Christianity in the ante-Nicene period was the period in Christian history following the Apostolic Age up to the First Council of Nicaea. Although the use of the term Christian is attested in the Acts
Funerary stele of Licinia Amias on marble, in the National Roman Museum. One of the earliest Christian inscriptions found, it comes from the early 3rd-century Vatican necropolis area in Rome. Upper tier: dedication to the Dis Manibus and Christian motto in Greek letters ΙΧΘΥϹ ΖΩΝΤΩΝ (Ikhthus zōntōn, "fish of the living", a predecessor of the Ichthys symbol); middle tier: depiction of fish and an anchor; lower tier: Latin inscription of the identity of the deceased
Fresco showing a woman wearing a headcovering praying in the gesture of orans (3rd century)
Christ Jesus, the Good Shepherd, third century.
Ignatius of Antioch, one of the Apostolic Fathers and the third Bishop of Antioch, was considered a student of John the Apostle. En route to his martyrdom in Rome (c. 108), Ignatius wrote a series of preserved letters which are examples of late-1st to early-second-century Christian theology.
Historiography of early Christianity is the study of historical writings about early Christianity, which is the period before the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Historians have used a variety of sour
The romanticized engraving of Flavius Josephus appearing in William Whiston's translation of his works.
Detail of the page from an 11th century codex containing Annales, xv. 44.3–8, the passage with the reference to Christians (Florence, Laurentian Library, Plut. 68.2, f. 38r, fragm.)
Detail of the Medicean manuscript showing the word 'Christianos'. The large gap between the 'i' and 's' has been highlighted; under ultraviolet light an 'e' is visible in the gap, replacing the 'i'
Christ in the House of his Parents by John Everett Millais, 1850. A number of paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood reflected the interest in the 19th century in the historical reality of the life of Jesus