The Good Shepherd: The Early Christian Movement

The Good Shepherd in the Catacombs of St. Pietro and Marcellius is a fresco found in Rome during the fourth century. It contains shapes of crosses with Christ in the center and the good shepherd. It uses orans that are figures without stretched hands representing a prayer towards Heaven.

Christianity is a vast umbrella; a faith that shelters many souls. Believers of the Christian faith, if adhering to the scripture of the bible are governed to practice acts of empathy, compassion, kindness, selflessness, etc..Christians are supposed to reject judgment on one another, even though that is a trying task because mankind does it without effort. However, Christians believe that God created all in his image and we are all children of him. With that premise, it would be blasphemous to use such a faith to ones advantage. Political leaders tend to play on peoples emotions by using the power that Christianity holds against them by strong arming them to believe that if they do not follow them they are bad and in a sense rebelling against

Martin Luther, born into the Catholic Church in 1483, is considered to be the father of Protestantism. 1 Luther was a devout man who dedicated himself to the study of the bible; in addition to being a Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Wittenberg, he was also a priest and a monk. He spent a lot of his time focusing on what one could do to earn eternal salvation as it was written about in the Bible. This was especially troubling to him given the actions of his colleagues at the University of Wittenberg and his fellow priests and monks. He felt the actions of many of those in the Church that he loved were both immoral and corrupt, and especially in the midst of his own struggles with the idea of salvation, these actions troubled him deeply. 2

In the first three centuries of the early Christian church. The church was being martyred and treated badly by the Roman population. There were many reasons that the Romans persecuted Christians. Although many people thought the reason was because the Christians refused to worship the Roman gods or take part in the sacrifices. But, that was only part the reason that the Romans actually persecuted Christians. The Romans just hated the Christians in general because of their teachings of the Lord.

The Roman Christian Art also known as byzantine Art marks the beginning of religious art and the image of Jesus. Which emerged after Christianity become the dominate religion in Rome around the 2nd century. One the oldest images of Christ comes from the mid-3rd century, it is young Jesus as the Good Shepherd from the Catacombs of San Callisto. In this fresco Jesus is portrayed as a young shepherd holding a sheep on his shoulders. A shepherd guides and direct his sheep. This has a symbolic meaning, in the bible (John 10:1-21; Luke 15:1-7 and 11-32). Jesus represented as the good Shepard and we are his sheep. It also states that as the shepherd he will look for the lost sheep (sinners) and rejoice when it is found. The painting explains how Jesus will help protect and guide you in the right direction. This was a way of telling passages of the bible to the people who were illiterate.

Since its beginnings, Christianity has been guided by the concepts of humbleness and good morals. However, there exists evidence that in the Middle Ages, Church officials in western Europe used Christianity as a cover for corrupt acts, such as war and torture, as well as financial extortion and bribery. The medieval Roman Catholic church began with the fall of Rome in 476 CE. With Roman emperor Constantine’s moving of Rome’s capital to the ancient city Byzantium in eastern Europe, which he renamed to Constantinople, Rome’s ability to enforce its rule in the west declined greatly, allowing Germanic invaders to successfully take rule.

Early Christianity had a lot to do with the transformation of Rome and posed a challenge to the Roman Empire. Christians were known as the enemy of Rome, primarily because they refused to worship the emperors as the embodiment of Rome’s Gods meaning they were denying his divinity and authority. The one whom the Christians worshiped had been declared a criminal, was tried and put to death the roman state.

Christianity is one of the oldest religions. It began in Roman Palestine when Judaism was the political religion of the Roman State. The first major event of Christianity was the birth of it all, the birth of Jesus. During Jesus’s time, Judaism was characterize by strict monotheism. So, when a man comes forth claiming He is the God and essentially the son of God, the Christian movement first began. He was inevitably crucified due to treasons of claiming He was God. However, He had twelve disciples that followed Him. After Jesus’s death, they scattered about and taught the word of God. This lead to the growth of Jesus followers, who were soon called Christians.

Christianity is a major religion. It is one of the largest religions in the world. There is more than two billion believers in Christianity. The teaching of this religion is based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The spread of Christianity has lead to a lot of changes throughout the history. The core principles of this religion have become the major pillars of human life in most parts of the world. Christians use the Bible as the main guide of their teachings.

The Catholic Church has a rich history and has been around for many centuries now. When people talk about its early history, people mostly think about the persecution by the Roman Empire and how it affected the Christians back in the early century. Persecution by all means is when a group of people is being attacked because of who they are and what they believed in. Due to the brutal persecution of the Romans, all Christians were forced to live and worship in private. Most Christians claim that they were persecuted just because they were Christians and were also used as scapegoats. However, for the Romans, they see it as a threat to their own law and religion. There are many ways of getting persecuted by the Romans in the early century. For

In contrast to the noble figure of Augustus, the piece titled “The Good Shepard” (300-350 AD. Marble. Height: 39 inches) which resides as a wall painting in the Catacomb of Calixtus, is an early symbolic representation of Christ as a Shepard (Mueso, Rome Web 2014). Symbolic images like these were common for the period of Early Christian art. It compares nicley to the Greco-Roman sculpture ( 3rd Century b.c.e) piece of the same name. A similar depiction can also be found at Dura Europas(Ceiling piece, fresco painting-seen in image below), in an ancient Christian meeting house (Klein Fred S. pg 210). Christ the Good Shepherd of the Twenty-third Psalm was often depicted as a beardless youth derived from the pagan god Apollo and with other ties to many Mediterranean mythologies. It is significant to note that the style of this painting with its loose impressionistic style and suggestion of a landscape echoes a category of ancient painting called sacral-idyllic landscapes.

Overall it took some time for Christianity to become a part of the ancient world not everyone believed in Christianity. The messages Jesus preached influenced people to love each other. The Christian alternative to roman thought showed citizens how their lives were of such value to god which in a way is a gift to be appreciated no matter what. The commitment of early Christian's provided information on how a Jewish disfavor became fond of Christianity just by the presence of Jesus, then traveled through many cities to expand society's knowledge of Christianity as well as the importance. These three causes shaped Christianity into a superior religion. Knowing what we comprehend about Christianity I hope that every school can continue to teach

‘The early Christian church made no distinction between sin and suffering, and repentance and healing.” (p. 34) The Scripture equates sickness with unclean spirits and demonic activity. Early Christians understood the relationship between sin and sickness and acted accordingly (see James 5:14,15). Jesus taught the disciples the relationship between sin and sickness. In the early church repentance and healing went hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, in today’s church the first call of a sick Christian is to their doctor or hospital. We have turned to the secular world for a healing, which they cannot offer. Satan’s footprint is everywhere in the medical field. I am reminded of a Scripture, which says that man is always searching for knowledge but never

The Old Testament is the first half of the Bible, and is full of foreshadowing and the story of God's people. This is where we first see Salvation History, which began in the beginning with the creation story, went on through Abraham with his covenant with God, and continued through Moses and his exodus of Egypt. Salvation History is the events of God that are meant to show us how to act and our instruction to have eternal life in heaven with God.

Throughout history, Christianity always had a reputation, or a “name” following it. Different perspectives approached the reputation that was attached to Christianity in different manners. Justin Martyr and Porphyry had objectives when defining whether this “name” really defined Christianity and the past. They wondered whether the past really represented Christianity. Additionally they honed in on the question of was the past that people represented as Christianity really the roots of Christianity? All around Porphyry and Justin was perceptions of what Christianity rooted from and stood for.