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The Split between Judaism and Christianity.
The Parting of the Ways By Anne Amos
http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?item=797
The split between Judaism and Christianity was gradual and happened at different rates in different places. There is remarkably little agreement among scholars as to what precisely caused the rift and estimates vary about the date, from the middle of the first century CE to the middle of the fourth CE.
The First Stage
- Marked by a move from concern with purely Christian self-definition to formulating the Church as a distinct entity from Judaism, a move heretical to Jews.
- Four first-Century sects - were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots. The first century was pluralistic but Jewishly pluralistic.
- The early Jewish church was Jewish in leadership and membership. It functioned in synagogues and had Pharisaic traditions and it never lost its traces of Rabbinic Halakha [religious law].
- To the Rabbis Jewish Christians were heretics.
- The Jews had become the "other". What we do not know is whether this creation of the "other" was ethnic - Jew separated from Gentile, or religious Jew separated from Christian. Whichever, their ways had started to diverge as Christians struggled to establish a distinct identity.
The Second Stage (very abbreviated)
The constitution of the Church as a distinct institution from Judaism, was a struggle for legitimacy against the antiquity and attractiveness of Judaism.
In Jewish eyes the Church was an upstart - The word Christian does not appear - The definition of minim is elastic but it is thought to sometimes refer to Christians.
There are texts in the Talmud that deal with the antiquity of Judaism over the minim, the continuing authority of the Rabbinic writings as G-d's Law
The intention of Rabbi Samuel ben Nahum seems to ..meet the Christian objection that sought to disassociate the moral law, i.e. the decalogue, from the second covenantal code, mainly the ritualistic.
Likewise, when the Rabbis deny emphatically that G-d had any son, this must be an allusion to Christian dogma even though the minim are not identified in the relevant texts.
There is a significant body of Christian antisemitic literature that is evidence that Judaism represented a real threat to the Church:
Christianity inherited such pagan attitudes and there were populist complaints against Jews. However, by the fourth century, there was also an ecclesiastical and learned condemnation that was nourished by a particular reading of the scriptures to support such assertions as deicide and supersessionism.
Justin Martyr (100-165) was writing in the period just before Jewish Christianity as a sect was separated from the Church.
Addressing Trypho he accuses the Jews of "cursing in your synagogues those who believe in Christ" .
The context was the re-establishment of the twin faiths of Judaism and Christianity after the destruction of the Temple. The issues of cult practice, the locus of Divine Favour and the identity of the true Israel were the subject of lively but respectful debate in a time when Jews and Christians still had meaningful concourse.
Chrysostom, Bishop of Antioch, delivered "Eight Homilies against the Jews" for the instruction and moral reformation of the nominally Christian city of Antioch.
The strength of Chrysostom's antisemitism was proportional to the numerical strength of the Jewish community.
Aphraates lived outside the Empire amidst a strong Jewish community. He was bypassed by the great controversies of the Empire. He was the first of the Syriac Church fathers and he lived through the persecutions of Shapur II (310-379) in Persia.
His Christology is archaic and retains the simplicity of the first generation of Christians. .. Christ is the object of faith and worship. However his speculation is through and through Semitic, untainted by the influence of Hellenism.
Judaism's appeal was a threat not only to the formulation of Christian doctrine but also to the popular practices of the Church. The people who advocated the retention of Jewish customs in the Church were known as Judaisers. Theirs was a popular movement. It laid the elements taken from Judaism and Christianity side by side, a form of syncretism.
The Christian writers who insist most strongly on the lapse of Israel's call are the ones who are most occupied with combating the Judaiser's pressure and that was true of Justin Martyr, Chrysostom and Aphraates.
The Councils of the early Church were also preoccupied with prohibiting Jewish practices.
Conclusion : The Council of Nicaea as the event that marked "the parting of the ways".
Rev. Anne Amos is a Minister of the Uniting Church, Australia.
Church Councils:
Abridged From AOL Hometown: Early Christian Church Councils
http://hometown.aol.com/goodnews77/footnote_churchcouncils.htm
Most of these councils were held in the eastern part of the empire and the attendee's were primarily eastern.
- 49 A.D. Council of Jerusalem - exempted all pagan converts from the laws of Judaism
- 325 A.D. Council of Nicea - Decreed The Trinity + manhood and divinity of Jesus Christ
- 381 A.D. First Council of Constantinople - belief in the Holy Spirit added to Nicene Creed
- 431 A.D. Council of Ephesus - Jesus; one person with two natures + Mary is mother of God
- 451 A.D. Council of Chalcedon - to reaffirm the Church's positions above.
- 553 A.D. Second Council of Constantinople - counter the continuing heresy of the Nestorians
- 680 A.D. Third Council of Constantinople
- 787 A.D. Second Council of Nicea
- 869 A.D. Fourth Council of Constantinople - to avert a schizm between west & east ('Filioque')
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Heresy
EBIONISM By JAMES AKIN
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1994/9405hotm.asp
There were three groups of Jewish heretics in the early Church:
A strict party, the Judaizers, claimed that all Christians must accept circumcision and keep the Mosaic Law in order to be saved.
A milder party, sometimes called the Nazarenes, claimed that all Jewish Christians must be circumcised and keep the Mosaic Law, even though Gentile Christians need not.
A Gnostic Jewish group, sometimes called the Elkasaites, insisted on keeping the Mosaic Law and added pagan cosmic speculation and the worship of angels.
EBIONISM
Insistence that all Christians or at least all Jewish Christians must be circumcised and keep the Mosaic Law; belief that Jesus was not God but an angel or, more commonly, a mere man, often with a denial of the Virgin Birth; rejection of the epistles of Paul; claim that Paul was a false apostle; and often the rejection of all Gospels except Matthew or a revised version of Matthew.
In the second century and later, the claim that Jesus was a mere man became the most noted doctrinal claim of Ebionitism. Some have suggested this influenced the development of Islam and its similar view of Jesus.
Modern Parallels
Different aspects of Ebionite teaching are reflected in the theologies of modern groups. Some groups of Messianic Jews have a position that is basically the same as the Nazarenes with respect to the Law (that is, Jews should keep it, but Gentiles need not).
Seventh-Day Adventists retain elements - like the Judaizers except for the fact that they do not require circumcision.
The Gnostic Ebionites find parallels today in New Agers
Moslems, like most Ebionites, claim that Jesus was a mere man
Jehovah's Witnesses, like some Ebionites, claim he was an angel in a body.
Sects that come especially close to Ebionitism are:
- Yahweh's New Covenant Assembly in Kingdom City,
- Missouri and the House of Yahweh in Abilene, Texas.
These are Messianic Jewish groups that reject the doctrine of the Trinity and insist on observance of parts of the Mosaic Law. The latter group goes so far as to claim that Abilene is God's chosen city and replaces Jerusalem for the celebration of his feasts.
History Time Line:
A Brief Overview of the Early History of the Orthodox Church
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_orthh.htm
Second and third centuries CE: Pauline Christianity ... started to develop a formal theology, a set of doctrines, and an unofficial canon of writings which were later to become the Christian Scriptures.... was in response to frictions between the Pauline and Gnostic branches of the early Christian movement. The Apostolic Fathers had replaced the original apostles by this time. They included a number of teachers and bishops: e.g. Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Origen, Polycarp, Tertullian. A hierarchical organizational structure called the "monarchial episcopate" developed in which the individual congregational leaders recognized the authority of their area bishop in matters of doctrine and faith.
Fourth century CE: The years of Christian persecution came to an end in 313 CE. Emperor Constantine (289-337 CE) issued the Edict of Milan which formally established freedom and toleration for Christianity. Jews lost many rights with this edict. Circa 330 CE, Emperor Constantine decided to build a "New Rome" on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium (now at Istanbul, Turkey). It was called Constantinople.
Fifth Century CE: In 451 CE, the Council of Chalcedon was called to resolve still another debate about Jesus. The East Syrian (Nestorian) church and the Oriental Orthodox Christian Church disagreed with the council's decision that Christ had two natures, one human and one divine. They split off from the rest of Christianity in the first major schism from Pauline Christianity.
Sixth century CE: Emperor Justinian called The Second Council of Constantinople for 533 CE. He invited equal numbers of bishops from each of the five patriarchal sees: Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome. The Bishop of Rome at the time, Pope Vigilius, saw that many more bishops from the east than from the west would be present; he refused to attend.
1054 CE - the leaders of the Roman Catholic church and Eastern Orthodox churches excommunicated each other. Among the reasons cited for the schism were the practices of the Orthodox church of:
- Not fasting on Saturday.
- Beginning Lent on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday (instead of Ash Wednesday itself).
- Allowing priests to be married.
- Allowing priests to administer confirmation.
- Rejecting the inclusion of the Filioque to the Nicene Creed. Roman Catholics generally recites that version of the creed which declares that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father "and the Son." Eastern Orthodox churches follow the original version which did not include reference to the Son.
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Posted by R.P.BenDedek (Filling in for the Editor)
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