The Birth of Christianity

Abstract

Crossan and Casey are examples of those who say that in the first twenty
years of the apostolic era Jesus was re-defined as ‘Son of God’ and ‘Lord’. These and other accounts make inquiry into those two decades quite critical. We are able to affirm the broad lines of the narrative of Acts by undisputed information in Paul’s earliest letters and by the data in the ‘we’ passages in Acts. Case studies in Rom 1:1-4 and in the recorded teaching of Philip point to the pervasive influence of the ‘teaching of the apostles’, Peter’s in particular. The pre-history of the underived Gospels of Mark and John, as well as the Synoptic sources Q, L and M are to be sought in this critical two-decade period immediately ‘after Jesus’.