So the title of the talk as advertised was the development of Christian tradition from the end of the New Testament period to the first Ecumenical Council.

Okay, so that's where I lost the brother this morning.

And I put it there as the intellectual development, which is the development of thought and how Christians thought about things.

So let's first of all define our terms as we want to present them in this talk.

So when is the end of the writing of the New Testament about the year 100 AD?

Okay, so Jesus is born a little bit before 0 AD or if such a year existed and he died around the year 30 AD and so

about 70 years after the death of Jesus you have this um the period that we're beginning that we're

going to talk about at the end of the first period of more or less intense activity of Christians, in particular in evangelizing.

And then it goes on to the first ecumenical council, which took place in the year 325.

So you're talking, we'd be talking tonight, more or less about a 225 year period in about 40 minutes.

So we're going to concentrate on the first half of that,

which is the 100s in general,

and see what was happening.

So when we think of the beginning of the church

like that in that period,

if I speak for myself,

it often seems to me as if it's like a dream.

You know a dream that's in black and white and you sort of make out shadows and so

and so forth. This year is so obscure to us. Now it shouldn't be that obscure for one

reason which is that our age is a very technologically advanced age, and so was theirs.

And our age as well, people think a lot or maybe not enough,

but there's a good bit of thinking going on and a good bit of social change,

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