The term epískopos was not from the earliest times clearly distinguished from the term presbýteros (" elder ", " senior ", nowadays used to signify a priest ), but the term was already clearly used in the sense of the order or office of bishop, distinct from that of priest in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch ( died c. 108 ), and sources from the middle of the 2nd century undoubtedly set forth that all the chief centres of Christianity recognized and had the office of bishop, using a form of organization that remained universal until the Protestant Reformation.

In the 16th and the 17th centuries, the earliest European arrivals in China, the Christian Jesuits, considered Confucianism to be an ethical system, not a religion, and one that was compatible with Christianity.

The earliest recorded use of the terms Christianity ( Greek ) and Catholic ( Greek ), dates to this period, the 2nd century, attributed to Ignatius of Antioch c. 107.

This is consistent with the celebration of Easter having entered Christianity during its earliest, Jewish period, but does not leave the question free of doubt.

There has been discussion by academics whether the " word square " is actually a Christian artefact, but if it is, it is one of the earliest examples of early Christianity in Britain.

The earliest confirmed written evidence for Christianity in Britain is a statement by Tertullian, c. 200 AD, in which he described " all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ ".

This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.

The Muratorian fragment, dated at between 170 and as late as the end of the 4th century ( according to the Anchor Bible Dictionary ), may be the earliest known New Testament canon attributed to mainstream Christianity.

" From its earliest beginnings, Christianity spread much more quickly in major urban areas ( like Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, Corinth, Rome ) than in the countryside ( in fact, the early church was almost entirely urban ), and soon the word for " country dweller " became synonymous with someone who was " not a Christian ," giving rise to the modern meaning of " pagan.

Similarly within the religious schema of Christianity and the cockfight within a religious, spiritual and sacred context, there are numerous representations of the rooster or the cock and the cockfight as a religious vessel found in the Catacombs from the earliest period as well as similar illustrations of cocks in fighting stance taken from the Vivian Bible.

The earliest references to Nubia's successor kingdoms are contained in accounts by Greek and Egyptian Coptic authors of the conversion of Nubian kings to Christianity in the 6th century AD.

The passage is one of the earliest non-Christian references to the origin of Christianity, the execution of Christ described in the Canonical gospels, and the presence and persecution of Christians in 1st-century Rome.

* March 22 – Easter Day in Western Christianity falls on its earliest possible date.

Not only do they provide some of the earliest evidence for Christianity in Britain, they are almost unique – the closest parallels come from a house-church in Dura Europus, Syria.

In none of these earliest references to Christianity ’ s arrival in Britain is Joseph of Arimathea mentioned.

In his authoritative ' Godliness and Good Learning ' ( Cassell 1961 ), D. H. Newsome points out that muscular Christianity developed after Arnold's time at Rugby and that " although ' Tom Brown's School Days ' is one of the earliest examples of the delight in athleticism, the ideal there expressed is not that of Arnold but of Thomas Hughes author " ( page 80 ).

A particularly notable find in the Fosse Way burials was a Chi-Rho amulet, at the time thought to be from the 5th century, and so held to be among the earliest definite evidence of Christianity in England.

When Christianity was legalized under Constantine the Great and Licinius, formal church buildings were built in great numbers, normally with free-standing altars in the middle of the sanctuary, which in all the earliest churches built in Rome was at the west end of the church.

The introduction of Christianity was undoubtedly very early, as martyrs of Ausa are recorded in the time of Emperor Decius, and in the earliest records of the Tarraconensian sees the Bishop of Vic is one of the very first mentioned.

The earliest surviving examples seem to come from the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which had been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries ; it remains unclear whether the form first developed in Ireland or Britain.

First, the earliest surviving independent images of the Virgin Mary are found in Rome, the center of Christianity in the medieval West.

As one of the earliest accounts of the teachings of Jesus, the Gospel of Thomas is regarded by some scholars as one of the most important texts in understanding early Christianity outside the New Testament.

This is one of the earliest surviving pagan perceptions of Christianity.

Liko is the earliest surviving form of religious belief for the Melanau, predating the arrival of Islam and Christianity to Sarawak.

" The change of view is illustrated clearly in the essay, published in the Tübinger Zeitschrift for 1831, on the Christ-party in the Corinthian Church, Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde, der Gegensatz des paulinischen und petrinischen Christentums in der ältesten Kirche, der Apostel Petrus in Rom, the trend of which is suggested by the title ( in English, ' The Christ Party in the Corinthian Community, the Opposition of Pauline and Petrine Christianity in the earliest Church, the apostle Peter in Rome ').

A man in a novel who is defeated in his childhood and condemned by unconscious forces within him to tiredly repeat his earliest failure in love, only makes us a little weary of man ; ;

That first entry there is the Vermont Flumenophobe, the earliest and one of the most successful of my eighty-three varieties -- great big scapulars and hardly any primaries at all.

Fing, a lean, chiseled, impeccable gentleman of the old school who was once mistaken on the street for Sir Cedric Hardwicke, is responsible for the rediscovery of Verdi's earliest, most raucous opera, Nabisco, a sumptuous bout-de-souffle with a haunting leitmotiv that struck me as being highly reminiscent of the Mudugno version of `` Volare ''.

`` Neutral Tones '' is an excellent example of Hardy's mature style, drawn from his earliest productive period ; ;

The earliest certain ancestor of " A " is aleph ( also called ' aleph ), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet ( which, by consisting entirely of consonants, is an abjad rather than a true alphabet ).

With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in mathematical logic.

In her earliest depictions she is accompanied by the " Mister of the animals ", a male god of hunting who had the bow as his attribute.

The earliest Greek word for a statue is " delight " ( άγαλμα: agalma ), and the sculptors tried to create forms which would inspire such guiding vision.

The oldest known caecilian is Eocaecilia micropodia, also from Arizona, while the earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China.

The earliest known alphabet in the wider sense is the Wadi el-Hol script, believed to be an abjad, which through its successor Phoenician is the ancestor of modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin ( via the Old Italic alphabet ), Cyrillic ( via the Greek alphabet ) and Hebrew ( via Aramaic ).

It is unknown whether the earliest alphabets had a defined sequence.

The earliest attested name is the Hittite Assuwa a region in central-western Anatolia which seems to be connected with the Mycenean Greek epithet a-si-wi-ja in Linear B inscriptions found at Pylos.

The earliest Mongolic language of which we have written evidence is known as Middle Mongol.

The earliest Para-Mongolic text is the Memorial for Yelu Yanning, written in the Khitan Large Script and dated to 986 AD.

Eastern Anatolia, along side Mesopotamia and the Levant, is also a heart region for the Neolithic revolution, one of the earliest areas in which humans domesticated plants and animals.

The afterlife played an important role in Ancient Egyptian religion, and its belief system is one of the earliest known.

The earliest recorded use of this term in English is in Thomas Hacket's 1568 translation of André Thévet's book on France Antarctique ; Thévet himself had referred to the natives as Ameriques.

This is the earliest use of Germania.

Although Dio is the earliest writer to mention them, Ammianus Marcellinus used the name to refer to Germans on the Limes Germanicus in the time of Trajan's governorship of the province shortly after it was formed, circa 98 / 99.

His chief work is a Historia Francorum, or Libri v de Gestis Francorum, which deals with the history of the Franks from the earliest times to 653, and was continued by other writers until the middle of the twelfth century.

The earliest documented event in Alaric's reign concerned providing refuge to Syagrius, the former ruler of the Domain of Soissons ( in what is now north western France ) who had been defeated by Clovis I King of the Franks.

The earliest attested form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek feminine noun a-re-ka-sa-da-ra ( transliterated as Alexandra ), written in Linear B syllabic script.