Loading...It is not easy to understand the relationship between Jews and Christians in antiquity; Christianity starts out as a Jewish sect; there is conflict between most Jews and those few who claim Jesus is the messiah; soon more gentiles convert than Jews and many of them are not connected with Judaism or appreciate Judaism; there end up being additional conflicts; and different Christians have different views of Jews and Judaism, at times leading to hateful acts. Etc.
I thought it might be useful
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Bart.
Excuse me for asking a question you’ve probably been asked countless times: If Paul had become a father, would he have had his son circumcised?
I assume he would have, but most assumptions I make about Paul are completely wrong!
Thanks.
Most certainly he would have, in my view. He was a Jew.
Christianity is massively confused, as testified by its thousands of different sects. In a nutshell, Jesus taught Jews exclusively; and after the Jerusalem Council meeting (Acts 15), James and the elders ruled that the Gentiles could be included as fellow Christians if they follow the basic moral code of the Laws of Noah. So for the next several decades, born-Jews continued to observe the entire Torah (being zealous for it, as Acts 21:20 says), and the Gentiles did NOT need to observe the “whole law” UNLESS they converted by accepting circumcision (Galatians 5:3).
While Christians were divided, it wasn’t Paul vs. James; it was an unnamed group of Jewish-Christians who rejected the ruling of James. This group is called “the circumcision party” in Galatians 2:12 and Titus 1:10. It was this circumcision party who continued to pressure the Gentiles to convert to Judaism, possibly because they felt that was more in line with what Jesus instructed, or perhaps they held by Beis Shammai. AI says, “Many scholars, most notably N.T. Wright and David Stern, argue that the “strict” Pharisaic faction described in the New Testament mirrors the specific legal rigors and nationalistic outlook of Beis Shammai.”
It’s ironic that a religion that started out as a sect of Judaism should end up inspiring so much hatred for Jewish people throughout history (the antisemitic writings of Luther being a noteworthy example).
Both highly ironic and reasonably predictable (at least in hindsight) given their messianic claims.
Wouldn’t you agree that for Paul it isn’t just a matter of gentile converts being exempt from keeping the law but that the law lacks the power to produce righteousness for Jews and gentiles alike?
Absolutely.
Because of the prevalence of the I AM sayings in the fourth gospel I’m curious as to whether there was a Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be the “Name Bearer” of God and thereby divinely authorized to function as God’s agent or alter ego in the world. See John 17:11 and 12 “ your name that you have given me”. If so, could you suggest some non-biblical sources I might review. Thanks very much.
There certainly were Jewish traditions of a divine figure alongside the God of Israel. A good (now classic) study of this is Allen Segal, Two Powers in Heaven.
Historically, anti-Jewish sentiment existed within parts of the Christian church. However, when looking at the situation in the United States today, many evangelical churches seem to view Jewish people quite positively, while criticism or hostility toward Muslims appears to be stronger.
I had long assumed that conservative religious traditions were historically associated with anti-Jewish attitudes. Why, then, has this situation changed so dramatically? What historical, theological, or political factors might explain this shift?
Shinji@Tokyo
I’d say most evangelicals cherish the state of Israel highly, but still think Jews themselves are all going to hell. The shift was not toward Jews but toward Israel, based on Christian beliefs that the prophets predicted the return of Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple. That started in 19th century England and then came to America big-time. I talk about this a good bit in my book Armageddon.(I excerpt some of this in earlier blog posts; search for State of Israel and you’ll find the posts)
Thank you very much! I will read all!
Hi Dr. Ehrman, what text(s) would you suggest to delve more into Marcion? von Harnack?
Harnack is the classic, but no longer seen as adequate. The best recent study is Judith Lieu on marcion.
If we limit ourselves to the New Testament period, it seems there were two Jewish interpretations of resurrection. The traditional view was that it was a reward for strict Torah adherence, especially to the point of martyrdom. Jesus would have fit this criterion. The other NT view is new and resurrection does not require adherence to Torah. The resurrection of Jesus removed the need for Jews to observe Torah according to Paul but not James and Peter.
Why wouldn’t we think that the followers of Jesus made a resurrection claim for the usual reason – Jesus’s strict Torah adherence, and then Jews who were not zealous for Torah accepted that claim and riffed on it using ‘prophecy fulfillment’ to create the new resurrection scheme in which it was no longer necessary for Jews to obey Torah?
Plot summary of the gospel story: A religious conservative objects to the marriage of the royals because it violates Torah; a hero appears and performs heroic deeds; as a result of the heroic deeds, it is no longer necessary for Jews to obey Torah. If the new claim is fictional, the beneficiaries are Torah-lax Jews like illegally-wed Herodias and Drusilla. Suggestive of authorship.
I’ve heard that there are some scholars who view that our version of Luke and the Pastoral Epistles are later responses to Marcion, who preserved an original proto-Evangelion. What do you think?
I don’t think there’s any way. There appear to be two quotations of Luke already in the first century (1 Timother and the Didache) and marcion’s work cannot be dated till around 140 CE.
If there were two Jewish groups with conflicting and opposed resurrection claims, the traditional group whose leaders were martyred followed by Paul claiming that consuming the dead body of a martyr is associated with the reason that Jews no longer need to adhere to Torah – that group would have become very inflamed. This would predictably lead to violence. Then, after the Temple was destroyed, the conservative group’s apocalyptic hope would increase, and they would want not only resurrection as described in Maccabees, but also revenge.
A group like this sounds like the author of Revelation. References to wine and blood in Revelation suggest the authors were aware of the Pauline Eucharist and ideologically opposed to it.
Interesting Russellonius!
BART, I am afraid I don’t know Revelation in detail, I know there is a lamb figure who is apparently pretty pissed off and at the right hand of the Thone. In light of the view of the Two Powers in Heaven book (I just ordered, along with a Jewish scholars’ similar topic, Two Gods in Heaven), is there any reason to entertain the notion Revelation was a Jewish Apocalypse, perhaps even if interpolated here or there to make it more Christian?
For example, are there any references in that work to crucifixion, a salvific atonement or sacrifice, reference to a period of fleshly existence?
In my (limited) understanding, the term “Antichrist” does not appear in that book, using instead the term “The Beast.”
As you’ve mentioned many times, there were apocalyptic movements in Judaism throughout the first centuries BC and AD. You are probably familiar with many things about them, I think that makes up a big part of one of your books. What in Revelation discounts that possibility?
Layman’s curiosity, not positing it as a thesis!
About a century ago a number of scholars thought that Revelatoin was originally a Jewish document that had been Christianized (this is the view of D. H. Lawrence in the final book her wrote, which was on the Apocalypse of John — a little known fact!). Today that is not widely seen as plausible. The lamb in Revelation is integral to the account; the lamb “has been slain” for the sake of others. It is identified as Christ. Christ is a central figure throughout the entire book. So even if the author was influenced by broader apocalyptic thinking in Judaism (many scholars think he was originally Jewish; I myself don’t think there’s much reason to think so), the book was almost certainly originally Christian.
The earliest Christians were all apostate Jews.
The Eucharist (*symbolically* containing two dietarily unclean substances) is similar to the pork of Jason and Menelaus, apostate Jewish high priests who solicited the Seleucid ruler to allow more cultural alignment between the empire and their willingly apostate local Jewish culture. This request was granted by Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
The authors of Revelation revered Jesus (as willing ‘slaves’) and seriously wanted big-time revenge for his execution. They also upheld Torah and therefore were not apostate Jews. Revelation’s authors were clearly Jesus followers and they interpreted drinking blood traditionally, as a curse. The Eucharist, famously, contains the blood of you-know-who, so these Jesus followers who wrote Revelation opposed Pauline Jesus followers. Paul never met Jesus but, obviously, other Jews did. Some, but not all, of the rival missionaries referred to in the seven letters taught drinking wine that symbolized blood.
Rev 16:6 “…for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. They deserve it.”
Paul is like Jason and Menelaus. The authors of Revelation are like the Maccabees, but unlike them, their side lost.
On March 15, 2024, you replied illuminatingly to a suggestion by me that it might be fairer to speak of Marcion’s interpretation of the older Scriptures than of his rejection of them, and that he was interpreting them in the light of Plato’s view that we first encounter the divine in limited form as Creator who has to work within the necessities imposed by the material things he works with, and only on mature thought recognise God in the highest form who has nothing to do with evil. You have once or twice since remarked that ancient people in general did not see the divine as a single, sharply demarcated category as we tend to do.
Marcion may not have wanted to bin ‘the Old Testament’ so much as interpret it as pointing to something beyond itself, maybe not unlike the way some Christians interpreted some pagan literature as praeparatio evangelica
Hi Bart. Do you have any dates for the 3rd edition of your textbook?
I recently bought the 2nd edition, and I’m really enjoying it.
Thanks for all your books. Maybe this year I can finally have and read all of them. 🙂
We’re about done with it; it normally takes a year to publish once the manuscript is completed — so I suppose spring 2027?
Thanks for your answer Bart. Hope we can enjoy your work for many more years.