CHAPTER II Christianity During the First Four CenturiesCHRISTIANITY, at first, was preached by Jews to Jews, as a reformed Judaism. Saint James, and
to a lesser extent Saint Peter, wished it to remain no more than this, and they might have prevailed
but for Saint Paul, who was determined to admit gentiles without demanding circumcision or
submission to the Mosaic Law. The contention between the two factions is related in the Acts of
the Apostles, from a Pauline point of view. The communities of Christians that Saint Paul
established in many places were, no doubt, composed partly of converts from among the Jews,
partly of gentiles seeking a new religion. The certainties of Judaism made it attractive in that age
of dissolving faiths, but circumcision was an obstacle to the conversion of men. The ritual laws in
regard to food were also inconvenient. These two obstacles, even if there had been no others,
would have made it almost impossible for the Hebrew religion to become universal. Christianity,
owing to Saint Paul, retained what was attractive in the doctrines of the Jews, without the features
that gentiles found hardest to assimilate.
The view that the Jews were the Chosen People remained, however, obnoxious to Greek pride.
This view was radically rejected by the Gnostics. They, or at least some of them, held that the
sensible world had been created by an inferior deity named Ialdabaoth, the rebellious son of
Sophia (heavenly wisdom). He, they said, is the Yahweh of the Old Testament, while the serpent,
so far from being wicked, was engaged in warning Eve against his deceptions. For a long time, the
supreme deity allowed Ialdabaoth free play; at last He sent His Son to inhabit temporarily the
body of the man Jesus, and to lib-