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Chapter 5 Early Christianity: A World Religion Origins of Christianity As confidence in human reason and hope for happiness in this world waned in the last centuries of the Roman Empire, a new outlook began to take hold. Jesus: Moral Transformation of the Individual Around the age of thirty, no doubt influenced by John the Baptist, Jesus began to preach the imminent coming of the reign of God and the need for repentance—for a moral transformation so that a person could gain entrance into God’s kingdom. Although Jesus did not intend to lead his fellow Jews away from their ancestral religion, he was distressed with the Judaism of his day. Jesus believed that the center of Judaism had shifted from prophetic values to obeying the rules and prohibitions regulating the smallest details of daily life. Such legalism and ritualism, Jesus held, dealt only with an individual’s visible behavior; they did not penetrate to the person’s inner being and lead to a moral transformation. The inner person concerned Jesus, and it was an inner change that he sought. With the fervor of a prophet, he urged a moral transformation of human character through a direct encounter between the individual and God. Jewish scribes and priests, guardians of the faith, regarded Jesus as a troublemaker who threatened ancient traditions and undermined respect for the Sabbath. To the Romans who ruled Palestine, Jesus was a political agitator who could ignite Jewish messianic expectations into a revolt against Rome. After Jewish leader turned Jesus over to the Roman authorities, the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, sentenced him to death by crucifixion. At the time of Jesus’ death, Christianity was not a separate religion but a small Hebrew sect with dim prospects for survival. In the years immediately following the crucifixion, the religion of Jesus was confined almost exclusively to Jews, who could more appropriately be called Jewish-Christians. Before Christianity co