Jewish Christians

Jewish Christians (sometimes called also "Hebrew Christians" or "Christian Jews") is a term which can have two meanings. The first describes the members of the early Christian movement, who were Jews that accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. The second refers to a Jewish movement within contemporary Christianity.

Early Jewish Christians predominated in the movement of early Christianity until the successful of Saint Paul's mission to the Gentiles. After this, tensions within Jewish Christianty with regard to membership qualifications for Gentile Christians, especially the issue of circumcision and other matter of Jewish law. The Jewish revolt of 70 C.E. and the later Bar Kochba revolt spelled the end of the role of the Jerusalem church as the center of the Christian movement and ensured the ascendancy of Gentile Christianity. Christian theology, as well as church tradition, took on an increasingly Hellenistic quality, with doctrines such as the Trinity—deeply offensive to Jews who held that the Messiah was a man and not God—coming to the fore. Soon, Christianity took on a distinctly anti-Jewish character, and practicing Jewish Christians were treated as heretics. By the sixth century, Jewish Christianity had been virtually destroyed except in small pockets, although some groups with semi-Jewish Christian roots still survive.

The contemporary movement of Jewish Christians includes both observant and non-observant Jews who accept Christian teachings about Jesus. Largely because today's Jewish Christians generally accept Christian teachings about Jesus' divinity, they are treated with suspicion by mainstream Jews and are often no longer truly Jewish.

Jewish origin of Christianity

The term "Jewish Christians" is often used in discussing early Christianity. Jesus, his Twelve Apostles, his family], and essentially all of his early followers were Jewish or Jewish proselytes. Hence the 3,000 reported converts on Pentecost, following the death of Jesus, described in Acts of the Apostles 2, were virtually all Jews or recent converts to Judaism in Jerusalem. Samaritans were also numbered among the early followers of Jesus, but only a few Gentiles, such as the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8). Traditionally the Roman Centurion Cornelius is considered the first Gentile convert, as recorded in Acts 10, although he too was a "God-fearer" —a proselyte who participated in a Jewish synagogue.

The major division in the early church prior to Cornelius' conversion was between Hellenistic and non-Hellenistic Jews, or Jews who spoke Koine Greek (Acts 6) and those who spoke Aramaic (Acts 1:19) speakers. Saint Stephen and the other deacons became leaders of the Hellenistic Jewish Christians, while Peter and the other Twelve Apostles were the leaders of the Judean and Galilean Jews. Later, Philip (the deacon, not the apostle) led a successful mission among the Samaritans, who were mixed-blood Israelites but not Jews.

The Book of Acts does not use the term "Jewish Christians." Instead it refers to the members of the Jerusalem church as followers of "The Way". The term "Christian" was first applied to those who followed the movement after Paul of Tarsus and his companion Barnabas, both of whom were Jews, started preaching at Antioch (Acts 11:25-26). Here, Gentiles as well as Jews accept the Gospel message, and questions soon arose as to whether these converts needed to become Jews in order to participate fully in Christian fellowship. Paul took the view that conversion to Judaism was not necessary and harm his efforts to evangelize. A particularly contentious issue was that of the circumcision of adult males who wished to join the church, considered absolutely essential by many, especially in Jerusalem, but adamantly opposed by Paul. Another issue was whether Gentiles needed to follow other Jewish laws such as the kosher dietary rules. There was general agreement, however, that the moral commandments of Judaism applied to Jews and Gentiles alike.

Paul made explicit the division between those who were circumcised and those who were not circumcised in his Epistle to the Galatians 2:7-9. Referring to a meeting between himself and the leaders of the Jerusalem church to deal with the question of whether Gentile members of the group needed to be circumcised, Paul wrote:

"When they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised... and when James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised." (NRSV)

This so-called Council of Jerusalem, according to Acts 15, determined that circumcision was not required of Gentile converts, only avoidance of "pollution of idols, fornication, things strangled, and blood" (KJV, Acts 15:20). The basis for these prohibitions is unclear, Acts 15:21 states only: "For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day," the implication being that they are based on the Law of Moses. Some consider them to be the Noahide Laws. However, they seem also to indicate a limited version of the kosher laws, requiring—besides the commandment against fornication—that Gentile members refrain from eating meats that had been butchered in the pagan manner (offered to pagan gods) as well as meat that had been strangled or not fully cooked.

Not all Jewish Christians accepted the view of Council of Jerusalem. They insisted that non-Jewish church members must become Jews and adopt Jewish customs. In addition, the compromise reached at Jerusalem did not solve certain other problems for Jewish Christians who wished to remain true to the Jewish tradition but now had to live among Gentile Christians with whom they were forbidden certain types of fellowship. Paul refers with disgust to certain "men from James" who came to Antioch and refused to eat with the Gentile Christians there. When Peter sided with the "men from James," Paul rebuked him in public (Gal 2:14). However, Barnabas, Paul's partner up till then, sided with Peter (Gal 2:13, Acts 15:39-40). Shortly after this, Paul seems to have left Antioch, and he and Barnabas parted ways. Throughout Paul's later letters, the struggle between him and the "Judaizers"—those who insisted that all Christians accept the Law of Moses, including circumcsion—is apparent.

Others took Paul's teaching to such an extreme as to reject the Old Testament law altogether, something which Paul clearly did not, despite his emphasis on salvation being a matter of "faith" and not "works." In I Corinthians and several other letters, Paul goes out of his way to emphasize that although the Jewish ceremonial and dietary laws are not binding on Christians, the fundamental points of the Jewish moral commandments—such as the prohibitions against idolatry, fornication, adultery and incest; and the positive commandments to obey authority and to love God and one's neighbor—still hold. Moreover, at least according to Acts, not only the Jewish Christians generally but even Paul himself continued to follow Jewish customs. He caused his companion Timothy, who had a Jewish mother but a Gentile father to be circumcised, and on returning to Jerusalem in Acts 21, Paul made a public act of atonement at the Temple in order to prove that he did not teach Jewish Christians to abandon the Law.

According to Eusebius (History of the Church 4.5.3-4), the first 15 Bishops of Jerusalem were "of the circumcision." The Romans destroyed the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem in year 135 during the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Earlier, the Temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed in 70 C.E. These events put an end to the central position of the Jerusalem church. Henceforth, Rome would emerge as the most important church, and Pauline Christianity would predominate. By the time the Gospels had been written, Jesus was portrayed—except in Matthew's Gospel—as not merely a reformer of the Jewish law but seemingly an opponent it. The Jews were portrayed as collectively responsible for Jesus' death, and the idea that Christianity had replaced Judaism as God's one true religion came to the fore. By the late first century, doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the early stages of trinitarian doctrine had emerged.

However, Jewish Christianity continued to flourish in some places. In most cities with strong Gentile Christian churches, however, it found itself increasingly on the defensive. Indeed, the tables had now been completely turned. Whereas previously, Jewish Christians had predominated and argued among themselves about whether Gentile Christians had to follow Jewish law, now Gentile Christian held sway. The question was now whether it was even possible to be a practicing Jew and a Christian at the same time.

The Ebionites were a group of Jewish Christians who continued to follow Jewish tradition well after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jerusalem church. The Ebionites rejected the orthodox Christian teaching of Jesus being God incarnate, insisting that he was a human Messiah as taught in the Hebrew Bible. Some seem to have accepted the Gospel of Matthew, although there are also fragmentary references in the Church Fathers to a Gospel of the Ebionites and a Gospel of the Hebrews. However, their writings are largely lost. How long they survived is a matter of debate. Some scholars find traces of them as late as the fifth century CE.

The Nazarenes (Hebrew: Netzarim, נצרים) were an early Jewish Christian sect similar to the Ebionites, in that they maintained their adherence to Jewish law, but unlike the Ebionites, they apparently accepted the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus.

Christian anti-Judaism

The Gospels, written well after Paul's ministry, reflect a period of growing tensions between the Jewish Christian community and mainstream Judaism in the first century. In addition, the internal struggle between the Judaizers and the followers of Paul escalated after Paul's death.

With the destruction of the Jerusalem church as the center of Christian Judaism, Christianity naturally took on an increasingly Gentile nature as it spread throughout the Roman Empire, both theologically and culturally. The early Church Fathers soon developed an Adversus Judaeos tradition that flourished from the second to the sixth centuries. The main accusation was that the Jews had rejected the Messiah, and so God had justly rejected them.

The apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas (c. 100 C.E.) declares that Jesus had abolished the Law of Moses and calls the Jews were "wretched men [who] set their hope on the building (the Temple), and not on their God who made them." In the second century, some Christians went so far as to declare that the God of the Jews was a different being altogether from the loving Heavenly Father described by Jesus. The popular preacher Marcion, although eventually rejected as a heretic, developed a strong following for this belief.

The Christian apologist Justin Martyr in his Dialog with Trypho the Jew (c. 150 C.E.) stated:

The circumcision according to the flesh, which is from Abraham, was given for a sign that you may be separated from other nations and from us; and that you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer... (Dialog with Trypho, ch. 16)

Similar attitudes were expressed by major Christian writers throughout the second and third centuries. This contempt for Jews was later translated into formal church law. Formal restrictions against Jews began as early as 305 C.E., when the Council of Elvira (now Granada), declared that Christian women were forbidden to marry Jews unless the Jew first converted to Catholicism. Christians were also forbidden to eat with Jews or to maintain friendly social relations with them.

File:Chrysostom-preaches.jpg

Bishop John Chrysostom preaches to Empress Eudoxia.

Anti-Jewish legislation soon reached the imperial level. At First Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E., the Roman emperor Constantine said, "... Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way." In 329, Constantine issued an edict providing for the death penalty for any non-Jew who embraced the Jewish faith. He also forbade marriages between Jews and Christians and imposed the death penalty upon any Jew who transgressed this law.

In the fifth century C.E., several of the homilies of the famous "golden-tongued" orator John Chrysostom, Bishop of Antioch, were directed against the Jews: "The Jews are the most worthless of all men," he taught. "It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews." ("Adversus Judæos," I) He sermons indicate, however, that not all of his flock obeyed him. Indeed many Christians seemed to continue to fellowship with Jews, attend synagogues, and participate in Passover Seders.

The General Council of Chalcedon in 451 banned intermarriage with Jews throughout Christendom. The Justinian Code a century later stripped Jews of many of their civil rights, and Church councils throughout the sixth and seventh century further enforced anti-Jewish provisions. In 589 in Catholic Spain, the Third Council of Toledo ordered that children born of marriage between Jews and Catholic be baptized by force. By the Twelfth Council of Toledo (681 C.E.) a policy of forced conversion of all Jews was initiated (Liber Judicum, II.2 as given in Roth).

The age of Jewish Christianity had clearly come to an end. During the time of Spanish Inquisition, however, a number of Jewish converts Christianity attempted to continue to practice Jewish customs. Their treatment by Catholic authorities remains one of the most shameful acts of church history.

Surviving communities

Nasrani menorah

The Nasrani community in Kerala, India is conscious of their Jewish origins. However, they have lost many of their Jewish traditions due to western influences. The Nasrani are also known as Syrian Christians or St. Thomas Christians. This is because they follow the traditions of Syriac Christianity and claim descent from the early converts by St. Thomas the Apostle. Today, they belong to various denominations of Christianity but they have kept their unique identity within each of these denominations.

Two of the existing communities that still maintain their Jewish traditions are the Knananites and the Fallasha. The Knanaya, who are an endogamous sub-ethnic group among the Syrian Malabar Nasrani are the descendants of early Jewish Christian settlers who arrived in Kerala in A.D 345. Although affiliated with a variety of Roman Catholic and Oriental Orthodox denominations, they have remained a cohesive community, shunning intermarriage with outsiders (but not with fellow-Knanaya of other denominations). The Fallasha of Ethiopia likewise reflect a Hebrew tradition that was outside the influence of much of the conflicts and conquests of the Hebrews of Israel and Judea.

Contemporary Jewish Christians

"Jewish Christians" is sometimes used as a contemporary term in respect of persons who are ethnically Jewish but who have become part of a "mainstream" Christian group which is not predominantly based on an appeal to Jewish ethnicity or the Law of Moses. This term is used as a contrast to Messianic Jews, many of whom are ethnic Jews who have converted to a religion in which Christian belief (usually evangelical) is generally grafted onto Jewish ritual which would, to outsiders at least, typically resemble Judaism more than Christianity. There are important similarities and differences between "Jewish Christians" (or "Hebrew Christians") and "Messianic Jews."

Contemporary Jewish Christians identify themselves primarily as Christians. They are (mostly) members of Protestant and Catholic congregations, (usually) are not very strict about observing Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) or the Sabbath. They are (generally) assimilated culturally into the Christian mainstream, although they retain a strong sense of their Jewish identity which they, like Messianic Jews, strongly desire to pass on to their children. In Israel, there is a growing population of Christians who are of Jewish descent and conduct their worship mostly in Hebrew.

Messianic Jews consider their primary identity to be "Jewish." For them, belief in Jesus is the logical conclusion of their "Jewishness." They try to structure their worship according to Jewish norms, they circumcise their sons and often abstain from non-kosher foods and observe the Sabbath. Many (but by no means all) do not use the label "Christian" to describe themselves.

The existence of such groups within the Christian world today shows how dramatically the attitude of Christianity has changed since the advent of the Protestant Reformation, prior to which either time of Jewish Christianity would be punished as heresy. On the other hand, the Jewish community generally rejects Jewish Christianity as un-Jewish, largely because most Jewish Christians accept basic Christian doctrines about the Trinity, considered anathema to normative Judaism. The issue of Jesus' messiahship is also a sticking point, of course, but it is no unprecedented for Jews to follow a "false" messiah and still be accepted as Jews. The great early talmudist Rabbi Akiva followed Simon Bar Kochba as the Messiah, and countless otherwise orthodox rabbis accepted Shabbetai Sevi as the Messiah in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Jews in general are extremely sensitive to the threat of Christian evangelism aimed at Jews, and the modern movement of Jewish Christianity remains highly suspect for the mainstream Jewish community.

See also

• Antisemitism
• Anti-Judaism
• Ebionites
• John Chrysostom
• Messianic Judaism
• Nazarene (sect)
• Supersessionism

External links

All links retrieved November 27, 2007

• Scripture & Torah Study Resources - Sa-hebroots.com
• ORTHODOXY AND HERESY Appendix 1: On the Problem of Jewish Christianity by Walter Bauer, Ccat.sas.upenn.edu.
• PBS Frontline From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians: Wrestling with their Jewish Heritage by L. Michael White, Pbs.org.
• Medieval Sourcebook: Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407) : Eight Homilies Against the Jews by Paul Halsall, Fordham University, May 2002.
• Christianity in its relation to Judaism: Early Christianity a Jewish Sect - Jewishencyclopedia.com.
• The Ascendance of Messianic Judaism in the Context of Hebrew Christianity by William Greene, Ph.D., Miami Christian University.

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Jewish Christians  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Jewish Christians"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.