ABSTRACT
During its first four centuries, from 30 to 430 ce, Christianity was closely connected with the Mediterranean region, which also constituted the original heartland of the Roman Empire. There were Christians developing notable traditions somewhat away from the Mediterranean and outside the Roman empire, in places like Armenia and Ethiopia, or even further afield, in India, but they were a small minority of the total Christian population. In any event, even they had been shaped by the missionaries from the Mediterranean countries who had evangelised them. 'The Mediterranean is a great gulf of the Atlantic cutting back into the land mass of the Eastern Hemisphere'. The Greeks and Romans broadly divided the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea into three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. Herodotus scoffed at map-makers who drew the earth in perfectly circular fashion, with Oceanus running round the circumference, and with Europe and Asia of roughly equal size.
