Scholars debate when the church proper began. Many would say at Pentecost, others would trace it back through the righteous of Israel in the OT, while another possibility is the empty tomb. If we take the resurrection as the launch of the renewed people of God with Jesus as the first of a new humanity, then the church began then. I am somewhat drawn to the latter view, Jesus the firstborn of resurrection, the first fruits, and then believers men and women were added to his people. They were empowered for life at Pentecost, but for the forty days from the Resurrection, they were his people, building to 120 or so, gathered in prayer, as God's newly formed community of the ekklesia of God, waiting in obedience for God's power to be unleashed into them (Luke 24:46-52; Acts 1:8-14). Assuming this is so, aside from Jesus who is the head of the church in any decent ecclesiology (Col 1:18), the first church was entirely made up of women! This is confirmed in all four Gospels eve...
The blog of Mark Keown, New Testament lecturer at Laidlaw College, Auckland, New Zealand. It involves comments on theology, life, sport and whatever comes into Mark's random mind.