The history of Christianity in the second century is determined by three main factors, namely its relationship with its parent, Judaism, relations with pagan neighbours and the internal multiform developments.

As shown earlier (see Part 1, especially paragraphs 3.3, 3.4, 3.9 and 3.11-12), the history of Judaism was a tumultuous history in the period between the two Jewish wars of 66 to 73 CE and 132 to 135 CE, including the Jewish insurrections in between (such as the riot in Cyrenaica and Alexandria in 117 CE). Both wars proved disastrous for the Jews. The first left the temple in ruins and in the second, the city of Jerusalem was razed. After 135 CE, in spite of an earlier promise to rebuild the city, emperor Hadrian decided rather to refound the city as a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina, and banish Jews from it. The position of Judaism as a legal or permitted religion, however, remained unchanged.

As Judaism reorganised itself after 70 CE it developed a new identity from which early Christianity started to diverge to an ever greater extent (see part one). Christian communities existed in close proximity to Jewish communities with the result that tensions and riots between the two groups flared up regularly. After the Jewish war of 66 to 73 CE, the Jewish temple tax was converted by the Flavian emperors into a punitive tax on Jews for the war, the fiscus judaicus. This forced the issue of who was a Jew and, in a way, contributed to the formation of a distinct Christian consciousness. Church writers report that much mob violence against Christians was instigated or flamed up by Jews. This hostility contributed to the difficulties Christian communities experienced in the Roman world, since they gained a reputation as being troublemakers. The early apologetic works set out to demonstrate the difference between the Christian faith and Judaism, and answered the charges from Jewish and pagan side.

Christian communities gradually developed new forms of organisation, parallel with the new evolving social organisation of Judaism.