The rise and fall of early Jewish Christianity

Jesus of Nazareth was an Aramaic speaking Jew in Judea, and all of his disciples and prophetic mission were strictly to Jewish people (Matt 15:24) and within Jewish lands (Matt 10:5-6), and he was firmly within Judaism (Matt 5:17-18). Likewise, the first Christians were entirely Jewish and Christian, and early Christianity operated within the structures and vernacular of Judaism. The first Christian missionaries were Jews who went to Jewish people and synagogues surrounding the Mediterranean, and it wasn't until the Jerusalem Council (Acts 17) that non-Jewish people began to be admitted into Christian communities without first converting to Judaism.

We may credit Paul for beginning the Hellenization of the Church, and the emergence of a non-Jewish Christianity from his missionary journeys, and although he empowered non-Jewish peoples to become Christians without first converting to Judaism, it wasn't until after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (CE 70) and after the Bar Kokhba revolt (circa 132-136 CE) that Christianity began to exist as a separate entity from Judaism. It is remarkable that early Jewish Christianity would quickly disappear and give way to a completely hellenized and romanized Christianity. The earliest form of Christianity that was both Jewish and Christian vanished from the world, and it is a wonder how this happened. It is astonishing how little we know about the demise of early Jewish Christianity today, and even more so how little the earliest Christian sources reveal about this dramatic shift from early Jewish Christianity to later Hellenized and Romanized Christianity.

The hellenization and romanization of the New Testament

It is enigma that the New Testament contains no non-Hebrew writings at all considering the initial dominance of early Jewish Christianity—it is all Greek to us! The Old Testament was written entirely in Hebrew (with some Aramaic quasi-exceptions). The entire New Testament has been transmitted in Greek, and it contains only a handful of transliterated Aramaic words (that are also translated) in the earliest sources (especially Mark). Speculations that some of the New Testament writings were translated from Hebrew has not provided any manuscript evidence. The New Testament's quotations from the Old Testament are from Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Septuagint) indicating that the earliest form of the New Testament was already at a distance from its Aramaic and Hebrew sources—a fact that has caused many to wrongly believe that Jesus and his disciples were far more hellenized than they were and has been wrongly used to justify Christian antisemitism.

A minority of the New Testament is distinctively more Jewish than the rest of the New Testament. Matthew, John and the epistle to the Hebrews are more acquainted with Jewish tradition and life in Judea and therefore also of early Jewish Christianity. The Q source (the common material between Matthew and Luke) is transmitted in Greek (although the Q logia may have been translated from an early Aramaic sayings source). The epistle of James has a distinctive Jewishness that has caused some (like Martin Luther) to remove it from the Biblical canon because it was at variance with the more hellenized parts of the New Testament (Luther famously called it an "epistle of straw"). Also, the iconic testament to the hellenization of Christianity and purging it of all Jewishness was the early second century Marcionite canon wherein the pinnacle heresiarch Marcion of Sinope (circa 85 – 160 CE) rejected the entire Old Testament and reduced the New Testament to roughly Paul's letters and a redacted Luke.

The Bible shifted further away from early Jewish Christianity as it was romanized in the Western Church, beginning with the Latin Fathers and latin translations of the Bible (Vulgate, etc). The entire language shifted from Greek to Latin, and the latinized vernacular significant reshaped the course of the church (consider the filioque that caused the Great Schism). It wasn't until the Reformation that the Greek New Testament (e.g. Erasumus' Novum Instrumentum omne) and Hebrew Bible (i.e. the Masoretic text) sources of the Bible began to be reconstructed. Early Jewish Christianity and its sources have not been reconstructed in the same way. 

The repression of Jewish Christianity

My previous comments were inspired by Hans Küng's discussion of early Jewish Christianity and Islam in his book Christianity: Essence, History, Future. Küng argues that the Hellenized victors have written early Jewish Christianity out of the histories, and the New Testament is a testament to the repression of early Jewish Christianity.  

Küng writes "And whereas Simon Peter is mentioned by name around 190 times in the New Testament and Saul/Paul around 170, James is mentioned only eleven times (in Acts only three times), which according to some present-day exegetes indicates a suppression of Jewish Christianity (and the brothers of Jesus) in the Gentile Christian church." [1]

Küng identifies many sources that were highly influenced by Jewish Christianity including the ones that have been accepted in the biblical canon—Q, Matthew, James, John, etc.—as well as ones that have not been accepted as non-canonical such as Gospel of Hebrews, Gospel of the Nazarenes, and Gospel of the Ebionites, as well as the Ascension of Isaiah and the Didascalia Apostolorum (Teaching of the Apostles). Küng also identifies Paul's opponent Judaizers in Galatia (Gal 2:14) and Philippi (Phil 3:2-4) as examples of repressed early Jewish Christianity. [2]

In kind, Hans Küng argues that the marginalization of early Jewish-oriented Christianity sects indicates a systematic repression of early Jewish Christianity groups such as the Nestorians, Nazarenes, Ebionites, and the Elkesaites. 

The succession of Islam

Hans Küng believes that the rise of Islam corresponds to the suppression of early Jewish Christianity, and therefore Islam is not a "Christian Heresy" (as John of Damascus argued in the seventh century) but the rightful heir and divinely appointed successor of early Jewish Christianity; Muhammad's reforming work was also a restoration of early Jewish Christianity, and early Jewish Christianity's beliefs lives on today in Arabic garb through the rise of Islam. Is it really a mystery as Küng notices that the title "seal of the prophets" that was first applied to Jesus by Tertullian would later be reapplied to Muhammad? So the question "How is possible that early Jewish Christianity died out?" may be answered that "It has not died out, but is alive today in Islam." It is a bold thesis that has opportunistic possibilities for Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue today that I will explore further.

Hans Küng introduces this argument by quoting Adolf Schlatter thesis for the correspondence between the repression of early Jewish-Christianity to the rise of Islam:

"Even its leading men who lived and taught in Caesarea, like Origen and Eusebius, remained amazingly ignorant about the end of Jerusalem and its church. Similarly, their reports about the ongoing existence of Jewish Christianity are sparse. They (sic!) were heretics, because they did not submit to the law which held elsewhere in Christianity, and were therefore set apart from that Christianity. . . . None of the leaders of the imperial church guessed that the day would come for this Christianity which they despised on which it would shake the world and destroy a great deal of the church which they had built. It came when Muhammad took over their prize possession of the Jewish Christians, their consciousness of God, their eschatology proclaiming the day of judgment, their morality and their legends, and established a new apostolate as "the one sent by God". [3]

Küng argues that early Jewish Christianity developed independently in the transjordan and lower mesopotamian regions, and was not influenced by the hellenization of the Western Church, and therefore continued to exist as a Jewish-Christianity that was free from the creeds and councils that controlled the rest of the world. Küng argues that Jewish Christianity was influenced more by Arabic culture, argues this based on the existence of scriptures translated into Arabic.

Küng explains that the form and beliefs of Jewish Christianity was far closer to the Qur'an.

Küng writes, "Monotheism instead of the doctrine of the Trinity, servant christology instead of a two-nature christology: the thesis of the influence of Jewish Christianity on the Qur'an had already been discussed and consolidated earlier by Adolf von Harnack, and by Hans-Joachim Schoeps." [4]

The Qur'an is replete with references to Jesus and events in the New Testament and early Church, but the Quranic picture of Jesus is far more Jewish than the picture of Jesus drawn from say the Council of Nicea or Chalcedon, or the Church Fathers. In the Qur'an, Jesus is understood in a similar way to the transjordan Churches (such as the Nestorians, Nazarenes, Ebionites, Elkesaites, etc.) that were deemed heretical by the Hellenized and Romanized Churches. 

"However, one thing cannot be disputed: the analogies in content between the Qur'anic picture of Jesus and a christology stamped by Jewish Christianity remain perplexing: the parallels are indisputable and await a historical explanation." [5]

Küng said that one should not be too quick to identify the Christians whom Muhammad encountered from any of these transjordan Churches. "We should probably not think of the early Christian Nazoraeans as possible direct links between Jewish Christianity and the Qur'an." [6] However if a connection is to be made, then it would be the gnostic Jewish Christians known as "the Elkesaites, who according to the most recent research may have been identical with the Sabaeans mentioned in the Qur'an" [7]

Küng believes that Muhammad did not have a defective understanding of Christianity (as many have argued), but actually had a highly developed understanding of Jewish-Christianity (that was distinctively Jewish and Christian) that has not been influenced by Nicea or Chalcedon.  

Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue

Küng argues that if Christians would relax their defensive polemics against Islam, then we may realize there is redemptive and restorative bond between Christianity and Islam that is possibly achieved by recognizing Muhammad (and Islam) as a legitimate and revelatory heir of an early form of Jewish Christianity that was wrongly repressed, suppressed and oppressed by hellenization and romanization. Is it possible (and a surprising hope) that Muhammad may finally be understood as a Christian prophet? After all, Muhammad has resurrected early Jewish Christianity from death.

"After all, since the days of the last church father, John of Damascus, Christians have been fond of disqualifying Islam as a 'Christian heresy'. No, the authenticity of the Qur'anic revelation is not being put in question if we establish links with the Christian tradition, any more than the Christian revolution is diluted if we reconstruct all the possible Jewish sources. So parallels and analogies will not be cited here to prove the superiority of Christianity or to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Qur'anic revelation, but to indicate the affinity between Christianity and Islam, which represents a challenge and an opportunity for all those engaged in dialogue.

Let us be clear just for a moment what it would mean for a dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims if Muhammad could be understood as the 'Jewish Christian apostle' of the one true God in Arabian garb, whose day came when he 'took over the prize possession of the Jewish Christians, their consciousness of God, their eschatology proclaiming the day of judgment, their morality and their legends, and established a new apostolate as 'the one sent by God', to quote Adolf Schlatter once again." [8]

And

"Jewish-Christian dialogue made decisive progress (after centuries of reciprocal anathemas) when Jews and Christians together began to take seriously for their faith the abiding basic features of Judaism to be found in the figure and message of Jesus. The implications of the insights into the affinity between earliest Christianity and earliest Islam should be made fruitful for Christian-Muslim dialogue -- the earlier the better: the Qur'anic understanding of Jesus no longer as a Muslim heresy but as a christology on Arabic soil colored by earliest Christianity! We must be clear that these insights would at first be highly inconvenient for all three prophetic religions. But if an understanding is to be reached, the questions which arise must receive answer." [9]

Sources:

1. Hans Küng. Christianity: Essence, History, Future. Continuum, 1996. p. 99.

2. Küng. Ibid. p. 100-1.

3. Küng. Ibid. p. 106. [Hans Küng quoting Adolf Schlatter's History of the First Christianity (1926)]

4. Küng. Ibid. p. 106.

5. Küng. Ibid. p. 108.

6. Küng. Ibid. p. 106.

7. Küng. Ibid. p. 106.

8. Küng. Ibid. p. 108-9.

9. Küng. Ibid. p. 109.

10. Header includes image of Codex Arabicus (source: wikipedia)