The Rift

The church with which the evangelist John was associated found itself in great danger. Expulsion from the synagogues exposed them to the threat of the Roman authorities.

Formation And Struggles: The Birth of the Church AD 33-200, by Veselin Kesich

In the early 60s AD, James, the “brother of the Lord” and head of the Jerusalem church was stoned to death. Peter and Paul were both martyred in the mid-60s. in 66 AD, a Jewish revolt broke out against Roman occupation.

James was accused of transgressing the law by Ananias, the high priest; Clement of Rome, writing around 95 AD, would write that Peter was crucified likely in 64 AD – perhaps in the wave of Christians killed by Nero, taking the fall for the great fire; Paul was likely beheaded, in approximately 67 AD.

Nero would commit suicide in the next year.

The loss of these leaders of the Christian community coincided with the devastation of war through the 60s. The Zealots would lead the revolt against Rome; Christians and some Pharisees refused to participate. Vespasian would move against Jerusalem in 69 AD, and his son Titus would complete the work – devastating the country and destroying the temple. Many Jews were taken from Judea as slaves.

The Romans destroyed the temple, but they did not outlaw the Jewish religion. Roman policy was never aimed at its destruction.

Palestine was important to Rome – a defense against the Parthians to the east, and protection for Egypt in the southwest. While expelled from Jerusalem, Johanan Ben Zakkai, a leader of the Pharisees who did not participate in the revolt, was allowed to establish a rabbinical school in Yavneh (Jamnia). It was through this school that the Palestinian Jews would come to redefine Judaism.

The rabbinic school was built upon the principle that the study of the Torah was of the highest value and far more important than the restoration of the temple.

Yet they never gave up hope that the temple would be rebuilt. This idea would contribute to the Second Jewish War, from 132 – 135 AD. This war was far more disastrous than the first for both Jews and Jewish-Christian relations.

Returning to the first revolt, Jewish Christians did not participate, instead fleeing to Pella (approximately sixty miles northeast of Jerusalem across the Jordan River). Meanwhile, the Hellenists (diaspora, Greek-speaking Jews) took the story of Jesus to the diaspora – beginning as early as immediately after Peter’s first recorded sermon in Acts.

Hegesippus was a second-century Christian of Jewish origin. He would record the story of Symeon, the cousin of Jesus, who led the Christian community to Pella and back at the time of the first revolt. Symeon would remain head of the church in Jerusalem for some forty-five years, from AD 62 – 107. This Jerusalem community of Christians would remain until the time of Hadrian and the Second Jewish War, provoked by the banning of circumcision and the transforming of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina (the name held until the Arab conquest in the seventh century).

Until this time, the Romans grouped the Christians with other Jews. Meanwhile, the rabbis were starting to draw strong boundaries around Judaism, boundaries that excluded the Christians. In the years following the destruction of the temple, the relations significantly worsened. By the turn of the century, even the Christians would start to contrast their faith as a religion separate from Judaism.

Around this same time, the rabbinic authorities published a benediction against the “apostates and heretics”: let there be no hope, and may these heretics perish in a moment and be blotted from the book of life. This curse would expel the Christian communities from the synagogues.

In the wake of the defeat of the second revolt, Rabbi Akiba and other leaders of the Academy of Jamnia perished, with the center of gravity in Jewish life moving to Babylon.

Kesich places the writing of the Gospel of Matthew as sometime in the 80s, and through this lens he sees the extensive polemics against the scribes and Pharisees (see Matthew 23, for example) as representative of the growing antagonism between these groups and the Christians in the years after Jesus’s time on earth. It is likely written to bolster the faith of those Christians facing this increasing antagonism.

Reacting to the expulsion of Jewish Christians from the synagogue, Matthew attacked the Pharisees, the leaders of Rabbinic Judaism, in vitriolic terms, as hypocritical, legalistic, blind, and murderous.

…this gospel reflects a bitter struggle between two groups who share the same heritage.

Kesich points out that during the time of Christ the temple employed thousands of people. I have never considered anything like this. In other words, Jesus was not only challenging religious convictions and traditions; He was attacking an institution that provided gainful employment for a sizeable portion of the population.

While Matthew’s gospel reflects the conflict with Judaism, John’s reflects the conflict between the church and the synagogue. By the time John’s gospel was written, Christians were “put away from the synagogue” – and it is only in this gospel where this phrase is employed. This expulsion from the synagogue put the Christians in threat of the Roman authorities.

The letter to the Hebrews is apparently written in the context of these struggles – Jewish Christians returning to Judaism and its sacrificial system due to the persecution and separation that resulted from adopting this Christian sect.

The Jewish Christians who were drifting away did not forsake Jesus, but saw him as no higher than an angel or Moses.

We see in Hebrews the effort taken to prove from Scripture that this is not the case – the Son is higher than the angels, and is superior to Moses; t is through the Son that the world was created.

Conclusion

In the aftermath of the second revolt, Jews were forbidden to return to Jerusalem, now renamed Aelia Capitolina. Relations fully deteriorated, with Christians refusing to participate in the second revolt. By the end of the second century, polemics between Christians and Jews intensified – the incarnation being the major point of contention.

Meanwhile, there were sects among the Christians – basically, what they believed about Jesus distinguished one group from another.