ABSTRACT
Christianity collectively represents a variety of beliefs and practices based on a tradition centered around Jesus of Nazareth (“the Christ”), who is believed to have lived c.3 B.C.– A.D. 33. Since the original churches were congregational, each tended to reflect the values or assumptions of the social and cultural community in which it found itself, and these differences continue to exist. By about A.D. 200, the church had come to recognize the texts making up the New Testament as a single canon, although some groups included texts that others labeled as Apocrypha. After some hesitation the Hebrew Scriptures known to Christians as the Old Testament were taken from Judaism as divinely inspired.
