Christianity began in the eastern Mediterranean, among Jewish followers of Jesus in the regions of Galilee and Judea , with Jerusalem quickly becoming the early movement’s main center.

The geographic starting point

  • Historians generally say Christianity “began” with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish teacher active in Galilee and Judea in the 1st century under the Roman Empire.
  • After his death, his followers formed a new sect within Judaism in the Roman province of Judea, centered first around Jerusalem.
  • Some scholars highlight Galilee (where Jesus lived and called many disciples) as the original soil of the movement, with Jerusalem as the place where it organized and spread.

From Jerusalem to the wider world

  • The earliest community of Jesus’ followers gathered in Jerusalem; from there, they began preaching to other Jews and then to non‑Jews (Gentiles) around the eastern Mediterranean.
  • Very soon, communities appeared in cities like Antioch in Roman Syria, where the term “Christians” was first used for Jesus’ followers.

Different but compatible answers

You’ll see slightly different emphases in serious discussions of “where Christianity began”:

  1. Galilee – where Jesus lived, taught, and gathered disciples.
  1. Jerusalem (in Judea) – where his followers first formed a lasting community after his death and resurrection beliefs, and where key early events like Pentecost are placed in Christian tradition.
  1. The Roman province of Judea – a broader way historians describe the region where a Jewish sect evolved into what we now call Christianity.

A simple way to put it:

Christianity began as a small Jewish movement around Jesus in Galilee and Judea, and it first took recognizable shape as a distinct community in and around Jerusalem, before spreading across the wider Roman world.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.