In ancient Rome, Christians were officially classified as a Jewish sect among other Jews. One example of this fact is seen in that as early as the middle of the first century, Rome expelled the Christians along with all the other Jewish residents. Their welcome came “to an end with Claudius’s edict in A.D. 49. Christian and non-Christian Jews alike were expelled from the city.”7 In its earliest stages Roman Christianity was thoroughly Jewish, and long after the apostolic age it continued to