"As Christians, we are taught by our leaders to believe certain ideas and behave certain ways. We have a Bible, yes. But we are conditioned to read it with the lens handed to us by the Christian tradition to which we belong."
– Frank Viola Pagan Christianity Pg 26
In part 1 I posted the first half of a chapter in D. Thomas Lancaster’s Restoration: Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus. There he mentioned how the Gospel was in exile along with the Jewish people being in exile from there Land. He then went on to say that the Apostles viewed their ministry as a sect within Judaism, not a separate religion. He finished with the history of the Jewish war and the ramifications it had on the Jews and Gentile believers. That was the beginning of the separation of the synagogue and the church. In part 2 he will take us to a brief history from the second century through the middle ages and how the Church grew further and further away from its Jewish roots.
OUR JOURNEY AWAY FROM TORAH
THE CHUCH FATHERS
We call the leaders of the generation of Gentile believers who lived through the Second Jewish Revolt the Church Fathers. They were godly men doing the best they could with the understanding they had. Unfortunately, their understanding of Torah was largely a misunderstanding. One of the Church Fathers, Ignatius, wrote an epistle to the congregations of Asia... He said to them,
Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness...But let every one of you keep the Sabbath in a spiritual manner...not in relaxation, not in eating things prepared the day before, not in finding delight in dancing and clapping which have no sense in them. [6]
What did he mean? Why did he have to prohibit second-century believers from keeping the Sabbath? He had to prohibit them because despite all the adversity, John's and Paul's congregations were still keeping the Sabbath.
In the same era, men like the author of the epistle of Barnabas arose. The epistle of Barnabas, is a known forgery that is alleged to be written by Barnabas, Paul’s traveling companion. It is actually a deeply misguided, anti-Semitic justification for replacement theology. The author of this pseudo-epistle describes the Jews as wretch men deluded by an evil angel (that is, the God of the Hebrews Scriptures) and abandoned by God. In the epistle of Barnabas, the laws of Torah are allegorized and Judaism is condemned.
It was in this era that we have the first record of Christians proselytizing Jews. There is a famous Christian-Jewish dialogue in the form of a polemic between a Hellenist Jew named Trypho and the Church Father Justin Martyr. It is a testament of how far the Roman believers had already divorced themselves from Judaism and even from the Scriptures. Justin Martyr explained to Trypho (and all the Jews) that the Torah was given to Jews as a punishment for their exceptional wickedness and because of God’s special hatred for the Jewish people. He said, “We, too, would observe your circumcision of the flesh, your Sabbath days and in a word all your festivals, if we were not aware of the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, because of your sins and your hardness of heart.” Yet even Justin Martyr admitted that, in his day (153CE), there were believers who still practiced the laws of Torah, both Jewish and non-Jewish believers. These “weak-minded” brothers, he reluctantly conceded, were still saved, despite their foolish insistence on observing the laws of Moses.[7]
At the same time that men like Ignatius and Justin Martyr were holding their sway over the developing church, the believers saw the rise of the great heretic Marcion. He came sweeping through the church with his refined doctrine that the Jesus of the New Testament had had defeated and unseated the evil god of the Jews. Therefore, the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) and any Jewish relics in the Christian faith needed to be expelled. He compiled the first version of the ‘New Testament.’ Marcion’s Bible consisted of portions of the book of Luke and ten of Paul’s epistles, which he edited to remove what he termed as “Jewish corruptions.” He discarded the rest of the books of the Apostles, as well as the entire Old Testament, on the basis of their Jewishness. Marcion’s anti-Jewish, anti-Torah version of Christianity caught on quickly. Though the Roman church denounced him as a heretic in 114CE, Marcionite churches, bishops and communities sprang up throughout the empire. Tertullian compared the Marcionites to “swarms of wasps building combs in imitation of the bees.”[8] He was wildly popular and stunningly influential, and his teachings remained deeply rooted–even after he was denounced for his heresies.
RESURRECTION SUNDAY
Meanwhile an annual remembrance of the resurrection of Messiah had emerged in Christian practice. It occurred every year on the Sunday that followed Passover. The Roman Christians called it Easter, an older name for a pagan Roman springtime festival. The Roman church ordered believers to quit reckoning Passover by the traditional Jewish method and to only keep this annual resurrection festival. It was a great controversy because the churches of Asia (the congregations of Paul and John) did not want to play ball with Roman authority. They wanted to keep Passover as they always had. But in the end the authority of Rome prevailed.
Part of the fallout of the controversy was that Sunday was elevated while all the biblical (i.e., Jewish) elements, festivals and days were eliminated. It became a Christian innovation to fast on the Sabbath and rejoice on Sunday as a weekly celebration of the annual Sunday resurrection festival. The Church began to celebrate Sunday as a weekly, mini-Roman, Easter.
CONSTANTINE AND NICEA
By the time Constantine converted to Christianity and declared it the official state religion, most of the Jewish elements were gone. Except for hold-out sects of Jewish believers like the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, the observance of Torah had been largely eliminated from the faith. Constantine made the divorce from Judaism final with the Council of Nicea (325 CE). His official policy regarding Torah observance is expressed in his words: “Let us have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish rabble.”[9] The decisions made at Nicea defined the course the church would take henceforth. Later church councils followed suit, and new legislations was introduced to forbid Christians from observing Torah. The Council of Antioch (341 CE) prohibited Christians from celebrating Passover with the Jews, while the Council of Laodicea (363 CE) forbade Christians from observing the biblical Sabbath. The edicts of these various councils make it clear that many believers were still, even in the fourth century, keeping Torah.
In the late fourth century, John Chrysostom delivered a series of sermons in Antioch against the Jews and against the Judaizers among the Christians. “Judaizer” is a term that the Church Fathers applied to anyone who practiced the laws of Torah. Chysostom’s sermons contained an abundance of hateful, anti-Jewish venom. He singled out the observance of Torah as a disease in Christianity.
What is this disease? The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the Feast of Trumpets, the Fest of Tabernacles, the fasts [i.e., the Day of Atonement]. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observation their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the church right now…But now that the Jewish festivals are close by and at the very door, if I should fail to cure those who are sick with the Judaizing disease…[they] may partake in the Jews’ transgressions.”[10]
Chrysostom went on to denounce Christians who participated in the festivals, the Sabbath and the dietary laws. He rebuked them for attending the synagogue. In total, he delivered eight consecutive sermons on the subject, ample testimony that even in the fourth century many believers were still obedient to Torah. Yet in the end, the will of the Church Fathers prevailed, and the divorce between Christianity and the Torah of Moses was completed.
These things had been foreseen. The Master warned His disciples that, in the troubled times to come, “Many will fall away…False prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased…” (Matthew 24:10-12) Paul had warned the Ephesian elders that “after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among you your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” (Acts 20:19-30) In writing to the Thessalonians, he warned them of an apostasy to come, an apostasy of Torahlessness: “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first…For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 7)
As time went on, and the Dark Ages began, the Christian church turned violent toward the Jewish people. Synagogues and holy books were burned, whole communities were slaughtered. Jewish men and women were tortured – all in the name of Christ. The pages of church history are stained red with the spilled blood of the Jewish people.
The church tightened her grip on her own people by forbidding laity from possessing a copy of the Scriptures. The Holy Book was forbidden. A person caught with a coy of the Scriptures could be sentence to death. Like the Jewish people, the Gospel was truly in exile, lost among the nations.
A look ahead at the next installment:
- THE REFORMATION
- END OF THE EXILE
- THE MONDERN JEWISH ROOTS MOVEMENT
Works Cited
6 Pseudo-Ignatius, Epistle to the Magnesians
7 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 47. 8 Tertullian, Against Marcion, 4.5.
9 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, v. 3, c. 18-19.
10 Chrysostom, John, Against the Jews, Homily 1.5.
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