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For those interested, here is a bit of Church history you may have missed during the Sunday sermons. For the observant, you may notice a pattern here when it comes to religion.
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One of the great ironies of history is how a sect within Judaism, known as Christianity, became a religion of the Gentiles and in the process become virulently antagonistic toward the very people from which the religion sprung - the Jews.
Jesus was a very Jewish man, born of Jewish parents (well one of them at least) living in a very Jewish world, living by very Jewish laws he, like all other Jews, believed were given to them by their god. His followers were also all Jewish. Jesus was also a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who expected the Jewish god to intervene in history to overthrow the forces of evil and set up his kingdom on earth. In order to enter this kingdom, Jesus taught that one had to follow the commands of God in the Jewish law, notably to love their God with all their hearts and to love their neighbors.
It seems Jesus did not set out to start a new religion. His followers were responsible for that. His sayings and deeds fit within a Jewish apocalyptic framework. He simply taught a more intimate relationship with God within the Jewish religion. His early followers known as the Ebionites, retained the Jewish identity of Jesus’ message, however, as the religion evolved out of its birthplace, these early followers were labeled heretics. Yes, the original form of the religion was eventually denounced.
The Ebionite argument was that Jesus never changed or ended Jewish law. Circumcision and eating kosher foods was still necessary and so was keeping the Sabbath. The Ebionites did not underestimate or ignore the death and resurrection of Jesus as part of their belief system. They just felt one still had to follow the law and keep it more diligently than the Jewish holy men themselves. They also believed that Jesus’ followers were to be Jewish.
The emergence of the Apostle Paul and his teachings proved to be fatal to the Ebionites, also known as the Jerusalem Christians. Paul taught that the law had no place in one’s justification before God. He believed and taught that Gentiles coming to knowledge of Jesus and his message were not under any obligation to keep the law. In fact, he believed that if a Gentile made attempts to keep the law, he was, in effect, watering down and denying the grace of God through Jesus. To reinforce this, Paul even states that those who try to gain justification with God through the law risked losing their salvation (Galatians 5:4).
This marked a fundamental split in early Christianity and on occasion we get a peek into the infancy of this schism in the book of Acts when Paul and Peter had a showdown over keeping the law. In addition, the book of Galatians and Romans hints at Paul’s conflicts with Judaizers; those who opposed him, teaching that one had to also keep the law to please God. For Paul, all that was needed for one’s salvation was Jesus’ death and resurrection. The law did not matter nor could it save. Jesus taught the law. Paul taught Jesus. Paul took the religion of Jesus and effectively made it a religion about Jesus or at least, he was the best known proponent of this approach.
Paul’s distinction was taken further by Marcion 100 years later. Marcion taught that the distinction Paul made was an absolute one. In his estimation, the law had nothing to do with the Gospel. The (Old Testament) law was a Jewish thing that came from the Jewish god and them or anyone who seeks to follow it, does so to their demise. The Gospel, on the other hand, came from the God of Jesus and provides deliverance and salvation from the vengeful god of the Old Testament. Clearly Marcion believed there were two gods (hint of Gnosticism) and neither had anything to do with the other. As a result, a clear line had to be drawn between the Jews and their way of life via their law (a bad thing) and those who followed Jesus and accepted his grace (a good thing). Marcion’s teachings were later considered heretical; however, his teaching was widely accepted for quite some time.
Not surprisingly, there were others who taught an opposing view to that of Marcion. Ironically, their views led to an even more potent form of anti-Judaism. Their views were essentially wrapped up in the popular Epistle of Barnabas (not the real Barnabas, the traveling companion of Paul, by the way), a book which was extremely popular in Christian circles and heavily considered, at one point, to be included in the New Testament canon. For the writer of that epistle, the Old Testament was indeed a Christian book and not a Jewish book at all. The Jews simply misunderstood its teachings and always did and did so out of sheer willful spite. They even broke their special covenant with God and in the writer’s opinion, God never restored the covenant with them. As a result, a new covenant was made with followers of Jesus who were now just about all Gentile.
The aim of the epistle of the Barnabas was clear: totally undermine the validity of Judaism and claim their religion and make it solely Gentile. So where does this leave the Jew in the grand scheme of things? On the outside looking in and very exposed t what would eventually develop into centuries and centuries of anti-Semitism. Speaking of all this irony, it is also quite interesting that the writer of the epistle of Barnabas, uses the name of a Jewish Christian to legitimize his book to essentially build a case that helped to lead to the rejection of Jews.
From there, Gentile Christians began to accuse the Jews of all types of villainous things. They not only misinterpreted their own scriptures, rejected God’s covenant with them and disobeyed God at every turn, they were now accused of killing their own Messiah. That logic went even further with the emerging belief that Jesus was God himself. If Jesus was God, then the Jews in effect did the unthinkable – they killed God. This was a charge made popular by a late second-century writer by the name of Melito who was bishop of the city of Sardis.
Other Christian writers (Church fathers) helped to perpetrate the notion about the Jews being rejects of God. Justin Martyr and Tertullian wrote material designed to oppose the Jewish religion. Justin even went as far as to say that the biblical sign of circumcision was not given to the Jews to show separation as the people of God, but rather, to show who was cursed and worthy for persecution. These writings were setting the tone for later generation of Christian readers but in order for them to become wildly popular, a twist of fortune was needed.
In the mid 300s A.D, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity (if only lip service) making it fashionable to be a Christian. By the time of the later Emperor, Theodosius I, Christianity was made the official religion of the Empire placing all other religions, including Judaism, in the crosshairs. What was once rhetorical now became action. While there was no official Roman decree to persecute Jews, on a local level where Christian governors had influence, they often turned a blind eye or endorsed violent actions toward Jews. Synagogues were burned and Jewish property confiscated. Other Jews were subjected to mocking and worse, mob violence. As time went on, and as history has shown, Jewish persecution reached alarming levels. Not surprisingly, the worst of it was played out in “Christian” Europe.
And so we end up with one of the greater ironies of early Christianity. The religion of Jesus and his early followers became the religion that persecuted the people of Jesus, eventually leading to unspeakable persecutions of the Middle Ages, followed by pograms and of course, the Nazi Holocaust. Those who practice and promote Anti-Semitism may have no idea why they hate Jews or why there has been a tradition of hating them, but they are unwitting perpetrators of an old tradition that, sadly, began with the rise of Christianity.
The religion of Jesus and his early followers became the religion that persecuted the people of Jesus, eventually leading to unspeakable persecutions of the Middle Ages, followed by pograms and of course, the Nazi Holocaust.
Nuh uh! It wuz cuz of Darwin. My preacher told me.
Have any of you ever wondered what might have been if the Roman empire had adopted Judaism as the official religion instead of Christianity? I don't think a Jewish majority would have treated a Christian minority any better than vice versa. I'm sure a Jewish Crusade against Muslims would have been just as bloody if not worse.
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