Narkissos, that's a great issue about the early Jewish and gentile Christians what their relationship was like and what the former really believed.
There are the Nazarene Jewish Christians, and then later the Ebionite Jewish Christians and it is they that refused to accept the Divinity of Jesus but not the Nazarenes who were lead by James in Jerusalem.
There is also no real proof that the Paulines and the Nazarenes hated aech other as many modern scholars believe. The Jewish Nazarenes were obeying the law and the gentile Paulines were not. But there was no animosity between them.
The Ebionites however were thought of as heretical as they saw no divine origin in Jesus and did not believe Mary conceived while a virgin.
JWs and the Judaic influence
by greendawn 27 Replies latest jw friends
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greendawn
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Rig Boy
Masonic minded people like to attack and attempt to discredit Paul because Paul was a Jewish defector who exposed their murdering of Christians. Paul also turns the racial doctrine of the Israelites on its head and shows that the chosen are the people of faith in Christ, rather than a certain bloodline or lineage.
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Leolaia
greendawn....I find your characterization of Jewish Christianity to be a little too simplistic. The evidence from the early period is insufficient to establish exactly what the labels "Nazorean" (your "Nazarene") and "Ebionite" meant in the first century. We know of a group of "Nazoreans" designated as a Jewish sect (haireseós) in Acts 24:5, and this fits well with what we know about earliest Christianity as a movement within Judaism (the full break with Judaism came after AD 70). This same text portrays Paul as a Nazorean leader, which does not reflect a claimed distinction between the Nazoreans (or "Nazarenes" as you call them) and Pauline Christians. The Nazorean sect is often thought to have preceded the Jesus movement and thus would have included other Jews in their number; Acts claims that the disciples of John the Baptist were affiliated with the disciples of Jesus (cf. Acts 10:37, 13:24, 18:24-25, 19:1-4), Epiphanius made reference to pre-Christian Nasaraioi (Panarion 29.6.2), and the Mandaeans who continued to follow John the Baptist in the third century referred to themselves as ntswr'yy'. So there is a problem on what exactly constituted this group: Was the entire Christian movement called "Nazorean"? (e.g. including Paul) Was it limited to Jewish Christians? Was it limited to or dominated by Law-observant Jewish Christians or Law-free Jewish Christians? Was it broader than the Jesus movement and included followers of John the Baptist? It is too deterministic and reductionist to equate them with the Jewish-Christians led by James the Just in Jerusalem.
The characterization of the Ebionites is similarly problematic. It is assumed in your post that Ebionites are later than the Nazoreans, but this in fact is not known. Your post also characterizes them on theological grounds as deniers of the Deity of Christ (or more accurately, as adoptionists), but this is relying on Irenaeus' late second-century description of them which, like most oversimplified descriptions of religious groups, may not be entirely accurate. Was Irenaeus describing some Ebionites who were adoptionist, or were there other Ebionites who were not? This problem is highlighted by the fact that Epiphanius' description of them is strikingly different from that of Irenaeus and others. Most scholars today recognize that the Ebionites were defined not by their theology but by their lifestyle....the name 'bywnym is Hebrew for the "poor". So some (or many) of the Ebionites may have been adoptionist, others may not have been, but the defining characteristic at least in the beginning is their destitute social status. It is generally recognized that such lifestyle was in place very early; many synoptic logia concern the "poor" and advocate a destitute lifestyle (cf. Matthew 6:25-34, 13:44-46, 19:16-26, Mark 10:23-27, Luke 6:20, 7:22, 12:33, 16:19-26, 18:18-27, 19:8), and the description of the early Christian community in Acts also depicts neophytes as selling their possessions and living without private property (cf. Acts 2:44-45, 4:32, 34-35, 5:1-11). This is similar to the lifestyle of the Qumran Essenes (and John the Baptist had much in common with them), and thus is probably a genuine early feature of Christianity close to its Jewish roots. James 2:5 also discusses the followers "who are poor in the eyes of the world to become rich in faith and inherit the kingdom," and Paul twice mentions "the poor among the saints in Jerusalem" (Romans 15:26) and "the poor" that James the Just wanted Paul to help support (Galatians 2:10). The term "Ebionite" thus originally was probably not the name of a "sect" but a signifier for those in the community who were poor for the sake of the kingdom. The Gospel of Thomas also gives further testimony of the "destitute" in the movement (cf. Thomas 41:1-2, 42:1, 54:1, 64:11-12, 69:2). If this is the case, the labels "Nazorean" and "Ebionite" would have probably overlapped, at least in the earliest period, but the precise relationship of the Ebionite poor in the overall movement is lost to history. Similarly, it is unknown when the term "Ebionite" became a signifier for a religious group in distinction to the Nazoreans; possibly this was sometime after AD 70 after the Jerusalem church had been dispersed and Jewish Christians began to form new (and at times antagonistic relationships) with other Jews. As for the adoptionist theology of the Ebionites known to Irenaeus, this was not necessarily a late feature since adoptionism was one of the oldest christologies...
There is also no real proof that the Paulines and the Nazarenes hated aech other as many modern scholars believe. The Jewish Nazarenes were obeying the law and the gentile Paulines were not. But there was no animosity between them.
First of all, it is a great leap to say that "there is no real proof" of something and then say on that basis that the opposite is the case. In fact, there is in fact evidence of animosity between Paul and "circumcision party" in Galatians (2:12, where they are associated with James; compare 3:1, 4:16, and especially in 5:12 where Paul hopes they would castrate themselves), Acts 21:15-26 similarly describes hostility towards Paul by Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who were "staunch upholders of the Law" (compare 18:12-13), there is much rhetoric against antinomians in Matthew (cf. 5:17-19, 7:13-14, 21-23; on halakhic matters see also 16:19, 18:18, 23:2-3), and in the second century we find further anti-Pauline animus in the Ascents of James and later in the Epistula Petri. Nor were Law-observant Jewish Christians a monolithic group; some insisted on circumcising Gentiles, others accepted uncircumcised Gentiles but expected them to follow purity laws, while some wished to maintain a ritual distinction between Jew and Gentile (cf. Galatians 2:11-13). The view of the "circumcision party" was almost certainly that Gentiles were to become "Jews" through circumcision (along the lines of Hellenistic conversion of Gentiles to Judaism), the Petrine view was that Christians were neither "Jew" nor "Gentile" but a new group entirely without ritual distinctions, of worshippers of God who observe his Law (as in the Kerygmata Petrou), and the Pauline view is that Jews and Gentiles form a new group without divisions "in Christ" (cf. Galatians 3:27-29), as "Jews" in the sense of being heirs of the promise of Abraham (i.e. NOT ethnic Jews), but do not observe the Law. The situation was thus sociologically quite complex.
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greendawn
Leolaia thanks for the long and informative post, indeed there are many gaps in our knowledge of the Jewish Christian groups and historians and theologians are not exactly sure how many groups there were and what each one believed. Many groups representing many ideologies that differed a little or much between them.
What is certain if we are to go by the book of the acts is that in the early church there were the Jewish Christians that observed the law down to the last iota and the only difference between them and the Judaic Jews was that they had accepted Jesus as the long expected Messiah and also accepted his pre existence, immaculate conception and ressurection from the dead. That's what the earliest church under James was like.
Now Paul had this revolutionary vision that Gentile converts should not keep the law and after a conflict with the Jewish Christians the matter was amicably settled: the Jewish Christians were to carry on observing the Law and the gentile Christians were to be free from it except for the rules on blood, fornication, and idolatry.
However there were Christian Jews that refused to abide by the above and wanted to see the gentile Christians bound to the Mosaic law and it's these that Paul was very angry with. Such anachronistic groups whatever their names lingered on until the early fourth century when they were suppressed by the gentile catholic church as heretical.
Some other Judaising groups believed in a Jesus that was just an ordinary man and of these some believed in his resurrection and some did not. Others did not even believe that he was executed yet others saw no redemptive value in his death, for mankind.
All in all the differences between Paul and James were about the observance of the law and James probably saw Paul as very useful in spearheading the spreading of Christianity among the gentiles.
Some however argue that the events in acts touching on the above issues were fabricated by the Paulines to justify their anti mosaic law approach. -
Narkissos
Some however argue that the events in acts touching on the above issues were fabricated by the Paulines to justify their anti mosaic law approach.
I'd rather say that the book of Acts offers a pseudo-historical synthesis toning down the conflicts and the respective stances, both of James and Paul, subordinating them artificially to the leadership of Peter and the Twelve. While the Pauline "mission" is validated at face value, the most distinctive echoes of Pauline theology (as understood by the author of Acts) are put on the lips of Peter: this is the role of the Cornelius story and the Jerusalem debate which follows (chapters 10ff). Especially noteworthy is 15:7ff (Peter speaking Pauline, or most exactly post-Pauline theology):
My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers (Paul's role according to the epistles). And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.
Of course Galatians offers a completely different picture of the respective stances of Peter/Cephas, James and Paul.
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Star Moore
Greendawn....your point is reallly excellent. The WT is exactly like a Christian, OT religion...and the GB as being Moses. But what they fail to realize is that Jesus set us free from that structure and organization. And he is our only mediator. We've been set FREE and we're not enslaved anymore by alot of laws and men over us..
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Rig Boy
The pharisees of Paul's time hated him and the pharisees of today hate him. In addition, the Zionists (judaisers) hate him for the same reason. Zionists Christians and associated Judaic sects don't like Paul all that much either. At least Paul has Jesus Christ, the most important thing one can have. Paul's views do not support Zionism or Freemasonry, and that will get you hated by the world.