Jewish and Christian Misunderstanding of One Another and the change in Jewish and Christian identity since the Second Temple period

Jews and Christians have very long histories. In each case there is a deep sense of identity. Indeed, 'remembering' is fundamental to both traditions. Both traditions have annual as well as weekly acts of 'remembering.' Great past events are continually brought to mind by 'remembering' and these contribute mightily to our sense of 'who we are,' that is, to our respective identities.

Yet here we make an assumption that must be questioned. We easily assume that that our respective sense of identity means that we had the same or very similar identity at previous times. After all, both traditions tend to be conservative, enshrined in liturgies and regulated by calendars. Thus we assume that a Christian in 1999 believes and acts in much the same way as a counterpart did in 1099 or 599 or 299 or 99. Likewise the Jew when the same slices are made at those historical moments.

My interest lies in the period of the New Testament and the era leading to it as from the Macedonian invasion and conquest of the Levant in the 300's BC/BCE. Broadly speaking this corresponds with what is called the 'Second Temple period.' What I am questioning is the assumption that a Jew from that period closely resembles a Jew of today and that a Christian in the New Testament era resembles a Christian now.

I repeat. This opinion may come as a shock because of our 'tradition' and our sense of 'identity' formed by that tradition. I must have a reason for this.

My point is this: The Jewish war in 66-70 AD/CE, when the Temple and much of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the war of 132-135 when the demolition of the Holy City was completed and a Roman city Aelia Capitolina erected in its place, cut a swathe through history. That critical period separated Jews before and after from one another, but also Christians before and after from one another.

Continuity for Jews was breached by the destruction of the Temple, the disappearance of the High Priests and the sacrifices and the emergence of 'rabbinic Judaism.' To be sure, there were synagogues everywhere as from the late Persian period. But after the destruction of the Temple and the Romanizing of Mt Zion the synagogue, the rabbi, the liturgies and many other things assumed new shapes and infinitely greater importance.

Before those wars Jews engaged in various missionizing activities among Gentiles. To be sure, it was uneven and sporadic. But there is a sense in which Second Temple Judaism was a missionary religion. Closely associated was the welcome extended by Jews in the Diaspora to those Gentiles who attached themselves to the synagogue and its meeting, the so-called 'God-fearers' or 'worshippers of God.' The Aphrodisias inscription puts the existence of such God-fearers beyond doubt. According to Philo, their numbers were considerable. Some scholars have explained the massive growth of Jewish numbers in the Second Temple period as due to successful Jewish missionizing. While I prefer to attribute that growth to the stability of Jewish marriage and family life as compared to the domestic chaos among Gentiles. For example, I am thinking of serial marriages, the termination of pregnancies with the consequent loss of life of many mothers, and the exposure of children which was a mark of the ways of the Gentiles. But there can be little doubt that the Jews of the era had a certain openness to the inclusion of the Gentiles. But this did not continue and to my knowledge has not at all been a feature of Judaism in the decades and centuries since. It is an example of the unwisdom of assuming that Judaism today resembles too closely the Judaism of that period.

Continuity for Christians was also fractured because until the 66-70 Jewish war, the new movement and its leaders were predominantly Jewish, whereas by the beginning of the second century, the movement itself was overwhelmingly Gentile. At the turn of the second century Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, said that was not possible to practice Christianity and Judaism. Nonetheless, Jewish Christianity continued for several centuries, the so-called 'Church of the Circumcision.'

Pre-70: Access Through Surviving Sources

This is not to say that the pre-70 era is cut off absolutely. Not at all. It is cut off from continuity of identity to a significant degree for both Jews and Christians but it is not cut off from scholarship. The pre-70 era is known to us through the surviving historical sources and these are accessed by the proven methods of scholarly research.

Judaism of the pre-70 epoch is known to us from the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, by the pre- 70 traditions retained in the Mishnah and, not least, from the data within the New Testament itself. The New Testament must not be overlooked as a source of information about Judaism, it has its well formed viewpoints. But so too does all relevant literature from that era, for example Josephus. Critical scholarship has a role here.

For its part we know about pre - 70 Christianity from the New Testament, the post-apostolic church fathers, along with scraps of information found in Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius.

However, we must not underestimate the depth of scholarship required to be acquainted with Judaism and Christianity within this period. It calls for an understanding of the languages of antiquity, together with extensive knowledge of the immediate texts set within their respective historical contexts.

Judaism within the Second Temple Era

The era of Persian hegemony of Palestine is now passed. Alexander has swept through Anatolia and down into the Levant to Egypt and back again en route to Mesopotamia and further to the east. His diadochi (Greek military successors) will bed down Greek cities and everything that went with that culture bringing an impact that will last for centuries. From Macedonia, through Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt to Mesopotamia the revolutionary culture of the Greeks was unleashed. Most cultures gladly succumbed to the heady wine of Greek language, education, philosophy, drama, history, athletic competition, military technology, town planning, architectural style, agricultural practices, financial and political administration.

What resulted in most places was a mish-mash of Greek and local cultures especially in Egypt and Syria. Democracy, as in the Athenian ideal, was conspicuously absent, however. The Macedonians had kings. So did the Syrians and Egyptians. Their kings, however, were god-kings. The kings of the new Hellenistic kingdoms were also god-kings. The Seleucid, Antiochus IV, sought to impose this view on his province Judaea. This led to the zealot-like Maccabean revolt in 175 BC/BCE.

The Jews in Palestine alone offered serious resistance to the cultural influence of Hellenism. For their part, the upper echelons of Jewish society gladly submitted to Hellenism. The Maccabee rulers, though at first resistant to the inroads of Greek ways, soon capitulated to them. The Herodian dynasty of Idumea which superseded the Maccabees were all of Greek name - Antipater, Herod, Antipas, Archelaus - a symptom of their commitment to Hellenism. The court and the courtiers of both Maccabees and Herods were those of minor Hellenistic potentates. The aristocrats who progressively gobbled up the land from the peasants were glad captives of Greek ways. Likewise the Sadducees and the constituent families of the High Priests were traditionalist Jews only in a shallow sense. At heart these people had become Greeks.

Resistance to Greeks and Jews who were Greek-influenced tended to come from the poorer sections of the community, from Hasidic and Zealotic types. From the Hasidim, who some time after the Macabbean revolt split into the Essenes and the Pharisees, came the intellectual and spiritual resistance to Hellenism. Physical muscle came from the 'Zealots,' or more exactly from a mind-set Josephus calls the 'Fourth Philosophy.' (The 'Zealot' faction, as faction did not emerge until the period of the war, 66-70 AD/CE.) The 'Fourth Philosophy' was composed of 'direct action' men allied with pro-active Pharisees.

For our purposes in this paper neither the Essenes nor the 'Fourth Philosophy' are important. Both groups appear to have disappeared from the scene after the wars in 66-70 and in 132-135. But the Pharisees and their influence survived those wars and their social disruption. Their teachings lived on through the creation of religious and scholarly academies (e.g., at Jamnia and Sepphoris) and through the synagogues and their liturgies, the powerful influence of the rabbis, the traditional commitment of Jews to the Sabbath and to household religion under the leadership of the father. The Mishnah bears witness to the survival of that tradition through the critical period of the wars and the physical and spiritual losses of Temple and City.

From the Mishnah and the Gospels it appears that the Pharisees were essentially defenders of the faith of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Based on the Law and the Prophets these scholars established clear boundaries within which children of the covenant must live. Clearly the Sabbath was critical to the religious identity of the people of the land. The Pharisees established an elaborate and complex code of teachings as what could and could not be done on the Sabbath. Spiritual purity was equally fundamental. The daily immersion in the mikve (household purity bath), the washing of vessels and goods purchased in the market-place before use were critical. Such boundaries served to mark off those who were 'in' and who remained 'true to' the ancient covenant. Equally, those people who were unobservant were defined as 'outside,' as 'sinners.' They were broadly classifiable with Gentiles.

During the 'Second Temple' period the Pharisees adopted an end-time eschatology which divided the present age from the coming age. This age was evil, ruled by Satan and his legions. By contrast the coming time was glorious and good. It was heralded by the Resurrection of all and the judgement and punishment of Satan and the wicked.

Broadly speaking, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament subscribed to the Pharisees' eschatology and dualistic world-view. Christian eschatology incorporated itself within the pre-existing Pharisaic framework.

Jesus

There are three things about Jesus which must be noted. One is that he believed himself to be the long-awaited Messiah, the greater son of great David. This messianic conviction was based on his consciousness of belonging to the line of David, but also of being assured from the Voice in the Jordan River that he was, indeed, the Son of God. Initially he was known as Jesus the Christ, but then as Jesus Christ, and then as Christ. His followers were dubbed by the authorities of Antioch as Christianoi, adherents of Christ, in the same way that adherents of the Herod the tetrarch were called Herodianoi. The various references to Christ and Christians in Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, but also in Eusebius make clear that the name Jesus was relatively secondary and that the title 'the Christ' which became the surname 'Christ' was uppermost. The title ho christos meaning 'the smeared one' or 'the painted one' would mean nothing to a Gentile at that time. We understand well how the title must become a name.

Another thing about Jesus which must be noted is that he re-defined Messiahship. To Jesus, Messiahship meant a special filial relationship with God beyond the notion as in Psalm 2, for example, that the Anointed One as the Son of God was understood in a merely titular sense. Jesus related to God as his own abba, an intimate and domestic relationship which he mediated to his disciples, as witnessed in the Lord's prayer. Furthermore, it is historically certain that the earliest communities of Christians called God abba, 'dear Father.' Again, Jesus believed that he must die redemptively for the people of God, based on texts from the prophets like Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7. But the Messiah must be raised to life on the 'third day,' again in fulfillment of the prophetic hopes. Thus Jesus believed that the future had been foreshortened in his own person. The coming age had been dragged back into him as messianic fulfiller, in his coming, his redemptive death and his resurrection from the dead. The blessings longed for in the future were now to be had by those who belonged to him, his messianic people.

As well, Jesus held that the total 'movement' of the Law and the Prophets pointed to him and was now in process of being fulfilled in him. On one hand he was, as St Paul declared, 'servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth.' But he was also the means by which 'the Gentiles would glorify God for his mercy' (Romans 15:7). Jesus was the minister to both, forming one new people. In Jesus's own understanding he would be the New David, the messianic shepherd over Israel but also over 'other sheep,' the people of the Nations. This is the New Temple which he will build after 'three days.'

Mission and missionary work, then, lies at the heart of Jesus's self-consciousness.

Jesus and the Jews then: No Misunderstanding

At the heart of the New Testament lies a profound difference of opinion. That difference is focused on the identity and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, before his death, and his followers afterwards, held that he was the Messiah and that the end-times had come and with them the time for the ingathering of the Nations.

Numbers of modern scholars in the liberal tradition for more than a century have sought to make Jesus a more or less acceptable Second Temple Jew, though with some more or less bearable eccentricity. Perhaps he was somewhat apocalyptic, or zealotic, or pietistic, or whatever, depending on the writer's point of view and emphasis. An endless stream of Jesus books keep flowing from the presses. Others want to say he was more of a Greek Cynic preacher than any kind of recognisable Jew within the tradition of the covenant. Anything but Messiah, Son of God, Lamb of God, resurrected Judge.

But these are desperate and transparent forms of revisionism. They all fail to cope with the amazing speed by which Jesus was proclaimed precisely as Messiah, Lord, Son of God and Saviour and the immediate rise of earliest Christianity which confessed him along these lines. Surely these views lay at the heart of Jesus's own view of himself. Any other view, that these were corruptions arising later, in particular from Paul, is historical nonsense making the immediate origins of Christianity and the early writing of much of the New Testament quite inexplicable.

So the problem must be located in the three or so years of the events narrated by the gospels. Here is the primal storm centre, Jesus himself. This is perfectly clear from the gospels themselves, in both the synoptic and the Johannine tradition.

This is not to deny that there were subsequent storms, especially in the fifties when Paul seriously began to incorporate the Gentiles as full and equal members of the covenant of Abraham. But those Pauline storms were precipitated by Jesus himself. Jesus's welcome to the 'sinners' among the people of the land was the signal for the welcome to the 'sinners' among the Gentiles as a sign of the end-times. For his part, Paul is grief stricken that the historic people Israel are not, as a people, responsive to the claims of Jesus as the Christ. This is quite striking in view of the considerable degree to which the former Pharisee suffered from 'his own countrymen,' to use his own words (2 Corinthians 11:26). But Paul's language about those 'countrymen' are far less polemical than the references to 'the Jews' in the Gospels and the book of Acts. To the end Paul remained a Jew. 'Are they Hebrews ? So am I. Are they Israelites ? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham ? So am I' (2 Corinthians 11:22).

The stormy and polemical language of the gospels gives a historically accurate account of the stormy relationships stirred up by Jesus himself. This agitation arose not because he was in the public perception some kind of prophet or rabbi, though clearly those categories lent themselves to various attempts to describe him.

Something far more fundamental was the source of the storms. That 'something' was Jesus's own sense of end-time fulfillment which he proclaimed in public and taught in private to the Twelve. Even that number was provocative. Twelve disciples pointed back to twelve tribes and pointed now to a New Israel, at least in embryo. In that fulfillment there was, he asserted, something new and radical. The old wineskins could not hold the new wine. This radicalism, as already noted, lay in his identity as the messianic Son, in his conviction of a redemptive death awaiting him followed by his resurrection at the head of a resurrected messianic people, who must now also include the Nations. In the end the disputes with the Pharisees about Sabbath breaking and purity infringements and his headlong battle with the High Priest arose out of his utter conviction as to his identity and mission.

For various interests within Judaism these claims were intolerable. For the Pharisees, Jesus's breaches of Sabbath and purity and his friendship with 'the sinners' represented an unspeakable breach of their efforts to protect the ancient covenant. But for Jesus the inclusion of 'sinners' spoke of the grace of God and was a necessary prelude to the inclusion of the Gentiles in the blessings of God. For the 'Fourth Philosophy', Jesus's insistence on his upcoming death was scandalous. A Messiah securing victory by enduring the defeat and humiliation of crucifixion could only mean the humiliation of the nation and the humiliation of the God of the nation. Crucifixion could be no route to God's salvation of Israel. The way of the cross appeared utterly offensive in contrast to the way of the sword. For the Temple hierarchy, a David pretender who promised to demolish and rebuild the House of God, and who upturned the traders' tables, was unendurable.

In short, at every point Jesus's person and mission cut across the beliefs, values and programmes of the stakeholders in Israel's future.

I do not think we serve the interests of historical truth by pretending things were different.

The various Jewish interests recognised very clearly what Jesus was about. For his part Jesus recognised the sources of opposition against him and the reasons for that opposition. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, which he somewhat redefined, and the Jews of that time rejected and opposed those claims.

Notwithstanding these storms recorded in the Gospels Jesus-messianism made good progress among Jews in Judaea, including among Temple priests (of lower orders, one supposes) and among numbers of Pharisees. This progress may have continued unabated with greater numbers of Jews accepting Jesus as the Messiah without in any way relinquishing their full involvement in Judaism. Even a quarter of a century on from Jesus James could say to Paul on his return to Jerusalem, 'You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the Law' (Acts 21:20). Josephus records James' death at the hands of the High Priest in c. 62, but mentions James' popularity with the chief proponents of the Law (Antiquities 20.200).

Why did this growth in Jewish Christianity stop ?

I suggest two reasons.

First, numbers of members of the Jesus-messianic community in Jerusalem opposed Paul's admission of Gentiles to the Abrahamic covenant on a circumcision-free basis. The leading opponents of Paul and his mission among the Gentiles were Jews who were also Messiahmen / Christians. I believe that Paul's efforts to include the Gentiles released forces among the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem, then among Jews in general which militated ultimately against the survival of Jewish Christianity. Had Paul not sought to win the Gentiles for Jesus as Messiah it is quite possible that Jewish Christians may have been able to coexist as a sub-group within the wider community of Jews. All the evidence about the first Christians in Judaea supports this proposition.

Secondly, I attribute to the Jewish wars of 66-70 and of 132-135 a cause of the parting of the ways between Jews and Gentiles in the Roman world. This schism has shaped relationships in Europe for nineteen centuries. Those wars were a long time coming, due mainly to Graeco-Roman fears at the astonishing growth of Jewish populations throughout the Roman world during the era of the Second Temple. Jews represented about twenty per cent of the population of the Roman world. The vilification of Jews and Judaism is all too obvious from the writings of Juvenal and Tacitus.

For decades there had been grave relational problems between Greeks and Jews in the great cities of the eastern Mediterranean, for example Alexandria, Antioch and Caesarea Maritima. Serious disturbances which approached the dimensions of the civil war had erupted in the decades before the flash point in October 66. Possibly it was feared that the Parthians, the Romans' great enemy on her vulnerable eastern flank, would join the Jews in any empire-wide uprising. Julius Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius had managed to keep the lid on the cauldron, but as from Gaius the mad Princeps, the slide to war seemed inevitable. But Rome's ruthless war machine spelt defeat first over the Jews' factional chaos of 66-70, and also under Ben Kosiba's more focused leadership in 132-135.

The Fiscus Judaicus (Rome's tax imposed on Jews after AD 70) and the erection of Aelia Capitolina utterly and permanently changed Jew-Roman relationships. By that time Jesus-messianism was becoming a predominantly Gentile movement. Furthermore, Jewish Christians declined to fight for the Jewish cause, either in the 66-70 war or in Kosiba's battles half a century later. Jews would not have regarded Jewish Messiahmen / Christians even as half brothers.

Meanwhile the Romans were as ill-disposed to Christians as they had been towards Jews. Indeed, Tacitus speaks with revulsion against Christians in terms quite similar to those he employed about Jews. He spoke of both as a spreading disease. Because they refused to give Caesar primacy above Jesus as Lord the Romans deemed Christians to be a superstitio, a sect of bloody minded 'haters of the human race.'

Periodic and violent persecution against Christians occurred, often involving lynch mobs offended that their gods had been offended by these 'atheists,' as they called the Christians. 'If the Tiber floods or the Nile doesn't the cry is at once, "Christians to the lion.'' Natural disaster was evidence that the Pax Deorum / 'the peace with the gods' had been disrupted - by these 'atheists.'

The hated Fiscus Judaicus levied on Jews after the destruction of the Temple did at least give Jews liberty not to worship the Roman gods. The Christian, who had equal revulsion at idolatry, enjoyed no such protection. This is the historical backgound to the sufferings of Christians in the Book of Revelation, written c. 96.

It did not help Christian relationships with Jews that Jews sometimes provoked and facilitated the violent action of local governors against Christians, even if indirectly. The death of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, in the mid-second century is but one example.

It is important to reflect on the circumstances that prevailed when Constantine adopted the sign of the cross as the way to victory and as the new religion for the tottering empire. The Romans would not forget two wars waged against the Jews as an obstinate people with, to their eyes, comical beliefs. The Jews would regard themselves as humiliated by the Romans and their Sacred Place deliberately defiled by them. They are driven from the historic homeland of the Patriarchs. With good reason Jews would now see the Christians as coextensive with the very empire itself. For their part, Christians, now seated in power, remember too well the involvement of Jews in persecutions in the fairly recent past, even if indirect. Christian rulers like Theodosius begin to discriminate against Jews and the synagogues. Synagogues are now burnt and Jews killed by mobs of Christians.

And so on into the pogroms and ghettoes of the middle ages into the anti-semitism of modern times. A grim and tragic history. But a grim and tragic history that should be separated at least to some degree from the Second Temple Period. I am arguing that on the other side of the wars 132-135 and 66-70 Judaism was different from what it would become and Christianity was different from what it would become. And I have argued that we must detach ourselves from our present identities to analyze through scholarship why Jesus did not accommodate himself to Second Temple Judaism and why Second Temple Judaism did not accommodate itself to him.

Understanding: A Millennium Hope

Jews and Christians have much in common. We hold to a common body of literature which we call the Scriptures. From those Scriptures and the 'Ten Words' we learn about our Creator and his abhorrence of idols but also of the sanctity of human life and of critical human rights. The reading of the Law and the Prophets is as fundamental in the Church as it is in the Synagogue. Likewise the Psalms are precious to Christians both in corporate worship and private devotion.

I am ashamed that fellow Christians at this time and in earlier times have treated Jews in the way they have. For what it is worth I offer my apology for wrongs done by others.

But I see no point in obscuring the historic circumstances surrounding Jesus which led to the schism within Judaism that became Christianity. I am deeply saddened by the social consequences of that schism and express my deep regret for them. But I cannot deny what I believe to have been true of Jesus's identity and mission.

I must allow you the right to see Jesus through the eyes of his contemporaries who rejected his claims and to assent to their verdict on him. I may disagree, as I do to that verdict. I am committed to Jesus as the Messiah. But we have to live together on this planet in decent and harmonious relationships.

Two words I apply to myself are orthodoxy and liberality. I hold to orthodoxy as a Christian. That is my world-view, including my end-time world view and my view that Christianity is a missionary religion. It is my view of God and of goodness and of hope for all people everywhere. But as a person set in the kaleidoscope of humanity by the God in whom I believe then I am committed also to the principle of liberality within ordered societies. Oppression of religious minorities and the ghastly 'ethnic cleansing' are utterly abhorrent. Jews have suffered from it and are suffering from it. Christians have suffered from it and are suffering from it. Muslims in Kosovo are suffering from it as we speak and the source appears to be a version of Christian religious culture.

But I can only pray that the new Millennium may give to others what I desire for myself - the right to be orthodox as to what I believe and the freedom to disseminate those beliefs in circumstances of liberality and decency. Both of these appear to be fundamental to democracy.

I include in that the freedom to express the views I do in this forum tonight.

This paper was to be given at The Aquinas Academy, Sydney, May 13, 1999. The other speaker was to be Professor Emeritus Alan Crown. The meeting was cancelled.