The
Pauline and Judeo-Christianity
In the early stages of Christianity, there were two
versions of Christianity: one presented
by James, a relative of Jesus, and the rest of the
apostles as a mission to the Jews.
Paul introduced the second version as a religion for
Gentiles. Barnabas introduced Paul,
to the other apostles in Jerusalem. But the disciples
“were
all afraid of Paul and
believed
not that he was a disciple, but Barnabas took him and brought him to the
Apostles”,
(Act 9:26-27).
The apostles had doubtful feelings that Paul was not what he
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seemed to claim. Paul tried first to preach to the
Jews, but he was unsuccessful as some
of the Apostles. They understood that the Jesus’
message was for “the black sheep of
Israel”, and Jesus came not to “destroy but to
fulfill.” And here was someone, that they
did not trust, pushing to steal the show and expand
the religion beyond its original
boundaries. The apostles were trying to conserve the
Jewish law, while Paul was
exempting the Gentiles from this law. In Paul’s view,
it was very difficult, or even
impossible to approach a Greek or Roman with a new
religion and then, for example,
ask the future convert, to be circumcised. Just
imagine a thirty-year old Greek leaning
towards Christianity, and then someone tells him: by
the way, you need to be
circumcised;
or if you commit adultery you are going to be stoned to death! What do you
expect his reaction to be?
The author of 2 Peter speaks of difficulties in
understanding Paul (2 Peter 3:16),
and then he said that: “as
also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in
which
are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to
their
own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” Peter was referring to
the teachings of Paul. What did Peter mean by that?
How were the scriptures explained
in a way that was hard to understand? Who was Peter
referring to by untaught and
unstable people? The Bible does not give any clues to
these questions.
The small group of apostles formed a Jewish sect that
remained faithful to the
form of worship practiced in the temples. Some men
went to Antioch in 49 AD, and told
the Gentiles ”Except ye be circumcised after the
manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.”
(Acts 15:1). Paul and Barnabas were against this
teaching. When converts from
paganism were presented to the apostles, a “special
system” was offered to them in the
council of Jerusalem in 49 AD that exempted them from
circumcision and the Mosaic
Law. This council was a meeting of Peter, Paul, and
the leaders of Jerusalem's
Christians. Many Judeo-Christians rejected this
concession. This conservative group
was separated from Paul. For Paul, the circumcision,
Sabbath, and rituals of worship
practiced in the temple were old fashioned, even for
the Jews. Christianity was to free
itself from Judaism and open itself to the Gentiles.
The head of the community at that
time was James. James represented the Judeo-Christian
camp, which consciously
adhered to Judaism as opposed to the Pauline
Christianity. Jesus’ family, and certainly
the Virgin Mary too, had a very important role in
supporting the Judeo-Christian church
of Jerusalem.
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It was not just in Jerusalem and Palestine that
Judeo-Christianity predominated
during the first hundred years of the church. The
Judeo-Christian mission seemed to
have developed everywhere before the Pauline mission.
This is certainly the explanation
of the fact that the letters of Paul had difficulties
in understanding the new religion. The
whole Syrian-Palestinian coast from Gaza to Antioch
was Judeo-Christian as witnessed
by the Acts and the writings of Clement. In Asia
Minor, Paul’s letters to the Galatians and
Colossians indicated the existence of
Judeo-Christians.
It is important to know these facts to understand the
struggle between
communities that ended up by shaping Christianity.
The Gospels began to appear
around 70 AD, the time where the two rival groups
were engaged in a fierce struggle,
with the Judeo-Christians winning this battle. Then
the Jews revolted against Rome in 66
AD, and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD
the Pauline version won the victory
after his death. From 70 AD to about 140 AD, the
Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and
John appeared. They did not constitute the first
Christian documents: the letters of Paul
dated well before them.
Paul is the most controversial person in
Christianity. He was considered to be a
traitor to Jesus’ teachings by the family and
apostles of Jesus. Paul created Christianity
at the expense of those whom Jesus had gathered
around him to spread his Gospel. He
proved the authority of his mission by declaring
Jesus, raised from the dead, had
appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It is
reasonable to state that Christianity
would not be the same without Paul. It is almost
certain that if this atmosphere of
struggle between Christians had not existed, we would
not have had the Bible that we
know today. The Gospels started to appear at a time
of fierce struggle and political
upheaval, when Pauline Christianity won the battle of
the Gentiles, and created its own
collection of documents. These texts constituted the
“Canon” which condemned and
excluded as heretical any other documents that were
not following Paul’s version of
Christianity. The Judeo-Christians were cut off from
the church that gradually freed itself
from Judaism and the Law. However, they existed in
few numbers in the third and fourth
centuries, especially in Palestine, Arabia, Jordan,
Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. They
kept the original Christianity in their hearts, and
tried very hard to keep it alive. This was
demonstrated by the efforts of Arius in Alexandria to
revive Judeo-Christianity.
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