Of course, determining what kind of Jew he was is another matter, and here the scholarly debates can be prolonged and harsh for insiders and a bit perplexing for outsiders. Is the historical Jesus best understood as a Jewish rabbi, who, like other rabbis, taught his followers the true meaning of the Law of Moses? Or as a Jewish holy man, who, like other holy men, could claim a special relationship with God that gave him extraordinary powers? Or as a Jewish revolutionary, who, like other revolutionaries, urged an armed rebellion against the Roman imperialists? Or as a Jewish social radical, who, like other social radicals, promoted a countercultural lifestyle in opposition to the norms and values of the society of his day? Or as a Jewish magician, who, like other magicians, could manipulate the forces of nature in awe-inspiring ways? Or as a Jewish feminist, who, like other feminists, undertook the cause of women and urged egalitarian structures in his world? Or as a Jewish prophet, who, like other prophets, warned of God's imminent interaction in the world to overthrow the forces of evil and bring in a new Kingdom in which there would be no more suffering, sin, and death?
All of these options have their proponents among competent scholars who have devoted years of their lives to the matter yet cannot agree about some of the most basic facts about Jesus, except that he was Jewish. That at least is a start, however, and for our purposes here it is probably enough. Moreover, most scholars today acknowledge not only that Jesus was a Jew but that he was raised in a Jewish household in the Jewish hamlet of Nazareth in Jewish Palestine. He was brought up in a Jewish culture, accepted Jewish ways, learned the Jewish tradition, and kept the Jewish Law. He was circumcised, he kept Sabbath and the periodic feasts, and he probably ate kosher. As an adult he began an itinerant preaching ministry in rural Galilee, gathering around himself a number of disciples, all of whom were Jewish. He taught them his understanding of the Jewish Law and of the God who called the Jews to be his people. Most scholars would agree that some of these disciples, probably while Jesus was still living, considered him to be the Jewish Messiah, come to deliver God's people from the oppressive power of Rome to which they were subject. For one reason or another, the leaders of his people, the power players in Jerusalem, considered him a troublemaker, and when he appeared in the capital city for a Passover feast around 30 ce, they arranged to have him arrested and handed over to the Roman governor, who put him on trial for sedition against the state and executed him on charges of claiming to be king of the Jews.
And so Jesus was Jewish from start to last. His disciples were as well: born and bred Jews. Not long after his death, some or all of them came to understand Jesus as something more than a Jewish teacher (or holy man or revolutionary or social reformer or feminist or magician or prophet or whatever else he may have been). For them, Jesus was the one who had brought about a right standing before God for others. Some of his followers thought this salvation came through Jesus' death and resurrection; others said it came through his divine teachings. In any event, his followers soon came to proclaim that the salvation brought by Jesus was not for Jews alone, but was for all people, both Jew and Gentile.
Paul and His Judaizing Opponents
No one was more central to this proclamation to the non-Jew, the Gentile, than the apostle Paul. Paul was originally a Jewish Pharisee from outside Palestine, who had heard the Christian proclamation of Jesus, found it blasphemous, and worked to oppose it with all his heart and strength, one of the first and most forceful persecutors of the new faith (Gal. 1:13; cf. Acts 8:3). But Paul himself then had some kind of visionary experience of Jesus (Gal. 1:15-16; 1 Cor. 15:8-11) and changed from being the Christian movement's chief adversary to being its chief advocate, transformed from persecutor to proclaimed Specifically, Paul saw himself as the apostle of Christ to the Gentiles.
Early on in Paul's efforts to take the gospel to the Gentile mission field, a major problem emerged. Gentiles, of course, were "pagans," that is, polytheists who worshiped numerous gods. To accept the salvation of Jesus, they had to renounce their former gods and accept only the God of Israel and Jesus his son, whose death and resurrection, Paul proclaimed, put them in a right standing with God. But in order to worship the God of the Jews, did they not have to become Jewish? The Jewish God, after all, had given the Jewish Law to the Jewish people. And the way his people knew they were his people was by keeping his Law, a Law that gave specific guidelines, say, about how they were to worship and live together in community. This Law stipulated that God's people should avoid worshiping pagan idols and should obey certain broadly acceptable ethical regulations, such as not murdering or committing adultery. But it also indicated that his people should be set apart from all other peoples in distinctive ways, for example, by keeping the seventh day holy, free from work, so as to worship him; by following certain dietary laws and avoiding such foods as pork and shellfish; and, if they were male, by receiving the sign of the covenant God had made with his people, the sign of circumcision.
And so the problem Paul faced in converting Gentiles to faith in Jesus, the son of the Jewish God. Did Gentiles who came to believe in Jesus need to become Jewish in order to be Christian? Did they need to adopt the Jewish Law for themselves? One can imagine that it was a rather pressing issue, especially for Gentile men, the vast majority of whom were uncircumcised.
Some of Jesus' Jewish followers insisted that converts were to adopt the ways of Judaism. Paul, however, appears to have been the leading advocate of a moderating line on the issue. Paul did insist that Gentiles who became followers of Jesus had to accept the God of the Jews and worship him only. But he was equally emphatic that they did not need to adopt "Jewish ways" or, as we might call them, "Jewish boundary markers" as spelled out in the Jewish Law. They did not need to observe the Sabbath or Jewish festivals, keep kosher, or be circumcised. In fact, in Paul's view, for Gentiles to adopt the ways of Judaism meant to call into question the salvation God had provided by the death of Jesus; it was Jesus alone, not the Jewish Law, that brought a person into a right standing before God (Rom. 3:10, 8:3; Gal. 2:15-16).
Looking back on these debates, as recorded even in the pages of the New Testament, we tend to think that the matter was easily, quickly, and effectively resolved. In point of fact, even the New Testament texts that discuss the issue show that it was not such a simple affair and that Paul's view was not universally accepted or, one might argue, even widely accepted. The account of the conference that met to decide this issue in Jerusalem, part way through Paul's missionary activities among the Gentiles (Acts 15), indicates that unnamed groups of Christians argued the alternative line, that Gentile converts wanting to become Christians first had to become Jews. Even more striking, Paul's own letters indicate that there were outspoken, sincere, and active Christian leaders who vehemently disagreed with him on this score and considered Paul's views to be a corruption of the true message of Christ. Some such leaders appeared among Paul's churches in Galatia and convinced the Christian men there that they had to be circumcised if they wanted to be full members of God's people. And they could quote Scripture to support their views, since God had given the sign of circumcision to the father of the Jews, Abraham, and told him both that it was an eternal covenant (not just a part-time agreement, to be annulled later) and that it applied not just to those born Jewish but also to anyone from outside the ranks of Israel who wanted to belong to the people of God (cf. Gen. 17:9-14).
Paul fired off a white-hot anger letter in response to his "Judaizing" opponents in Galatia, in which he went on the attack against these "false teachers" who, in his judgment, had corrupted the true gospel of Christ and stood accursed before God. This letter, of course, made it into the New Testament, and so most people simply take it at face value: Paul's opponents were corrupters of the Gospel and accursed by God. But surely they themselves did not see it this way. They were, after all, Christian missionaries, intent on spreading the gospel of Jesus throughout the world. One of our greatest losses is a written response from one of them. But if any such re
ply was made, it has disappeared forever. That does not necessarily mean, however, that, at the time, they took the minority position. One should always bear in mind that in this very letter of Galatians Paul indicates that he confronted Peter over just such issues (Gal. 2:11-14). He disagreed, that is, even with Jesus' closest disciple on the matter. What would Peter have said in response? Regrettably, once again, we can never know, since all we have is Paul's version.
According to Paul, a person is made right with God only by faith in Jesus' death and resurrection, not by following any of the deeds prescribed by the Jewish Law. And this applies to both Jews and Gentiles. Since Jesus alone is the way of salvation, then anyone who tries to follow the Law in order to be right with God has misunderstood the gospel and probably lost his or her salvation (Gal. 1:6-9, 5:4). Here is a stark alternative: No one in early Christianity could surpass Paul in making an issue both clear and compelling.
At the same time, whereas only Paul's account of his confrontation with Peter and the Judaizing missionaries of Galatia survives, at one time numerous positions were represented. Even though most of the others have been lost, it is possible that not all of them have been. A close reading of our surviving sources shows that one of our Gospels, at least, appears to represent an alternative point of view.
With good reason, Matthew's Gospel is frequently thought of as the most "Jewish" of the Gospels of the New Testament. This account of Jesus' life and death goes to extraordinary lengths to highlight the Jewishness of Jesus. It begins by giving a genealogy of Jesus that extends through David, the greatest king of the Jews, to Abraham, the father of the Jews. Time and again it quotes the Jewish Scriptures to show that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent from the Jewish God in fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures (cf. Matt. 1:23; 2:6,18). Not only does Jesus fulfill the Scriptures here (a point Paul himself would have conceded); Matthew also insists, contrary to Paul, that Jesus' followers must do so as well. In one of the most trenchant statements of the Gospel, found only in this Gospel in the New Testament, Jesus is recorded as saying:
Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law and the prophets; I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest stroke of a letter will pass away from the Law until all has taken place. Whoever lets loose one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that if your righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:17-20).
For Matthew, the entire Jewish Law needs to be kept, down to the smallest letter. The Pharisees, in fact, are blamed not for keeping the law but for not keeping it well enough. It is worth noting that in this Gospel, when a rich man comes up to Jesus and asks him how to have eternal life, Jesus tells him that if he wants to live eternally he must keep the commandments of the Law (19:17). One might wonder: If the same person approached Paul with the same question twenty years later, what would he have said? Would he have told him to keep the Law? His own writings give a clear answer: decidedly not (cf. Rom 3:10; Gal. 2:15-16).
It is hard to imagine Paul and Matthew ever seeing eye to eye on this issue. In any event, from a historian's perspective it is interesting to note that after they both died, advocates of their respective positions on the Law developed these views at some considerable length. By the mid-second century, we know of Christian groups taking stands on Judaism that were at polar ends of the spectrum, some groups insisting that the Jewish Law was to be followed for salvation and others insisting that the Jewish Law could not be followed if one wanted salvation. All of these groups claimed to be representing the views of Jesus himself.
Christians Who Would Be Jews: The Early Christian Ebionites
Through sources dating from the second to the fourth centuries, we know of Christians called the Ebionites. We do not know for certain where the name came from. The proto-orthodox heresiologist (opponent of heresy) Tertullian claimed that the group was named after its founder, Ebion. That seems like a poor guess, however, probably based on Tertullian's assumption that every heresy begins with a heretic who can be named. Other heresiologists, such as Origen of Alexandria, were probably closer to the mark when they derived the name from the Hebrew term ebyon, which means "poor." Origen and other proto-orthodox writers had a field day with the name, indicating that the Ebionites were "poor in understanding." That is almost certainly not what they thought about themselves. Possibly the name goes back to the earliest days of the community. It may be that members of this group gave away their possessions and committed themselves to lives of voluntary poverty for the sake of others, like the earliest communities mentioned in Acts 2:44^45,4:32-37. Jesus himself, of course, was poor. Maybe these were people who took him seriously when he said they were to love their neighbors as themselves, realizing they could scarcely do so while living in relative luxury while people around them were starving.
In any event, they were called the Ebionites, and by the second century none of their opponents appears to have understood why. And since we do not seem to have any writings from anyone who belonged to the group, we cannot be certain either. This lack of primary source material is much to be regretted. Surely some of these people wrote treatises that advanced their views and defended them as necessary. But as no such writing survives, we must base our understanding on the words of their opponents, sometimes taking their claims with a pound of salt. Since some of these reports are inconsistent with others, it may be that there were a variety of Ebionite groups, each with its own distinctive understanding of some aspects of their faith.
Proto-orthodox authors clearly agree that the Ebionites were and understood themselves to be Jewish followers of Jesus. They were not the only group of Jewish-Christians known to have existed at the time, but they were the group that generated some of the greatest opposition. The Ebionite Christians that we are best informed about believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. They also believed that to belong to the people of God, one needed to be Jewish. As a result, they insisted on observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher, and circumcising all males. That sounds very much like the position taken by the opponents of Paul in Galatia. It may be that the Ebionite Christians were their descendants, physical or spiritual. An early source, Irenaeus, also reports that the Ebionites continued to reverence Jerusalem, evidently by praying in its direction during their daily acts of worship.
Their insistence on staying (or becoming) Jewish should not seem especially peculiar from a historical perspective, since Jesus and his disciples were Jewish. But the Ebionites' Jewishness did not endear them to most other Christians, who believed that Jesus allowed them to bypass the requirements of the Law for salvation. The Ebionites, however, maintained that their views were authorized by the original disciples, especially by Peter and Jesus' own brother, James, head of the Jerusalem church after the resurrection.
One other aspect of the Ebionites' Christianity that set it apart from that of most other Christian groups was their understanding of who Jesus was. The Ebionites did not subscribe to the notion of Jesus' preexistence or his virgin birth. These ideas were originally distinct from each other. The two New Testament Gospels that speak of Jesus being conceived of a virgin (Matthew and Luke) do not indicate that he existed prior to his birth, just as the New Testament books that appear to presuppose his preexistence (cf. John 1:1-3, 18; Phil. 2:5-11) never mention his virgin birth. But when all these books came to be included in the New Testament, both notions came to be affirmed simultaneously, so that Jesus was widely thought of as having been with God in eternity past (John, Paul) who became flesh (John) by being born of the Virgin Mary (Matthew and Luke).
Ebionite Christians, however, did not have our New Testament and understood Jesus dif
ferently. For them, Jesus was the Son of God not because of his divine nature or virgin birth but because of his "adoption" by God to be his son. This kind of Christology is, accordingly, sometimes called "adoptionist." To express the matter more fully, the Ebionites believed that Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood human like the rest of us, born as the eldest son of the sexual union of his parents, Joseph and Mary. What set Jesus apart from all other people was that he kept God's law perfectly and so was the most righteous man on earth. As such, God chose him to be his son and assigned to him a special mission, to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Jesus then went to the cross, not as a punishment for his own sins but for the sins of the world, a perfect sacrifice in fulfillment of all God's promises to his people, the Jews, in the holy Scriptures. As a sign of his acceptance of Jesus' sacrifice, God then raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him to heaven.
It appears that Ebionite Christians also believed that since Jesus was the perfect, ultimate, final sacrifice for sins, there was no longer any need for the ritual sacrifice of animals. Jewish sacrifices, therefore, were understood to be a temporary and imperfect measure provided by God to atone for sins until the perfect atoning sacrifice should be made. As a result, if these (Christian) Jews were in existence before the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 ce, they would not have participated in its cultic practices; later they, or at least some of them, evidently remained vegetarian, since in the ancient world the slaughter of animals for meat was almost always done in the context of a cultic act of worship.
The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Page 14
