Church History: Jewish Roots and Early Christian Practice

Church history is part of our family story. It includes remarkable faith, courageous mission, worship, scholarship, sacrifice, real disagreement, cultural change, painful prejudice, and generations of believers trying to follow Jesus in very different worlds.

Kingdom Report tells that story with gratitude and clarity. This page keeps several important historical records close at hand so you can see the people, dates, laws, sermons, councils, and source texts behind the larger story for yourself.

It is a companion to Jesus, Israel, and the Jewish Roots of the Church . That page tells the story as ministry teaching; this page gives you the records that help document it.

The New Testament begins inside Israel’s story

Jesus is Jewish, His first disciples are Jewish, and Acts begins in Jerusalem. Acts 10 records Peter being sent to Cornelius. Acts 15 records the Jerusalem council receiving Gentile believers into the growing family of Jesus. Romans 11 gives Paul’s enduring image of Gentile believers grafted into an already-cultivated olive tree whose root carries them.

For the biblical starting point, read Acts 2–3, Acts 10, Acts 15, Acts 21, Romans 9–11, and Ephesians 2.

AD 70: Jerusalem and the Second Temple are destroyed

The Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in AD 70 changed Jewish life profoundly and also affected the Jerusalem-centered Jesus movement. Sacrificial worship ceased. Jewish communities adapted through Torah, prayer, synagogue life, and developing rabbinic leadership, while Christian communities continued spreading throughout the Roman world.

This matters because Jerusalem had been the center of the earliest church as well as the center of Jewish national and religious life. Once the city and Temple were destroyed, both Jewish and Christian communities had to live in a very different world.

AD 132–135: the Bar Kokhba revolt brings another devastating change

The Bar Kokhba revolt brought another major war in Judea. Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, the revolt was crushed, and Jewish access to the city was severely restricted.

Our surviving evidence is incomplete and historians still discuss details of the sequence, but the broad result is clear: AD 132–135 brought enormous loss, displacement, and another profound change to Jewish life in Judea. It also further changed the environment in which Jewish followers of Jesus and increasingly Gentile Christian churches were living.

Mid-second century: Justin describes Christians gathering on Sunday

Around the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr describes Christians gathering on the day called Sunday. He speaks of readings from the apostles and prophets, teaching, prayer, Eucharist, voluntary giving, and care for people in need.

“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place.”

Read Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 67 .

This gives us clear evidence that Christian Sunday gatherings were already established in at least some churches long before Constantine became emperor.

Second century: Christians disagree about Pascha and still share fellowship

Eusebius preserves correspondence about an early disagreement over Pascha. Churches in Asia Minor associated with Polycrates kept the fourteenth day of the biblical lunar month, while other churches centered the celebration on Sunday.

Eusebius also preserves Irenaeus’ account of Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicetus of Rome disagreeing over the practice while remaining in fellowship. Later, when Victor of Rome tried to cut the Asian churches off over the date, Irenaeus urged peace.

“They immediately made peace with one another.”

Read Eusebius, Church History, Book V, chapters 23–24 .

That record shows the early church living with real differences in inherited practice at a time when fellowship could continue even though Paschal calendars differed.

AD 321: Constantine gives Sunday legal status in Roman public life

In AD 321, Emperor Constantine issued civil legislation directing judges, city residents, and workshops to rest on the “venerable day of the Sun,” while allowing agricultural work when necessary.

By that time Christians had already been gathering on Sunday for generations. What changes in AD 321 is the public setting: Sunday now receives legal support as a day when large parts of Roman civic and commercial life are expected to stop.

A translation with the Latin text is preserved in Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church at CCEL . Eusebius also describes Constantine’s later encouragement of Lord’s Day observance in Life of Constantine .

The law is issued in AD 321; its effect then spreads through courts, cities, workshops, churches, households, and later laws as Roman society adapts to the new rule.

AD 325: Nicaea presses the churches toward one Paschal date

The Council of Nicaea addresses the already-existing disagreement over when Christians should celebrate Pascha. After the council, Constantine writes to the churches urging one common observance.

His letter also uses strongly anti-Jewish language and urges Christian Pascha to be calculated apart from contemporary Jewish practice. One sentence makes the tone unmistakable:

“Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.”

Read Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Book III, chapters 17–20 .

This marks a significant change from the earlier Polycarp-Anicetus story. A disagreement that had once been carried through personal fellowship is now being addressed by a council in an empire where Christian leaders and imperial authority can influence churches across a much larger territory.

Fourth century: Laodicea tells Christians to move away from Jewish Sabbath rest

The Council of Laodicea, generally dated to the fourth century, includes Canon 29, which gives a direct instruction about Sabbath and Sunday:

“Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath.”

The canon continues by directing Christians to work on that day and honor the Lord’s Day. Read Council of Laodicea, Canon 29 .

This gives us a clear example of church leadership using an official rule to distinguish Christian weekly practice from Jewish Sabbath observance. That kind of rule helped make Sunday rest more normal in Christian culture while making Jewish-style Sabbath practice less welcome in many church settings.

AD 387–388: Chrysostom’s sermons show how closely Jews and Christians still lived

In Antioch, John Chrysostom preached a series of sermons because Christians were attending Jewish festivals, observing Jewish fasts, and visiting synagogues. His language toward Jews is frequently harsh and painful to read.

The sermons also preserve an important picture of ordinary city life. Christian attraction to Jewish worship and sacred times remained strong enough in late-fourth-century Antioch to concern one of the city’s leading preachers. Jews and Christians were still living close enough for religious practices, relationships, and shared city life to overlap.

Read the contextual introduction and texts at the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations or Homily 1 .

Fifth century: many churches are still assembling on the Sabbath

Around the fifth century, church historian Socrates Scholasticus records widespread Sabbath assemblies while noting different customs at Rome and Alexandria:

“Almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the sabbath of every week.”

Read Socrates Scholasticus, Church History, Book V, chapter 22 .

His testimony matters because it shows that Saturday Christian assemblies were still part of church life even after Sunday worship had become widespread and some church canons were discouraging Jewish-style Sabbath rest.

What these records show when we place them in order

The church’s relationship with its Jewish roots changed through a long sequence of concrete events. Roman wars disrupted Jerusalem and Judea. Gentile churches grew rapidly. Christian communities developed regional customs. Bishops argued about Pascha. Constantine gave Sunday legal status in Roman public life. Nicaea pushed toward one Paschal practice. Laodicea explicitly discouraged Jewish Sabbath rest. Chrysostom preached harshly against Christians participating in Jewish worship, while Socrates still records many Saturday Christian assemblies later on.

Rules and councils shaped Christian practice, and everyday relationships did too. Migration, friendship, family, local custom, persecution, preaching, and ordinary people continuing to live alongside one another all helped shape what happened over the centuries.

Why Kingdom Report studies this history

We study these records because they help us understand how the Christian world became different from the Jewish world in which Jesus and the apostles lived. That matters whenever we read Sabbath passages, the biblical feasts, Romans 11, Acts, or the many places where the New Testament assumes Jewish customs and calendar knowledge that modern Christians may no longer share.

Earlier Christians also give us extraordinary examples of courage, worship, mission, scholarship, sacrifice, generosity, and devotion to Jesus. At the same time, some Christian preaching and policy wounded Jewish people and made the Jewish setting of our own Scriptures feel foreign to later generations.

Knowing the whole story helps us love the church as our family, honor Israel and the Jewish people, read the Bible with more of its original world in view, and approach Shabbat and the appointed times with gratitude, humility, and better historical understanding.

Continue with Jesus, Israel, and the Jewish Roots of the Church , The Biblical Calendar in Scripture , or Shabbat / Sabbath .