Finding a way: Elizabeth Coleman on discovering Jewish Christianity

‘We can be followers of Jesus, even if the creeds do not speak to our condition.’

Some people become Quakers because they cannot accept the teachings of the mainstream church, such as Jesus being God, Jesus dying for our sins, or the trinity. As Jesus is now bundled up with these beliefs, they can end up rejecting Jesus himself, though many accept him as a great ethical teacher. If you could go back in time and show Jesus the creed that is recited in church, I think he would be bewildered (I don’t know what he would make of twenty-first century Quakerism!).

It was not until 300 years after Jesus’ death that the doctrine of the trinity was enforced by the church. In its early centuries, Christianity was very diverse. It might be said that modern Christianity began in the early fourth century CE, when the Nicene Creed (which includes the doctrine of the trinity) was accepted at the Council of Nicaea. Before then, orthodoxy had been to believe that the ‘son’ was obedient to the ‘father’, and hence not an equal part of a trinity.

Even quite soon after Jesus’ death, there were at least two main strands of Christianity: the Jewish Christians headed by Jesus’ brother James in Jerusalem; and Paul’s mission to the gentiles. The Jewish Christians had the most direct relationship to Jesus and his disciples, as the Jerusalem church would include many people who knew Jesus. Paul had never met Jesus except in a vision, and his gentile converts would have had a limited understanding of his Jewish background. Jewish Christianity continued for some centuries, but it is not nearly as well documented as gentile Christianity. Many varieties of Christianity developed, and these vary in how well records have survived. My own interest and knowledge are in Jewish Christianity.

There are three main sources of information about Jewish Christianity: the New Testament, in particular the book of Acts, which records the conflict between Paul’s mission and the Jerusalem church; the ‘Church fathers’, who decided that Jewish Christianity, which had once been the only Christianity, was a heresy; and references (nearly all hostile) to Jesus and Christians in Jewish writings such as the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds.

In Jesus’ time, the urgency of preparing people for the imminent coming of the kingdom of God dominated everything. (It is complicated being a follower of Jesus today, as we know that the kingdom did not come in his lifetime as expected.) The burning issue after his death was whether gentiles had to convert to Judaism to be followers of Jesus. This was resolved at the Jerusalem Council in around 50CE (I follow the custom used by Jewish people of saying BCE and CE rather than BC and AD, so that something as mundane as giving a date does not have to become a declaration that Jesus is Christ and Lord). The outcome is summarised in what James, brother of Jesus and head of the church in Jerusalem, said: ‘My judgement therefore is that we should not impose irksome restrictions on those of the gentiles who are turning to God but instruct them by letter to abstain from things polluted by contact with idols, from fornication, from anything that has been strangled, and from blood’ (Acts 15:19-20).

Thus the two branches of the church reached an uneasy agreement.

The historian Eusebius records that the Jerusalem church continued to be led by Jews right through the disastrous rebellion against Rome, finally defeated in 70CE, until the crushing of the second rebellion led by Bar Kochba in 135CE, after which Jews were excluded from Jerusalem.

How did Jewish Christianity differ from gentile Christianity, other than the main point, that Jewish Christians followed Jewish law, including circumcision and dietary laws, which affected every aspect of their lives?

The Jewish writings refer to Jesus, and to Jewish Christians, but are difficult to interpret. For example, they use the term minim to refer to Jews who are not orthodox, and it is clear that sometimes this means Jewish Christians, but it is often unclear. Robert Travers Herford, a Unitarian minister (1860-1950) must have spent many, many hours, going through Jewish writings covering several centuries, mainly in Aramaic, and recording and translating any passages that appeared to be about Jesus or Christians, and we can benefit from his work.

An example of an extract from the Babylonian Talmud is as follows: ‘Once I was walking in the upper street of Sepphoris, and I found a man of the disciples of Jeshu the Nazarene, and Jacob of Chephar Sechanja was his name.’

It goes on to describe a discussion on the interpretation of a passage from Deuteronomy. Although Travers Herford recorded over thirty pages of extracts, the information you can get from them is not great, and references are almost all hostile. Jesus is depicted as forsaking God, being idolatrous, practising magic, being foolish, lascivious, lying, a bastard, who deceived and led astray the Jewish people, and was executed after his guilt was conclusively proved. Their view of Jesus can be presumed to reflect the writers’ view of his followers. The references to Christianity are all to Jewish Christians, and where the location can be identified it is in Palestine from the second to the fourth century. They indicate that Christians had a reputation for healing, sometimes invoking the name of Jesus; they were called Nazarenes, they kept Sunday rather than the Sabbath; they had a gospel.

The Christian writer Jerome (345-420 approx) refers to a gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic: ‘Matthew… was the first to compose a gospel of Christ in Judea in Hebrew letters and words for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed… The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea… From the Nazoraeans who use this book… I also received the opportunity to copy it.’

Tragically, the book has been lost, except for a few quotes in early church writings. For example, Origen quotes it as follows: ‘My mother the Holy Spirit just took me by one of my hairs and brought me to the great hill, the Thabor.’ So the Holy Spirit is female!

Let us hope for a discovery similar to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where a copy of the Hebrew gospel might be found.

I will now look at the group commonly known as the ‘Church Fathers’, namely Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome and Epiphanius. 

We learn that Jewish Christians did not accept the apostle Paul. They celebrated both the Sabbath and Sunday. Some of them were intellectuals who interpreted, and may have translated, the Bible. Some were vegetarians. They worshipped in Jewish synagogues, or had their own synagogues organised similarly to those of the Jews. One group were called Ebionites (poor people, because they looked for the abolition of worldly goods), and another, Nazoreans. The Ebionites did not believe in the virgin birth or the pre-existence and divinity of Jesus.

By learning about Jewish Christianity, we are brought closer to Jesus’ teaching. Also, it helps us to see that the doctrines taught with such confidence by the church have quite shaky foundations, depending on who ‘won’ in the controversies. What was orthodox one day could become heresy the next, and the winners enforced their beliefs, burning the books of their rivals. We can be followers of Jesus, even if the creeds do not speak to our condition.

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Comments

Thank you for a fascinating article.

By rosete on 31st March 2022 - 17:29

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