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Revision as of 17:17, 12 April 2005
The Early Christians is a term used to refer to the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth, before the emergence of established Christian orthodoxy. The term essentially refers to the Jewish Christians of the early period of Christianity, before it was constituted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, by emperor Constantine I, in 312 A.D.
The term has an underlying connotation of many of the Early Christians being Jewish. The term was used by the later Graeco-Roman Christians to refers to the early followers of the Christ, at a time when what was later called as Christianity was largely a Jewish sect. The Early Christians, however, mostly referred to themselves as Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). The early Christian-Jewish heritage lingers in the Nasrani tradition in South India.
Among those writers commonly referred to as Early Christian are:
- Clement of Rome
- Ignatius of Antioch
- Papias
- Polycarp of Smyrna
- Justin Martyr
- Tatian
- Athenagorus
- Irenaeus
- Clement of Alexandria
- Tertullian
- Hippolytus
- Origen
- Cyprian
- Dionysius of Alexandria
- Arnobius
- Lactantius
The term is less often, but with equal validity, applied to the authors of the books of the New Testament.
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