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JEWISH CHRISTIANS

The original core of a reform movement within Judaism that later emerged as a separate religion known as Christianity. Owing to the dynamics and changes within this process, scholarship has struggled to find a historically acceptable definition of Jewish Christianity. At one extreme, some have focused on all sorts of early Christian thought expressed in forms borrowed from Judaism (Jean Daniélou). At the other extreme, some have preferred to use “Jewish Christian” only for the movement’s radical wing that refused to accept Gentile Christians (Hans Joachim Schoeps). The following definition allows room for diversity and development.

“Earliest Jewish Christianity” is equivalent to the body of Jews who soon confessed Jesus as a venerable person or as the messiah and thus to all of earliest Christianity. Earliest Christianity contained various underdeveloped points of view on the precise nature of Christianity.

“Early Jewish Christianity” stands for but one development out of earliest Christianity. Its characteristics are: (1) confession of Christ; (2) Jewish observance (when relevant, to a degree that separated it from the evolving Great Church, particularly including one or more of the following elements: observance of the sabbath, observance of the Jewish calendar, observance of the commands regarding sexual purity, observance of circumcision, and attendance at a synagogue); and (3) some sort of direct genetic relationship to earliest Jewish Christianity.

Part of the problem in defining early Jewish Christianity is that, as is evident from Paul’s letters, the early Christians did not universally adopt a single name for themselves. One of the more widespread names was Nazoreans (“observers”). This designation was preserved among the Jewish Christians, and indeed among all Aramaic Christians, for a long period. Other self-designations for the Jewish Christians were Ebionites (“the poor”) and Sampsaeans (“servants [of God]”).

Sources

Paul’s letters are the most important source for the earliest history of Jewish Christianity. No Jewish Christian writing has been preserved intact. While thus none of the writings of the NT are Jewish Christian in their present form, Jewish Christian sources were used in Matthew, and a stage of Q must be seen as Jewish Christian. Mark also has used traditions ultimately deriving from Jewish Christianity. Acts, however, should be used with much greater caution than has been usual in NT and early Christian studies.

Outside the NT, Jewish Christian writings have survived in fragments. The bulk of this information is found in the patristic writers, particularly in Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, the Didascalia, and the heresiologists. There are remnants of three gospels, a Jewish Christian “acts of the apostles” found in Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27-71, other portions of the Pseudo-Clementines, the anti-Pauline Ascents of James, and the Book of Elchasai. Jewish Christian traditions have perhaps also been preserved in a layer of the Gospel of Thomas. While the recently recovered Greek biography of Mani adds some further information and confirms that Mani grew up as a Jewish Christian, it is doubtful whether Arabic writers have preserved any other genuine traditions.

History

The history of Jewish Christianity begins with the disciples of Jesus, who doubtless spoke Aramaic. After Jesus’ death, his message was continued by his disciples in Galilee and Judea, and the memory of Jesus was venerated. Wandering charismatics traveled north, east, west (Corinth), and perhaps also south (Egypt). Jerusalem soon asserted itself as the center of the movement under the leadership of “the pillars”: the apostles John, Peter, and particularly James “the Just,” a brother of Jesus. An attempt was made to integrate the rising Gentile Christianity (the “collection,” and a mission to correct Pauline congregations). In 62 c.e. the Sanhedrin, under the leadership of the high priest Annas, executed James for transgression of the law. Simeon, a son of Jesus’ uncle Clopas, then headed up the scattered Jerusalem community, while grandsons of Jude also came to be acknowledged as authorities.

Jewish Christians continued gradually spreading among the Aramaic-speaking East. The destruction associated with the First Jewish Revolt against Rome contributed further to the disarray among the Palestinian Jewish Christians and to the dissolution of bonds with the evolving Gentile Christianity. Rabbinic Judaism institutionalized its rejection of the Jewish Christians by adding a curse of the “Nazoreans” to a synagogal prayer. In Jerusalem, Jewish Christian dominance of the church ended with the foundation of Aelia Capitolina after the Second Jewish Revolt. Elsewhere in Palestine, Syria, the Transjordan, and upper Mesopotamia, Jewish Christians survived in pockets through the end of the 4th century. The diversity among the Jewish Christians, at all periods, should not be underestimated.

Bibliography. J. Daniélou, A History of Early Christian Doctrine before the Council of Nicaea, 1 (Philadelphia, 1964); F. S. Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity. Texts and Translations 37. Christian Apocrypha 2 (Atlanta, 1995); A. F. J. Klijn and G. J. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects. NovTSup 36 (Leiden, 1973); H. J. Schoeps, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church (Philadelphia, 1969); M. Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135-425) (Oxford, 1986).

F. Stanley Jones

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JEWISH CHRISTIANS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)