| Chapter 1: | The Spread of Christianity |
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indicates that Paul's main focus of activity was in areas of Graeco-Roman population, where Jewish communities were less prominent than in the East. Paul's workers, whose names are recorded in Acts, are Jews and include women.18 An exception was Titus, a Greek, whom Paul did not compel to be circumcised.19
By the end of the first century of the Common Era, the Christian movement had already attained a wide geographical spread throughout the Roman Empire. Numbers, however, do not seem to have been large. Acts, for example, indicates that gentile converts were quite few. The church at Troas, for example, could fit into one upper room.20 Again, according to Acts, initially there appear to have been large numbers of Jews converted to Christianity, but this changed with the activities of Paul among the non-Jews.21
Paul's first missionary journey was to the east, beginning in Antioch in Syria, passing to Seleucia, Cyprus, Salamis, Paphos, Perga in Pamphylia, Antioch in Pisidia, and Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe.22 During this time, while his visits were welcomed by non-Jews, considerable tension was stirred up in various synagogues along the way.
In some communities, Christianity had preceded the Pauline mission.23 By the time of the first Epistle of Peter in the late first century, there were Christian communities in Asia, Galatia, Bithynia, Pontus, and Cappadocia.24 The Book of Revelation speaks of the seven churches of Asia—Smyrna, Magnesia, Tralles, Laodicea, Philadelphia, Sardis, Thyatira, and Pergamum.25 The letters of Ignatius (d. 107) were addressed to Christians in Smyrna, Magnesia, and Tralles, as well as Ephesus, Rome, and Philadelphia.26 All these cities had Jewish populations.27
On his second and third journeys, Paul had travelled west to the region of Macedonia and Thrace, a region inhabited by non-Jews.28 Flusser affirms that this change in direction from the east, where the Jewish population was most widespread, to the West, which was settled by non-Jews, was pivotal to the success of the Christian mission, and resulted in Christianity developing into a European religion. He argues that liberalism, an intrinsic element of western culture, added to Christianity's movement away from ritual and ceremonial prescriptions concerning