ablishes that the mission of the Church extends to both Jews (circumcised) and Gentiles (uncircumcised), 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 Jews on the other.
The outreach to Jews and Gentiles alike reflects the injunction to teach all nations. Accordingly four distinct early-Christian groups in ethno-religious-geographical terms have been identified:
The Twelve of Galilee, under Peter, went to Galilee and beyond, to the village culture existing there. The Brethren, under James, addressed themselves to "Hebrews" [who] . . . tended to isolate themselves from the prevailing Greek society. The Hellenists, led by Stephen and Philip, directed their mission to "Hellenists"--Jews who . . . related themselves to Hellenistic culture. The [] Apostles, under Barnabas and Paul, worked with synagogues in what is now Turkey and Greece (Eberts, 1997, pp. 305-6).
According to Eberts, these groups "cooperated with each other, and they fought each other." That is, different strands of thought emerged in different cultures of the time.
By Acts 28:17ff, Paul, who has preached far and wide in the Levant, has been arrested by Jewish authorities in Caesarea and is being extradited to Rome. By that time, too, Pauline Christianity, because of Paul's letters to communities throughout the Empire, had an identity distinct from Jewish and Hellenistic tradition. Campbell refers to him as Christianity's "first organization man," who makes a point of uniting Jew, Greek, slave, and free as "all one in Christ Jesus" (1978, p. 379).
There were to be growing pains: persecutions, rival Christian sects accusing one another of heresy, and apostolic and patristic commentary that variously interpreted the meaning of Jesus' nature as Son of God and/or Son of Man--and, eventually, Reformation. Chadwick (1993, p. 133) cites the "misfortun...