The people who started the movement around Jesus must have suffered a traumatic setback with his death. They were expecting the coming of the kingdom of God on earth, but it did not arrive immediately as they had expected. Something changed their outlook on who Jesus was and what he would mean for the future of the movement. This is known as a rebirth. The followers of Jesus were convinced that he had been raised from the dead and had been taken away into heaven as an acquittal of his messianic identity.
             The earliest form of the movement was thoroughly a sect within Judaism. The earliest forms of the Jesus movement were small, sectarian groups. The people held on tightly to their beliefs and expectations while at the same time continued in their Jewish tradition. One of the things they had to do was distance themselves from their authoritative cultural surroundings. A sect always arose within a community with whom it shared a basic set of beliefs and yet, it needed to find some way to differentiate itself. Sectarian groups were always in tension with their environment. That tension was manifested in a variety of ways. There were controversies over belief and practice and different ideas of pureness and holiness. Another demonstration of the tension is the tendency to spread the message out, to travel, and convince others that the truth is real.
             Christianity did not start out as a unified movement. There were no fixed thoughts of what Christian beliefs should be, what Christian rituals should be, or what they should think about Jesus or what they should tell about Jesus. Over a long period of time Constantine, Julian, and Arius had disputes over which religion should dominate their region. Christianity adopted a lot of concepts from other religions, which enriched the early Christian movement tremendously. By the time of the conversion Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. That was not a sim...