BELIEFS AND TEACHINGS
Jesus and all the apostles were Jewish, as were all the earliest followers of Jesus, which included a significant portion of the population of Jerusalem (Acts 4:4; 21:20) and even many priests (Acts 6:7). James describes them as all zealous for the Torah (Acts 21:20). The brother of Jesus, James,had become the leader of the Jewish believers in Jerusalem after Peter fled (Acts 12:17). Early Christians never thought that they ceased to be Jewish. Their religion was Judaism, plus Jesus. They still prayed at the Temple and probably attended the synagogues. But they had their own separate meetings to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, receive religious instruction, and support one another (cf. Acts 2:41, 42).
The word “Christianity” did not yet exist. People referred to the movement as “the Way” (Acts 22:4) and called its members Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). Since, at the time, Judaism was highly pluralistic, many regarded them as just another Jewish sect or denomination like the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. They were all ethnic Jews. The Hellenists mentioned in Acts 6:1 were Greek-speaking Jews from the Diaspora. The Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8:27-39 was Jewish by religion, perhaps a proselyte, for he was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As for the Samaritans of Acts 8, they also were not Gentiles but circumcised Israelites, even though regarded with hostility by other Jews. At any rate, the Jewish believers seem not to have objected to their being baptized or to the ministry of Philip and Peter.
Early Christianity crossed a serious line when Peter baptized the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household (Acts 10). They were considered unclean by the Jews because they were uncircumcised Gentiles. Peter would never have done it if it had not been for the dramatic vision he received three times and the intervention of the Holy Spirit that came upon the Gentile believers (Acts 10:9-16, 45). Their baptism was something so unusual, even shocking, that it created hostility toward Peter from some Jewish Christian leaders in Judea (Acts 11:1-3). The disciple’s only defense was to describe his experience. He had no scripture to quote in support of his deed. The Jesus movement still limited evangelism to Jews (Acts 11:19) followingJesus’ command in Matthew 10:5. But at Antioch, some new Jewish converts from the Diaspora evangelized Gentiles with great success (Acts 11:20, 21). Since one could hardly call such Gentile believers Nazarenes, they became known as Christians (v. 26).
After the church in Antioch set them apart by the laying on of hands, Paul and Barnabas embarked on a mission that resulted in the conversion of more Gentiles (Acts 13:46) and rejection by other Jews. The evangelism of Gentiles upset many Jewish believers who believed that Judaism was the necessary prerequisite to becoming a disciple of Jesus. They feared that allowing people to join the church without first becoming Jews was a lowering of standards. Therefore they sent representatives to Antioch with the message, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). Perhaps they sensed that by bringing uncircumcised Gentiles into the church, it would cease to be Jewish and perhaps not even be Christian. But at a meeting in Jerusalem (Acts 15), church leaders, based on the testimonies of Peter and Paul as well as Scripture, realized that the Holy Spirit was indicating a new direction. Paul’s mission to the Gentiles was enormously successful. It led many Jewish believers to feel that they were becoming a minority in the religious movement that had begun with them.
They faced several issues, such as how they should relate to Judaism and how they should relate to Gentile believers. Another issue wasPaul’s preaching that, to some, seemed to diminish the importance of the Torah. In respect to the first question, some continued to be as obedient as possible to the Torah, while others decided to distance themselves from Pharisaic Judaism. As an example of the latter, an early Jewish Christian church manual says: “Do not fast on the same days as the hypocrites [Pharisees]. They fast on Monday and Thursday, so you must fast on Wednesday and Friday” (Didache 8:1). Many took other positions between such extremes. As for the second question, some rejoiced in the success of the Gentile mission, while others, upset by it, regarded Paul’s teachings as heresy. Again, various groups adopted views somewhere in between. For example, some accepted Paul’s teaching but thought some of his disciples carried it too far or misunderstood it. Several NT epistles sought to correct an exaggerated Pauline doctrine that amounted to antinomianism. Thus 2 Peter 3:16, 17 warns its readers that some things in Paul’s letters are “hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction.” So they must beware of getting carried away by the “error of the wicked.” James 2 is an extended correction of those who misunderstood Paul, while 1 Peter 2:16 admonishes believers to live as “free men, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice.” Romans 6:1-4 also reinforces these points.
We can divide the history of Jewish Christianity into different periods. The first extended from Pentecost to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Nazarenes experienced some tension and persecution from their fellow Jews, but for the most part, they felt at home in the synagogues. Some synagogues may have even become predominantly Nazarene (the Greek of James 2:2 literally terms the Christian meeting a “synagogue”). Or they may have formed their own synagogues. In Capernaum Peter’s house became a place of worship, located only a block from the local synagogue. (Both sites can still be seen.) Apparently, they coexisted reasonably well. Relations with Gentile believers did produce some tensions. Paul’s letter to the Romans was a plea for tolerance between the Gentile believers who were taking over the Roman church and the Jewish believers who had been its charter members. Paul refers to the Jewish believers as “the weaker brethren” (Romans 14). According to the fourth-century church historian Eusebius (H.E. 3.5.3), the Nazarenes, heeding Jesus’ warning (Matt. 24:16), fled from Jerusalem before its fall and settled around Pella beyond the Jordan River. Though many modern scholars doubt the Pella tradition if it did occur, other Jews would have regarded them as deserters. James, the brother of Jesus, had led the Nazarene church until his martyrdom just before the Jewish War broke out in AD 66.
The second period AD 70-135 was a time of increasing tensions. Simon bar Cleopas, another relative of Jesus and cousin of James, led the exodus to the region beyond the Jordan. It seems that all the subsequent leaders were relatives of Jesus. The last recorded one was Judas Kyriakos, martyred in AD 135 when the Nazarenes of Palestine were all but exterminated. According to Eusebius, such relatives of Jesus were known as desposynoi, “the Master’s people.”
The Jewish Christian believers found themselves assailed from all sides. After the catastrophe of AD 70, Judaism sought to “purify” itself and standardize along Pharisaic lines, eliminating those varieties of Judaism it regarded as deviant. About AD 80, to smoke out Christian believers, the rabbis made a change in the synagogue liturgy. The second part of the liturgy was the Amidah (standing prayer), also called the Eighteen Benedictions. It consisted of a series of short prayers that any adult male could be asked to lead, and to which all present were expected to assent with an “Amen.” As the twelfth prayer, the rabbis added one called the Birkat ha-Minim (the benediction about the heretics). It went like this: “May the apostates have no hope, may the dominion of wickedness be speedily uprooted in our days, may the Nazarenes and Heretics quickly perish and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed art Thou, the Eternal, our God, who crushes the wicked.” Their fellow Jews increasingly shunned Nazarenes. An ancient rabbinic source (Tosefta Hullin 2.22, 23) tells of a Christian healer named Jacob of Chephar Sama, who was not allowed to practice. A serpent bit a rabbi named Eleazar ben Damah, and when Jacob came to cure him in the name of Jesus, Rabbi Ishmael would not allow it. As a result, Rabbi Eleazar died.
Gentile Christians increasingly condemned Nazarenes as Judaizers. For example, Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, writing about AD 110, says, “It is utterly absurd to profess Jesus Christ and to practice Judaism. For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity, in which every tongue believed and was brought together to God” (Ignatius Magnesians 10.3).
Not surprisingly, after AD 135, Jewish Christians found themselves increasingly isolated, condemned as heretics by Gentile Christians, and shunned by Jews. One group about which we know quite a bit acquired the name of Ebionites (from the Hebrew word for “poor,” perhaps a reference to the beatitude “Blessed are the poor”). They were an offshoot of the Nazarenes who went to an extreme, but who also preserved some primitive Jewish Christian features. Using a variation of the Gospel of Matthew, they also highly regarded James, the brother of Jesus. They abhorred Paul and all his writings, saying that he taught apostasy from Moses. Labeling him a false apostle, they considered only the original Twelve as authentic. Besides, they held that only qualified persons could pass on teachings and even then, such knowledge must be carefully guarded. They regarded Jesus as the prophet like Moses and the Messiah. He rose from the dead and will come again. Water baptism was necessary for the forgiveness of sins and entrance into the kingdom of heaven. It replaced the bloody animal sacrifices. They celebrated the Lord’s Supper with bread and water, practiced circumcision, and always observed the Sabbath. Appealing to the original diet in Genesis 1-6, they were vegetarians.
Later the Ebionites became more extreme. They taught that Christ is the only man who has completely fulfilled the law, and anyone who does likewise would also be a Christ. Jesus was consecrated as the Messiah at His baptism when the preexistent Christ came down like a dove and entered the human Jesus.
After several centuries, the Ebionites, and Jewish Christians generally, gradually died out, being absorbed into the wider church or disappearing back into Judaism.