The construction of a Universal Church

The earliest known reference to the "catholic" church is found in Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Smyrnaeans (ca 107 CE), chapter 8:

εκει η καθολικη εκκλησια.

The word greek word "ekklesia" referred to the principal assembly of the democracy in ancient Athens, open to all male citizens as soon as they qualified for citizenship.  That the early "church" chose to so identify itself gives an idea of why the Roman government thought it a potentially insurrectionist association, in a way that has nothing at all to do with any presumption that the "lovingness" of the community represented a threat.  

In appropriating the name of the assembly of the democracy in ancient Athens, the leaders of the new assembly were deliberately sending a signal that they had the intent of challenging Roman authority.

In appropriating Judean texts, and in writing themselves into ownership of those texts, the leaders of the new assembly were intentionally asserting that their fellowship was not limited to Greco-Roman cultic practice, but was subsuming all available cults, to make it a "universal" assembly.

(http://www.textexcavation.com/greekignatiussmyrnaeans.html)

It has been posited by early church scholars that the Jewish War of 66-70 was the cataclysmic event that launched the early church, which, presumably, had been "in hiding," or, at best, "small communities of followers" since the post-crucifixion era (ca 35 CE, give or take).

It is worth noting, however, that the Judean leader of the Jewish War was Yosef ben Matitiyahu.  Joseph son of Matthew, 

We have already seen that Yehoshua haMoshiach is not a name but a sentence:  "The annointed one will save."  We have also already seen that the names of the gospellers were derived from leaders of the Kitos War.  

The church, from its inception, was a construct, not the natural evolution of a band of followers of a single, humble teacher.

What we have is not a new religion based on the execution of a wandering rabbi/wonderworker/mystic and his followers.  We have a deliberately constructed cult whose purpose was to challenge the authority of Rome, and to absorb into itself as many cults into itself as possible,