When did Christianity Separate from Judaism?

by fulltimestudent 16 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  kaik

  Christianity evolved from Judaism, but the ideological split happened in the course of two generations. Reformation was also a process that took about 40 years and it created two different branches of Christianity. Another major issue for Judaism and its identity was the Jewish war in 70AD that had a profound effect on the development of the Jewish identity. Prior that event, Jewish faith and culture was deeply integrated in the Greco-Roman culture and their faith was considered as equal. Jewish revolts in 70AD and later 115 cemented their beliefs and national identity due several factors: Jews were considered as a hostile element in Roman society, rabbis were executed through the empire, and Jewish holy books were banished.

  While Christianity was also oppressed, their identity development was different from the Judaism. Certainly after 70AD the split between these two groups was permanent and irreconcilable, but for another 50 years there were Jewish Christians as can be seen from contemporary writings. Ignatius who died in 107AD pressured these Jewish Christians to give up their Jewish customs. What I have read, the split had happened between 70AD and 115AD.
  
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  CalebInFloroda

  It depends on what you mean by split.

  My family tree is made up of Sephardic Jews who have connections to what the Catholic Church describes as "the Jerusalem Church" which was made up of Christians who lived with Jewish customs. This group disappeared in the 6th century CE, before which the Campos and Marroquin lines which compose my lineage had already developed their start 9in what was then referred to as Seferad or the Iberian Peninsula). The fact that my ancestors were persecuted and expelled from Spain in 1492 and are still doing things like lighting candles on Friday night, speaking Ladino, and while being very Catholic shows that the formal disconnection has never really happened (the same goes for thousands of Catholics around the Americas who today are just learning about their Hebrew roots). A member of my family is part of the Hebrew Catholic movement, an approved group of Roman Catholics who are Jewish and thus allowed to keep their Jewish customs intact, something that has not actually totally disappeared apparently.

  From rabbis I have spoken with and learned from there is also no agreement about any formal split. Some say there was one, while others dismiss the idea because the belief is based on an old teaching from the Catholic Church that claims that Jews were made to speak curses against any who accepted Jesus as Messiah, a claim even many Jewish scholar are adamantly opposed to perpetuating.

  Still that the two groups are currently "coming together" in ecumenical discussion and reportedly "making progress" is evidence that some type of split occurred. Add to this that the governments of Spain and Portugal have recently apologized and invoked a "law of return" for descendants of those expelled in the 15th century due to the Catholic-sponsored inquisitions they used for their own political ends (which means that Catholics did not like us Jews at least by then), something happened somewhere. Kaik's date some of those between the fall of the Second Temple and the time of Ignatius suggesting Jewish Christians give up their customs (70-115) seems to be the period where cracks began.

  But I do have to point out that even though it makes some of the neighbors a little confused, members of my family began outwardly living like Jews even though they are Catholics, and with full approval from their religion. This was as early as the 1990s for some of them. And since then the Church has issued several dramatic statements from the Vatican and Pontifical Biblical commission which allows for the introduction of an interpretation of the New Testament with the understanding that the Jewish Christians of the time may have been Torah observant even when the Pauline epistles were composed.

  This has not stopped some Catholics and Christians from insulting some of my family members (one Catholic even told them they needed to 'go home to Israel and join a synagogue'), so it's not all sugar and pretty animated scenes from Disney, and may never be. But even some Protestant theology is beginning to lean toward a view that Jewish Christians may not necessarily be exactly free from obligation to Mosaic Law. Add to this a growing number of academic Jews are of the opinion that the New Testament loses something when one fails to read it from a Jewish point of view that the original writers likely possessed (as seen in the recent release of the NRSV Jewish Annotated New Testament).

  Me, I just say 'hmmm.' I really don't know, and I'm a Jew!
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  fulltimestudent

  Great story, CalebinFloroda. Thnx, for telling it here.

  The biggest mistake (IMHO), is that standard (for lack of a better word) Christians including the standard JWs, is to assume that both first century CE Judaism and Christianity was homogenous and united in their belief systems. Of course, there were some common beliefs, but there were also some really wild beliefs also.
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  EdenOne

  Even if you take the Bible alone you will notice, despite all the redacting efforts made in the book of Acts, that there were clear fracture lines in the early congregation, namely between the "elders and apostles in Jerusalem", led by James, and the congregations that had been started by the apostle Paul. No such thing as a homogenous group of early christians.

  Eden
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  kaik

  Nice post Caleb. I do not think there will be universal agreement when the split between Christianity and Judaism happened, if it was gradual or sudden, or just both religions grew apart. What I had studied from various books on Early Christianity, and history in college, the split happened after Jewish War and but was before Trajan/Hadrian banishment Jews from Jerusalem (around 115-135AD). Other sources say that Council of Jamnia had been the final split between these two groups. Marcion also excluded Hebrew Bible and accepted only Paul's writing. While Christianity took over 200 years to develop into own religion and be legalized, it is possible that the religious split happened very quickly in matter of two generations. Protestantism is one of the prime examples how one group within one religion would secede and create own church and own theology. Bohemian Protestantism took 25 years to form (1415-1440) and lasted for another 200 years. However, even in the first two generations, people who went to Bohemian and Moravian churches saw themselves as a Catholic, but without Rome and Papacy. The ideological justification of the own church came in 50-75 years later around 1480's. German Reformation was also very rapid, but English took much longer to secede from the Rome.
  
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  CalebInFloroda

  The Pauline epistles must be read in light of Acts 21.17-26 which prove that both Paul and the apostles never demanded that Jews stop observance of the Mosaic Law. For centuries this section of Acts has been overlooked dislpite the fact that many of Paul's letters had been completed prior to these events.
  

  Texts such as Mark 7.19 have likewise been misread as if kashrut laws had been dismissed by Chrsist whereas Acts 10.14 show that Peter himself had kept kosher even beyond the days of Pentecost and never cosidered any commands of Christ as negating Jewish obligation to kashrut demands.

  Arguments in the Pauline epistles are written to Gentiles, and his arguments against Judaizers regard the issue of the Gentile relationship to Torah, not the Jewish obligation. Romans especially is quite clearly used to prove that Gentiles who seek to find salvation by observing Torah actually break the laws of Torah by such an attempt. Paul never teaches that Law is not for the Jews, only not for the Gentiles. In Romans especially are the arguments used by Paul taken from the Torah itself to prove this.

  Jews do not have a doctrine regarding being saved by faith or saved by works. They especially do not believe that Mosaic Law observance saves in any way, and Paul was trying to teach this. This was not a fracture in the early church as all peoples had their own customs and laws that others were not subject to. The fact that many Gentiles became Christian before the Second Temple fell is evidence that Mosaic Law observance was not a fracture of any type for indeed the leaders of the Church at the time were all Jewish and, as Acts 21 tells us, zealous observers of Torah. If this was a fracture then Gentiles like Cornelius never really joined the Church nor was the letter to the Gentiles at Acts 15 necessary.

  The fracture had to be much later and is questionable whether such happened completely as the Jerusalem Church existed until the 500s and Jewish Christians in my family kept kashrut till I was born, raising me in it to the extent that I never ate cheeseburgers or had milk with a meal until I became a JW...and learned I was lactose intolerant as a result. All this was due to my abandoning kosher meals as a JW, from kashrut observance handed down by Jewish Christians for some 2000 years. I am not alone in this as there are thousands of people like me in California, Texas, and Mexico learning that they are Semitic and not actually Hispanic with recent discoveries regarding Sephardic ancestry lines recently made accessible through websites like Ancestry.com and the like.

  It might be that Chistians felt better about how they treated Jews in history upon telling themselves there was a fracture, when in reality it may have never really happened. It is easier to lie to oneself and say the Jews divided themselves from the Christians to excuse what would otherwise be anti-Semitism currently dressed up as theology.

  The whole concept of a Messiah is a Jewish one anyway. The majority of the Bible is made up of the Hebrew Scriptures, and except for Luke and Acts the entire Chistian Bible was written by Jews who according to Acts were Torah observant. Call that a fracture and division? That's like saying Diet Coke is not part of the Coca-Cola line since it doesn't have sugar as a sweetener like the other Cokes do.

  Again not saying a fracture isn't there, but also not saying that everyone is being truthful with themselves on both sides of the Jewish-Christians issue.
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  kaik

  I think we are trying to look into Judaism and Christianity of the 21st century mind and it is our guess how people who were Jews, Christians from Pagans, and Christians from the Jews felt on this topic around 100 AD. Judaism developed on theology and new books were written. Christians did the same. For centuries these two coexist, especially during the first two centuries of prosecution. By 350AD, Christianity became dominant religion in Roman empire, especially in the Greek speak territory of the future Eastern Roman Empire. The dominant influence in that era would be coming from St. Augustine (+430) who actually hoped to reconcile differences of Christianity and Judaism to fulfill Divine promises as realized in the church and written in the OT. Unlike contemporary John Chrysostom (+407) who had tremendous influence upon Christianity in this writing was utterly anti-Semitic and in his homilies he compared synagogues as place of demon worshiping.