The Apostles and Saint Paul

After Jesus was crucified (put on the cross), we still don't have any information except from the Bible for a while. The Bible says that after three days in his tomb, Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to some of his followers, and then rose up into heaven to become one with God. This was called the Resurrection, and medieval Christians celebrated its anniversary at Easter every year.

Jesus' followers, left behind on earth, were not sure what to do at first. One story says that Judas was sorry and tried to give the money back.

Judas was sorry (mosaic from Ravenna, 500's AD)

It seems that Jesus' friends (the apostles) travelled around Western Asia and other parts of the Roman Empire preaching the things that Jesus had told them. They also said that when Jesus was crucified, he sacrificed himself for everybody else who believed in him, and so now the Jewish animal sacrifices were not needed anymore. Sometimes when the apostles came to a town, people were glad to listen to what they had to say, and even became Christians (followers of Christ) themselves. Sometimes the people didn't like these new ideas and threw the apostles out of town.

One Jewish man who converted to Christianity was Saul, who was later called Paul. Paul travelled all over, to Greece and to Turkey and to Damascus in Syria, preaching Christianity. A new thing that Paul did was to preach to people who were not Jews. Paul told people that Jesus wanted them to behave in very pure ways like never telling lies, or stealing, or cheating anyone in a trade. But he said that love was more important than any of these things (I Corinthians). Paul also told people that Jesus didn't want anybody who got divorced to remarry. A man could only have one wife, and a woman could only have one husband.

Peter and Paul (mosaic from Ravenna, 500's AD)

In 49 or 50 AD, from the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, we find the first reference to Christians outside the Bible. The Roman historian Suetonius (writing about 100 AD) notes that "Claudius threw out of Rome the Jews who were always making a fuss in the name of Chrestus." This refers to a time about 15 years after Jesus was crucified (but it was written about 85 years later).

Around the same time, tradition tells us that Paul and the apostle Peter were both killed in Rome for being Christians. We are not sure if this is true, or exactly what the charge was, since being a Christian was not in itself illegal until around the reign of Trajan.

Nero and the Great Fire in Rome
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