Christian Origins & Early Schisms

hi this is Matt Baker today I'm going to start a new series in which I'll be building a huge family tree of every major christian denomination which is something that many of you have been asking me to do for a long time now as you can imagine the chart is going to be quite large because there are lots of different types of Christians in fact at this point I'm not actually sure how many episodes will be needed to cover everything but however long it takes the plan is that at the end I'll have a complete

chart of Christian denominations that I will be making available as a poster in this first episode I'll be starting at the very beginning and discussing how the religion of Christianity developed out of second temple Judaism I'll also be discussing some of the earliest schisms that occurred within the church and how these resulted in the development of the Oriental Orthodox Churches as well as the Church of the East two branches of Christianity that often get overlooked but first I want to tell you about today's sponsor blinkist imagine you're about to start a big project you know

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free of charge just check out the link in the description or pinned comment okay let's start at the very top of this chart with ancient Israelite religion many centuries before the birth of Christianity this represents the religion of the people who lived in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the Iron Age so basically about 1000 BCE to 600 BCE now there are several competing ideas about what exactly the ancient Israelite religion looked like and how it came to exist so rather than present you with only one view let me give you at least two

the first is the view given in the Bible according to a literal reading God revealed himself first to a man named Abraham but then Abraham's descendants ended up in Egypt as slaves where they became known as the Israelites God then revealed himself to Moses who helped lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan where they conquered the local population there and eventually established a kingdom which was then later split into two so according to this view the Israelites knew about the one true God from the start but then after that they

started disobeying that God and worshiping other gods instead which led to the destruction of Their Kingdoms the Northern Kingdom of Israel falling first to the Assyrians and the southern Kingdom of Judah falling second to the Babylonians so that's one view the other view is based on a more literary reading of the Bible combined with what we have come to learn from secular history and Archeology according to this view the Israelites were probably just a subset of Canaanites who survived the Bronze Age collapse in the Hill Country and who then combined with other nearby people groups

to form a tribal Confederation this confederation then evolved into the Kingdom of Israel which would have originally been polytheistic however within the Kingdom of Israel there were some priests who advocated for henotheism which is the worship of only one God without denying the existence of other gods and the one God they advocated for is the one represented by these four letters as a Jew I'm not supposed to pronounce the name so I will say Hashem instead which simply means the name anyway the Kingdom of Israel was eventually conquered by Assyria however the nearby Kingdom of

Judah and in particular its capital city of Jerusalem managed to hold out therefore the Temple of Hashem at Jerusalem also known as the first temple became the new center of the Israelite religion which became increasingly more monotheistic eventually however Judah was also conquered This Time by the Babylonians the first temple was destroyed and judah's Elites were carried off to Babylon where they experienced the Babylonian exile from approximately 586 to 516 BCE which brings us to second temple Judaism by the this point the Israelites were now known as Jews named after the kingdom of Judah however

when the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians the Persians allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple to Hashem which became known as the second temple so in many ways second temple Judaism was the direct descendant of ancient Israelite religion however it was almost certainly influenced by the interactions that the Jewish people were now having with their new foreign rulers for example the Persians followed a religion known as Zoroastrianism and Zoroastrianism likely had a major impact on second temple Judaism for example the figure of Satan and the idea of there being an

end of the world where good triumphs over evil likely came from Zoroastrianism likewise when the Greeks conquered the Persians and Hellenism began to spread throughout the Middle East many ideas from the Greeks found their way into second temple Judaism as well but the most important thing you need to know about second temple Judaism is that by the Roman period it was not a single highly unified religion but rather a religion that had many different sects operating within it the four main sects were the Pharisees Sadducees ascenes and the zealots let's quickly look at each one

the Sadducees represented the elites of Jewish society and included the priests who ran the temple they were the group that were the most open to Hellenism in contrast the Pharisees were associated more with the everyday people and included the scribes and Scholars who studied the Hebrew scriptures next there were the essenes who were the most mystical of the four groups often living apart from mainstream society and having a keen interest in things like angels and the idea of a spiritual Messiah they were probably the group group that produced The Dead Sea Scrolls finally there were

the zealots who were the opposite of the essenes in that they wanted real world change in other words they wanted to overthrow the Roman government and re-establish political Independence for the Jews now here's the thing out of these four groups only one survived the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE this was the Pharisees you see after Jerusalem was destroyed the Pharisees moved their headquarters to a nearby city called yavne where they then became known as rabbis the religion of Judaism as it exists today traces its roots back to these early rabbis and therefore

directly to the Pharisees in contrast the Sadducees ascenes and zealots all became extinct however very late in the second temple period a fifth Jewish sect had started to form that of the early earliest Christians and this fifth sect survived the destruction as well now it doesn't actually matter whether you believe that Jesus was God or that he was just a man or that he never existed at all what is absolutely certain is that Christians existed by the end of the first century and that these earliest Christians were Jews in fact many of the earliest Christians

were likely former Pharisees such as Paul but it's also likely that there were some zealots as well after all one of the Twelve Disciples was named Simon the Zealot there also seems to have been a heavy essene influence on early Christianity considering that both groups were apocalyptic meaning that they believed in a hidden spirit world that was about to be revealed the only Jewish group that Christianity didn't seem to draw heavily from was the Sadducees however in addition to Jews early Christianity also attracted people from a group known as the God fearers God fearers were

basically Gentiles in other words non-jews who were nonetheless very sympathetic towards Judaism and often like to participate in Jewish Customs without actually converting now I cannot stress enough how important the destruction of the temple in 70 CE was to both the development of Christianity as well as the development of rabbinic Judaism prior to 70 CE Judaism was very much a temple-based religion but once the temple was gone both early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism were forced to adapt and change Christianity adapted by focusing more and more on Jesus as the new spiritual high priest and on

his sacrifice as a replacement for the earlier Temple sacrifices in contrast rabbinic Judaism adapted by emphasizing the study of the Torah and meeting together in synagogues for prayer as the new ways to commune with God however this series is about the various branches of Christianity not Judaism so from this point forward I'm going to shift towards focusing exclusively on how Christianity continued to develop although at some point in the future I might return to rabbinic Judaism and talk about its modern branches as well okay so following the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE

Christianity went in three very different directions first there were the Jewish Christians who kept following all the various Jewish practices in the same manner that the earliest Christians had done so they continued to practice things like circumcision and not eating pork in addition to revering Jesus as an important spiritual leader two groups that are representative of this Branch are the nazarenes and the ebionites over time though Jewish Christian groups like this went extinct however it is thought that they may have had some influence on the development of Islam like the nazarenes Muslims see Jesus as

being an important human prophet and even the Messiah born of a virgin but they do not see Jesus as being Divine so if you want to know what Jewish Christians in the first few centuries see were like well they were a lot like Muslims are today just without the Quran and Muhammad in contrast to the Jewish Christians were the Pauline Christians who primarily consisted of Gentiles again Gentiles are simply non-jews the word Pauline refers to the Apostle Paul who died shortly before the destruction of the temple Paul wrote much of the New Testament and is

credited with introducing Christianity to the Gentiles in his writings he argues that Gentile Christians should not be required to follow Jewish Customs such as circumcision and not eating pork in fact Paul's main message was that Jesus's death and Resurrection introduced a New Covenant that superseded Jewish law we'll come back to Pauline Christianity in a moment but first let's look at the third major branch of early Christianity gnosticism now the first thing I want to make clear is that gnosticism wasn't a single unified sect and in fact the word gnosticism is actually a modern term used

to lump a bunch of different early Christians together such as the valentinians and the satians however these groups did differ from both Pauline Christianity and Jewish Christianity in several key ways so I think from a general point of view putting them together as a third major branch is in fact fair so what the various Gnostic groups shared in common was the idea that the physical world was altogether bad and that the spiritual world was all that really mattered they thus emphasized Jesus's Divinity and downplayed his humanity gnosticism is based on the Greek word gnosis which

means knowledge and basically gnostics believed that they had access to secret knowledge about the spirit world but like Jewish Christianity Gnostic Christianity eventually died out however there is a minor religion that still exists today known as mandeism that may Trace its roots back to the early Gnostic Christians okay so let's go back to Pauline Christianity from the perspective of Christians today Pauline Christianity represents the original true Christianity and the Gnostic and Jewish Christians were simply early Heretics however from a secular point of view these three branches were initially all on a Level Playing Field and

it just so happened that Pauline Christianity emerged as the quote-unquote winner whichever view you take it's clear that things started to coalesce During the period between 180 and 313 CE the Christian church at this time is often referred to as the great church because it was during this period that the church started to become more and more unified emerging as a distinct religion with a large number of adherence the year 313 CE is an important date in Christian history because this was the year that the Roman emperor Constantine the Great together with his co-emperer lycinius

issued the edict of Milan which gave Christianity legal status throughout the Roman Empire thus protecting it from persecution shortly thereafter in the year 325 CE Constantine convened the Council of nicaea which got all the various Christian Bishops together to clarify what the official doctrines of Christianity were and what they produced was a document known as the Nicene Creed virtually every Christian denomination today agrees with the various position statements made in the Nicene Creed and therefore to this day the Nicene Creed serves as a way to distinguish mainstream Christianity from Christian Fringe groups but initially Nicene

Christianity had a competitor Aryan Christianity note that this is Aryan with an i not Aryan with a Y Aryan Christians disagreed with the Nicene Creed and followed the teachings of a man named Arius instead basically the difference is this according to Aryan Christianity Jesus did not always exist instead Jesus was made by God and is thus subordinate to God likewise Aryan Christians believe that the holy spirit is also distinct from God the Father and Jesus the son in contrast Nicene Christians believe that God the father Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit are all co-eternal

meaning that they all have no beginning in other words all three have just always existed Nicene Christians also believe that God is one Essence but three persons so for a while both Aryan Christianity and Nicene Christianity existed side by side with Aryan Christianity being found mostly among the newly converted Germanic tribes such as the Goths vandals and Lombards and Nicene Christianity being found in the Roman Empire but over time arianism faded away so that basically Nicene Christianity became the only Christianity in fact in the year 380 CE Nicene Christianity was made the state religion of

the Roman Empire by Emperor theodosius the first via the Edict of thessalonica a lot of people get these two edicts confused thinking that it was Constantine who made Christianity the state religion but keep in mind that he simply made Christianity legal it was actually theodosius who made it the official religion of the room Empire around the same time as the Edict of thessalonica a second major Council was held the Council of Constantinople it is not shown on this chart though because it didn't lead to any major schisms however I do want to mention it because

it resulted in a few minor revisions to the Nicene Creed the third ecumenical council was the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE and this one did result in the first major split within Nicene Christianity breaking away at this point was the Church of the East which was the National Church of the sassanid empire in Persia so basically these were Christians who lived outside of the Roman Empire there Christians tended toward a theology known as nestorianism named after a man named nestorius according to the Council of Ephesus historians put too much of an emphasis on the

distinction between Jesus's Divinity and his Humanity so the Church of the East went its own way at this point today there is only one major independent denomination that traces its roots all the way back to the Church of the East and that is the Assyrian Church of the East based primarily in Northern Iraq they are currently led by patriarch AWA III and number around 400 000. the fourth ecumenical council was the Council of calcedon in 451 CE and yet again this one led to another major division this time the Oriental Orthodox Churches split away from

the mainstream so basically these churches together with the Assyrian Church of the East are known as non-calcedonian churches whereas everyone else is is known as calcidonian the other term used for the Oriental Orthodox Churches is Mia physite Mia means one and physis means nature this sums up the difference between the Oriental Orthodox churches and the calcedonian churches the Oriental Orthodox Churches believe that Jesus had just one nature which was a mix of divinity and Humanity whereas the calcedonian churches believe that Jesus was one person with two natures now before I explain the Oriental Orthodox Churches

I want to introduce the concept of the pentarkey penta meaning five over time there emerged five cities that were the most important centers of Christianity these were Rome Constantinople Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem each one had a leader known as a patriarch and hence each Center was known as a patriarchy however following the Council of calcedon two of these patriarchies experienced major schisms these were Alexandria which is in Egypt and Antioch which is in Syria the Christians in Alexandria who supported Mia physicism broke away and became known as the Coptic Orthodox church and the Christians in

Antioch who supported Mia physicism broke away and became known as the Syriac Orthodox Church shortly thereafter they were also joined by The Armenian Apostolic Church which also supported Mia physicism so to this day there are actually two competing Patriarchs of both Alexandria and Antioch currently the Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria is Theodore II whereas the Coptic Orthodox patriarch is tawadros II interestingly tawadras also uses the title of Pope so yeah if you thought this guy was the only pope now that Benedict has passed away you were wrong there's still Pope Tauros II as well when

it comes to Antioch the Eastern Orthodox patriarch is currently John the 10th whereas the Syriac Orthodox patriarch is Ignatius Ephraim II up until the 20th century the Oriental Orthodox branch of Christianity consisted of only three autonomous Church urges however in 1959 the Ethiopian Church became independent from the Coptic church and then the Eritrean Church became independent from Ethiopia in 1991. note that both the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches used the word tawajedo in their names which is a gayes word meaning unified I also want to point out that the Ethiopian church is currently the largest of

the Oriental Orthodox churches and has about 40 million members they are currently led by a patriarch named Matthias finally there's the malankara Orthodox Syrian church located in India it was originally under the jurisdiction of the Syriac Orthodox church but in 1912 became independent so that basically takes care of all the non-calcedonian churches in episode 2 all be diving deeper into the calcidonian pentarkey and the great schism that eventually occurred between the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox church I'll also be looking at how each of those churches are organized particularly all the various branches

of the Eastern Orthodox Church then from episode 3 onwards I'll be looking at the various Protestant denominations which is where things really start to go in a bunch of different directions until then let me know what you think of the series so far and which branch of Christianity you are most looking forward to me covering thanks for watching [Music] thank you [Music]