Messianic Jews see themselves as having a different if not separate history from the Gentile Church. As the “Who Sold This Business to the Gentiles” story indicates, Messianic Jews believe that “something has happened” to bring about this different history. In an effort to understand that “something” some Messianic Jews have attempted a reconstruction of the history of the Jewish Church.
By far the most exhaustive and scholarly attempt was made by the British Jewish Christian scholar, Hugh J. Schonfield, in his The History of Jewish Christianity.[1] He would later write The Passover Plot: New Light on the History of Jesus,[2] in which he denies the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus and he fails to mention his own previously held faith. Nevertheless, his History of Jewish Christianity is the best scholarly attempt at a reconstruction of Jewish Church history.
Since the Holocaust of World War II, which was likely responsible for Schonfield’s disillusionment,[3] numerous Christian scholars have begun to pay attention to the Jewish roots and origins of the Church. Jakob Jocz’s The Jewish People and Jesus Christ[4]represents the first and best of these. In 1981 he published The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz as a sequel to his first work. Here he notes the revived interest by Gentile and Jewish scholars alike in the Jewish origins of Christianity and the Jewishness of Jesus:
The most remarkable development in Jewish culture is the increasing acceptance of Jesus the Jew. There is a genuine effort made to incorporate the Nazarene into the history of Jewish spirituality, not as the Christ of the Church but as a teacher in Israel. Therefore, the question, “Who is Jesus?” is repeatedly asked and answered in a variety of ways. The question regarding Jesus raises the problem of the “normalcy” of rabbinic Judaism. The discovery of the Qumran literature in the Dead Sea caves opened new insights into the structure of religious life at the time of Jesus. Until that discovery it was taken for granted that Pharisaic Judaism was the normative religion in Israel. The Church therefore was seen as an offspring of the Synagogue. Jewish (and even Christian) writers frequently speak of Christianity as the daughter of Judaism, meaning rabbinic Judaism. But the recently recovered facts contradict such a position. Judaism at the time of Jesus was by no means a homogeneous entity. There were many sects in competition with each other, none normative. This is an important point in assessing the status of ancient Hebrew Christianity. The claim to “Jewishness” cannot be sustained anymore as a prerogative of rabbinism. On historic grounds it will be difficult to substantiate the claim the Hebrew Christians have abandoned Judaism. Rather, they have opposed rabbinic Judaism with their own brand, as did the monks at Qumran.[5]
More recent interest by Rodney Stark, Steven Wilson, and Howard Clark Kee is beginning to reveal the variety of Judaisms and Christianities that existed during the first century C.E.[6] Rabbinic Judaism and Pauline Christianity then would represent the “winners” in the struggle for survival from historical trauma and religious persecution in the first century of this era.[7]
Though socio-historical works like that of Stark and Kee are interesting, they offer little in the way of concrete documentation or substantive historical analysis of the early Jewish Church. To-date there has been no exhaustive scholarly history that can supplant the work done by Schonfield. Recent attempts by Arnold Fruchtenbaum[8] and David Rausch[9] rely heavily on Schonfield and his familiarity with Jewish-Christian sources and materials.
Since this dissertation is an examination of the contemporary Messianic movement in its congregational expression, we will briefly recount this “story” of the different development of the Jewish Church as Messianic Jews would understand and tell it. We will rely primarily on Schonfield because the Messianic Jewish understanding has been so strongly influenced by his History of Jewish Christianity, referring the reader to him and to primary sources for further study.
Definition of Terms
One of the more daunting challenges in an examination of Messianic Judaism is the plethora of terms, titles, and nomenclature that have been proposed to define that group of individuals throughout the last two millennia who have been ethnically, religiously, nationally, or racially Jewish and who have become followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Those from Christian sources include: Nazarenes, Hebrew Christians, Messianic Christians, Jewish Christians, Hebrew Believers, Messianic Jews, Messianists, or simply, Believers. The Jewish community has called them Heretics (minim) and Apostates (meshumadim and anusim). This is further complicated by the debate that continues to rage over what it means to be Jewish and who can claim to be called a Jew. Is a Jew to be defined racially, ethnically, nationally, or religiously? Should Jews be called Jews, Judeans, Israelites, or Hebrews? Should worshipping communities of those Jews who believe in Jesus be called churches, synagogues, congregations, assemblies, or fellowships? How shall we describe those Jews who have experienced a spiritual re-birth: the born-again, converts, proselytes, the repentant? In this section we will examine the rationale behind each of these appellations and elucidate our own choices for this dissertation.
Terminology for the Jewish Believer
Nazarenes
After the resurrection of Jesus, his followers were often known as Nazarenes, to signify their connection with his Galilean home and ministry. Hugh Schonfield suggests that those Jews who followed the “Way of Jesus” (Acts 24:14) established what they thought of as a new synagogue in Jerusalem. This “Nazarene” representative of the many “Ways” of Judaism existed alongside that of the synagogues of the Freedmen, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and Cilicians.[10] He suggests that this Nazarene synagogue represented an unique expression of Judaism, but not separate from the larger body of Jews who worshipped at the Jerusalem Temple. He sees in the establishment of the first diakanoi and the leadership of Peter, John, and James, the brother of Jesus, as nasi (president) of the supreme Council, a synagogal polity not unlike that of other local synagogues of the first century.[11] With the development of a large number of Gentile converts as a result of the missionary efforts of the believers at Antioch, Schonfield postulates the genesis of a separate ecclesiastical organization distinct from the mostly Jewish Nazarene synagogue in Jerusalem. He then suggests that the letter of Acts 15:22-30 was the official charter of Gentile Christianity with the Gentiles as “associate members” of the House of Israel. Therefore, according to Schonfield, the early Jewish believers came to be known as Nazarenes in distinction from the Gentile believers.[12] But to use the term Nazarene would have little value in the contemporary context, and even Schonfield later adopts Hebrew Christian as his preferred terminology, using Nazarene to refer to the earliest Jewish churches.
Hellenists or Hebrews
The New Testament suggests a distinction between believing Jews who were culturally Hellenists and those who were Palestinian Hebrews.[13] This is found first in Acts 6:1-6 on the occasion of the election of the seven men tasked with serving the needs of the Hellenist Jewish families. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews seems to address that part of the Church that was located in Judea, but James 1:1 addresses the twelve tribes scattered abroad without distinguishing between these two groups. 1 Peter 1:1 is also addressed to those who are scattered throughout the Greco-Roman world. The implication is that whatever distinction existed between Hellenist and Judean believers had already ceased by the time of the Roman invasion and destruction of Jerusalem from 67-70 C.E.
Ebionim
One of the self-designations of second century Jewish believers was that of Ebionim. Referring to the beginnings of racial antipathy between Gentile and Jewish Christians, Schonfield notes:
The separation was not made without some bitterness being displayed. Jewish Christians charged the Gentiles with apostasy from the teaching of Jesus and his disciples. They stressed their designation of Ebionim “the poor of this world, rich in faith” and therefore the true heirs of the kingdom of God, in contrast to the comparatively wealthy but unfaithful Gentile Christians. Those, on the other hand, retorted that they did well to call themselves Ebionites, seeing that they held such poor opinions about the person of Jesus, or perhaps it was their own intellect that was poverty-stricken, or even the Law to which they adhered.[14]
Hebrew or Jewish Believers
Another self-designation for the second century Jewish believers was that of maaminim (believers). Jakob Jocz quotes Adolf von Harnack:
The name “Christians” is the title of the Gentile-Christians; at first and probably through a long period, Jewish-Christians were never called by this name.
Jocz elucidates:
In a footnote he [Harnack] explains that, to his knowledge, there is no old Christian document where Jews are called “Christians.” This was entirely a Gentile designation: “The Jews could not have invented the name Christians for the Christians, nor could the heathen think of speaking of ‘Christians’ as long as the movement remained a purely Jewish one.” But it appears to us that even the Hebrew equivalent of meshihiim would have been an impossible appellation, as faith in the Messiah was not only a Christian but also a Jewish characteristic. The only difference between them was that the first believed he had come, while the others still looked for his coming. The “Christians” were thus the believers, the maaminim.[15]
Thus they knew themselves simply as Believers.[16] In order to distinguish themselves from Gentiles who were following Jesus, the label Jewish or Hebrew would be prefixed resulting in Hebrew Believers or Jewish Believers.[17]
Hebrew Christians, Jewish Christians, or Messianic Christians
Harnack’s contention that believing Jews would not have been known as Christians makes impractical the use of the titles Hebrew Christian or Jewish Christian. I found that Israeli believers have a strong objection to the term “Christian.” The anglicized version of the Greek christos evokes powerful memories of persecutions suffered by countless Jews in the name of Christ through the centuries. Especially in Israel, Christian is a word that carries the connotation of hatred, persecution, and more importantly, the Holocaust.[18]
The term Messianic Christian, besides suffering from the negative connotation of the word Christian, is at best redundant since Messiah is simply the anglicized version of the Hebrew meshiach, which transliterated into Greek is christos. John Fischer suggests that a more appropriate English designation would be “Messianist” as “the exact equivalent of Christian, only using the Hebrew term rather than the Greek as its base.”[19]
Minim, Meshumadim, and Anusim
The Talmud makes reference to the minim (heretics). Although a broad term that has come to be used for all Jewish heretics, “it is generally held that, if not in all, then in many cases the minim referred to in the Talmud are Hebrew Christians.”[20]
By the eighth century C.E., Judaism distinguished two groups of Jewish-Christian heretics. Schonfield explains,
A large number of so-called converts were compulsory Christians, whom the Jews classed as Anusim, as distinguished from Meshumadim (Apostates), who had been baptized in order to escape confiscation of their goods, if not the loss of their lives, or had adopted the Christian faith from motives of self-interest.[21]
Messianic Jews
In the past thirty years, the term Messianic Jew has begun to gain prominence as the name of choice by many believing Jews both in North America and Israel. Originally, this title referred to those elements within believing Jewry who sought a Jewish-style congregational expression, leaving the term Hebrew Christian for believing Jews within the historic Gentile churches.[22]
Because “Messianic” does not have the negative connotation carried by the term Christian, and because “Jew” identifies the non-Gentile part of the Church, we have adopted it as our comprehensive term referring to that group of Jews who have placed their faith in Jesus from the Day of Pentecost to the present day. Similarly, we will use the term Messianic Judaism to refer to the overall category of Messianic Jews.[23]
Other Definitions
Finally, it is necessary to clarify the use of the terms Jew, congregation, and convert in the context of this dissertation.
Who is a Jew?
There has always been, and continues to be, a lively debate both within and without the scholarly community as to who can claim to be a Jew.[24] Proposals for definitions of Jewish identity have been offered along racial, ethnic, national, and religious lines. Here we will define Jews as those who identify themselves as Jews by any or all of these criteria. We will treat this subject more fully when we examine modern Jewish identity issues in chapter 4.
Church, Synagogue, or Congregation
What shall we call assemblies of Messianic Jews? By the New Testament definition, they certainly are churches. But there is an understandable reluctance in the Messianic community to use terminology that would too closely associate them with established and traditional Christianity. This reluctance issues from two sources: the history of Christian anti-Semitism and how that could taint evangelistic efforts, and the desire to have a genuinely indigenous Jewish community expression reflective of new life in Messiah.[25]
Some contemporary Messianic communities prefer the term “synagogue” as expressive of both the Synagogue of Israel and association with Rabbinic Judaism.[26] My own choice is “congregation.” This term is religiously neutral but still emphasizes the corporate and communal element.[27]
Converts or Proselytes
A final and more troublesome issue is what new Jewish believers in Jesus are to be called. They cannot be called proselytes (Hebrew-ger, stranger) as this is a technical term within Judaism for Gentiles becoming part of the congregation of Israel.[28] Another possibility would be “born-again” or “regenerate.” Either of these terms expresses the new spiritual life that Jesus spoke of in John 3. There is strong reaction among Messianic Jews to “convert.” This term seems to imply a change from being a Jew into something that is not Jewish. Some Messianic Jews prefer “repentant” (Hebrew-teshuvah) as expressive of a turn from sinful living to faith in God and Yeshua as Messiah. Although I am not uncomfortable with repentant as a description of the new believer, the term “convert” more appropriately describes one who both repents from sinful living and makes a conscious and purposeful life change consistent with faith in Yeshua.[29]
Each of these titular decisions presented difficulties for me as I approached this subject. Respondent audiences had various reactions to vocabulary that I employed. Some insisted on being called Hebrew Christians, reacting very strongly against being called Messianic Jews.[30] Others maintained that Believer was the only proper title for Jewish followers of Jesus. One respondent castigated me for the use of the word “convert” in my survey, insisting that Jews did not convert to Christ, but just accepted him as the Jewish Messiah. Another complained that he did not understand “any” of my vocabulary used in the cover letter or survey, concluding that I must not have a very good background in Judaism. There is no commonly agreed on vocabulary. The terms I have settled on seem to present the greatest clarity and the broadest application, while at the same time allowing the fewest opportunities for criticism or complaint.
From Peter to Bar Kochba
In recounting some details of the history of the early church, we are not attempting to reprise or summarize the large body of scholarly and popular material that exists. Our purpose is only to note those events and issues that are seminal or significant for an understanding of the reemergence of Messianic Judaism in the twentieth century and especially in the past thirty years. There is little debate that the earliest church was essentially a Jewish church and that the incorporation of Gentiles on any large scale basis was a second generation phenomenon. The time period examined here, from Peter’s (Acts 1) speech on the Day of Pentecost circa 32 C.E. to the end of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 C.E., represents the only previous example of a visible Jewish ecclesiology.
This period of church history is a “Golden Age”[31] or “sacred time”[32] to which contemporary Messianic Jews continue to look for their own theological and identity development. Three realities of this period have become cardinal and foundational principles in the contemporary Messianic movement:
- The leadership was first in Peter and then later in James the brother of Jesus.
- Messianic Jews continued to see themselves as Jews, not as another people or religion separate from the rest of the people of Israel.
- The believers continued religious activities and worship at the Jerusalem Temple and local synagogues.
The leadership residing in Peter and James is the basis on which modern Messianic Jews assert their independence from the Pauline-led church, that would later be represented in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant confessions. The Jewish identity of the earliest believers remains the most sensitive and important issue in modern Messianic circles. The degree to which Messianic Jews should participate in the life and observance of the Jewish Synagogue has been and continues to be the most fervently debated issue in the Messianic Jewish movement.[33]
Schonfield describes the early reaction to the activities of Messianic Jews:
To the Jewish authorities they represented one of the many “Ways” with which Jerusalem was vexed. The capital at this time was a hotbed of peculiar people offering infallible remedies for the nation’s ills. They had to be tolerated for the sake of peace, and were only interfered with when that peace was endangered by their loud-voiced activities.[34]
As one of many Jewish “Ways,” the rapid growth of the believing community brought its own administrative difficulties. The solution of electing seven men to minister to the needs of the widows of the Hellenistic Messianic Jews resident in Jerusalem has suggested to some the establishment of a “Nazarene Synagogue.”
Any group of Jews which comprised ten batlanim, men of leisure, could found a synagogue, and there were numerous synagogues in Jerusalem representing nationalities, trades, and no doubt “Ways” as well. . . . [M]any elements in the early Christian liturgy derive from the liturgy of the Synagogue, and it is not, therefore, unreasonable to suppose that those of the “Way of Jesus” did, in fact, establish a synagogue of their own. Such a meeting house may have been situated, especially in view of the Hellenists, close by that of the Freedmen, Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, with whose members the deacon, Stephen, came into wordy conflict, with the result that he was accused of blasphemy and hailed before the Jewish Ecclesiastical Council.[35]
After the stoning of Stephen, the Jerusalem believing community was scattered and there followed a wider dissemination of the new gospel message. As reception of the gospel spread to provinical Jews and Samaritans the Jerusalem church sent Peter and John on an “official visit, no doubt to organize the communities and to encourage them in their faith.”[36] Others went on visits to the Jews of the Diaspora. The newly converted Paul was sent to Antioch where the believers were first “called Christianoi (Christians), the Greek rendering of Messianists.”[37]
Back in Jerusalem the Messianic community had grown so rapidly and had gained so much attention that the Jewish religious authorities reacted by beheading James the brother of John and imprisoning Peter (Acts 12:2-3). With these developments,
It now became evident to the apostles and elders that a more elaborate organization was necessary if the scattered communities of believers were to be kept together. The movement was in every way a Jewish one, and its leaders were closely identified with Jewish affairs. There was no split with the Synagogue, and it was only natural that the government of the communities should be conducted on current lines. This required the establishment of local Synagogues with their officials, president, deacons, precentor and teachers, three of whom form a tribunal for the Judgment of cases concerning money matters, thefts, losses, immorality, admission of proselytes, etc. This local council in turn would be responsible to the higher court in Jerusalem, to which graver charges and cases would be referred. The organization also provided for itinerant teachers sent out from the central authority, whose duty it was to exhort and expound the true doctrine, and also to collect dues for the maintenance of the organization. We gather that this system was adopted by the Nazarenes, the leadership of the visiting teachers being given to Peter, while James the brother of Jesus was elected Nasi, or president, of the supreme Council, both on account of his kinship to the Messiah and his noted piety.[38]
The “Christians” at Antioch sent out a mission under Paul and Barnabas to reach other Diaspora Jews as well as Gentiles who might already be attracted to Judaism. The question arose concerning the nature of the Gentile converts. “Were they to be regarded as ‘proselytes of righteousness’ (full proselytes), subject in all respects to the laws of Israel, or as ‘proselytes of the gate’ (half proselytes), subject only to the primary Noahic laws?”[39] The matter was brought before the Jerusalem Council presided over by James.
[T]he President [James] gave the judgment to the effect that the evidence in accordance with the Scriptures warranted the conclusion that God was calling out from among the Gentiles a people for His Name, who, without becoming Jews, were to share with them all the privileges of the covenants of promise . . . subject only to the Noahic laws. . . . It was agreed that the two organizations should be kept distinct.[40] [Italics mine]
The opinions that Schonfield offered here have become “dogma” for the contemporary Messianic movement. The highlighted themes of synagogal polity, the distinction between Christians (Gentile believers) and Nazarenes (Messianic Jews), and that Gentile believers participate in the Noahic covenant not the Abrahamic covenant have significant ramifications for present-day Messianic congregational identity.[41]
In Jerusalem the growth of the body of Messianic Jews led to a greater role in Jewish life for James, the most widely-recognized Messianic leader. A spirit of revolt began to rise against the Roman oppressors:
There is some evidence to show that James the brother of Jesus was made unofficial leader of a united people’s party. The title given him, Oblias, which Eusebius renders “Protection of the People” (perioche to lao), the tenor of his Epistle, the fact that his influence was so feared by the high priestly party that they illegally put him to death, and that this caused such a popular outcry that the responsible high priest was deposed and the revolt accelerated, all point to this conclusion.[42]
The revolutionary fervor against Rome intensified and the Messianic Jews may have found themselves uncomfortably aligned with the Zealot party, especially with the rise of the Sicarii who were,
a desperate league of daggermen, who did not stop at murdering the pro-Roman chief priest and wealthy citizens even within the sacred precincts of the temple. It is probable that it was at this time that the Nazarenes assumed the designation of Ebionites, signifying the contrast between themselves and the avaricious apostates and claiming that they were the true heirs of the Messianic kingdom.[43]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We can hardly fail to conclude that the Zealot-Nazarenes and the Zealot-Pharisees were drawn together during the struggle by a common aim and not very divergent expectations. In fact the only real distinction was the Nazarene equation, the Messiah is Jesus.
But while this distinction was not of great moment to the bolder sort of Zealots, it was of enormous importance to the particularist Pharisees and to the Sadducees: according to the Old Russian version of Josephus it was the subject of an inscription set in the Temple balustrade, and it was the cause of the death of James the Just.[44]
According to Hegesippus, a second century Messianic Jewish historian, James refused to dissuade the people from following Jesus, even when faced with death.[45] After James’ death there was no longer anyone from among the Messianic Jews who could command such respect from the rest of the Jerusalemite community.
Just previous to this, Paul’s successful mission had borne both fruit and problems. Schonfield suggests that the Gentile churches had become so sinful and immoral that Peter felt the need to rebuke them for their immoral lifestyle (2 Peter). “Henceforth, by the bulk of Jewish Christians, Paul was anathematized as an apostate from the Law,[46] and his way and theirs lay ever apart.”[47] The result had been Paul’s journey to Jerusalem in Acts 21. Many Messianic Jews understand Paul to have humbly submitted himself to the authority of James and the Jerusalem Council and that he remained an “observant Jew” to the end of his life.[48]
The death of James and the martyrdom of Peter left the Judean church without strong leadership. The disavowal of Paul’s theology meant that when events accelerated with the Roman invasions of 64-70 C.E., there was no place for the Judean church to turn except to the words of Jesus reported in Matthew 24 to flee. Many of them did flee to Pella in the Decapolis under the leadership of Simon the son of Cleophas. As a cousin of Jesus, he had succeeded James in leadership of the Jerusalem church.[49] The Romans conquered Galilee, northern Judea, and finally in 70 C.E., Jerusalem.[50]
The war could certainly have widened the distance between Jewish and Gentile Christians. According to Schonfield, the Gentile churches exhibited a “coldness and aloofness” to the Messianic Jews and their struggles. For Christians who were Roman citizens, especially, there was little sympathy for Jewish national aspirations.
For them the destruction of Jerusalem and the cessation of temple services meant the end of the Law. It came to them as a happy release from the incubus of Judaism and left them free to develop a Christian philosophy of their own better suited to the Gentile temperament.[51]
Messianic Jews saw Gentile Christians as theologically ignorant, misunderstanding the meaning of the Messianic term “son of God” when applied to Jesus and importing their own mythological understanding of a “son” as one who is the progeny of a god. As a group, Messianic Jews held to the practice of circumcision, Mosaic Law observance, and practice of a Saturday Sabbath.
Thus by the pressure of political circumstances and racial antipathies Jewish and Gentile Christianity grew apart, each following the path of its inherited tendencies, and developing its beliefs along the lines of its own racial genius. Paul’s great ideal of Jew and Gentile both one in Christ could not then be realized, because neither would acknowledge the right of the other to regard God’s revelation from the standpoint of his own psychology.[52]
A further issue that contributed to the breach in relations between Jewish and Gentile believers focused on church leadership and Davidic descent. Messianic Jews felt that church leadership must be carried out by relatives of Jesus who were of Davidic descent. This was in accordance with the biblical expectation that Messiah was to be from the line of David. The genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew documented this in the case of Jesus. This was in contrast with the Roman Church’s position that the “keys of the kingdom” had been given to Peter. James’ successor, Simon the son of Cleophas, was martyred at the reputed age of 120.
Thus perished the second bishop of the Jewish Christian flock, probably the last of those who had seen and heard the Messiah, and who therefore had the best means of knowing the truth concerning his person and doctrine; a fact that must always be recognized in dealing with primitive Jewish Christian beliefs.[53]
Eusebius summarizes this period of Jewish leadership in the Jerusalem church:
As to the bishops at Jerusalem, however, I have quite failed to find their dates preserved in writing (for indeed it is recorded that they were exceedingly short-lived); but this much I have learnt from writings: that up to the siege of the Jews under Hadrian there had been fifteen bishops in succession, all of whom, it is said, were of Hebrew origin . . . for [it is said] that their whole church at that time consisted of believing Hebrews, who continued from the days of the apostles right down to that siege in which the Jews, having again revolted from the Romans, were conquered after severe fighting.
It will be right, then, since the bishops of the circumcision came to an end at that time, to give here a list of them from the first. The first, therefore, was James, the Lord’s brother, as he was called; after him the second, Symeon; the third, Justus; Zaccheus, the fourth; the fifth, Tobias; the sixth, Benjamin, John, the seventh; the eighth, Matthias; the ninth, Philip, the tenth, Seneca; the eleventh, Justus; Levi, the twelfth, Ephres, the thirteenth; the fourteenth, Joseph, last of all, the fifteenth, Judas. Such is the number of the bishops in the city of Jerusalem, from the apostles to the time of which we are now speaking. All of them were of the circumcision.[54]
In 132 C.E. a new conflict with the Romans began over the claims of Bar Kochba as Messiah. Many Judeans were induced to follow him when Rabbi Akiba championed him as Messiah.[55] Messianic Jews, who had participated in the struggle against the Romans from 65 to 70 C.E., refused to join in with Bar Kochba because of his Messianic claims. In return, he was a violent persecutor of Messianic Jews, ordering their deaths for their refusal to renounce Jesus as their Messiah.
Bar Kochba was defeated and the Romans drew a plough over Jerusalem, built a Roman city on its ruins (Aelia Capitolina), forbade all Jewish entry to the new city, and placed a statue of the Emperor Hadrian in the place of the altar of the Lord. Only Gentile Christians were allowed into the city, and the church there was under a Gentile bishop.
Messianic Jews were now considered traitors to their own people. A curse on heretics (minim) was added to the synagogue liturgy of the Shemoneh Esreh (Eighteen Benedictions) that every Jew was to repeat daily according to rabbinic custom. An early version of it read:
For the renegades (lameshummadim) let there be no hope, and may the arrogant kingdom (=Rome?) soon be rooted out in our days, and the Nazarenes (we-ha-nozrim) and the minim perish as in a moment and be blotted out from the book of life and with the righteous may they not be inscribed. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant[56]
It would have made it difficult for Messianic Jews to read such a curse as part of participation in synagogue life, knowing that it was being applied to themselves and their own families.
Jewish Christianity never regained its position of authority in the affairs of the Church. The Hadrianic war, which had rung the death knell of Jewish hopes of political independence, had also relegated the Church of the apostles to the rank of a heretical sect. Henceforth the Jewish Christians, while they observed their ancestral customs, were practically excluded from the Catholic Church, and might only associate with one another in their own communities scattered about Coele-Syria and Transjor-dania . . . .[57]
Jews in the Gentile Church
We know very little about Messianic Jews between 135 C.E. and the Muslim conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. We do know that it was a period of absorption of individual Messianic Jews into the Gentile church. Believing Jews were persecuted by Jews, and excluded by Gentiles from church leadership. It may well be that this Gentile leadership did not pass on records of separate Messianic Jewish communities.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that some Messianic Jewish congregations continued to exist. Epiphanius states that there were scattered communities in the regions of Syria, the Decapolis, and Mesopotamia.[58] Origen knows of Messianic Jews as “the twofold sects of Ebionites, the one confessing as we do that Jesus was born of a virgin, the other holding that he was not born in this way but like other men.”[59] One group was apparently orthodox in doctrine, maintaining Jewish customs of circumcision, Sabbath, and Torah observance. Another group of Ebionites denied that Jesus was virgin-born, but that rather he was the natural seed of the Davidic line who then acquired divine attributes.
In the second and third centuries some Catholic fathers began to write treatises against Judaism and Jews in general. In this atmosphere, Middle Eastern Messianic Jews gravitated toward to the churches of Antioch and Damascus which too had experienced difficulty with the leaders of the Roman Church.
The native Syrian Christians were willing to allow the antiquity of the Nazarenes, and to accept the fact that they possessed genuine independent traditions regarding the life of Christ, which they were avid to learn and utilize.[60]
Aside from the Ebionite denial of the deity of Christ, other doctrinal aberrations are reported about the surviving Hebrew Christian congregations. There are indications of Gnostic influences among them found in the Clementine Homilies, the Gospel of the Egyptians, and the Gospel of the Hebrews.[61] Schonfield has an extensive section on Gnosticism, noting,
It has been necessary to treat of Gnosticism at such length because it is directly due to its subtle influence that the downfall of independent Jewish Christianity must be attributed.[62]
An example of this Ebionite Gnosticism is cited by Epiphanius:
And they say that . . . Jesus was begotten of the seed of a man and chosen, and thus named Son of God by election, after the Christ who had come to him from on high in the form of a dove. . . . But they say he is not begotten of God the Father, but was created as one of the archangels, and that he is ruler both of angels and of all creatures of <the> Almighty.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
They thus believe that Christ is a figure in the form of a man, invisible to human eyes, ninety-six miles, six schoena wide; and some other measurement through. Opposite him the Holy Ghost stands invisibly as well, in the form of a female, with the same dimensions.[63]
Schonfield adds, “They [the Ebionite Gnostics] also seem to have held that it was possible for any of the their number to attain to Christhood by leading a life of equal sanctity.”[64] The Messianic Jewish communities reacted to these doctrinal aberrations and the attacks from church authorities that followed by becoming more withdrawn and exclusive, with little or no interaction with other Christian communities.[65]
One notable exception to the anonymity and aberrance of the Messianic Jews of this period was Hegesippus, a church historian:
Born in Palestine about 140 A.D. he kept closely in touch with all sections of the Church, though he himself held to the Nazarene faith. He travelled [sic] widely throughout the west, and came to Rome during the bishopric of Anicetus. Subsequently he wrote his Memoirs, in five books, now unfortunately lost. But the fragments have been preserved chiefly in Eusebius’ quotations . . . . They show him to have been a sedulous collector of traditions regarding the lives of the apostles and those related to them, and it is to him that we owe much of our knowledge of primitive Christian history.[66]
But Hegesippus seems to be the exception. The aberrant and exclusive nature of Messianic Jews meant that there was hardly a protest from other Christians when Constantine began to expunge all that was Jewish from the Church and Empire. Constantine himself said,
We desire to have nothing in common with this so hated people, for the Redeemer has marked out another path for us. To this we will keep, and be free from disgraceful association with this people.[67]
The name Nazarene was now only used by the Catholic Church to refer to Jewish heresy. By the force of Roman Imperial intent, the Nazarene or Messianic Jewish expression of community life was no longer to be visible.
While certain Messianic Jews are notable in the history of the universal church, most Jews who became part of the Church were induced into baptism at the pain of death.[68] Many willing converts actually became harsh critics of their own Jewish people.
A large number of so-called converts were compulsory Christians, whom the Jews classed as Anusim, as distinguished from Meshumadim (Apostates), who had been baptized in order to escape confiscation of their goods, if not the loss of their lives, or had adopted the Christian faith from motives of self-interest. Such converts had their every action scrutinized by a vigilant and bigoted clergy ever on the look out to discover the least signs of relapse into Judaism; and immunity from espionage was often only purchased by a zeal for Jewish conversion and persecution of those who resisted the Christian claims. The crime of Judaizing, which sometimes meant nothing more than saying a word in favour of the Jews, was punished by heavy fines, confiscation of property, lifelong imprisonment, or death, according to the heinousness of the offence. The instinct of self-preservation may thus be pleaded in extenuation of much that Jewish people suffered at the hands of Christianized Jews.[69]
Upon conversion, Jews were expected to renounce all that was Jewish. James Parkes quotes a baptismal confession forced upon Jewish converts:
I renounce all customs, rites, legalisms, unleavened breads and sacrifice of lambs of the Hebrews, and all the other feasts of the Hebrews, sacrifices, prayers, aspersions, purifications, sanctifications and propitiations, and fasts, and new moons, and Sabbaths, and superstitions, and hymns and chants and observances and synagogues, and the food and drink of the Hebrews; in one word, I renounce absolutely everything Jewish, every law, rite and custom, and above all I renounce Antichrist, whom all the Jews await in the figure and form of Christ; and I join myself to the true Christ and God. . . . [I]f afterwards I shall wish to deny and return to Jewish superstition, or shall be found eating with Jews, or feasting with them, or secretly conversing and condemning the Christian religion instead of openly confuting them and condemning their vain faith, then let the trembling of Cain and the leprosy of Gehazi cleave to me, as well as the legal punishments to which I acknowledge myself liable. And may I be anathema in the world to come, and may my soul be set down with Satan and the devils.[70]
Over the centuries, forcible conversion was pressed on Jews wherever they were found under the influence of the Catholic Church. Neither Jew nor Judaism was to be tolerated. Jewish families were forcibly divided, child from parent, husband from wife, in an effort to put an end to Jewish existence.[71] The only respite that Jews had from the unrelenting forced conversions was in the “House of Islam.” There Jews found respect and shelter as “People of the Book.” Nevertheless, even in Muslim lands, Jews were marginalized as were Christians, by the dominant Islamic culture. In such an atmosphere, independent Messianic Jewish expression is not attested after the seventh century.[72]
It would not be until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the emergence of Zionism that Messianic Jews in Europe would once again become cognizant of their identity as Jews and the first tremors of a Messianic Jewish congregational movement could be felt.
Notes
[1] Hugh J. Schonfield, The History of Jewish Christianity: From the First to the Twentieth Century (London: Duckworth, 1936; reprint, Ashford, Kent: Manna Books, 1995).
[2] Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot: New Light on the History of Jesus (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1965).
[3] The 1936 conclusion to Schonfield’s History of Jewish Christianity was written with a consciousness of Jewish persecution in Germany, but with a hope that the ministry of Jewish Christians as a part of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (I.H.C.A.) would bridge the gap between them and their Jewish brethren:
The accession to power of the Nazi party in Germany initiated a bitter period of Jewish persecution which still continues. . . . In Jewish circles it used to be asked facetiously, “Where and what are the Jewish Christians?” To-day the I.H.C.A. is the sufficient answer. A measure of actual co-operation has been achieved which augurs well for the future. (127)
With the end of the war, and the dawning of an understanding of the immensity of the Holocaust, Schonfield may have experienced a disillusionment with Jewish Christians and Christianity itself that may have caused him to reevaluate and eventually repudiate his own Christian beliefs.
[4] Jakob Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ: A Study in the Relationship between the Jewish People and Jesus Christ (London: SPCK, 1949).
[5] Jakob Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz: A Study in the Controversy Between Church and Synagogue (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 9-10.
[6] Howard Clark Kee, Who Are the People of God? Early Christian Models of Community (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Stephen G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70-170 C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
[7] Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, 71.
[8] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Hebrew Christianity: Its Theology, History, and Philosophy (Tustin, CA: Ariel Ministries Press, 1974, 1983).
[9] David A. Rausch, Messianic Judaism: Its History, Theology, and Polity (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982).
[10] Schonfield, History, 18.
[11] Ibid., 20.
[12] Ibid., 21.
[13] This rather obvious distinction highlighted in the New Testament has been challenged as too simplistic by some scholars. See Kee, Who Are the People of God?, 227. Kee suggests that the early Church’s diversity included the communities of the Wise, the Law Abiding, Where God Dwells, Mystical Participation, and the Ethnically and Culturally Inclusive.
[14] Schonfield, History, 36.
[15] Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, 180.
[16] This is the preferred designation for the believing community in Israel today.
[17] Both Jocz and Schonfield use Jewish Believer and Hebrew Believer interchangeably as well as the terms Hebrew Church, Jewish Church, Hebrew Christians, and Jewish Christians in describing the first four centuries of the Christian era.
[18] John Fischer, The Olive Tree Connection: Sharing Messiah with Israel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 102-3. See also Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz, 36-37.
[19] Fischer, Olive Tree Connection, 203.
[20] Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, 175.
[21] Schonfield, History, 68.
[22] See Rausch, Messianic Judaism, 32-43 for an account of the controversy in the Hebrew Christian Alliance over Messianic Judaism. Also see Fruchtenbaum, Hebrew Christianity, 12, for a contrary position favoring the term Hebrew Christian. There is more to this dispute than titles as we will demonstrate in the third chapter, “An Emerging Identity.”
[23] Baruch Maoz, “Jewish Christianity: Whither and Why?,” in Israel and Yeshua, ed. Torlief Elgvin (Jerusalem: Caspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies, 1993), 124-25. Maoz objects to the term Messianic Judaism as being too closely associated with Jewish national identity. His concern is that it promotes a breach in the body of Messiah between Jewish and Gentile believers.
[24] See the article on “Jew” in Louis Jacobs, The Jewish Religion: A Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 284-85. Also see Kai Kjær-Hansen, ed., Jewish Identity and Faith in Jesus (Jerusalem: Caspari Center, 1996).
[25] Messianic Jews prefer the term “in Messiah” to the anglicized Greek “in Christ.” It is also not uncommon for the Hebrew or Aramaic name Yeshua to be used in place of “Jesus.”
[26] This is especially true in “Torah Observant” Messianic communities (see chapter 3).
[27] Arnold Fruchtenbaum prefers “fellowship.” This is consistent with his position that it is better to have circles of Jewish believers within Gentile dominated churches than to have separate Jewish ecclesiastical structures. See his Hebrew Christianity, 96-97.
[28] Philip Birnbaum, Encyclopedia of Jewish Concepts (Brooklyn, NY: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1964, 1979), 132-34.
[29] Such an understanding was explained to me by my own childhood rabbi. He explained to me that, in his eyes, Messianic Jews were not Jews who had simply “found Jesus” and added him to their Jewish religious expression. Instead, they were “converted” to a truly new life in Christ. This is similar to Paul’s understanding in 2 Cor 5:17. Rabbi Chester Diamond, Rabbi of Temple Adath Israel and Brith Shalom, interview by author, 20 June 1995, Louisville, Kentucky.
[30] Arnold Fruchtenbaum is particularly dogmatic about using the term “Hebrew-Christian.”
[31] Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 835.
[32] Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), 72.
[33] This issue will be explained fully in the discussion of Torah observance in chapters 3 and 6.
[34] Schonfield, History, 17.
[35] Ibid., 18-19.
[36] Ibid., 19.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., 20. Emphasis mine.
[39] Schonfield, History, 21.
[40] Ibid.
[41] We will deal with the issue of Gentiles who want to be Jewish in chapter four.
[42] Schonfield, History, 23.
[43] Ibid., 25. Schonfield suggests that the Epistle of James was written in this context, especially 5:1-9 where the text mentions a “day of slaughter” and the murder of “the just.”
[44] Ibid., 26.
[45] Eusebius, Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea: The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine, vol. 1, trans. Hugh J. Lawlor and John E. Leonard (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1927),2.23.
[46] Schonfield, History, 27. Schonfield cites Irenæus here to support this, but Irenæus says that it was the Ebionites who saw Paul as apostate, especially those Ebionites who shared the views of Cerinthus and Carpocrates. Irenæus, The Writings of Irenæus, trans. Alexander Roberts and W.H. Rambaut, vol. 1 of Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers to A.D. 325, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1868) Haer., 1.26.
[47] Schonfield, History, 28. This impression given here has been adopted by many of the current leaders of Messianic Jewish congregations. There is an implicit belief that Paul was deviant in his theology, especially in his ecclesiology.
[48] Ibid., 29. This assertion that Paul accepted the authority of the Jerusalem Council and that he himself was “Torah observant” is common in modern Messianic literature. It is affirmed uncritically that because Paul took a vow in Acts 21, he was in total agreement with keeping all the precepts of the law except for the sacrificial elements that Jesus fulfilled in his death. See works by Daniel Juster, Ariel Berkowitz, David Rausch, and David Stern.
[49] See Ray A. Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), 122-27, for a detailed analysis of the historical evidence concerning the flight from Jerusalem by Jewish believers.
[50] Schonfield, History, 32. Here we find the interesting suggestion that John’s Revelation was written as a cryptically worded letter to Jews in the churches of Asia who had fled the Roman invasion. The purpose would have been to let them know that the Palestinian Jewish Christians were safe in the desert (Rev 1:9, 11, 19).
[51] Ibid., 35.
[52] Ibid., 36.
[53] Ibid., 37.
[54] Lawlor, Eusebius, 4.5.
[55] Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, 71.
[56] Translation by Jocz. Ibid., 53.
[57] Schonfield, History, 38-39.
[58] Epiphanius, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1-46), trans. Frank Williams (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), 39.7.
[59] Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 5.61. Rodney Stark suggests that there were viable Jewish Christian congregations even in Palestine until as late as the seventh century. Although his evidence is based on sociological theory rather than historical data, it suggests that assimilation was not the only course open to Messianic Jews. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 49-71.
[60] Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, trans. John A. Baker (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1964), 19-24.
[61] Schonfield, History, 63-66.
[62] Ibid., 66.
[63] Epiphanius, Panarion 30.16, 17. Similar Gnostic-like doctrinal understandings can be seen in today’s Messianic congregations, especially in some charismatic congregations. I spoke with one non-charismatic Israeli pastor whose struggle with the deity of Christ led him to affirm only that Jesus was “divine,” but he would not affirm that Jesus was God himself. Name supressed, Israeli pastor, interview by author, Tape recording, 28 January 1997, Jerusalem.
[64] Schonfield, History, 66.
[65] Ibid., 53.
[66] Ibid., 55.
[67] Ibid., 56.
[68] Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, 83-92.
[69] Schonfield, History, 68.
[70] James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (London: The Soncino Press, 1934), 397-98.
[71] Jocz, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, 75.
[72] In a paper read at the 1996 Society of Biblical Literature meeting, Troy Miller cites indications of strong Jewish influence in Syrian Church liturgy. He ascribes these influences to the remnants of Messianic Jewish communities that found affinity and shelter in Syrian Christianity. Troy A. Miller, “Liturgy and Polemic: Hellenistic Synagogal Prayer 5 in the Context of Jewish-Christian Relations,” The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1996.