Paul and Jesus

Did Jesus plant the seeds of that definitive split? Did James the brother of Jesus, along with Peter and the other twelve apostles, remain Jews, observing the Torah and maintaining the traditions of their Jewish heritage? What about Paul? Did he remain a Jew, observant of Torah, as the book of Acts maintains, insisting only that his non-Jewish converts not be forced to become Jewish? Or did his understanding of his newly revealed Gospel so completely supersede his former Jewish faith as to transform it into what could only be called a new religion?

Scholars have devoted an inordinate amount of attention to this “parting of the ways,” that is, the eventual break between Judaism and Christianity and how and when it came about.¹ What we can be quite sure of is that by the second century and beyond, Jews did not want to be confused with the Christians and the Christians wanted nothing to do with the Jews, considering them a rejected people without Christ.² Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, writing around A.D. 110, could hardly be any clearer:

Do not be deceived by strange doctrines or antiquated myths, since they are worthless. For if we continue to live in accordance with Judaism, we admit that we have not received grace. (Magnesians 8:1)

It is utterly absurd to profess Jesus Christ and to practice Judaism. For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity, in which “every tongue” believed and “was brought together” to God. (Magnesians 10:3)

But if anyone expounds Judaism to you, do not listen to him. For it is better to hear about Christianity from a man who is circumcised than Judaism from one who is not. But if either of them fail to speak about Jesus Christ, I look on them as tombstones and graves of the dead, upon which only the names of men are inscribed. (Philadelphians 6:1)

The term “Christianity” (Christianismos) appears here for the first time in any ancient source, showing how early this separate religion was emerging, in distinction from Judaism, its ancient mother faith. The verb Ignatius uses here, translated as “practice Judaism” (‘ioudaizo), means to “live like a Jew,” referring particularly to the identifying marks of inclusion in the Mosaic covenant, such as the dietary laws, the observance of the Sabbath and Jewish festivals, and the circumcision of male children. The concern that Ignatius and other early Christian leaders had over the next two centuries was that Gentile Christians would continue to be attracted to Jewish observances.³ Apparently this concern was justified because statements repudiating the Jews as an obstinate race from whom God’s favor had been removed, as well as strong prohibitions against any sort of Jewish observances, are common throughout the writings of the early Christian fathers.

Paul insisted that none of his Gentile converts was bound to keep the Jewish commandments but the issue of what Paul himself practiced as a Jew, and what he told other Jews, either openly or secretly, about their obligations in the Jesus movement brought him into the sharpest conflict he had with the Jewish Christianity espoused by the Jerusalem church, led by James and the apostles. For any Jew to disregard these commandments and related observances as obsolete and superseded by the coming of Christ amounted to nothing less than the abolition of Judaism. If Jews ceased to practice circumcision or any of the distinctive observances that separated them from the “nations,” it would be only a matter of a generation or two that their “Jewishness,” even by the most general definition, would disappear. If they, in addition, took on the practices and faith of a new religion, particularly one that espouses tenets that are alien to Judaism, the rupture and loss of identity would become complete.

I believe that Paul is indeed a “second” founder of Christianity and that he departed from his former Jewish faith in such a radical way that his gospel cannot by any stretch of definition be called “Judaism.” Paul never uses the word “Christian,” nor does Jesus for that matter, but I am convinced that Paul promulgated his version of messianic “Christ faith,” which he calls his gospel and which laid the foundation for a new religion, entirely separate from Judaism. All labels are inadequate, and pigeonholing is difficult, since the definitions one ends up using for either the term “Christian” or “Jew” can vary so much, but the positions Paul takes on the fundamental tenets of Judaism are quite clear. I use the term “second founder” because I want to reserve the use of the term “Christian” to describe a form of the faith associated with Jesus, his brother James, Peter, and the rest of the twelve apostles, who I argue stood in solidarity together.

NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK