Ebenezer Nti Obeng

The Identity of the Early Christians Shaped by Persecution: Perceptions of Emerging Christianity As a Categorical Group and Group of Membership in the First Two Centuries Ebenezer Nti Obeng

Christianity we see today how did it emerge and expand in the Greco-Roman world in the first two centuries. How did it appear to the people and the societies in which it emerged out from and how did those who were seen to be outside this new group saw them. This is the questions that this book has sought to answer by using using both the insider source(christianity) and the outsider source(pagans) The identity of the early Christians can never be well understood if we try to look at it from the only the Christian sources without the observations of the world in which they emerged out from. This is because the perceptions of those who were not part of the Christian movement at its formative stages are equally important because they tell us something about the character of the early Christians. Christianity started as a sect in Judaism in the land of Palestine before it spread to the other parts of the Greco-Roman world. Already in the Greco-Roman societies, there were well established groups or associations and also communities like Judaism and the traditional Roman religion. So for Christianity to be distinct from Jews and the Roman religion, they needed their own identity and group