NOTES FROM THE EDGE FROM THE THEOLOGICAL, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL RESIDENT NERD OF CLERGY
This is fun for me. I’m a nerd and IMMENSELY proud of it. There is NO way I would stand before my church on a Sunday without being armed with every piece of evidence I have to support the cause of Jesus and PURE Christianity. So, let’s have some intellectual historical fun to make you think and what you won’t get from your lazy clergy on a Sunday when they repeat the same stuff on love and tolerance.
Here we go. Obviously, Jesus preached a new and dangerous message to the Jews AND the Romans. Much like our own Constitution that speaks of a freedom we may or may not fully understand due to limited intellect or education. So, all historically proven, Jesus was crucified, all within Roman and Jewish history accounts. After the resurrection, again authenticated by unbiased history, He had his Apostles begin the new religion called “the Way” (and I don’t need to remind you of Jesus’ words “I am the way, the truth, and the life…). Judaism and “the way” were like my dad and I living under the same roof. Was never going to happen.
We get versions taught into Sunday School, in church, and our limited understanding of Scripture, but the history is important. Throughout my studies and analysis there has been something seismic and very important for the Christian body to realize. Like Jesus, Truth is uncomfortable sometimes. Theological scholars have been systematically dismantling the stories we all were taught and think we know. These scholars have been digging through all of the things that apply to money, control, and power. Everything that scholars have found has everything to do with taxes (money), governance (law/control), and imperialism (power). Don’t forget, I’m a monk nerd when my wife is gone or sleeping.
Historians believe that the real break between Judaism and Christianity was NOT at the foot of the cross. Although it DID, it didn’t and therein lies the beauty of our faith when analyzed from a different perspective. Historically, the WAY or Christianity was a slow, calculated, politically engineered separation that has stretched across centuries. It involved Roman empowers, destroyed temples, it brought on a special tax that made them identify as a specific religious system, there were two catastrophic Jewish wars with Rome (failed), and then some imperial decrees from Rome that more or less forced a division. Remember, the basic tactics of divide and conquer.
Historically, what is so interesting to me is that the Jews and “the Way” never realized that they were going through this divorce of faith that would carry on to this day. Interestingly throughout this time, Jews who were worshipping Judaism and Jews that were worshiping Jesus were worshiping in the same synagogue. And like in old Jewish culture, they were arguing over the same text of the Torah. One from a Yeshua angle and the other from the Yahweh angle. They all celebrated the same historic Jewish festivals and yet fragmented by the Jesus factor.
Let’s go back in history to understand how the “way” or Christianity became the religion of the power elite in Rome. Now this is nothing less than a miraculous stretch done on the back of Paul in his travels. Now, I have to be honest, as we have gotten this wrong in our Sunday School stories after the fact of Jesus. You see, in the first century we tend to see Judaism as a singular religion when in fact is was more complex. First century Judaism was diverse, chaotic, and no different than the denominational religions we see today, fragmented by interpretation and directed doctrine. In Judaism, there really was no central authority. There really was no definition of what being a Jew really meant.
I lean on the historian Josephus who really covered all of this for Rome in the latter half of the first century. As we see from his writings there were at least four major sect of Judaism competing for power in Judea alone. The Sadducees, who were the priestly aristocracy allied with Rome. They were tied to the Jerusalem temple, politically tied to Rome, and narrowly theologically conservative. They rejected the resurrection of the dead—count Lazurus and Jesus out, they rejected the concept of angels, and most of the oral traditions found in the Torah. Then we have the Pharisees. They were essentially opposite of the Sadducees as they were deeply in the oral tradition that wrote the Torah, and interpreted the “law” for everyday life and bringing temple-level purity into every home. Josephus averaged that there were approximately 6000 Pharisees before the temple fell in 60 A.D.—a minority but extremely powerful. Now, we have the Essenes—most likely affiliated with the ancient community of Qumran who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls—always convinced the end of the world was night. Lastly, we have my personal favorites because of their devotion and fight—the zealots. They were militant and always ready for the right moment, with or without their “Messiah,” to drive Rome out of the Holy Land that I will forever refer to as Israel, by force. NOW, please allow me to STRONGLY STATE that Israel is Jewish as per God’s design and designation. Israel and Jew are so closely tied in my Christian-Jesus-God mind that I can never, and will NEVER allow that to be diminished as it happened all to many times throughout history. So, now you know where I stand. That should serve to tick off the smooth-brained “from the river to the sea” knuckleheads…oh well, God’s will, not mine.
The Romans were always looking for a rebellion or insurrection, and why so many crucifixions and overt oppression. Judea in the first century was essentially a religious marketplace with Jewish, Greek Roman, and the “Way” influences. It almost seems as if people were waiting for the something to break the sky open. Through all of this walked in a Galillean carpenter named Jesus with his small band of followers. Not an army, not an insurrection, not a rebellion, just teaching a Truth of real freedom…spiritual freedom.
Modern and revisionist historians will tell us that Jesus wasn’t trying to form a new religion because Jesus was Jewish, His mother and earthly father were Jewish, His disciples were Jewish. Jesus preached in synagogues, he maintained allegiance to all of the festivals, He even went so far as to argue the correct interpretation of the Torah. When Jesus went to the temple, He was using language that any Jew would recognize and accept…except, He was talking about something far above them.
The movement Jesus started was essentially a Jewish renewal movement that few could comprehend. Paula Frederiksen at Boston University argued in her book, “When Christians were Jews,” that 1st Century Christians were nothing more that Jews who could actually identify the Messiah. They weren’t rejecting Judaism, rather, they were in reality, fulfilling it. I call this Jesus radicalization.
After Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the “WAY” He left behind is exactly what we would expect and has lasted for centuries. His small sect worshipped in the temple and in private homes telling His story. And the leader was…wait for it…not Peter as Catholic tradition would tell us, but James the brother of Jesus. With James running the first Jerusalem church it was scandalous as he stayed kosher and recognized all of the Jewish traditions. Early sources say that James had hardened his knees at the alter in the temple from constant prayer. The community he led, often called the Nazarenes for Jesus of Nazereth, saw themselves as completely fully Jewish with the only difference in that they believed Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.
So, if everyone saw themselves, it wasn’t really until Paul that we historically see the break. As a Hellenistic Jew, Paul was able to open the door of Christianity far beyond Judaism across the gentile European landscape. The new Gospel was that people could become Christians without converting to Judaism first. No Old Testament Levitical laws, no circumcision, no food restrictions, just simply follow the teachings of Jesus. This was first event of shaking up the Christian faith as James was teaching a more Jewish form of Jesus while Paul was teaching a Jesus for the world. Paul eventually went to Jerusalem to the first Christian counsel recorded in Acts 15. This confrontation was real and fierce. They reached a compromise on circumcision and came to terms with eating food sacrificed to idols and sexual morality. This was the first of many events that shaped Christianity and it survived the first hurdle. Imagine that, divisiveness in the church and it was only 50 A.D.. Even after this first council, no one thought that they were actually starting a new religion. They were solely discussing the terms in which a gentile could be a part of an original Messianic Jewish movement. The disagreement was actually internal to Jews. In Paul’s writings, some of the oldest manuscripts found, his arguments are from Jewish Scripture, Jewish categories, believing that people would care deeply about their Jewish identity. After his council, there was no defined split. The split to come didn’t occur because of theology, but because of a catastrophe.
In the year 66 a complete revolt between the Jews and Romans took place led by the Jewish zealots. The Jewish forces had some initial success, but the Roman response was devastating. Roman legions march on and surrounded Jerusalem. They were able to breach the walls and slaughtered an enormous number of the population then burned the second temple to the ground. This was a big deal as the temple was the very center of Jewish life. It was the heartbeat of a religious system that had existed at that time over 1000 years. The consequences for Judaism were existential. The Sadducees whose very existence was centered around the temple vanished within a generation. The Essenes disappeared around the same time. The Zealots were crushed by the Romans in the war. The only order of Judaism left were the Pharisees. The survived because their sect relied on study and analysis of the Hebrew text and very little on the actions within the temple.
This group of Pharisees began the long journey of reinventing Judaism—essentially, a religion that could exist without a temple. They moved to a coastal town named Yavneh continuing the oral traditions of the faith and began to build what is called Rabbinic Judaism. This is the direct ancestor of all modern sects of Judaism that we see today. This is where the real trouble begins for the Jesus movement.
Jesus was getting pushed out because this new form of Judaism was much more strict and tighter in interpretations that had absolutely no room for the risen savior or Jesus factor as I like to call it. A little discussed not except within astute scholarly discussion that caused a real separation for Christianity was Roman taxation. After the destruction of the temple, the Emperor took the two Drachma tax that normally went to the temple in Jerusalem and brought it straight to Rome to fund the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. This meant that every Jew in the empire had to pay a tax to a Pagan temple. It was an annual humiliation, not only were the Jews not recognized as a people, the goal was to destroy their faith.
There was an unexpected secondary effect. It created, for the first time, an administrative category of “Jew” that Roman tax collectors needed to identify. This tax was called the “Fiscus Judaicus” that ended being one of the most important elements in the development of Christianity. Well-respected historian, Marius Heemstra, has a very convincing argument that this specific tax and the way different emperors used it was the critical movement to push Christians and Jews apart. Under Vespasian and Titus the tax was collected as usual. But under the next emperor, Domitian, things went dark as he expanded this tax and did so brutally. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Domitian aggressively pursued this tax among two groups. First, people who were living Jewish lifestyles without formally acknowledging Judaism. Second, people who were trying to disguise their Jewish origin.
Now the division began as all Jewish Christians were forced to pay the tax, but the Gentile Christians also came into question as they celebrated certain Jewish traditions like the Sabbath and a life of virtue and morality. Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote about how Emperor Domitian executed citizens that drifted into Jewish ways to include members of his own extended family. Domitian was ultimately assassinated, probably from killing so many of his own family members for smelling too Jewish, and Nerva took over for two years.
Nerva’s first act was to reform the Fiscus Judaicus and even minted a coin in honor of this change that read: “FISCI IUDAICI CALUMNIA SUBLATA,” or roughly translates to “the slander of the Jewish tax have been removed.” He narrowed the definition of who had to pay—only practicing Jews. This was a true pivot in Christianity as Rome drew a legal line between Jews and Christians.
This placed Jewish Christians in a dilemma, to be a Jew or a Christian was the deep question. To be a Jew meant paying a tax, but was considered a good thing as it made Judaism a protected religion under Roman law. This meant they would have to associate themselves with the synagogue that moved them further away from the Jesus factor and Christianity. If they didn’t want to pay the tax, then they were considered something different, something new, and NOT as a protected status. This new law made Christianity an illegal religion not sanctioned by Rome to be some sort of atheism. Jewish Christians were being pushed in two separate directions and beliefs. The social, economic, and legal pressure was enormous. By the end of the first century the structural divide between Judaism and Christianity was nearly complete. Not necessarily because of a theological decision, but because of a tax policy.
There is another layer to this divide that occurred within the synagogue. There was a change made to the Jewish daily prayer known as the Amidah or 18 Benedictions. An additional benediction was added called the Birkat Ha’Manim or “Blessing on the Heritics.” The word “blessing” here is kind of a Jewish irony because it was actually a curse. The traditional version is a prayer that the heretics (Christians) be destroyed, that the arrogant kingdom be uprooted, and in later manuscripts, specifically, that the Nazarenes be wiped out. Obviously, Nazarenes was the name given to the earliest followers of Jesus. Straight forward and brutal and virtually impossible for a Jewish Christian to recite publicly before the altar and God.
The second catastrophe occurred in the year 132 when another massive revolt took place in Judea. This one was led by a charismatic leader named Simon bar Kokhba, that was sparked by Roman provocation to build a Roman city on the ruins of Jerusalem complete with a pagan temple. The revolt was initially successful liberating large portions of Judea, minting their own currency, and beginning to rebuild Jewish self-rule. It was here that the leading Rabbi of the Jews in Judea, Rabbi Akiva, said something to be remembered for centuries in declaring Simon bar Kokhba to be the Messiah. The implications of this were enormous, especially for the Jewish Christians.
Remember, the Jewish Christians had their own Messiah in Jesus. Accepting bar Kokhba as the Messiah would mean to renounce Jesus. An early Christian writer, Justin Martyr (what a great name is that?!!!), bar Kokhba’s followers actively persecuted the follower of Jesus and their cause. Christians were considered traitors to the Jewish situation and they pursued them with vengeance. In 135 bar Kokhbar and his resistance was utterly destroyed that led to Jews being banned from Jerusalem for penalty of death. This is where the rename of the entire region to Syria-Palestina came from…Roman edict.
Jewish life shifted north to Galilee where it would create the great Rabbinic works like the Mishnah and later the Talmud. For the Jewish Christians, the bar Kohkbar revolt was the point of no return. Jerusalem the spiritual capitol was gone. The dynastic leadership of James family, was gone as they had scattered. The Jerusalem door was closed.
Meanwhile Gentile presence grew more abundantly and really unimpeded. By the mid-second century the new Christianity looked gentile, spoke Greek, and had very little visible connection with Judaism. But here is a detail that many miss. Jewish Christians really didn’t disappear and they persisted for centuries. Groups like the Nazarenes and the Ebionites continued to follow Jesus while keeping Jewish law. Church fathers like Jerome wrote in the 4th and 5th century that he met with Nazarenes even to that day. Jerome described them as Jews, but Christians, and he really didn’t know what to make of them. From an institutional perspective, they really didn’t fit anywhere.
Experts from Oxford and Princeton over the past two decades wrote a landmark document entitled, “The Ways that never Parted” in 2003. This document explains that a clean split between Judaism and Christianity in the 1st and 2nd Century was more messy that historians realize. They argue that Judaism and Christianity were intertwined long after the 2nd Century. There were on-going contacts and on-going conversions in both directions, and on-going shared practices and debates. It was a long, cumbersome, difficult division that stretched from the 4th to 6th Centuries.
Israeli-American scholar Daniel Boyarin in his book “Border Lines” wrote that the real break was not because of ordinary Jews and Christians at all. He contends that it was driven by religious elites on both sides seeking policeable boundaries. The ordinary believers kept mixing while the Roman and religious authorities kept doing their best to force them apart. Finally, the Roman political move that put the nail in the coffin.
In the year 312, Roman Emperor Constantine won the battle of the Milvian Bridge and declared himself a convert to Christianity. In 313 he wrote the edict of Milan that made Christianity a legal and acknowledged religion across the Roman empire. Over the next several decades, Christianity went from being a persecuted religion to being the favored religion of the empire.
Then in 325, Constantine convened the Council of Nicea that attempted to standardize Christian doctrine, especially on the question of the divinity of Jesus. Here is the moment when the imperial power of Rome finally made Christianity its only sanctioned religion. This council moved the date of Easter so it no longer coincided with the Jewish Passover, church canons strictly prohibited churches from performing Jewish functions, or even marrying Jews. The Theodosian Code of 438 included laws that treat Jews and Christians as entirely separate legal categories, and increasingly tilted the balance against the Jewish community. Increasing heat was applied to the Jewish Christians as Theodosius the new emperor dictated that Christianity was the one true faith in the year 380.
This is where the two forms of religion were cemented and have been separate for well of 1600 years. Many popular historians will say that there is no single moment of break. They will say that the division was caused more by economic and institutional pressures than theological ones. Let’s look at the timeline: crucifixion 30 C.E., destruction of the temple 70 C.E., tax reform 96 C.E., bar Kohkba rebellion 135 C.E., Constantine 312 C.E.. These were the real engines of separation. It seems theology followed politics and not the other way around. Third, it adequate to believe that Rome established the legal agency of separating the two faiths as legal and taxable identities throughout the empire. Fourth, centuries afterward, there communities that were a meld between Jewish and Christian who lived in the spaces between the emerging religions. These communities in the gap were written out of history completely by both Jews and Christians.
The way we tell this story as historians and theologians is easier if we maintain the “clean break” theory. The unintended consequences of this is to assert that Christianity super-ceded Judaism to somehow justify Christian hostility toward Jews. It is my scholarly belief that both faiths essentially grew up together and through the centuries tax laws, emperors edicts, and councils caused a more permanent division.
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