Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year B
The first followers of Jesus were Jewish and they did not see themselves as founding a new religion. Judaism has always been a wide tent with many variations on the theme of belief in the one God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The first followers of Jesus called their movement ‘The Way’ but they were still essentially Jewish; it wasn’t until later that they became known as Christians. Most of what we know about the manner in which these people worshiped has to be pieced together from references made in the writings of the New Testament and from other texts that were written in the same period.
