It was a dark night for the disciples of Jesus. The man they believed to be the Messiah had just died the brutal and humiliating death of a criminal on a cross. One question faced them: what would they do now?
If the story of Jesus and his disciples ended with them retiring to quiet lives we might only know of Jesus as just another of the religious prophets of the 1st century whose cults went nowhere. Instead, improbably, miraculously, this band of Apostles helped spread a religious movement that has shaped history and is today followed by around 2.6 billion people. To make sense of how Christianity got here we must look at the extraordinary lives of those who knew Jesus in the flesh.
Where did Jesus die?
Most historians are satisfied that Jesus was a real historical figure that lived, preached and died in the early decades of the 1st century. The Gospels of the New Testament give us the fullest picture of Jesus’ ministry, but these were written decades after his death. There are no contemporaneous documents that attest to his existence, but then this is true of most people who lived during that period.
The earliest texts that mention Jesus are most likely the of the . These letters may have been written as early as the 50s CE. written by St Paul, already mentions “Christ crucified”. Since the idea of the son of God being put to death is described by Paul as a “stumbling block” in
