When Jesus of Nazareth was put to death, his followers briefly despaired. But within days, they were convinced that he had risen from the dead, and that they had a duty to spread his teachings to the world.

Christianity, the world’s largest religion, started in Palestine, then an obscure corner from the Roman Empire, about 2000 many years ago. Its founder, Jesus, was a Jew, a carpenter’s son. He lived for about 33 many years, and throughout the last three he started to teach a new faith to the Jews. He said that the Kingdom of God was coming shortly, that he himself was God’s son, and that people who followed him would have eternal life.

Jesus’ followers throughout his lifetime had been basic individuals, yet they and their successors managed to spread his message throughout the Roman Empire. Even though the early Christian missionaries tried to convert the Jewish communities they came across on their travels, they had been much more successful with the gentiles (non-Jews). The gap between the faiths widened still further after Christians refused to support the Jewish uprising against Roman rule in 66 AD.

By 325 AD there were strong Christian centres as far away as Africa, Spain and northern France, although by 600, the whole of the former Roman Empire was largely Christian, and there were Christian outposts in Ethiopia and India. Tradition holds that one of Jesus’ original 12 disciples, Thomas, had taken the faith to India himself. The travels of the greatest missionary of all, Paul, are well documented.

This one-time persecutor of the Christians had a vision, converted to the new faith, and finally, overcoming the understandable dislike of the other disciples, spent the rest of his life travelling and spreading the word of Jesus. He was eventually imprisoned by the Romans in 62 AD and put to death a couple of many years later.