ocial cleavages between Roman citizens, at the top of the demographic heap, and those who either identified themselves or were identified as Greeks, Jews, Germans, Persians, barbarians, and so on. Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified, was in the Roman province of Judea, and the occupation was not always a peaceful one.
Thus it should come as no surprise that as a sociological phenomenon Christianity should have spread in the context of a variety of social norms. "Christianity has never been a monolithic movement," says one commentator (Eberts 305). That is reflected in how Acts explains that the apostles themselves divided their mission. In the first part of Acts 11, Peter declares that the mission of the Church extends to both Jews and Gentiles, more specifically to those of Judea (Acts 11.1) and to the Grecians (Acts 11.20), i.e., pagan non-Jews on one hand and Hellenized/Romanized Jews on the other. Of special importance was that representatives of the Jerusalem church under Barnabas and of the church in Tarsus under Saul/Paul convened for more than a year in Antioch, teaching new articles of faith (Acts 11.29). Out of Africa that assembly emerged to evangelize the world, in local-culture-savvy ways:
The Twelve of Galilee, under Peter, went to Galilee and beyond, to the village culture existing there. The Brethren, under James, addressed . . . "Hebrews"--Jews who spoke Aramaic . . . used Hebrew in their synagogues, and tended to isolate themselves from the prevailing Greek society. The Hellenists, led by Stephen and Philip, directed their mission to "Hellenists"--Jews who spoke Greek . . . in the synagogue, and related themselves to Hellenistic culture. The last, the Apostles, under Barnabas and Paul, worked with synagogues in what is now Turkey and Greece, ministering especially to "godfearers"--Greek men and women attracted to Judaism but who were not proselytes (Eberts 305-6).
Paul's evangelical activity among the Jews an...