Homily 33
    • c. 1014 CE The filioque sung in Rome's creed. Long used in Spain and the Frankish church, the addition "and the Son" entered the creed at Rome in the early eleventh century. Roman liturgical practice under Henry II
    • 16 July 1054 Mutual excommunications of the papal legates and the patriarch. One event in a long drift; the sack of Constantinople in 1204 made the break real, and the excommunications were lifted in 1965. The bull laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia
    • 1215 CE Transubstantiation and annual confession. The council defined the change of bread and wine and required every adult to confess and receive communion at least once a year. Fourth Lateran Council, canons 1 and 21
    • 1274 CE Purgatory set out in a council. Prayers for the dead are early; the noun purgatorium appears in the late twelfth century, and Lyon II gave the first conciliar statement. Profession of faith accepted at the Second Council of Lyon
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • Northern Europe was converted over some eight centuries, sometimes by persuasion and sometimes by force; Charlemagne's laws for the Saxons made refusing baptism a capital crime.
    • Clerical celibacy became binding law in the West only in the twelfth century, purgatory was set out at a council in 1274, and transubstantiation entered a council's decrees in 1215.
    • Medieval inquisitors sent most of those they convicted to prison or penance rather than the stake, but they executed some, and crusades against heretics killed many more.

  9. c. 1517 – 1648 CE Chapter 9 Majority view

    Reformations

    Luther's protest, the Swiss and the radicals, England's break, Trent's answer, and a century of religious war

    Latin Christendom: the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, France, the Low Countries, England and Scotland, Italy and Spain

    • 1517–1520 Justification by faith alone; Scripture as supreme authority. Luther's programme: sinners are justified by faith, Scripture stands above popes and councils, and all baptised believers are priests. Luther's Ninety-five Theses and treatises of 1520
    • January 1525 Adult baptism of believers. The Anabaptist movement begins, rejecting infant baptism. First adult baptisms in Zurich
    • April 1546 The canon fixed as dogma, with the deuterocanonical books. Trent defined the list of biblical books as a matter of faith for the first time. Council of Trent, Session IV
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • The Council of Trent (1545–1563) defined Catholic doctrine against the reformers, made the biblical canon a dogma for the first time in 1546, and reformed the training of priests.
    • Religious difference was settled by rulers and wars, not toleration: the Peace of Augsburg (1555) let princes choose Lutheranism or Catholicism, and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) added the Reformed churches.
    • Europe's witch trials peaked in the same century, between about 1560 and 1630; Catholics and Protestants both executed witches, and most of the roughly 40,000–60,000 victims were women.

  10. c. 1492 – 1900 CE Chapter 10 Majority view

    Mission and Empire

    Conquest and its critics, converts who made the faith their own, slavery, and the Protestant missionary century

    The Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia; Japan and China; the Atlantic world; the British Empire

    • 1537 Indigenous Americans declared rational and free. The bull declared that the peoples of the Americas were truly human and could not be deprived of liberty or property. Paul III, Sublimis Deus
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • Christianity took root where local people made it their own, as in Kongo, among the Nahuas of Mexico and among Japan's hidden Christians, who kept it alive in secret for over two centuries.
    • The churches both defended and attacked Atlantic slavery; Quakers and evangelicals led abolition, while slaveholders read the Bible as permitting it, and enslaved Africans built a Christianity of their own.
    • By 1900 Christianity was present on every continent, but about two-thirds of the world's Christians still lived in Europe; the shift south came in the twentieth century (§12, §13).

  11. c. 1650 – 1900 CE Chapter 11 Majority view

    Revival, Reason and Criticism

    Pietists and Methodists, the Bible's critics, Darwin, infallibility, new churches and the Rapture

    Germany, Britain and Ireland, North America, Rome

    • 24 May 1738 The heart "strangely warmed": evangelical conversion. The experience at the root of Methodism and of the evangelical religion of the heart. John Wesley's journal, Aldersgate Street
    • 1774–1778 A historical Jesus written against the Gospels. The first attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus in opposition to the Gospel accounts. Reimarus' fragments, published by Lessing
    • early 1830s A pre-tribulation Rapture. Darby developed the teaching that believers will be caught up before a final tribulation; the Scofield Reference Bible spread it from 1909. John Nelson Darby among the Brethren
    • 1854 Mary's Immaculate Conception defined. Defined as dogma for Catholics, long after it had become a widespread belief. Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus
    • 18 July 1870 Papal infallibility. The council defined that the pope speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals is infallible. First Vatican Council, Pastor aeternus
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • The 'war between science and religion' is largely a story told in the 1870s and 1890s; many churchmen accepted Darwin, and historians now reject the conflict thesis as a general account.
    • Rome answered the age by centralising: the Immaculate Conception (1854), the Syllabus of Errors (1864) and papal infallibility (1870).
    • The pre-tribulation Rapture, the belief that Christians will be taken up before a time of tribulation, was systematised by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s and spread through the Scofield Bible (1909); most churches have never taught it.

  12. c. 1900 – 1990 CE Chapter 12 Majority view

    The Twentieth Century

    Tongues of fire, fundamentalists, the churches under Stalin and Hitler, Vatican II and a southern turn

    Worldwide: the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union, Latin America, Africa and Asia

    • 1 January 1901 Speaking in tongues as Spirit baptism. One of several starting points of Pentecostalism; the Azusa Street revival followed from 1906. Agnes Ozman at Parham's Bethel Bible School, Topeka
    • 1944 A woman ordained priest in the Anglican Communion. Ordained in a wartime emergency; the Church of England ordained women priests from 1994. Florence Li Tim-Oi, Hong Kong
    • 1963 The Mass in the vernacular. The council allowed the use of the vernacular to be extended; the reformed Mass of 1969–1970 then replaced Latin almost everywhere. Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 36
    • 28 October 1965 Collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion rejected. The council rejected charging the Jews, then or now, with Christ's death. Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 4
    Key takeaways
    • 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.
    • Under Soviet rule the Russian Orthodox Church was nearly destroyed in the 1920s and 1930s; in Germany most Protestants and Catholics accommodated the Nazi state, while a Confessing minority resisted its control of the church.
    • The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) allowed the Mass in local languages, affirmed religious freedom and rejected collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.
    • By 1990 most Christians no longer lived in Europe and North America, a shift driven above all by growth in Africa and Latin America.

  13. c. 1990 – 2026 CE Chapter 13 Majority view

    Christianity Today

    Where Christians live now, how they are counted, and the splits, scandals and shifts of the last thirty years

    Worldwide, with the centre of gravity in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America

    Key takeaways
    • 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).
    • In much of Europe, North America and Australia, Christian identity is falling fast: the 2021 census found Christians below half the population of England and Wales for the first time (46.2 per cent).
    • The main churches have split along new lines: Moscow broke with Constantinople over Ukraine in 2018, a quarter of US United Methodist congregations left in 2019–2023, and the Anglican Communion is fractured over sexuality and women's leadership.
    • Compared with Jesus' movement in Galilee, almost everything has changed except a handful of constants: the scriptures, the creeds, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the hope of his return.