ABSTRACT
Pre-Christian Palestine was a stage on which several religious movements played out their complex and interwoven parts. There is a tendency to think of established religious institutions solely in terms of their structural and organizational qualities. This is particularly true when the institution has enjoyed a long history and has long operated at a relatively sophisticated level of social organization as has Christianity. This chapter proposes that Christianity arose as a cult within the context of Palestinian religious movements. Early Christianity is probably best categorized as a “cult movement.” As Christianity grew from a small Jewish cult into a dominant religious movement, it incorporated doctrines and practices from the existing religious world, particularly of the ancient Middle East, and synthesized these into a new perspective. Cult movements are essentially elaborate forms of expression of cult phenomena that reflect relatively high degrees of religious organization and development.
