Helen Fry
Is Christianity Irredeemably Antisemitic, Part 3
Dr. Helen Fry - Is Christianity Irredeemably Antisemitic, Lecture 3
- So, alright, we’re two minutes past the hour. So welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us again. We’ve got over, yeah, I think we almost had a thousand participants streaming in. So maybe we’ll just give everybody another 30 seconds. How have you been, Helen?
Yes, great. Had a break over Christmas, which is nice.
Good, good. And is it raining in London?
Yeah, we’ve had heavy rain. It’s also very quiet. I think everyone’s being very cautious. We’re not in a lockdown, but you never know in the new year, we’ll see how it goes.
Right. Right, well, yesterday New York has been very sunny. I see today it’s a little grey. I haven’t been out. It’s grey but no rain. So it’s been crisp. Very cold, but beautiful. Alright, so thanks everybody for joining us today. Helen and William, thanks Trudy. Okay, Trudy says we have over 250 questions so far. Okay, so alright, Judi, I’ll be talking to you after Helen’s presentation. And very big thank you to Judi as always, Judi Ferreira who’s there with us. And now over to you Helen. Thanks. Looking forward.
Thank you very much Wendy, and thank you as ever to Judi for managing the tech. So one thing I’ll say now in case I forget towards the end, I think we’ve made a decision as a group, because of the sheer number of questions that we’ve already received, and being able to plan and manage ahead of Thursday, we’re suggesting that the end of this lecture is the last for posting new questions please, ‘cause we’ve got over 250 questions already with lots of emails yet unopened by Judi regarding questions, more questions. So please, if you have some burning questions, we’re going to cut it off from after today’s lectures just so that it can be manageable. Thank you. So as I’ve put here, the partings, plural, of the ways between Judaism and Christianity help us to understand the origins of Christian antisemitism. And I myself have already had questions from some of you via my website. It’s been Christmas, I haven’t been able to answer all of them. And there are some really, really big issues, some of you have raised the issue of blood libel, Trudy and I will discuss this. The purpose of these four lectures, the two last week and the two this week that I’m giving, is to give perhaps a perspective that some of you may be familiar with, but some of which you may not be familiar with.
And that’s what I think will help us to understand the schism and the new religion became Judaism and Christianity. We need to understand the diversity. And then tomorrow I will address that issue, that question, is Christianity irrevocably antisemitic or irrevocably anti-Jewish? And as one of you wrote to me to say, actually, these questions may well be irrelevant now because we have a new form of antisemitism, which is far more urgent with relating to the foundation, relating to the state of Israel and the Palestinian situation. So we now have a really dangerous form of antisemitism, but we’re hoping, Trudy and I, to touch on this. But what I want to give you is an understanding of…
Helen, may I?
Yes?
Helen, may I jump in and say that I think that maybe what we should say is that, I think that the questions are very important.
Okay.
I think it is important to have the questions, but let’s put it this way, if your questions are not answered, please do you not be offended because there’s only a limited amount of questions that one can answer. So continue to send the questions, I’m happy to go through them with, you know, and I know that it takes time. But we will answer those that we feel are are almost pertinent to the lectures. Does that work Helen?
Yes, I’m very happy, very flexible. I’m just conscious of Judi’s workload, but thank you Wendy.
No, no, I’ll help her. No, no, I’ll help her because I think the questions are extremely important.
Yeah. Alright.
Thank you.
Okay, yes.
Thank so much.
Thank you. So next slide please. So today I’m going to give you a little bit more of the complexity and looking at the Apostle Paul in a bit more detail and the destruction of the temple; critical, critical times. But just to recap, ever so slightly, on the end of last week, what we’re beginning to discover is this whole diversity of Judaisms within the first century out of which eventually these strands Christianity emerges, and that the Jewish communities, the diversity of Judaisms, the early Christian communities, ultimately, as we’ll see in more detail today, the crunch that actually causes the beginning of the partings of the ways is not, interestingly, beliefs about Jesus because the early Christians could function within Judaism at that time. It does not become a new religion. And I think that’s a misunderstanding amongst Christians as well. They tend to think that, well, you know, Jesus has inaugurated new religion, but even if you believe, and they do now, that Jesus was Jewish and has not founded a new religion, that His death and resurrection instigates a new religion.
It’s not that simple. It took at least another two to three decades. That’s a heck of a long time. And that understanding that ultimately, and this is what I believe and argue from study at university myself, that is not beliefs about Jesus’ messiahship or even the resurrection that causes the parting of the ways between Jews and early Christians. And if we can understand the partings of the ways, and tomorrow we will look at the terrible anti-Judaism that does emerge by the end of the first century up to from the year roughly 100. So we are coming to that. So no worries there. But the early Christians continue to go to the temple. They’re functioning within the diversity of Judaisms. And as I’m reiterating there, Jesus’ disciples and followers believed, their belief was that not only that the kingdom of God was coming as preached by Jesus, but the end times were near; very, very near. There’s an urgency in the message. And for them, the resurrection of Jesus endorsed that, that this really is urgent. The end times are coming. Of course, when that doesn’t happen, and 2000 years later Christians are still waiting, the theology very quickly develops onto Jesus having a second coming to cope with that delay. So what you find in this period is this break, this chasm, this friction starts to emerge between the School of Hillel and the School of Jesus. And I’ve argued that Jesus can be much more firmly rooted in the Pharisaic tradition, in the School of Hillel. But what was claimed about Jesus I.e, that he’d been raised from the dead, School of Hillel didn’t believe that, school of Jesus did, that does not make the School of Jesus a new religion at this point. Next slide please.
So we come to Paul, otherwise known as Saul of Tarsus. I’ve deliberately put his dates there because this is significant. He dies in 67 CE, CE of the common era. He dies before the destruction of the temple. And I’m going to come back to that because this is crucial for understanding Paul’s theology, his religious ideas, what he does. He progresses in his thinking before his death. And I recommend, highly recommend a scholar, E. P. Sanders, S-A-N-D-E-R-S, EP Sanders, who revolutionised the Christian understanding of the Jewish Jesus. And he worked a lot with Jewish scholars, but he also provided us with a proper interpretation of the Apostle Paul. So he has also written about the apostle Paul. So I do recommend, you can get his books from the library or I think they are still in print. Now what does Paul understand? Because traditionally, we think that Christianity and Judaism, or the Judaisms, the diversity has disagreed over what is claimed for Jesus. And that’s true up to a point in terms of resurrection, but it doesn’t take it outside Judaism. When we come to Paul, Paul understands that Jesus’ death has not replaced Judaism. He’s originally persecuting the Jewish Christians. He has that religious experience on the road to Damascus, he becomes a Jewish Christian, believes in the resurrected Jesus, but he is not yet on a mission to the gentile world. He’s very firmly in the same camp as the Jerusalem church, if we can call it that. Those early Jewish Christians who are functioning alongside the other Judaisms, alongside the School of Hillel. And his theology, his ideology in his letters refers to, and we looked at this last week, Isaiah 53, he’s seeing Jesus very firmly within the prophetic tradition. He understands Jesus’ death.
This is important because of course it’s come way, way, way beyond that now in current forms of Christianity. In that passage in Isaiah 53, the suffering servant in some way can atone for the sins of a nation. So he’s seeing Jesus’ death in some way as atoning for the sins of a nation but is not replacing the sacrificial system. Paul, in that early period of his conversion, does not think that the temple should be replaced. And we discussed last week this whole idea of expiation, a sort of atonement if you like, a kind of martyrdom, it belongs to those text. Paul’s thinking is developing the whole martyrdom text from the Maccabean period, particularly from the second book of Maccabees chapter 7. If you can access that, it’s probably even available online. You might want to read that and and think, “My goodness!” ‘Cause for me growing up in the Christian tradition, reading Maccabees for the first time was at university, and some of the ideas there were so new, thinking from that period, thinking, “My gosh, this could be a Christian text.” So Paul is, and of course it’s not, but Paul is working very firmly within a form of Judaism. And he understands in Greco-Roman world, he’s a diaspora Jew, he’s using Hellenistic ideas as the Maccabees used from Hellenistic language, but they are using expiation being a Greek word. I’ve got the meaning here somewhere, let me just, hilasterion, yeah, redemption, like a redemption, a liberation. So it cleanses, liberates the people. Next slide please. So if it wasn’t beliefs about Jesus that caused the partings of the ways, what did? Because I always grew up, it wasn’t very liberal form tradition. So I’m not by any means conservative, but even I grew up thinking that what had caused Judaism, Christianity to develop as separate religions was what was claimed for Jesus. But before that, it all centred around identity. Next slide please.
And I do wonder if the debates on identity had never happened, Christianity would probably not have become a new religion. So let’s see why not? There is disagreement, there are a number of groups emerging within that early Jewish Christianity. So just as the diversity of Judaisms, we have a diversity of Jewish Christians. So we get a hint of this, and it’s not often studied in the churches, the Book of Acts in the New Testament, it talks about this disagreement between the Hebrews and the Hellenist. So I’ve spelled out there who they are. And I doubt if many Christians, if you were to ask them to read that part of the Book of Acts, whether they would say, “Well, who are the Hebrews?” They probably think that certainly not the Jewish Christians. Who are the Hebrews? Who are the Hellenists? So the Hebrews were those Jewish Christians based in Jerusalem. They are part of what was called in the early days the Jerusalem church. It’s not a separate religion, it’s not a separate church, but they kind of loosely called the Jerusalem church. And again, worth underlining, they adhered to the temple. And their leader was James, the brother of Jesus, whose legacy is very quickly suppressed within a couple of decades. So the Hellenists were diaspora Jews, diaspora Jewish Christians, headed by this figure called Stephen, we don’t know who he was, but essentially, he’s a kind of unknown figure. Whether that was his real first name, we don’t know. So they are Greek speaking Jews who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, who thought the temple was no longer necessary for Jewish life. They’re operating outside in the Hellenistic world. So already, you have hint in the Book of Acts of attention emerging between the Jerusalem church and those diaspora Jewish Christians who are used to incorporating Hellenistic ideas and wanting to flirt perhaps with Greco-Roman world. And initially, Paul, the apostle Paul, is firmly within the group of Hebrews. After his conversion, he has no problem with the authority of Jesus’ Brother James. Next slide please.
Again, I think that’s something that’s not usually appreciated. But as the Book of Act says, the Hellenists were actually hugely disliked, they were persecuted. Paul initially persecuted them himself. They were driven out of Jerusalem. So the Jewish establishment, the Judaism, the Pharisaic Judaisms, the Jewish Christians did not tolerate the Hellenists and they were driven out of Jerusalem at this time. Now, that meant that the Hebrews, the Jewish Christians, were left in Jerusalem, happily worshipping in the temple, meeting in houses for prayer, almost like the kind of synagogue, if you like, meeting for prayer, believing in Jesus’ resurrection. But a very, very simple understanding of what Jesus meant, resurrection, the end is coming, it’s really very, very basic but still totally observant of everything within Judaism. So what happens once the Hellenists are driven out? Next slide please. Something really, really interesting. It’s a dispersion of those Hellenists who lead to the Jewish Christianity, it is still Jewish Christianity I suppose at this point, that leads to the gentile mission. And so it’s ironic, really, Paul would give that later a religious underpinning for a mission to the gentile world. But in this early period, we’re talking about immediately after Jesus’ death in the 30’s, the dispersion of those Hellenists, they’ve been persecuted in Jerusalem, there’s no toleration for their perspective. They move further afield and start preaching. Now, they have no luck in synagogues, in the diaspora by and large. And they start to preach first in Samaria, but then they get quite a lot of interest from Gentiles. So in reality, the early Christian mission to the Gentiles was actually founded by an unknown group of Hellenists and not by Paul. Food for thought. And certainly not, I think we’ll be clear by now, by the historical Jesus Himself. He had no mission whatsoever to the gentile world. So gradually they start to take their mission further afield. Paul himself starts to preach initially in the synagogues, but it’s quite tricky because his message is not going down too well. The Hellenists did not insist on circumcision for Gentiles.
And this is where we’re starting to come into identity. And this, as I’ve put here, Christianity was on the way to becoming a new sect, possibly a new religion at this point. So it’s this unknown group that had by no means dominant and they could have lost, you know, it might not have been that strand of Jewish Christianity that survived. Next slide. That’s a, you know, interesting thought in itself. So what does Paul side when he’s in the diaspora preaching about Jesus, that in some sense, Jesus, His death can cleanse the nation, it can renew a covenant. There’s no replacement theology, nothing about Judaism being replaced. It’s pure and simple table fellowship. Do you know, I found this fascinating when I was doing my degree in my PhD, that at the end of the day, if you boil it down in that very, very early period, the most contentious issue, because basically the Hellenists were outside of Jewish and they were being ignored now, but the most contentious issue was table fellowship. Jews and if we call Gentiles could not sit down and eat together. And this is what begins to define the future. This is the debate which begins to define the future. Utterly fascinating. If so have I put there, if Gentile Christians did not keep the Mosaic Laws, they couldn’t dine with the Jewish Christians, they couldn’t dine with those that were looking to the Jerusalem church as their head, even though they were functioning outside of Jerusalem, some still looked to Jerusalem, excuse me, as their kind of centre of authority. And this becomes a huge issue for Paul because he’s got increasing number of Gentiles who are interested, they’re fascinated by Judaism.
Many, many Gentiles throughout Jewish history fascinated, and I think still today, people are fascinated with Judaism, with synagogue, with liturgy, but sort of, you know, it’s not a religion that takes converts easily. And so what Paul finds is that this was causing friction in the churches where he was ministering and it was in danger of fracturing those communities. He wanted a unifying message. Next slide please. So what does he do? He takes a trip to Jerusalem to try and sort this out, and this is where he meets with Jesus’ brother James. So we don’t know much, it’s such a shame, we don’t know much about the life of James. He’s rarely mentioned in the New Testament. He’s accredited with being the first bishop of Jerusalem, but not bishop as in the term that we would understand it today. He certainly was in conflict with Peter. And you have that in the gospels. That story about Peter, Jesus saying to him, “On this rock, I build my church.” Well that’s not the real historical Jesus. That’s a reflection of the tension in the leadership between James who’s heading the Jerusalem church and the apostle Peter who felt he was closest to Jesus in Jesus’ lifetime. There is already that tension between those Jewish Christian communities over leadership. So just thought that was important to say. But ultimately, and we know this from Josephus, James is stoned to death. He loses his life. He’s condemned to death for breaking the law. Next slide please. So something you might not be aware of but mentioned in the Acts of the apostles, and we don’t have an exact date, but working on the chronology, it looks to be around 49 CE. So we’re almost 20 years after the death of Jesus, and we’ve got two decades. And the Jerusalem council, as it becomes known, is convened by the Jerusalem church and by Paul to sit down and work out this whole issue of identity. And Paul is going to try and plead his case, his experience in the diaspora. And his question fundamentally that council, because he still respects, at this point, the authority of Jesus’s brother James. He still looks to the Jerusalem church.
The Jerusalem church ultimately, of course, would not survive what happens, but Paul, that question is fundamental. Do you have to become a Jew first to become a Christian? So for those Christians, and it’s not as we understand Christian, those to be a Christian is believing in the resurrection of Jesus, in the whole poor line idea religious thinking. But the question of identity is, okay, so we have these Gentiles who want to be part of this community, they want to be followers of Jesus, they want to be this new word Christian, but do they have to become Jewish first? And this is what has to be worked out by the Jerusalem Council in around 49 CE. And excuse the pun, but on the table there for discussion, three main issues: the food laws, of course I’ve mentioned, table fellowship being very difficult for Jewish Christians as full Jews to sit down with Gentiles; circumcision, these Gentiles wouldn’t have been circumcised; and purity laws, including using the mikvah and stuff like that. So do Gentiles have to keep these three laws? And interestingly, I think this is an important point, if Paul could have gone that day to James and said, “Look, your brother Jesus gave us a directive on this.” If Paul could have appealed to the historical Jesus of the authority on this, he could have. But it just shows us how Jesus didn’t really leave us behind any idea. Nothing on the Gentile world, couldn’t answer the questions for Paul on circumcision food, laws, and purity laws. Paul could not look to Jesus in his lifetime and say, “Look, Jesus preached this. This is our predestined.”
So they had to work it out at the council. And of course he, as I’ve said earlier, is wanting to incorporate for those Gentiles to understand his message about Jesus. He’s beginning to use the language of Greco-Roman world. Next slide please. So for example, when you have baptism, his understanding of baptism, he talks about the dying and rising, going into the water, the dying of the old life, the rising up of the new life. And it’s taken, you know, from from the pagan gods where you die and rise with the gods. So what about the Jerusalem council then? What did they ultimately decide? James’ brother, authoritatively concluded, well, gave Paul only one concession. He said, “Gentile converts are not required to keep all of the laws of Moses.” So they don’t have to be circumcised. So he conceded on that. James said, “Okay, you don’t have to insist. Gentiles do not have to be circumcised to be part of the Jewish Christianity that’s emerging, but they do have to keep the prohibition on eating blood,” so kashrut effectively, animals mixing animals, slaughtering properly. Next slide please. So keeping kosher. But Paul makes a decision for himself, for his followers, that Gentiles do not need to be circumcised or follow the dietary laws. And that major shift, he comes away from the Jerusalem council, deeply disappointed because he’s hoping that all those three main areas that I outlined that were on the table for discussion, that the most contentious issues in terms of identity, there was only one concession for Paul, and that was circumcision. And now, he comes away thinking and believing that what Jesus’ death and resurrection have done is in somehow in some way, it’s a unifying thing for those that believe in Him. And he now develops a religious thinking along line that there’s no boundary between Jew or Gentile.
And so therefore, it’s not really missionary as such, it’s identity. Gentiles don’t have to be circumcised, they don’t have to follow the dietary laws. It’s marked one of the major beginnings of the partings of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. There’s another scholar, James Dunn, who wrote a book called “The Parting of the Ways.” “Partings of the Ways,” fascinating book if you want to follow up on this. And he’s really the first Christian scholar to argue that there was no single one fracture. It’s a gradual partings between different groups. So we’ve seen the partings between the Hebrews and the Hellenists that were thrown out of Jerusalem, Hellenist is thrown out of Jerusalem, and then you now got a bit of fraction from Paul over identity, the Hellenist initially, over the temple. Now Paul, with identity, you’ve got this different miniature groups if you like, of Jewish Christians, but nothing has yet really taken them out of Judaism until now. Next slide please. So it’s quite late, isn’t it? It’s at least two decades after Jesus’ death before the crunch comes. Next slide please. I dunno if I’ve froze and not good. Okay. So Paul’s come away very, very disappointed by the results of that council, but he’s seen the reaction in the Gentile world, a world that is full of idolatry in his view, that a polytheist and believe in many gods. Paul is very firmly a monotheist. And so he has the opportunity to reach this polytheistic idolatrous world. And so he begins to take his message further afield, and as I mentioned earlier, little success in the synagogues. And he has to start to adjust his theology, his religious thinking, and try to understand the meaning of Jesus’ life, His death, and resurrection because he’s failed. He’s failed in his mission initially to the Jewish world. The Jewish community not interested. And so, he’s now having to deal with that failure.
And that’s part of what he deals with when he’s explaining his letters, the Romans to the Galatians and the Corinthians, he is trying to explain that relationship that’s going wrong because he fully expected the message to be accepted by, well, really by now Pharisaic Judaism. So he finds also in his letters, he’s having to constantly fight for his credentials to be, he believes he is an apostle of Jesus; Christ, the anointed One. He believes he’s an apostle of Christ even though he’s not one of those 12 disciples who, after Jesus’ death much more readily known as the apostles. So that close circle, Paul was not part of that close circle, but he nevertheless sees himself as an apostle with a message. Jesus’ resurrection for him has inaugurated this new era. So Paul also believed that the end was nigh. But of course we’ve had to wait two to three decades now, and of course it’s not happening, but he has to adjust his thinking there. For him, no barrier between Jew or Gentile. But very importantly, my last point there, you would be hard pressed to find any reference to the divinity of Jesus in Paul’s writings. Paul does not believe that Jesus is divine, that develops later. And this is where I think a lot of the misunderstanding has arisen with Paul. Next slide please. So I will expand. We’ll I’ll just come back to that shortly. So he has to deal with the Jewish rejection of Jesus, as he calls it. And he has to address this. The Gentiles are also interested, but he, on a personal level, is trying to understand, has God abandoned His people? Has God abandoned the covenant? His reply is unequivocal. He believes, and this is why we have to understand Paul’s thinking is not a theological rationale that’s intended to survive 2000 years.
He believes the end is coming, that the Jewish rejection of Jesus is only temporary, that they will be part of this new kingdom. But very, very importantly, and this is what later, isn’t it with the Catholic church and Pope John Paul II in the 80’s, 90’s, was very, very good at highlighting, this passage from Romans 11. Paul categorically says to the Romans, “The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” So the covenant is still valid. There is nothing in what we’ve discussed to now to suggest that Paul thought that the temple shouldn’t exist. And again, I think this is where it all gets sort of mixed up, also within the Christian world, when we try and understand Paul, people think he saw the end of the temple. He didn’t. He still functioned and went to the temple, but what he’s done is taken his message to the gentile world and he has now firmly shifted identity. And it’s that identity which takes Jewish Christianity, it’s becoming more Hellenistic, takes it further and further away from its Pharisaic roots. Next slide please. So where does it become trickier? This you may think is probably a personal interpretation, but for me personally, I think the cataclysmic moment is the destruction of the temple. And this has been underplayed in quite a lot of scholarship. When we look at the development of thinking about Jesus and also in Paul’s thinking, remember what I said at the beginning, Paul dies in 67 CE, he does not live to see the destruction of the temple. Be very interesting to wonder really what he would’ve developed, how he would’ve developed his thinking in the Gentile world had he witnessed the destruction of the temple. But this has to be understood, and I put there, I’ve used the word cataclysmic, it is a cataclysmic event. The Sadducees no longer survive as the form of that diversity of Judaisms. What emerges, what survives essentially are two forms of Pharisaic Judaism.
You have what becomes mainstream, I suppose if you like, Judaism and the Jewish Christianity through Paul out to the gentile world, which had it roots originally in Pharisaic Judaism, they split. It’s really that tension, and that tension of interpretations, you can see is really played out in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew dating towards the end of the 60’s, possibly 70’s. Some scholars will place it as late as 80, but somewhere around this whole time, his community of witnessed the destruction of the temple. And you had that whole polemic woe to you, the Pharisees. There is this real intense acrimony now between these groups. It forces this major, major shift in Judaism and Jewish Christianity. The likes of which you might say hasn’t happened since, well, wouldn’t happen again until the enlightenment period. I don’t know, you might want to think on that. But it’s not just organisational but it’s also theological. So both Judaism, and it’s Pharisaic Judaism that would enable Judaism to survive without the temple. Pharisaic Judaism has to learn, has to deal with this event in terms of its ideology, and it develops of course Oral Torah. Jewish Christians and those groups, ultimately the Jerusalem church would die out after this period because they are reliant on the temple. They don’t really have the mechanism, they’ve got no mission to the Gentile world. The larger Jewish community isn’t interested in their message. They basically die out. And Paul who’s having a huge success in the Gentile world is who escalates the Jewish Christianity. But of course, as I’ve said, he doesn’t witness the destruction of the temple, but those that are left also have to cope with the destruction of the temple. Next slide please. And what it does is a really interesting shift, theologically. Now, this really is, I believe, the final. What do we say final?
Yeah, I think I would say the final partings of the ways when Christianity really becomes a new religion and it’s after Paul. And what you find happens is all the religious thinking around sacrifice, atonement, I’m not talking about the Maccabean martyrdom texts, I’m now talking about around the sacrificial lamb, the whole idea of atonement, everything that’s is reflected in the temple life that’s now dramatically ended is transferred by the successes of Paul, I’ll now call it Christianity, is now transferred to the person of Jesus. And this is where you start to get the whole idea that Jesus, in some sense His death, a very problematic idea, but in some sense His death atones, not in terms of martyrdom, but that in some way His death actually atones for the sins of everyone. And that’s a theology which still is pretty strong in most strands of Christianity today. But you’d be hard pressed to argue that that was found before 70 CE. So it’s the destruction of the temple. If the temple hadn’t been destroyed, one wonders would we really have had these two separate religions and now they are fighting for survival. Next slide please. So the consequences then, it brought an end to the diversity of Judaisms. There now had to be one unified form that survived from that. The lost the sacrificial system. So Judaism also had to cope religiously without the sacrificial system. There could be no longer any diverse interpretations of Torah. There was an attempt to unify and to create what becomes rabbinic Judaism. So there is an attempt by both Judaism and Christianity to find a normative form, and there would be friction going forwards. And interestingly, and I believe it’s still in the liturgy if I’m not mistaken, by the end of the first century, next slide please, those followers of Hillel, oh no, I’ll come to back one please. Sorry. Those followers of Hillel actually instigate this curse on Notzrim male Christians, and that I believe is still in the liturgy and I’ve got the words for that coming up shortly. Next slide please.
So what the destruction of a temple does? I suppose you could say it’s about identity on one level, but what really started the partings of the ways as we’ve seen was following the mosaic laws, Kashrut, or the purity laws, circumcision. But now the most cataclysmic event that causes a theological crisis is the destruction of the temple. So as I’ve said, everything gets put onto the person of Jesus, He becomes the sacrificial lamb. And you start getting all this language, particularly in the Gospel of John, and the Gospel of John is problematic. And I know one or two of you have written to me and have mentioned the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John by large, it’s so developed. We can’t really be thinking that it’s the historical words of Jesus. There are some early traditions in there. But if we want to look at the earliest sayings of Jesus, we need to look to the first three gospels of Mark being the oldest, Mark, Luke, Matthew, and Luke. So John is problematic for a whole lot of reasons because it’s written post destruction of the temple when that community is struggling to survive but it is also a reaction to the destruction of the temple. You have all those Greek ideas of logos, the word, “In the beginning was the Word.” You have this incorporation of Greco-Roman Hellenistic ideas is all kind of mixing in now. And so it’s come a long way from where we started. But the problem of course, the temple has gone, Jesus hasn’t returned, you know what’s happening, the Romans haven’t been overthrown. Where is this kingdom of God that’s coming? And part of that, as I’ve mentioned before, gets shifted for the Christians onto a second coming. And then you get that bizarre development of the very last book in the Bible in the, sorry, the Christian Bible in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, which is so hard to understand. As one of my professors said, the key to understanding, the key has been thrown away basically.
We know all this imagery, but it again, it’s against that backdrop of an expectation of the end times. But it’s the goalposts are being shifted and the religious thinking is far, far developed even from the Apostle Paul. The Pharisees, as we know, fled Jerusalem as well under ben Zakkai. He reformulated a Judaism and enabled it to survive today. And I know there are a diversity of Judaism today. I do understand that. So it’s a development and an acceptance of Oral Torah. And it’s that development of Oral Torah which enables it, from my understanding, enables Judaism to survive the destruction of the temple. So now we have two religions becoming much more distinct, and that total, final cataclysmic event of the destruction of the temple, I think that’s what seals it. It’s not beliefs necessarily per se about Jesus. Because what develops after that is what becomes problematic, and begins very quickly within 10 years, if not less, certainly within 30 to be a very acrimonious. And one could say by a hundred antisemitic relationship, antisemitic treatment by the church of Jews. And we’ll look at that in more detail tomorrow. Next slide please. So let’s summarise so that we know where we are on this journey. I think it’ll be helpful for understanding whether Christianity can hark back to some of those earliest traditions because it makes so much of historical Jesus, it makes so much of the apostle Paul. And what we found now is a very different understanding of the historical Jesus and of historical Paul than what we’ve inherited, those early Christians committed to Torah and temple. I’m not suggesting, actually, that Christians should now become Jews. That could be a consequence of one of the arguments. I dunno.
But working within the framework initially of Judaism committed to the covenant. And that’s so, so important. And that even Paul has not declared the covenant null and void. He has not said that Jesus replaces the covenant. You get the problematic stuff in John’s gospel. I’m not saying that some of Paul’s sayings aren’t difficult to understand, but we understood in their proper context. And that’s why I think if you are really interested in exploring his ideas further, to look at this scholar, EP, I think it stood for Ed, but it’s EP Sanders, S-A-N-D-E-R-S. Fantastic, for understanding, going back to the basics, and understanding the teaching of Paul. Jesus’ death, His resurrection restores the nation, we’re still in the end times, and all of this could be sustained without, well, I’ve put without any tension with other Jews. Now the was tension, but it didn’t take it as a new religion. But ultimately, as I said, I still find it’s utterly fascinating, it’s identity that causes the first schism, the first crack in the partings of the ways. I think it’s terribly helpful for both Jews and Christians to understand that that partings was numerous, was slow, and was not a sudden fracture as is often believed. Next slide, please. Ah, yes, I promise you it’s a slide in the wrong place. I put it in the wrong place unfortunately. So for those of you who are interested, yeah, the Notzrim, the prayer that the followers of Hillel it’s thought not to originate from Hillel himself of course, long past, “For the Apostates, let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days. Let the nozerim and the minim be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed with the righteous.” You get very similar language, of course, talking about the Book of Life in in Revelation in the Christian traditions.
You get a tip over of ideas. David Flusser, I loved his stuff, love his stuff. He’s a historian, scholar. He believes it’s quite obscure, but he believes minim here are the Sadducees, the nozerim are the Christians and the minim are the Sadducees. Next slide please. So Pharisaic Judaism becomes rabbinic Judaism. You might think that’s rather a simplistic approach, but I think it’s helpful to have a kind of uncomplicated view here. Jewish Christianity becomes a more distinct group. This belief by Jewish Christians and by Paul does not supersede Jewish teaching or tradition. And where Paul differs, it’s on identity. So his message hasn’t abrogated Judaism, hasn’t said that Judaism is no longer valid, and that is so, so important. So where did it all go wrong? Question mark. Next slide please. Well, if we look at some of the Messianic views, and I’m going to finish shortly, ‘cause I know some of you like to have, you’ve got lecture at seven. If you look, and we’ll look at Christology or views of Christ a bit tomorrow because what becomes developed by the church fathers is far beyond even what Paul developed. But this Romans 1:3-4 is thought to be a formula. I’ve put that early Christian formula that was not made by Paul himself. It’s scholars, EP Sanders in particular highlighted, how this seems to be a sort of almost like, well yes, a sort of early Christian belief, is not come from Paul. It’s something that the early Christians believe that Jesus was descended from David according to his flesh, come back to that, designated son of God by His resurrection from the dead. And if you look at EP Sanders and scholars will follow him largely today, and Paul Crosson is another one who’s done some really good work in this area. There is nothing to suggest that Paul has any incarnation theology, that becomes developed later after the destruction of the temple, and certainly by the church fathers. And things really start going wrong when there’s the incorporation of the idea that somehow God is incarnate within Jesus.
And I think Trudy and I are going to talk about this in more detail and that whole idea of how Christianity develops, an idea of a trinity within the Godhead. The church fathers didn’t understand it, couldn’t explain it properly, I’m sure, and Trudy and I probably could go, but will we understand it? That’s the point. But of course from a Jewish perspective, it’s seen as idolatry. But we are not here talking about Paul who in any way sees Jesus’ death or His person, the historical Jesus, as an incarnation of God. That is later. But He’s Son of God, the term Son of God is used in the Hebrew Bible. There’s an endorsement, according to his flesh, it’s an endorsement of his humanity. And it’s the belief that through the resurrection to Jesus, raising Him from the dead, in some sense He becomes a Son of God. It’s not the Son of God if you look at the original Greek. Fascinating. Next slide please. So the Gospel of John, and I’m coming to my last couple of slides for today, is where things become incredibly tricky. So again, exact date, not known when it was written, but it’s certainly after the destruction of the temple. You have a community that is really, really struggling to be authoritative, to be the form of Christianity that survives.
They believe that just like with rabbinic Judaism, there’s an attempt to normalise Christianity, the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation, both of those very nearly didn’t make it into the Christian canon, into the Christian Bible, or separating out, into the New Testament. And you think, oh my gosh, you know, it was a council of the churches finally deciding that the Gospel of John should be included and the Book of Revelation. What if they’d been left out? Again, history could have been very, very different because the inclusion of the Gospel of John really throws a span within the works, when we come within just a decade, we get the most vitriolic sermons coming from those early church fathers. And by the time, so it’s written about 80, 90 by now, it’s not just that Judaism and Christianity have parted, the relationship is now irreconcilable. Next slide please. John’s community believing it had the correct interpretation of scripture through a correct interpretation of the understanding of Jesus. And you even get that whole thing starts, “In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God.” And you know, who understands what this means? “And the Word dwells within Jesus Christ.” I mean, this is so completely alien. Paul would never recognised any of this christologies, it becomes a views of Christ, the Anointed One. And now for John’s community, they are firmly stamping, they’re rooting their feet and saying, we have now superseded, we are the true Christianity, we have superseded Judaism. Hugely, hugely dangerous, dangerous development.
And as I’ve put there, and it’s sad, shocking state of affairs that his understanding of Judaism and not the early stuff that we’ve been discovering today that will pervade Christian theology of Judaism for 2000 years. My last slide, please, and I’ll bring my comments to a close, and we’ve got tomorrow of course to move further. So by the end of the first century, so by 100 CE, the Jewish non-acceptance of Jesus, and this will plays a part in the development of anti-Judaism, actually, Christians trying to understand, trying to come to terms with a viable Judaism that’s still surviving spite of the partings of the ways. Because many of those communities believe, that Christian communities believe that Judaism would just sort of die. It didn’t happen, and it was still attractive to some Gentiles. But for these Christians now, particularly for those community wanting to develop an orthodoxy, and this is what be carried through the next few centuries when we get to the church fathers, they want to develop an orthodoxy and to decide what is heresy and what is not. Now we’re really at the point of defining what do Christians believe? And the church fathers would define that, the partings of the ways now between church and synagogue are irrevocable.
And the church sadly finds itself having to, not just to live and to do its own thing, but feels it has to define itself against a thriving Judaism. And for me, when I studied this, I’ll say it again, with this two, this understanding at university, for me was just fascinating. This is why I love this period. And I think it is helpful for us to understand how complex the partings were and where it all went wrong. And of course it could have been so very different. But thank you for listening today and we will look tomorrow at a bit further at where it’s gone wrong from 100 CE onwards, and is Christianity, is it too late? Is it irrevocably antisemitic? So I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you, Wendy.
[Judi] Thank you so much, Helen. And we look forward to seeing everybody again tomorrow. Thank you. Bye-bye everyone.
Bye.