by Bob Shepherd
For generations - or perhaps centuries -- a core of believers clung to their Judaic and biblical heritage, resisted the excess hellenizing and theologizing, disapproved Paul's policy of seeking and accepting Gentile converts who did not adopt the full obligations of Jewish practice. Paul and the Hellenizers were lowering the bar. The Judaic believers emphasized deed and practice, the doing of God's will (a living and a doing), as Jesus himself apparently taught, the straight gate and the narrow way. Paul and the Hellenizers, taking Christianity to Europe, while broadening and widening, drifted from the impossible ethical standards of Jesus himself, replacing them with a beautiful theology instead.
A Christian "Caliphate"
Thus a division arose almost immediately, and the followers of Jesus began to drift into two opposing camps. The Hebraic camp intended no break with Judaism, never sought to destroy the law or the prophets, insisted that salvation is and would always be of the Jews. Their leader was James the brother of Jesus, and they apparently would not have regarded Jesus as being equal with God, who is One. Following James' martyrdom, another relative in Jesus' family (Simeon), the son of a cousin, became "bishop" of Jerusalem. (Thirteen other Judeo-Christians followed in succession as bishops of the Jerusalem group.)
The other camp, led first by Stephen, then later by Paul, emphatically pursued the objective of turning Jesus into a God, and they strained to support their objective by sound Jewish logic, combined with their own theologizing. However, their primary leadership in Jewish history (or primary heresy) was in the wide open welcome they offered to non-Jews. Forgetting the admonition of prophets from Moses onward that Jews were not to blur the differences between themselves and the nations round about, the Hellenizers self-consciously developed a theology that flung open the gates, missionary-fashion, to increasing assimilation and blending. Had their idealistic policy succeeded absolutely, the Jewish people would have disappeared as a distinct nation. Ironically, there are strong strands of universalism present in much of ancient Judaism, for example in Isaiah and the other prophets. But how far do you go?
The Hebrew party, though eventually outnumbered, were at ease with their own committed devotion to the Jesus they knew, a fully Jewish, fully Mosaic, fully Biblical Jesus, who came not to destroy Judaism, but to fulfill; who declared not one jot or tittle should pass from the law, till its full fruition; who was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. When this Judaic church spoke of Scripture, they meant the Law and the Prophets and the Writings. They took issue with the theologizing of the Hellenizing Christians. They seem likewise to have been bothered at the many compromises they saw the Hellenizers making, in order to welcome Gentiles.
James, called "brother" of Jesus, was a leader of the Judaic party. In the second chapter of James, he puts forward the alternative view to the faith-is-all theology of Paul and the hellenizers. It is the deed that redeems. Obey the commandments. We must LIVE the creed we were given from of old. By doing the word, rather than hearing it only, we build our house on the rock of obedience, rather than the sands of pretence (or pseudo-religion).
Over time, the Hebrew party drifted geographically. They had been headquartered in Jerusalem, fully observant Jews, except for sacrifices, since Jesus himself had pointed them to follow Moses, and the prophets. God was One, to them. And Jesus the Prophet foretold by Moses, the anointed one they served, was a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy. (Deuteronomy 18:18).
Ultimately the Hebrew party disappeared. During the war with Rome (Titus and Vespasian), they fled Jerusalem and sought refuge beyond the Jordan, settling there for a time. They clung to their Judaism, it seems, and some obviously sought to fully rejoin Diaspora Judaism. Others remained apart, like the Ebionites or like the Nazarenes. They were hanifs, observing the sublime ethics of Jesus, minus the studied theology of Paul We are told that much, apparently most, of the pseudo-Clementine literature came from these Hebraic followers of Jesus. They clearly persisted for a while, and the epistles of Paul show indications that he felt threatened enough by their own quiet Jewishness that he was compelled to direct his arguments against them. They were branded legalists, accused of promoting bondage, under the law, trusting in works. So much like the Essenes of JohnBaptist fame, their spiritual commitment inspired them to self-denial, living their values. What we see in Josephus, their focus was praxis, lives of sacrificial service and scholarship, almost a prototype of much of what Jesus would teach in the Sermon on the Mount.
Symmachus the Ebionite, (a translator of scripture) even as late as the third century, adhered to this belief. Yet the end was near for Judaic followers of Jesus. The Hellenizers grew in strength, and in the end succeeded in ripping Jesus out of his Jewish origins and Jewish context, Jewish faith and Jewish practice. And before long, anti-Semitism crept into their attitudes. They forgot the simple truth that Gentile Christianity was grafted onto the Jewish tree. Not the other way around. They forgot the admonition of primordial Hebrew monotheistic unitrarianism against changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. Soon, images appeared. The law given to Moses was disparaged as inapplicable under a New (and ever more Gentile) Covenant. Yet did not Jesus himself declare not one jot nor one tittle of the law would in any wise pass from the law?
If there was a flaw of the Judeo-Christians, it was their tendency to regard Jesus as one of their own, a Jew among Jews, Hebrew among Hebrews, Semite among Semites. Inevitably, they humanized and Shemiticized the Lord Jesus, perhaps paving the way for a more historical or Nestorian view of Jesus of Nazareth, a real person. Jesus had warned not one jot or tittle of the Law would pass. Often he asked his flatterers, "Why callest thou me good. There is none good but one, God. He had referred to non-Jews as dogs. He told the Samaritan woman that Salvation is of the Jews.
Jesus' brother (James the Less) first bishop of Jerusalem had emphasized obediance as the true proof of faith. The faith versus works debate is frivolous and moot, according to James' Epistle. Your action is the bottom line. If you don't LIVE your faith, it's dead. Or as Jesus himself taught, your house is built on sand. Wisdom must be lived, the Jewish view had always been. Jesus endorsed and reiterated that view, according to James (and the Judeo-Christians). A modern rabbi says as much. Abraham Joshua Heschel boils the Jewish conception into a pitthy phrase. The deed redeems. (Action is the bottom line.)
Hypostatic Union of the Theanthropic man
If there was a flaw of the Paulinian (Hellenizing) Christians, it was their almost docetic drift away from what Jesus actually said and did, and into a gentile, deifying, theologizing intellectualism. Theology became an idol. Given time, the Europeans came up with abstruse cerebral formulations, such as the Hypostatic Union of the Theanthropic man (to explain Jesus theological identity).
Interestingly, in order to broaden the appeal of the gospel, they had to mystify it, and in so doing almost left the simple gospel of Jesus behind. While Judeo-Christians were content to walk the walk that Jesus walked, the Hellenizers turned Jesus into an idol and a deity, and ceased to "do" the deeds that the Lord had asked. The solid rock, acording the Jesus word, had been the rock of obedience, of doing and not simply hearing.
Aboriginal Judaism had retained a theology that was relatively uncluttered (however excess their ritual had become). We are tempted to argue that Jesus himself supported the Judaic conception of a divine King "eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God." [I Timothy 1:17] But the Hellenizers and Europeanizers needed more. A split was inevitable.
In due course, the Hellenizers and theologizers succeeded in "winning" their rivalry with Judaic believers, but at what cost? The Judaic Christians could have helped balance out the dominant wing, and served as a check on un-Biblical tendencies, the drift into theology and docetic views. Judaic Christians offered a more solid continuity with Christianity's authentic Shemitic and Hebrew roots. They preserved a full awareness of Jesus the Jew. For all Jesus' criticism of religious hypocrisy and pride, we so often forget that he was clearly on the Pharisee wing of contemporary Judaism. He echoed the temperate and heartfelt Judaism of Philo of Alexandria. He talked like Hillel, and at times reaffirmed the inspired universalism of Isaiah. He even urged upon his followers aspects of the strict ethicism and personal moralism of the Essenes and of John the Baptist.
Forgotten by the increasingly Europeanized religion was the fact that the "Bible" of Jesus was thoroughly Hebrew, its milieu Shemitic and Judaic. Forgotten was such simple facts as what Renan declared: "the first founder of Christianity was Isaiah. By introducing into the Jewish world the concept of ethical religion, of justice, and of the relative unimportance of sacrifices, he antedated Jesus by more than seven centuries." (Le Judaisme comme race et comme religion, 1883.)
