CNN Presents: After Jesus – The First Christians
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Quotes from the Documentary

On How a Movement Becomes a Faith
With Global Followers:

"It's sometimes suggested that a group of fishermen from the Galilee would be incapable of establishing a worldwide religion, but that's simply our own modern skepticism. After all, Abraham, a single man from Ur of the Chaldees, managed to do so, and Muhammad, a single individual, managed to do so. The human spirit is remarkable, if people simply put their mind to accomplishing what they feel God calls them to do."

- Amy-Jill Levine, Ph.D., E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University

"I think most people imagine that after Jesus died, the Church just emerged suddenly and that you had Christians confessing the Nicene Creed, reading the canon of the 27 books of the New Testament, and that it was all in place right after Jesus' death. And, in fact, it took centuries for these things to fall into place."

-Bart Ehrman, Ph.D.,  James A. Gray Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"There's some evidence to suggest that the term "Christian" itself was actually used by the opponents of the followers of Jesus as a term of derogation, that, in fact, these are Christians, these are little Christs. ‘Who was Christ? He was the one who was crucified. That's what these people deserve, as well.’ "

-Bart Ehrman, Ph.D., James A. Gray Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

On The Birth of Jesus:

"The simplest things, like the date when Jesus was born, was totally fluid through the second and into the third century. It only appears for the first time on a Christian calendar in the fourth century as December 25. So you get the feeling that the entire coalescing of the religion of Christianity is taking place over
100 – 200 years after Jesus is no longer walking the face of the earth."

- Richard Freund, Ph.D., an ordained rabbi and director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford

On The Organization of The Early Church:

"When we now read these gospels as straightforward narratives, we completely miss their point. We are trying to make them into a diary. They're not a diary. We're trying to make them into a biography. They're not a biography. They are what, in our terms, should be called an apocalypse, a disclosure of a truth, a supposed truth, which the gospel writers themselves believe was beyond all normal human apprehension."

- The Rev. Robin Griffith-Jones, M.A., an Anglican cleric and master of the Temple Church in London

"The texts of the Nag Hammadi library are making it very clear that there were a lot of gospels that were composed in the early church. Four were finally selected for the New Testament canon, but beyond that, there were plenty of other gospels."

-Marvin Meyer, Ph.D., is Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University and director of the Chapman University Albert Schweitzer Institute

"At a time of instability in the Roman Empire and emerging danger in the Roman Empire, an overextended empire, incredulity clearly in the traditional gods of the Roman Empire, and Christianity offering something that appeared to be utterly and beautifully coherent about everything from the smallest detail of your daily life and the community around you, through to eternity. This is very compelling."

- The Rev. Robin Griffith-Jones, M.A., an Anglican cleric and master of the Temple Church in London

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Production staff traveled to North America, Europe, Asia and Africa for After Jesus, including the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Israel, Syria, Turkey
and Egypt.

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