Yeah we're going around in circles. You obviously have bias and an agenda to distance Christianity from Judaism. Your obsession with the term "judaizing" is unsettling. I'm sure it burns you up inside to have to admit that the Essenes were Jewish, Jesus was a Jew, the 12 Apostles were Jewish, the first Church in Jerusalem was Jewish, and that the ministry was only intended for the lost Jews within Judea.
Yes, I am unabashedly trying to raise consciousness about the fact that Christianity and the perception of Christianity has been Judaized pretty much since the beginning. I’ve also consciously added emphasis on this aspect of Judaization because everywhere I go people tend to become more Judaized instead of less. It’s kind of you to throw antisemitism in the mix to discredit my view, but Judaism as we know it is a post-Christian religion conceived after the destruction of the Temple 70AD (Jochanan ben Zakai) in the wake of mass Judean conversion to Christianity. It is the religion of those who had rejected Christ / the Messiah / God and they’ve been in rebellion against Him (and Christianity / the Church) ever since by means of subversion. Israel
is the rebel. The very name means "he who fights God".
That Jesus and His disciples were
Judean is of no relevance to me because that was their national identity, not their religious or spiritual identity. The Jew, as a religious identity, didn't exist prior to, or at the time of, Jesus, but as mentioned, after the Christ had entered human history because that Jewish identity depends on one's reaction to the Word of God.
This is the historical dialectic of the Judeo-Christian world: the Jew (not genetic Jews, but the Jew as the archetypical antichristian whether religious or atheist) in conflict with the Logos of Christianity; the old law in conflict with the new.
It's telling when, of all the mentioned theologians/historians of antiquity, you would highlight Epiphanius of Salamis. Yesterday I said to myself', "I wonder if dude will try to quote Epiphanius", sure enough you did haha:
"Thus, we may have to reckon with the possibility that, from very early on, there may have been at least two types of Ebionites: (1) Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking Ebionites who shared James the Just's positive attitude toward the temple, used only Matthew's Gospel and accepted all the prophets; and (2) Hellenistic-Samaritan Ebionites (Epiphanius' Ebionites) who totally rejected worship in the temple, used only the Pentateuch, and, carrying with them the memory of Stephen's execution, perceived Paul as one of their major opponents. The Jewish Christianity of Irenaeus' Ebionites involved obedience to Jewish laws (including circumcision), anti-Paulinism, rejection of Jesus' virginal conception, reverence for Jerusalem (direction of prayer), use of Matthew's Gospel, Eucharist with water, and possibly the idea that Christ/Spirit entered Jesus at his baptism. ... However, the explicit rejection of the temple and its cult, the idea of the True Prophet and the (selective) acceptance of the Pentateuch only, show that Epiphanius' Ebionites were not direct successors of Irenaeus' Ebionites."
You can gather all the patristic writings on the Ebionites on half a page, and half of that is from Epiphanius. To then act as if your prediction of me dragging Epiphanius into this is insightful, tells me that you thought we possessed a grand body of early literature on them when we don't. Detractions on gnosis or Gnostics however, you can fill entire libraries with that, figuratively speaking. So I believe you're overestimating the Judaic aspect of the Ebionites here, not to mention that most criticisms against or accounts of the Ebionites were lumped in with criticisms against or accounts of other Gnostics due the commonalities in some of their beliefs (as previously mentioned).
Also, as far as I know, academia are still unsure, and your quote confirms this, about which Ebionite sects the detractors were writing of, or how many Ebionite sects actually existed in the region, or of the differences between them. Your quote also repeats the mistake that they had the Gospel of Matthew, when this should
not be mistaken for Matthew’s canonical gospel.
There could be agreement between 15 or 20 academics about the subject of James the Bishop of Jerusalem, the Ebionites and the other first Jewish-Christians but I can read that you'd still find a way to dispute the accepted facts. And we get it, it's your love for Paul.
I believe you, like so many others, have a trendy predisposition towards Paul and the Catholic Church and an emotional attachment to the Jews and the Old Testament. I suspect this is likely the reason for this apparent, for lack of a better word, butthurtedness regarding my use of the term Judaization.
What consensus on James are we talking about?
Rather, anwer me these questions: if James and his congregation were Torah-abiding zealots persecuted by the Gentile Christians, why was James a Bishop, consecrated member of the Christian clergy, instead of a Cohen or High Priest according to Judaic custom? Why was his temple the Jerusalem Church and not the Jerusalem Synagogue? Why were all Christian scriptures at that time written in Greek instead of Hebrew or Aramaic? Why did James and the elders rejoice and praise the Lord at Paul's news of his successful ministry in the Gentile world when Paul returned to Jerusalem (Acts 21), when they
knew Paul was teaching not to follow Moses and not to live according to Judean custom?
This discussion is pointless. All we have to do is read the Gospel according to Matthew and the reality is there. Jesus taught from OT scriptures and the Apocrypha, he taught in the synagogues, he kept sabbath and Passover. There are too many references he made to the prophets and the law to even bother quoting.
You give two examples to illustrate Jesus’ adherence to the law, the sabbath and Passover. Yet both examples prove the opposite: Jesus was condemned by the Judeans for healing a man on sabbath and in so doing breaking it. And Jesus changed the meaning of Passover forever from the celebration of infanticide to the commemoration of his own sacrifice and resurrection.
Not to mention that the gospel of the Ebionites explicitly describes Jesus as refusing to eat the Passover lamb.
I don't believe you even care about the history of the Ebionites.
I'd be surprised if you've invested as much time into this topic as I have. Or if you had written an article on this specific topic as I have and which I shared on the previous forum edition and which is still in my possession. The accusation of antisemitism was to be expected. The accusation of me being indifferent however, I take more personally.
Finally we get to the heart of what we're talking about:
"“It is obvious then that what is reflected here is a controversy within Christianity – between that stream of Jewish Christianity which was represented by James at Jerusalem on the one hand, and the Gentile churches or Hellenistic Jewish Christians who had been decisively influenced by Paul’s teaching on the other.” - James Dunn
This sums up Christianity as we know it. The Hellenic/Roman establishment supplanted the sect in Jerusalem, and through the christology of Paul built up what came to be the Holy Roman Empire. Protestantism and Evangelicism are further elaborations of the theology of Paul, mixed in with gnostic/esoteric writings of John.
Each unto their own. Your version of worship and study doesn't effect mine, and vice versa. I actually am enjoying learning about the Gnostic-Christians and the background behind the literature of John, etc. But if I want to know of Jesus the Messiah and the roots of Christianity, I'll be sticking to the synoptic gospels and the epistle of James.
“The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know you will leave us. Who is going to be our leader then? Jesus said to them, No matter where you go, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.” – Gospel of Thomas Saying 12
This 19th century dichotomy of the School of Tubingen between Gentile and Jewish Christianity bears little historical relevance. It is but a theory much to the delight of Jews and Judaizers who, for obvious reasons, are big fans. There is no such thing as Jewish Christianity for reasons mentioned above. That this would somehow oppose Pauline Christianity is a false dichotomy. Early Christianity was victim of its own universal message in a culturally and religiously diverse environment. To achieve unity among the congregation, proselytism by means of compromise was inevitable. But there was no discord between Paul and James. Poor interpretations of Acts have led people to this delusion.
I'll skip over your abstractions of the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical conceptions because they're quite absurd.
But I salute you for your open-mindedness to all Christian scripture (apocrypha included) and wish you well in your research.
Now that I've hopefully indoctrinated you with the concept of Judaization, I hope it'll help you in your interpretations of the birth of Christianity, for
“He who has received something other than the Lord is still a Hebrew.” -
Gospel of Philip