Pagan Roots
Early Christianity developed in an era of the Roman Empire during which many religions were practiced. These included the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire period, the Roman imperial cult and various mystery religions as well as philosophic monotheistic religions such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and to a lesser extent the "barbarian" tribal religions practiced on the fringes of the Empire.
Even before the Council of Jerusalem the Christian apostles accepted both Jewish and pagan converts (Cornelius the Centurion is traditionally considered the first gentile convert) and there was a precarious balance between the Judaizers, insisting on the obedience to the Torah Laws by all Christians, and Pauline Christianity.
With the spread of Christianity in the Early Middle Ages, it has been argued that Christianity was influenced by the rituals of Germanic paganism, Celtic paganism, Slavic paganism and Folk religion in a number of ways.
Read more about this topic: Origins Of Christianity
Famous quotes containing the words pagan and/or roots:
“So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Sprung from the West,
He drank the valorous youth of a new world.
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind,
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul.
His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts
Were roots that firmly gript the granite truth.”
—Edwin Markham (1852–1940)