(29 votes, average: 4.79 out of 5)
Loading...As you know, Platinum members of the blog are allowed to submit posts for other Platinum members, and other members vote on which of them should be provided to the blog as a whole (It’s a nice perk. You should think about moving up to Platinum. There are other perks too–one, of course, is that you are contributing a larger amount to the charities we support!) The most recent winner is this intriguing post by Dan Kohanski, about why most Jews had no interest in joining the Jesus movement.
Dan will be happy to respond to your comments and questions.
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Why did only a fraction of one percent of all Jews in the empire or even in Judaea ever believe in the message of the Jesus Movement?[1] The answer starts with that message itself. The first members of the Movement were all Jews themselves, saw themselves as Jews, and argued that Jewish traditions and beliefs inevitably led to their version of Judaism. However, the way they used those traditions and beliefs to solve the dilemma of their founder’s crucifixion was too radical for most Jews to accept. I want to focus on three essential aspects of that solution that were particularly troublesome for Jews: belief in the individual resurrection of Jesus, belief in Jesus as the messiah after he had died, and belief in Jesus as necessary for salvation.
Belief in the individual resurrection of Jesus. Many—though by no means all—Jews in the late Second Temple era believed that they would be resurrected to life someday. There were many arguments about just how this was supposed to happen, such as whether they would have their old bodies, new bodies, or no bodies at all. But they all expected the resurrection of the dead would happen to all of them together, and at the end of time. Jesus’ disciples announced he had been resurrected in advance of everyone else. And then, much to their consternation, time continued to run unchanged. There was no place in the Jewish concepts of resurrection for a single individual being restored to life by himself, nor for the world to continue as before once the resurrection had begun. It simply made no sense to almost all Jews.
Belief in Jesus as the messiah. The claim that Jesus had been and would be the messiah was also alien to Jewish thinking. Jews in the Second Temple period had a number of different ideas about a messiah. But they all expected that he would be a powerful leader—whether as judge, general, priest, or king—who would get rid of the hated Romans and establish his kingdom where Jews would live in peace and prosperity. Jesus had preached non–violence (“turn the other cheek”) and accommodation with the Romans (“render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”)—for all the good it did him. He had come and gone, and the Romans who had killed him were still there.
The various Jewish portraits of a messiah were of a mortal descendant of the house of David (or occasionally of the priesthood). He might live a long time (400 years according to one idea), he might have supernatural powers, but at the end he would die just like everyone else. Nor would he share in the Godhood, which belonged to God alone. Jesus didn’t fit any of the Jewish portraits.
Belief in Jesus as necessary for salvation. This could be called Christianity’s most original idea—but by that same token, it was the idea least likely to attract Jews. Not all Jews of that period even believed in life after death, but those who did also believed that its rewards and punishments would be based on how one behaved, not on what one believed. This was not unreasonable, since there is no evidence that Jews of that time even questioned the belief that God had given Moses laws for the Jews to obey. There were huge disagreements about how to obey the laws, and about whether to use the prophets and traditions to help interpret the Torah (the Pharisees said yes, the Sadducees said no). Even Jesus took part in these arguments: his differences with the Pharisees on the Sabbath were not over whether to observe it but how. “Judaism was defined more by its practices than its beliefs,” writes Shaye Cohen, a major scholar of the Second Temple period. In addition, he continues, “no one thought to promote any single interpretation or set of interpretations as exclusively correct.”[2] Paula Fredriksen offers this memorable metaphor: “we [should] imagine the Torah as widely dispersed sheet music: the notes were the notes, but Jews played a lot of improv.”[3]
This highlights another reason why Jews found the Jesus Movement’s message impossible to accept. Jews argued with each other constantly, often intemperately, and occasionally violently. But almost none of them (other than perhaps the Essenes) thought their opponents were eternally damned by God for having a different interpretation of things. Yet this was precisely the Jesus Movement’s basic principle: Believe in our Jesus or you will go to hell. No wonder the Jews ignored them.
Why Does It Matter?
Why did it matter so much to the early Jesus Movement, why does it matter even now, that almost without exception Jews were and still are indifferent to Jesus? There are a number of reasons that have been offered over the years, but I suggest they can be reduced to these three. First is that the Jesus Movement claimed its version of Judaism was the only true one, and they wanted all other Jews to agree with them. Second is that they were also having trouble missionizing to the Gentiles, who kept asking why they should believe a crucified criminal was their salvation, especially when his own people didn’t. Third, it often happens that people are more upset by indifference than by hatred.
The only true Judaism. The last decades of the Second Temple period (c. 100 BCE to 70 CE) were a time of serious religious disputes among those Jews who cared about such things (almost certainly a small part of the population). These disputes could get quite heated, their partisans would swear at each other and call their opponents blasphemers, and on occasion they erupted in violence. The Jesus Movement went much further: If you didn’t accept that their interpretation of Judaism was the one and only valid Judaism, you would go to hell for all eternity.
Permit me to step away from my role as a student of history for a moment. I suggest that this attitude betrays a level of insecurity as well as a sense of superiority; indeed, the two often go together. If you believe you know the only way to escape eternal damnation, you owe it to those poor benighted souls who haven’t had the benefit of your knowledge to tell them what is best for them. At the same time, there is still that tiny seed of doubt: is my answer really right? Might they know something I don’t? Making a mistake, even an honest one, can cost you for all eternity.
It is a classic human response to this kind of doubt to demonize whatever is causing it. That is exactly what the Jesus Movement did to the Jews. Paul was the first, even if he was not consistent. In First Thessalonians he denounced Jewish stubbornness, but in Romans he said God had made the Jews stubborn to give the Gentiles more time to get saved. The rest of the New Testament texts, however, were written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which the Jesus Movement saw as a sign from God that they were right and the Jews were wrong. The Jews didn’t see it that way at all, and the gospels increasingly demonized the Jews for it.
Objections from the Gentiles. By the time Paul wrote First Thessalonians, he had evidently been missionizing to the Roman world for a number of years, and outreach to the Gentiles may even have begun before him. Early on, Paul wrote about a problem he was having in persuading Gentiles (and Jews as well). Around 54 CE, he admitted that “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). A few years earlier, he had accused “the Jews” of killing Jesus (1 Thess. 2:15), but he never did so more than that once as far as we know, so perhaps that argument hadn’t worked for him.
The evangelists saw it differently. They had evidently decided that if they could blame the Jews for the crucifixion, they could turn Jesus from a criminal crucified by Rome into an innocent victim of Jewish malice and manipulation. It would be anything but “foolishness” to believe in him. The gospels increasingly pictured Pontius Pilate, the remorseless Roman governor, as a helpless pawn in the face of Jewish insistence that Jesus had to die. This was the same Pilate who had once slaughtered a large crowd of Jews for protesting his seizure of Temple funds.[4] This was also the same Pilate who was infamous for his “ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty,” and who would be recalled to Rome in 36 CE for brutality that went too far even by Roman standards.[5]
Shifting the blame to the Jews solved another problem the movement was having with the Gentiles. Why, they wondered, should they believe in Jesus when his own people didn’t? Toward the end of the second century, the pagan philosopher Celsus would put it this way: “What God that appeared among men is received with incredulity, and that, too, when appearing to those who expect him? or why, pray, is he not recognized by those who have been long looking for him?”[6] The answer was that the Jews had indeed recognized Jesus—but they had rejected him. The Jews were so stubborn, said the evangelists and Church Fathers, that even after God had let his own Temple be destroyed—just as Jesus had warned them would happen—they still refused to accept that they were wrong and Jesus was right.
Hate can be more satisfying than indifference. I suggest that yet another reason for all this vituperation can be found in Elie Wiesel’s famous observation that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I argued earlier that the Jews’ refusal to believe in Jesus was very largely a case of indifference. Except for a fraction of a percent, all those Jews who heard the message of Jesus’s followers thought it was simply not credible. It just made no sense, and the Jews couldn’t be bothered with it. Anyway, as long as the Jewish followers of Jesus behaved according to Jewish law and didn’t get the Jews in trouble with Rome, they could believe anything they liked (and Jews didn’t care what the Gentiles believed).
It is a perverse truism that people would rather be hated than ignored. Persecution, whether real or imagined or misunderstood, can be used as proof that one is right, an attitude that showed up even at the beginning of Christianity. The last of Matthew’s beatitudes promised that those “who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (Matt. 5:10) will be rewarded in heaven. The First Letter of Peter reassured the reader that “if you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed” (1 Pet. 4:14). Being hated meant you were doing or saying something meaningful enough, powerful enough, dangerous enough that others, especially the Powers That Be, were afraid of you. Rome was the Power That Be, of course, but the Jesus Movement wanted to recruit in the Roman world. Jews were an easier target. When Gentiles wanted to know why Jesus’s own people didn’t believe in him, missionaries could now answer that the Jews had indeed received Jesus’s message—but they had rejected it because they were perverse and wrong–headed, because they hated Jesus, that they were even, as John’s Jesus called them, children of the devil.
[1] On the small number of Jewish believers in Jesus, see, e.g., Ehrman, Bart, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018 (74–76).
[2] Cohen, Shaye J. D., From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 3rd ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014 (101).
[3] Fredriksen, Paula, When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2018 (185).
[4] Josephus Antiquities, 18.61–62.
[5] Philo Gaius, §302. The governor of Syria had Pilate recalled over the murder of some Samaritans (Josephus Antiquities, 18.88–89).
[6] Origen Against Celsus, 2.75.
Dan,
TY very much for the interesting and informative post. I had a Jewish friend tell me once
another problem is Jews didn’t/don’t expect the messiah to have to come back.
In other words…he is supposed to get the job done once he appears. Not die and then
come back years, decades, centuries later. Get er done first time.
So the whole 2nd coming of a messiah (who was already here once doing stuff) also didnt make sense to them.
I haven’t had time to research that was wondering would you agree with that?
TY again for this excellent post!
Steve
Those Jews who believe in a messiah definitely believe he hasn’t come yet. There was a movement (still exists) among the Chabad Chasidim that thought Rav Schneerson was/would be the messiah, and when he died they seriously expected him to return in 40 days. I haven’t heard much from them lately; if you learn anything, let us know.
Schneerson suffered a massive stroke prior to his death. The result: a chronic global aphasia (he could neither comprehend nor produce language). This is how god rewards his meshioch? Well, there’s certainly a precedent.
My question: once re-animated, would Schneerson have remained aphasic? And would his right hemiplegia (paralysis) have healed?
See: Psalm 137:5-6.
You are Very disrespectful of a great man.
The second coming can be applied to anyone. That’s the problem.
Dan, this is very interesting and informative. Thank you!
Interesting thoughts; thanks for contributing this post. ” Jesus’ disciples announced he had been resurrected in advance of everyone else. And then, much to their consternation, time continued to run unchanged.” Jesus and the earliest disciples expected the Son of Man to come during their lifetimes, and when the first generation died off a major re-write was necessary (e.g., 2 Peter 3:3-9). But as often seen with such groups (consider the Great Disappointment of 1844 that spawned a major denomination) rather than admit error they just adapt and modify and double-down on their insistence that they were right. I think that absolute (though misplaced) confidence is part of what attracts people into the movement. Plus, there are always those who enjoy being the underdog, the rebel: us against the world. We see it in both religion and politics.
Well, Miller didn’t want to make that last definitive prophecy and had to be talked into it. And a lot of people did abandon him afterwards; the remainder eventually formed the Seventh-day Adventists. Most but not all end-time predictors have since learned to fudge the date, but I recall a discussion on another post here about 88 Reasons for the Rapture in 1988. A good book om the subject is When Prophecy Fails by Festinger et al.
Hi Dan. How were Jews treated in the Byzantine Empire?
A quick review suggests they were generally treated better than in the west. For example, Eusebius tells how he learned Hebrew from Jews in Caesarea, where he was bishop there (c. 315 CE). On the other hand, John Chrysostom in Antioch (late 3rd century) preached some of the most vile screeds ever recorded against the Jews. There may have been an attempt at forced conversion in the late 9th century.
In other words, there’s not a simple answer.
The claim that all Jews in that time expected the messiah to be a powerful figure is heavily disputed by mythicists – who, obviously, argue that the dissimilarity or embarrassment criterion is invalid in this particular case. How would you respond to that? How can we establish that “all Jews expected the messiah to be a powerful leader”? If we study thoroughly the germane ancient sources, can we establish that for a fact?
I should have explained that “all Jews” meant those who did expect some kind of a messiah. (I’ll correct that in the book.) Many did not, or weren’t sure, or weren’t paying much attention. But all the sources we have from that time which discuss a messiah make it clear that he will be a judge, a king, a priest, some kind of leader with the power to get rid of the Romans and make Judaea safe for the Jews.
Over the years I’ve been asked a few times why other Jews didn’t recognize Jesus as the messiah. I wish I’d had this excellent summation of the facts to hand them. It would have saved me a lot of breath.
Well done, Dan!
Dan, as we’ve talked about on the blog before, there are those among us who sympathize with the Ebionites and other groups that lie somewhere on the spectrum between Judaism and proto-orthodoxy. When you say
” Yet this was precisely the Jesus Movement’s basic principle: Believe in our Jesus or you will go to hell, ” are you mostly talking about the proto-orthodox or which other early Christian groups? Or are you mostly talking about Paul and the authors of the Gospels?
I’m talking about Paul, the gospels, the rest of the canonized NT and the rest of Christianity as it developed and got rid of those who thought differently. Over the first few centuries over doctrine. I think that Christianity did not necessarily need to go this route, but that’s the one that won out.
TheologyMaven: ”When you say, ‘Yet this was precisely the Jesus Movement’s basic principle: Believe in our Jesus or you will go to hell,’ are you mostly talking about the proto-orthodox or which other early Christian groups? Or are you mostly talking about Paul and the authors of the Gospels?”
dankoh: “I’m talking about Paul, the gospels …”
I think Paul was a little less Lutheran than he is usually interpreted to be. For example, when Paul speaks about judgment of the gentiles (Rom 2,14-16):
When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.
Thanks so much. This is great info I will use in the classroom
What school level? And I’d love to hear how it’s received.
Perhaps we might also ask: Why should this be surprising?
Or to phrase this another way: Wouldn’t it have been far more surprising if a huge number of first-century Jews *had* converted to the “Jesus movement”?
Setting aside the issues of differences in beliefs or questions about the “True Judaism”, why should we expect that *this* single, specific movement would be the one which would attract a huge number of coverts?
There were reportedly hordes of similar movements; self-proclaimed “returned Messiah” were apparently thick as the proverbial flies. Why should/would we expect this particular one to have won out?
(I suppose a modern analogue can be found in each of our email inboxes. In a given month (week? day?) how many announcements will the average reader receive proclaiming some variation of “The True Divine Secrets Revealed”? How stunned would we be if even one of these New-Revelations attracted even as much as the one percent suggested above? I suspect then, as now, most folks may have simply played the odds… “Oh good. Another one…” and gone back to their lives.)
All quite true. The problem is that the Jesus Movement did expect most or all Jews to see it their way, and Christians ever since have tried to convince, cajole, bribe, persecute, and exile Jews in order to get us to convert. That’s why it ‘s necessary to explain – again – why it didn’t work.
OK, I guess I would then ask:
1] I’m not sure why it would be a compelling explanation that the early Jesus movement “expected” (other) Jews to see things their way. Virtually *all* new movements expect other folks to see things their way – and typically seem bewildered when they don’t. (“Why don’t they get it? Isn’t it obvious to these people?”)
In short, why should we expect things to be different in this case?
2] It’s certainly correct to point out that, over the millennia, Christians have taken —some times, what we might euphemistically call extraordinary— measures to convert Jews.
But, setting aside for the moment the later use of compulsion, or force (or worse— none of which the early Jesus movement had serious access to) how successful were these efforts? What fraction of Jews were successfully simply “converted” at various times in history? Again to cite the 1st cent rate from above, was it ever much more than one percent?
1) The theology that the Jesus Movement devised to solve the problem of their leader’s crucifixion required that all Jews accept him as their savior. After all, it was the only way to get to heaven. And because they had built that theology out of Jewish ideas and sacred texts, they needed the rest of the Jews to agree with them. That makes Christianity different: They had backed themselves into a theological corner.
2) I don’t have any numbers, and I doubt it’s possible for anyone to come up with any reasonable ones, given the incomplete, confused, and polemical materials available. I don’t think it was very
many; after all, even God complained (or boasted) that Jews are a stubborn people.
1] But once again we’ve come back to the fundamental issue.
The question here is why did so few Jews converted to the Jesus movement. Pointing out that they (the Jews) weren’t doing what the (proto-)Christians “expected” them to doesn’t do much to establish *why* the Jews didn’t convert.
2] You’re right that it might be tricky to estimate the rates of conversion over time, but it should be possible to get something like a reasonable figure.
But nonetheless, —regardless of how tricky it might be to guesstimate such a figure— this is an important point for the overall argument.
If, as is suggested above, we should be surprised that “only one percent” of the Jews converted then we first need to establish that this is, in fact, a “surprising” number.
Granted, a devout modern Christian might claim surprise that so few Jews converted (“What was the matter with them? Why didn’t they get it?”). But if we, as historians, want to establish that the number is actually surprising, we first need to establish that that is, in fact, the case.
Fascinating post! I’d like to take a closer look at the scriptures suggesting that the messiah is a mortal man. Would you please point me to the passages you have in mind?
There are no passages in Scripture about a messiah as late Second Temple Jews understood the term. Try the Psalms of Solomon for an example of the views of that time, also various Dead Sea Scrolls. I did another check of First Enoch just now, and I do find references to the “Son of Man” (1 Enoch 48-71), who was created before the world, whose functions include being a light to the gentiles and the judge of the righteous and sinners. Only once that I have found (48:10) does he appear to be identified as the (or a) messiah. This may have influenced Christian thinking, but I find it obscure and ambiguous and am not sure what to make of it. Maybe Bart could chime in.
Dan, a very convincing post. Thank you. But there was some early Jewish reaction against the Jesus movement (as recorded in Acts) that was more hostile. The young Paul himself seemed incensed by some Christian ideas. Furthermore, the implications of cannibalism (or theophagy to put it more discreetly) contained in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper (eg. ‘This is my body/blood …’ ) must have been repugnant to many Jews, given their strict laws concerning the avoidance of any contact with blood, let alone drinking it.
Acts is not the most reliable source. For example, it describes great hostility in Jerusalem to the Jesus Movement in the first few chapters, but for the rest of the book the Jesus Movement keeps its headquarters in the city and does so with no trouble or objections from the authorities. Also, Acts’ descriptions of Paul and his actions is sometimes inconsistent with the Paul describes them in his own letters. As for the theophagy (!), Jews certainly would not have been attracted to it, but since they knew it was really wine (and only symbolically blood), it wouldn’t have been repugnant to them. At any rate, I haven’t run across any early Jewish objections to the Jesus Movement for that reason.
Great post. Thank you Dan!!
You mention that in all his letters, Paul only seemed to state one time that the Jews killed Jesus . He probably learned very quickly that this was not good for his health. He witnessed first hand what happened to Stephen when he made the same accusation.
I would suggest that this is why Paul put a different spin on the whole Jesus story. He changed his name from Saul to Paul and he changed the story as well. We are left with the idea that the Jews and the Romans were not murders but facilitators helping to sacrifice the lamb, and so reconciled us all back to God. I absolutely believe He is the Christ, that He endured a horrible death and was resurrected. But reconciled by that-no!
Stephen was accused before the high priest of “saying things against this holy place [the Temple] and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.” (Acts 6:13-14) In response, Stephen gives a long speech which only incidentally mentions the killing of Jesus at the end; most of it is about not keeping the law. Also, Paul (as Saul) approved of the killing at the time, long before he wrote First Thessalonians. Paul was extremely argumentative and willing to be punished for his words, so I don’t see any way he would have dissuaded from his position by something like Stephen’s stoning. Most likely he just decided it wasn’t an effective argument (since as far as we know he never repeated it, while on the other hand he had relatively nice things to say about the Jews later on.)
Interesting post, with some quality observations.
I’m currently researching Jewish-Christians groups in the first few centuries of the common era, and it seems there existed significant populations of Jewish-Christians in the east up until the 5th C.
Dan, you claim that only “only a fraction of one percent of all Jews in the Empire” accepted Jesus – which seems a reasonable estimate. But I wonder if you have estimated the percentage of Jews who accepted Jesus in the Roman province of Syria in the 1st/2nd C? It’s a smaller data pool, (Syria rather than Empire), but I get the impression from the NT that significant numbers of Jewish-Christians existed in Palestine and Syria.
Furthermore, the Jewish-Christian groups that either broke away or emerged out of the wider church, such as the Ebionites and Nazarenes existed in independent communities for several centuries and were said to have founded their own synagogues. Jewish-Christian texts (some of which survive) such as the Odes of Solomon, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Gospel of the Hebrews were composed – suggesting Jewish-Christians were of sufficient numbers to require copies for different communities. It would be interesting to generate an estimate of the number of these Jewish-Christians.
I relied on a number of scholars who have researched possible Jewish communities that converted to Christianity. The NT authors cannot be relied on for numbers, as they – much like general literature of that time – were prone to exaggeration. (For example, if one believes the numbers in Acts, perhaps as much as a third of the population of Jerusalem would have been following Jesus, and observers such as Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus would all have remarked on it.) Also, best guesstimates of the number of Jews in the Roman empire c. 100 CE are between 4 and 7 million. The highest guess as to the total number of Christians – Jewish and Greek – at that time was under 10,000. 10,000 is 0.25% of 4 million.
How obscure a sect could the Jewish believers in Jerusalem have been though if by the end of the century Josephus had heard of them? James at least seems to have had a reputation for piety outside his own community. Paul hit a brick wall with Jews because he taught his followers that they didn’t need to be Torah observant. I’ve always thought that early Jewish Christianity would have been seen as one sect among many in that milieu. Perhaps what actually marginalized them was the same thing that destroyed Second Temple Judaism – the Roman response to the First revolt.
Josephus wrote about the Jesus in the Testamonium Flavianum as yet one more example of Pilate’s cruelty and poor governance; look at the passage in its context. When Josephus discusses the various Jewish sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes), he doesn’t mention the Jesus movement. Also, Josephus wrote this toward the end of the first century, when Christians were becoming noticed; it’s even possible (I think) he used one of the gospels as a source text, since he reports Pilate’s actions the way the Synoptics portray them (more or less).
The Roman destruction of Jerusalem also took out the headquarters of the early church as well as enough Jewish Christians to shift the balance toward Gentile (Greek) believers in Jesus. The Jewish side never recovered its primacy, though there is some evidence they were still around as an identifiable group into the 4th (or maybe just into the 3rd) century.
Given the strength of Jewish beliefs at the time, making it difficult to listen to Christian arguments, what would you say was different about the early followers of Jesus? They were Jews, as pointed out. Why wasn’t Jesus ignored just as his movement was later? The Gospels were written after years of arguments, picking up on the ones that may have a hope of converting people and strengthening the beliefs of those already converted and ignoring others (as evidenced in the books of lost Christianities).
We have a lot of material showing what Jews in general believed in the late Second Temple period about the afterlife, resurrection, messiah, and in particular two things: the primacy of behavior over belief, and the complete difference in the nature of man and God. The Jesus Movement stressed belief (in Jesus) above behavior, and also drew on Greek/Roman ideas that man could become (or be) divine, thus partaking of the nature of God. That’s what was different about them, and most other Jews didn’t agree with it.
Also, Jesus was largely ignored during his lifetime. One problem Christians have is that there is no non-Christian testimony (actually, no known Christian testimony either) about Jesus during his lifetime. That goes to my point about indifference being worse than hatred.
Jesus practiced his own interpretation about how to follow the law and instructed his disciples, who were no doubt attracted to the charisma of the man and his message about how to be a good Jew. It doesn’t seem Jesus proclaimed himself a god or a son of God (despite later writings such as the John), nor at his death would his disciples have thought it was part of a cosmic plan. (My sense is that their utter grief led to vision of him alive). So, how did the disciples, who were probably illiterate, unschooled in pagan beliefs, construct a new theology, readily replacing their Jewish beliefs about messianic expectations and come to explain Jesus’s death as part of God’s salvation plan, that his death was predicted in books such as Isaiah and Daniel? Not to mention that the idea of Jesus being the “first fruit” of the resurrection of all the dead. It doesn’t seem that Paul invented the ideas since he was already persecuting Christians when he converted. Did someone from the Greek world convert early on and sort of re-convert the living disciples to the new ideas about Jesus. Any thoughts?
Who says they were all illiterate? Paul clearly had a good education and much training with the Greek Stoics, for starters. We don’t even know who wrote the gospels, or who contributed, or what sources they used. In fact, one of the more frustrating aspects of first century CE history is that we don’t have any material that can be dated to the first generation or so after the crucifixion (something that is high on Bart’s wish list!). Also, even illiterate Jews knew their Isaiah and their Daniel.
I was remembering (hopefully not misremembering) the probable illiteracy of the disciples from Bart’s books. Paul was not a disciple of the living Jesus. Someone before him came up with the foundations of the new Jesus story. But as you point out, due to the paucity of source documents we likely can’t know who or under what circumstances, only that people such as Paul elaborated on ideas already in play, while others elaborated along different theological lines, the orthodox theology descended from Paul and others with his way of thinking eventually winning out. Thanks for your thoughtful post and your replies.
So, look at the minimal baseline story. That is, what would have likely been said early on:
Galilean hillbilly apocalyptic preacher goes to Jerusalem at Passover, is executed for sedition as would be messiah but is “seen” by follower(s) so must have been resurrected by God so he was/is messiah.
Not a lot to go on there. Maybe his friends saw a ghost! While the oral history behind the gospels no doubt was circulating well before they were written (at the earliest mid 60’s, mid 80’ and maybe 90) we have no idea when, orally, the legendary miracles and deification were spun up in what I’ve always suspected were ever more fanciful attempts to convince a yawning audience to believe in Jesus. Always have to remember, in this light it was the Christians who were the winners (courtesy of Constantine and his Mom) who wrote and preserved the “history”. Rhetorically, Does anyone really think it happened as per Acts and all Josephus had to say was there also was Jesus who was a good guy?
Great guest post! If neither of them have done so, it would be interesting to have Dan Kohanski or Professor Ehrman write a post in which one of them thinks through all the consequences of the following thought experiment : What would have happened if Jews had accepted Jesus as the Messiah?
In other words, what if Jesus, through magnetic charisma and skillful diplomacy, had succeeded in convincing the vast majority of Jews (the Sanhedrins, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, etc.) that he was the prophesied royal Messiah?
A fundamentalist Christian friend of mine was taken aback when I pointed out that, unless God intervened to influence the outcome, not only would Jesus still have been executed for sedition (along with all the Jewish authorities and commoners who openly supported him) while his death would have probably caused the Great Jewish Revolt to happen 30 years sooner than it otherwise would, but it begs another question:
Would widespread Jewish acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah have made Jesus’ suffering and death for the sins of mankind unnecessary? If the Christian answer is No, it means that Jesus had to suffer and die, regardless of whether or not Jews rejected him.
I’ll take a pass, thanks. Hypotheticals are fun only if one has spare time for them. I’ll say this, though: My understanding of Christianity is the idea of Jesus as sacrifice for sin was invented in reaction to his crucifixion, and all else follows from that. As such, Jesus had to (retroactively) suffer and die regardless of what the Jews did or didn’t do. Widespread Jewish acceptance would not have changed that belief.
Indeed. I share the same understanding of Christianity that you have. The point of this thought experiment, which I should have made clear at the end, is that Christians blaming *all* Jews for the death of Jesus is non-sensical according to Christian theology.
Dan Kohanski
Troublesome for Jews:
Belief in Jesus as the messiah after he had died
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
Jesus is the Messiah/Savior of Judaism by utterly devastating Judaism with his take on his last Passover meal.
a) The Biblical Jesus led people astray from Yom Kippur. God forgives. People forgive each other (brothers forgive each other, a multiple of times). Forgive each other, memorialized in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Contessa, a wife, forgives husband who isn’t as forgiving).
b) The Biblical Paul and the Biblical Jesus gave us the metaphor of cannibalism and in the gospel of John, this meal is pushed beyond metaphor (For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. … From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him). “Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood–I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. I have given the blood to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar [not human sacrifice].” Leviticus 17: 10-11
See Ps 27: 8, 106: 38, Jer 19:3-9, Deut 28: 49-57, Lam 4:10
Dan, how could you leave that out?
Does that call for more than indifference?
1. If Jews believed that they were already within covenant, how was this reconciled with the idea that Jesus was needed for salvation?
2. Was there ever an idea that the belief in a messiah was needed for eschatological salvation?
Thanks for a great post!!
1. It wasn’t reconciled; that’s why almost all Jews were indifferent to the idea and why Christianity became a separate religion.
2. No.
Thanks that’s really helpful!
But how was it reconciled for those few Jews who did accept Jesus as an eschatological saviour?
According to a book by Eberts, Jr. and Eberts, the earliest Christian movement consisted of four groups, two basically Jewish and two not so much, as follows:
1. the Way; led by Peter and Jesus brother James, and headquartered in Jerusalem.
2. the Disciples; led by the disciples who fled to Galilee.
3. the Apostles; led most notably by Paul.
4. the Hellenists; the most totally Greek and whose best known member was Stephen the martyr.
Various of these folks established congregations around the empire ahead of or contemporaneous with Paul, which led to many of the conflicts Paul dealt with in his letters. Ultimately, following the destruction of Jerusalem and the diaspora of the Jews therefrom, a version of Paul’s theology evolved and came to dominate, largely due to Paul’s emphasis on brotherly love and compromise.
I wish someone could tell me if the above is generally accepted wisdom by scholars, or if it’s just another story based on cherry picking and imagination. Bart is unfamiliar with the book.
I haven’t heard of the book either and can’t really say much about this idea. I do question whether Paul “led” the apostles, since he seems to have had lots of disputes with them, especially Peter, and mostly went off on his own. And how does Eberts distinguish “disciples” from “apostles”? I doubt whether Stephen was Greek, since if Acts is correct his conversion and martyrdom took place very shortly after the crucifixion, when the Jesus followers were still mostly or entirely Jews from Judaea and Galilee. Plus Stephen’s speech in Acts is the sort that only a knowledgeable Jew would give. Beyond that, my only comment is that I have trouble dividing the groups that neatly.
May I engage you a bit on this statement:
Anyway, as long as the Jewish followers of Jesus behaved according to Jewish law and didn’t get the Jews in trouble with Rome, they could believe anything they liked (and Jews didn’t care what the Gentiles believed).
Specifically, I think that overstates the case. Paul and Acts spend real estate talking about what he did pre-Conversion & why. I have no idea what the rumpus was in Rome between Jews and the followers of Chrestus that got them expelled by Claudius but it seems pretty unlikely that that this was one-sided anti-Jewish rioting by gentile “Chrestians”. Josephus’ description of what happened with James, doesn’t give much support to this statement either. I want to be careful. I know how these verses have been used to support anti-Semitism. Still, would you agree with this revision, or no?
Anyway, as long as the Jewish followers of Jesus stayed away from trying to convert Jews and didn’t make confusing assertations (to the civil authorities) about Jesus’ return as a Jewish messiah and get the Jews in trouble with Rome, there would be no issues (and Jews didn’t care what the Gentiles believed)
I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what happened to get the Jews (briefly) expelled from Rome. As for the rest of your question: I had only so much space in this article, so some things got left out. One of them is the pax deorum, the understanding that the gods of the state would protect the state and grant Rome victory in war, so long as everyone sacrificed to them. Jews were granted an exemption from this requirement, so long as they didn’t disrespect the sacrifices. This is where Paul was causing problems; he went into the synagogues and told the gentiles there (the “godfearers”) not to “sacrifice to demons” (demons meaning lesser divinities). He was urging these Gentiles to, in effect, commit treason, and thus threatening to get the Jews in trouble with Rome. So both Jewish and Roman authorities punished him to make him stop.
As for James, that appears to have been some personal dispute between him and the high priest, who took advantage of a gap between Roman governors to have James executed. Jews in Jerusalem were so upset by this that they got the high priest kicked out of his position.
Speaking of James (James the Just), is it possible that he wrote the Gospel of John? There are so many comments that involved family members such as Jesus saying on the cross that Mary was to go with her son, James, and that he was the beloved apostle, and that “another apostle” was admitted into the “trial” of Jesus since the only apostle who could have been admitted might have been James who was a rabbi or a rabbinical student at the time. Not only that, might James and Jesus or at least Jesus have studied with the Essenes because so many of their ideas fit that cult according to Josephus and Philo’s description of the Essenes. Could that account for where Jesus was during his adulthood before he began preaching?
Bart could answer this better, but I don’t think James could be the author of John. For one thing, he was executed around 62 CE, and most scholars date John to 90 CE or even later. As for the Essenes, I am willing to speculate that they had indirect influence through John the Baptist. Bart disagrees with me on this, holding that there’s no evidence for it and that the similarities are coincidental. In any case, I see no reason to think that either Jesus or James themselves were ever associated with the Essenes; both of them operated in ways very different from the Essenes.
Bart and/or Dan,
Do scholars have a generally agreed upon definition for the distinction between “apostle” and “disciple”? As far as I can tell, they are used interchangeably in Acts (NRSV). However, when Luke describes the vote to choose a replacement for Judas, he indicates it had to be from among those who had actually traipsed around with Jesus during his lifetime; there seems to have been an adequate pool of such 2nd stringers (disciple wannabes?) to select among.
Steve
What’s interesting about Jesus’ supposed crucifixion is that the first identified potential witness (with supposedly preserved writings) would be Paul. Yet Paul’s generally accepted first Letter, First Thessalonians, never mentions “crucifixion” (as that great 20th century philosopher ALF said, “Look it up”). In combination with Paul clearly using the offending word figuratively and lack of evidence that anyone else outside or inside the Gospels other than that man (and the two crowd control experts Pilate fired) was crucified in Israel in Jesus’ supposed time increases the possibility that Jesus was not crucified (2,000 years does that all by itself).
In order to conserve Straw, this is a long way from proof that Jesus was not crucified. Really no positive evidence that he was not. See my related thread though on the possibility:
Was Paul the First to Assert that Jesus was Crucified?
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1186&p=26057&hilit=Was+Paul+the+first#p26057
https://thenewporphyry.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-skirvin-hotel.html
Since Paul’s writings are the first that we know about, he was the first to assert that Jesus was crucified. In fact, he admits that it’s a problem: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” 1 Cor. 1:22. There is no reason he would have meant that figuratively, not in those days. Given the difficulties the crucifixion caused Christian missionaries in the Roman empire, they would never have made it up; they said he was crucified because everyone knew he had been.
Here, we certainly agree, Dan. The crucifixion is probably the major obstacle to Jewish acceptance of the earliest ‘Christian’ message. Since we do not know how early this movement adopted belief in eternal punishment in hell, and there’s no good reason to assume this was part of the the earliest preaching of the movement, I would only see this as a later, secondary objection to what eventually became Christian orthodoxy.
The origin of the distinction between this world (עולם הזה) and the world to come (עולם הבה) in rabbinic Judaism may be similar to the apocalyptic views of Jesus (Mt 12,32) and perhaps those of Paul as well. The belief in a sort of Purgatory attributed to some early Jews, eg, the school of Shammai, may be rather late, given how difficult it is to date Talmudic traditions, though there are some suggestive texts in Enoch and also texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls that suggest the fire of God’s judgment reaching into the depths of Sheol, but I don’t recall there being any intimation of eternal punishment or purgatorial preparation for an eternal reward. Thoughts? Hoping to read Sigal, Collins & Nickelsburg on these questions.
Dan Kohanski: “But almost none of them (other than perhaps the Essenes) thought their opponents were eternally damned by God for having a different interpretation of things. Yet this was precisely the Jesus Movement’s basic principle: Believe in our Jesus or you will go to hell. … If you didn’t accept that their interpretation of Judaism was the one and only valid Judaism, you would go to hell for all eternity.”
Hi, Dan. Another question: When do you think the idea of hell as some kind of eternal punishment entered into the Jesus movement? Do you think Paul had such a belief? Have you read Bart’s book on Heaven & Hell?
Jews didn’t (and don’t) worry about hell as much as Christians do. It goes back to behavior vs. belief; Jews require good behavior and are (except the Essenes) prepared to felxible, or at least allow for different interpretations of the law. That’s what the arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees were about, but the Pharisees never said Jesus was going to hell for not following their version of the law. Christians, on the other hand, held that the critical factor was belief in Jesus and that this was the only way to avoid hell. The Talmud describes hell as a temporary place for correction, somewhat similar to Catholic purgatory. The ultimate punishment in Judaism is non-existence, not eternity in hell.
Paul was more interested in getting people into heaven (or on the right side of God) than in keeping them out of hell. The gospels and later writings shifted the focus. Let’s face it, it’s more fun to describe imagined tortures in hell than unending harp playing in heaven.
Yes, I’ve read Bart’s book.
Sir, in your excellent article and all these many comments I don’t think I saw any discussion of what may be another, if not the biggest reason, why Jews not only ignored the early Jewish “Christians” but were openly antagonistic and in some cases actually persecuted them. The late Larry Hurtado and others advanced the hypothesis that at an exceptionally early stage some of Jesus’ followers began practicing what he (and Professor Ehrman too if I recall) a “binitarian” exaltation of Jesus to some kind of divine status and directed their worship of God though Jesus. I’m sure that you are familiar with the idea. This direct assault on Jewish monotheism may also explain mainstream alienation and outright hostility.
You have to keep in mind that the reports we have of Jewish Christians being persecuted by other Jews all come from Christian sources who are not likely to be objective. Around the end of the first century or a little later, Jews did start to include the birkat haminim (“blessing” the heretics) which was actually cursing them, but Jews don’t like to use such negative terms. Heretic, of course, can only to apply to one’s own religion, so that was not, some claims to the contrary, an attack on gentile Christians. It is possible that this prayer was introduced in response to Jewish Christians starting to argue that Jesus was God in some way, a position so contrary to Jewish thinking that it couldn’t be tolerated. However, according to the Talmud, a prayer leader who faltered in saying this prayer was merely asked to step aside and let someone else lead the service; he was not persecuted. (Granted, the Talmud is no more objective than the NT.)
Hi Dan,
My question involves the idea of atonement.
An all-merciful God could forgive sins of Jews and that there were mechanisms and rituals in place to do so, long before Jesus came on the scene.
If this is true, I suspect Jews would have found the idea of atonement redundant?
Thanks!
I think you are asking if Jews found the idea of atonement via Jesus to be redundant. I suppose you could say so, except that isn’t quite what the Jesus Movement was saying. Christians who are saved through Jesus are only saved from Adam’s “original sin” which condemned all his descendants to hell. They still had to atone for sins they committed on their own.
Thanks, Dan!
Follow-up question:
Do you think James, Peter, John, etc. ascribed to what the Jesus Movement was saying? (e.g. “Christians who are saved through Jesus are only saved from Adam’s “original sin.”)
I think it’s hard to say. Some of this may relate to Paul’s primary focus on the Gentiles, who needed to have the Jewish concept of sin explained to them, whereas the gospels, to the extent they were talking to the Jews, didn’t need to do that. Paul had to explain to the Greek world that they too were subject to damnation for sin, and that this was because they were all descendants of Adam, the first sinner. Paul doesn’t actually use the words “original sin” but he does trace sin back to Adam. I don’t find any suggestion of this in the NT outside of Paul’s letters.
We sometimes overlook that Paul’s letters were all written before the gospels because of the way the NT orders them. So it’s possible the evangelists knew about Paul’s original sin, or even that it was already accepted doctrine. But since the gospels weren’t focusing on getting the gentiles (as opposed to the Jews) to accept Jesus, they may not have felt it important to discuss. Their focus was on the life, mission, and death (and resurrection) of Jesus.
Good question!
Stephen Campbell [Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy]:
There was also Jewish hatred of Jesus, for example, the Babylonian Talmud says Jesus was punished in hell.
I read that in a book I bought from amazon: Jesus in the Talmud
by Peter Schafer
Winner of the 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
published by Princeton University Press.
I left a 3-star review.
Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg / Israel Institute of Biblical Studies:
“Scattered throughout the Talmud … can be found quite a few references to Jesus–and they’re not flattering. Schafer examines how rabbis of the Talmud read, understood and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism’s superiority over Christianity. … Schafer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels–especially Matthew and John–and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis’ proud and self-confident counter message to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power.”
The Talmud – the Gemara section of it – is a record of discussions among the rabbis in Tiberius (the Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud) and in the academies of Sura and Pembeditha (the Babylonian Talmud), in each case between c. 200 and 500 CE. By that time, it was evident to them that Christianity posed a threat through its insistence on supersession – the idea that Christianity had superseded Judaism and therefore Judaism was no longer legitimate. So it’s understandable that they would take a few moments to mock Jesus. They didn’t spend a lot of time on him, however.
I found this post very personally insightful even if, perhaps, at this stage in my life I accept the entire scholarly premise almost automatically — because I remember going through a similar transition to Bart where I questioned my faith, but I can remember as a teenage Southern Baptist, even when I still fully considered myself a conservative Christian, I couldn’t really wrap my head around one major issue with the passion narrative when I read the gospels — why was Jesus crucified to begin with? What did he supposedly do wrong?
The text just didn’t make sense to me on its face, because it seemed like it deliberately obstructed the issue of Jesus’ supposed crime somewhat. Now as an adult who doesn’t believe in inerrancy, I can think about it critically and I realize that the narrative seemed to be deliberately shifting the blame to the Jews instead of the Roman authorities, which is why it didn’t make sense, because it was trying to blame an act of government on people who in truth had been oppressed by the government (particularly in the Pilate narrative) and couldn’t come up with a coherent, or at least consistent, reason.
Hi Bart, Is it reasonable to think that the Jewish community at the time of Jesus were not used to refer to God as “the Father”? The Jews used to refer to God as Adonai or Hashem, and people who did not follow the Pharisees would not have a problem referring to God as Yahweh, but what about “the Father”? Is it possible that this reference was developed by the Christian Greek as Zeus was called the Father, and Jupeter name is The “sky Father”, especially that Adonai, Hashem and Yahweh were not familiar names in Greek?
God is referred to as a Father in the Old Testament, so there was no difficulty in Jews thinking of him that way.
Thank you Bart,
This is very true, God has been referred to as ‘Father’ in the Old Testament, but just for only few times. I also could dare to say (if my memory is accurate) that God was referred to as “Father” for just 10 times (or even less) in the whole Old Testament.
So, the inquiry is still here, which is a historical inquiry, because It is very clear that the current Jewish community does not refer to God as ‘The Father’, but this does not support any claim in regard to the ancient Jewish community.
So, I am asking if there are any available data to support the claim that the Jewish community at the time of Jesus did USE to refer to God as ‘the Father’?
If there are no available data in this regard (for example any Jewish text from that date to support or deny the above claim) then the question will be: if it is reasonable to assume that this was not the case?
I believe God is called Father in rabbinic literature, no? I haven’t looked through Philo or Josephus, but that would probably bee worth doing.