An Essay on the early separation of Christianity and Judaism

The Separation between Christianity and Judaism and its effect on the Church’s understanding of the teaching of Jesus

Introduction

“The early church lost touch with its Jewish roots in or before 70 C.E. Various passages in the NT suggest that Christians were excommunicated from the synagogue before the NT canon was completed, and certainly before 70 C.E. This marked the beginning of the loss of Jewish culture within the church. A few Christian groups such as the Nazarenes and the Ebionites continued to follow Jewish customs, but these soon died out. The church very quickly forgot its Jewish roots, and thereby lost contact with much of the Jewish background of the NT writings.”[1] So writes David Instone-Brewer in his 2002 book Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible.

Instone-Brewer’s thesis is that Jesus and Paul’s statements on divorce in the New Testament need to be understood against the background of the Rabbinic debates from the 1st Century on the subject of divorce. His realisation that there was more implied by the texts of the New Testament than the church has traditionally understood came about as a result of his studies for his PhD in 1st Century Judaism. When he re-read the texts, he observed details that would have been recognised by a contemporary Rabbi, but not by a modern reader or even a reader a century or so after the event. To Instone-Brewer this was not surprising given that Jesus comments were responses to the questions of Pharisaic Rabbis and that according to Acts 22:3, Paul had been trained in the law under Gamaliel who was one of the foremost Rabbis of the time.

Instone-Brewer’s argument, put very simply, is that the church soon lost touch with its Jewish roots as a result of the Jewish revolt of 70 CE and the scattering of Jews and Christians that followed. Therefore the church lost its understanding of the Jewish background of the teaching of Jesus and Paul on the matter of divorce and subsequently has misinterpreted the texts.[2]

Of course this all raises a number of questions. What caused the separation of Christianity from Judaism? Is he right to suggest that the church lost touch with its Jewish roots before 70 CE? If he is right that the church has misunderstood Jesus teaching on divorce, are there other teachings of Jesus that might have been misunderstood?

The recent historical debate

For the last 150 years or so there has been a significant debate among scholars about the inter-relationship between Jesus, Judaism and early Christianity.

In 1845 F.C. Baur defined the “ultimate, most important point of the primitive history of Christianity” as “how Christianity, instead of remaining a mere form of Judaism …asserted itself as a separate, independent principle, broke loose from it, and took its stand as a new enfranchised form of religious thought and life, essentially different from all the national peculiarities of Judaism.”[3]

A turning point in the debate occurred in 1947 and the years following with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls which resulted in renewed interest in first century Judaism. Up to this point, there had been significant antipathy among some influential scholars to things Jewish, which somewhat biased the debate.

As James Dunn writes, “….the whole debate since Baur has opened up a gulf between Jesus and subsequent Christianity, in which the Jewish matrix of both has been very largely marginalised or effectively ignored…”[4]

According to Baur earliest Christianity had two factions. One with Jewish tendencies, the other being Pauline Christianity which was the invention of St Paul and therefore different to the original message of Jesus.

In the following century scholars argued for a whole spectrum of views of the Jewish law within first century Christianity. The ‘history of religions school’ pointed to Hellenistic Christianity as another expression of Christianity intermediate on the spectrum between Paul and the primitive Jewish church. The study of Christology led to this being subdivided into Hellenistic Gentile and Hellenistic Jewish Christianity.

The Liberal Protestantism of Ritschl and Harnack powerfully influenced thinking about the relationship between Jesus and his Jewish environment. Jesus’ ethical teaching was separated from its Jewish background and Ritschl and Harnack presented him as a timeless moralist. Ritschl’s analysis of Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God is presented as purely ethical. He writes, “The kingdom of God consists of those who believe in Christ, inasmuch as they treat one another with love without regard to differences of sex, rank or race, thereby bringing about a fellowship of moral attitude and moral properties extending through the range of human life in every possible variation.”[5] According to Harnack, in Jesus teaching God was the Father of all men… true faith was not a matter of credal orthodoxy, but of ‘doing what he did’.[6]

To Ritschl and Harnack the Jewishness of Jesus was almost irrelevant. According to Harnack Jewish apocalypticism was a religion of miserabilism, the religion of the wretched.[7] Long before political events in Germany in the 1930’s there seems to have been distaste for Jewish culture among German scholars.

At the same time a debate about the relationship between Jesus and earliest Christianity was developing. To Harnack, Jesus’ message had been through a developing process of Hellenization. Paul and others had effectively changed Jesus message from a simple message of love of God and love of brother into a religion of redemption requiring a bloody sacrifice. He saw Christology as replacing Christ’s true message.[8] The effect of this thinking was to separate the historical Jesus belonging to Judaism from Paul’s Christ of faith belonging to Hellenism.

This in turn produced a reaction from the history of religions school who thought Christianity ought to be placed particularly in the context of other religions of the Graeco-Roman world. For Heitmüller and Bousset Christianity could be considered as a kind of mystery cult. Heitmüller saw baptism and the Lord’s supper influenced by the sacramental ideas of the cults[9] and Bousset understood the development of Christology towards Christ being a full scale Gnostic redeemer.[10]

By the 1950’s, Rudolf Bultmann was able to sum up the trends on both sides of the gulf.

On one side, he was very ready to recognise the Jewishness of Jesus at least in terms of Jewish apocalypticism but this meant that Jesus could only be seen as just a part of the Jewish beginnings of New Testament theology. This is reflected in Bultmann's two-volume work New Testament Theology where the message of Jesus is examined in just thirty pages out of a work of over 600 pages.[11]

On the other side, he argued that Jesus’ continuing significance could only be appreciated in terms of existentialist philosophy. Bultmann understood Jesus proclamation of the kingdom of God as being expressed in mythological terms, outmoded in a modern scientific world.[12]

He rejected the Liberal Protestant thinking that the eschatological element of Jesus message could be dispensed with. Instead he saw it as an inseparable mythical part of the message. To get at Jesus message meant de-mythologising it into the categories of existentialist philosophy.

Consequently Bultmann replaced the Liberal Protestant moralist Jesus with an existentialist Jesus. The Jewish context was viewed as myth, to Bultmann Jesus could only be appropriated by separating him from his Jewishness.[13]

On the Christian side of the gulf, Bultmann argued that the Gnosticising of the gospel took place very early. He argued that developing Christianity depended heavily on an already developed pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer myth that influenced the Christology of the Hellenistic churches. This meant that, according to Bultmann, Christianity very quickly separated from its Jewish matrix.[14] Bultmann’s view of the resultant gulf between Jesus and early Christianity was based on the idea that Judaism and Hellenism were two distinct entities.

This distinction has subsequently been ruled out by the work of Martin Hengel.[15] Hengel observed that Hellenistic influences had been at work in Palestine since before the time of Alexander the great. Greek was widely used by Jews at the time of Jesus and by the time of Jesus there was no such thing as non-Hellenistic Judaism. Hengel suggested that from the beginning Jesus teaching was being translated from Aramaic to Greek. This leads Dunn to comment, “talk of Hellenizing in the sense of de-Judaizing, or implying a gulf between a Jewish Jesus and a Greek-speaking Christianity is undetermined.”[16]

Dunn further comments that there is no real evidence for the idea of a pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer myth put forward by Bultmann. All the indications pointing to Gnostic systems that include a redeemer figure come from the second century onwards. He concludes, “the attempt to find either a historical Jesus lacking significance for faith, or a Jesus significant for faith apart from his Jewishness, and distinct from a hellenized Christ of faith, has broken down in irretrievable ruin.”[17]

In recent decades there has been a renewed interest in the Jewish background of earliest Christianity, stimulated by a number of factors.

First the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls that indicate the diversity of first century Judaism. Second the Dead Sea discovery led to renewed interest in intertestamental Judaism, i.e. the Jewish apocrypha and pseudepigrapha that gives us insight into the context of Jesus and his contemporaries. A third factor was the development of a tradition-historical analysis of the Rabbinic traditions by Jacob Neusner.[18] Dunn comments that, before Neusner, Jewish scholars, e.g. Macoby and Christian scholars, e.g. Jeremias assumed the Rabbinic traditions represented by the Mishnah, Talmud etc, which originate from the third and fourth centuries, could be used freely to represent first century Judaism.[19] Of course not everyone agrees with Neusner.

A fourth factor has been a thorough reappraisal of the character of Judaism of the first century. As Dunn comments the work of E.P. Sanders and others led to Pharisaic Judaism no longer being viewed as a narrow, legalistic religion that it had been seen as by Christians for centuries.[20]

The Earliest Church and Judaism

So what caused the rift between the church and Judaism? Terrance Callan makes the observation that belief by early Christians that Jesus was the Messiah did not separate them from Judaism. However the development of Christology was a contributory factor to the rift. He says Judaism was quite tolerant of divergent beliefs within its ranks, however it was not so tolerant of divergent behaviour. Belief in Jesus as the Messiah did set them apart within Judaism but separation did not really occur until Christians began to neglect the keeping of the Jewish law.[21]

Callan finds it difficult to understand why the earliest church believed that Jesus was the Messiah. He says that after his crucifixion, Jesus “bore no resemblance to the messiah of contemporary Jewish expectation”[22]Callan states his opinion that Jesus had not laid great stress on a claim to be the Messiah. However, by way of explanation of the churches belief, he cites the explanation proposed by Nils A. Dahl in his essay The crucified Messiah[23], that it was because Pilate crucified Jesus as king of the Jews (Mark 15:26/Matt 27:37/Luke 23:38/ John 19:19-22) i.e. messianic pretender, his resurrection was perceived as God’s vindication of him, and equivalently a declaration that he was truly the Messiah.

Scholars who take a Hebraic view of the gospels, for example those associated with Jerusalem perspective, argue that Jesus’ teaching itself contains explicit claims to be the Messiah. For example David Bivin and Roy Blizzard in their book Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus[24] make the point that, in a very Rabbinic, way Jesus hints at Old Testament scriptures which were understood to be references to the coming Messiah. They give the example of (Luke 23:31 NRSV) “For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”[25]

Bivin and Blizzard argue that Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Greek was popular among religious Jews of the time of Jesus.[26] They argue that the gospel traditions were originally Hebrew so sense can only made of some of the more obscure sayings of Jesus recorded in the gospels if we translate them back into Hebrew. Bivin and Blizzard argue that in Luke 23:31 Jesus is referring to (Ezekiel 20:47 NRSV) “say to the forest of the Negeb, Hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree in you and every dry tree; the blazing flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from south to north shall be scorched by it.” This verse is a part of Ezekiel’s prophecy against Jerusalem and its temple. Allegorically the “Green Tree” is the “Righteous” and the “Dry Tree” is “The Wicked”.

Bivin and Blizzard argue that Jesus is calling himself the “Green Tree” a clear Messianic claim. They argue that, to Jewish hearers, there would be no Messianic secret, Jesus was using an accepted Rabbinic technique of applying scripture and in so doing made messianic claims of himself.[27] However their faith in Jesus as the Messiah came about, the early Christians found plenty of support for this idea by searching the Hebrew scriptures, finding a substantial number of prophecies that fitted with the events of Jesus’ life. Callan argues that although the early Christians believed in Jesus as the Messiah, this did not stop them remaining as Jews. Belief in the crucified Messiah set them apart but it did not exclude them from Judaism. He points to the Jewish piety of the early church revealed in the book of Acts, referring a number of times to the Christians’ presence in the temple and suggests this is probably an accurate reflection of the Jewishness of the early church.[28]

He makes the point that, throughout history, there have been a number of other Messianic movements which led to the formation of Jewish sects or movements, rather than separate religions.

Callan suggests that the cause of the separation was the decision, made very early in the history of the church, to admit Gentiles into the membership in the church without requiring that they keep the Jewish law. The first gentile convert to Christianity was Cornelius. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that when the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and his household, Peter concluded that they could be baptised.[29] Later this led to the decision made at the council of Jerusalem in 48 or 49 CE that circumcision i.e. conversion to Judaism was not necessary for Gentile converts to Christianity.[30]

Of course there were two possible conclusions that could have been made as a result of the Cornelius incident. It could be argued that, although the Gentiles had received the Holy Spirit as Gentiles, they should become Jews and accept the Jewish law as a consequence of this. This might be described as the ‘conservative’ approach. Or it could be said, as Peter does in Acts, that the gift of the Holy Spirit showed that circumcision was not necessary for them. This might be described as the ‘liberal’ approach.

The Acts of the Apostles gives the impression that the whole church was originally ‘conservative’ but as a result of the Jerusalem Council the whole church became ‘liberal’. Luke’s account is obviously oversimplified. It is clear that ‘conservative’ Christians continued until the third and fourth centuries and it seems likely that ‘liberal’ Christians existed before the Cornelius incident.[31]

One such possible ‘liberal’ group, according to Callan, is Stephen and the Hellenists. Callan suggests from Luke’s presentation that Stephen and the Hellenists differed theologically to some extent from the rest of the early Christians. Callan suggests that the accusation made against Stephen and the Hellenists in Acts 6:14, which Luke calls false, may well have been true. This seems to fit with the fact revealed in Acts 8:1 that non-Christian Jews persecuted the Hellenists, much more harshly than the apostles (and presumably other non-Hellenist Christians).

Callan suggests that the theological difference may have been the Hellenists’ liberal approach to Gentile converts; that evangelisation of Gentiles by the Hellenist Christians occurred earlier than Acts suggests, possibly in Damascus, and this posed a real threat to Judaism which the conservative Jewish Christians did not.[32]

Another indication of the existence of a liberal group within the early church are the Activities of Paul who became a Christian only a few years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Before that he persecuted Christians, the reasons for which are obscure. Galatians 1:13-16 reveals that Paul’s conversion was also a commission to preach Christ to the Gentiles and to him this implied that righteousness did not come from observing the Jewish law. This suggests that he first persecuted the Christians for preaching to the Gentiles and undermining the importance of the law but his conversion caused him to do this very thing himself. If this is so, as Callan suggests, Paul’s persecution of Christians reveals the existence of a liberal Christian group in just a few years after the resurrection of Jesus.[33]

This is somewhat backed up by James D.G. Dunn who argues that Mark 2:1-3:6 is a pre-Markan and pre-Pauline unit of tradition, which shows the movements of some groups within earliest Christianity towards a liberal position.[34]

Whenever the liberal approach emerged, it split the church in two because not all Christians accepted it and this view created an early decisive break between the large number of Christians who held it and Judaism. When a number of the key leaders of early Christianity accepted that Gentile Christians need not keep the Jewish law, the ultimate parting of the ways had begun.

However its is quite clear that conservative Jewish Christianity remained a strong force. Paul’s letters reveal the existence of conservative Jewish Christian missionaries active in Galatia, Philippi, Colosse and perhaps Rome in the 50’s and early 60’s CE. Paul’s disagreement with these Jewish Christians is so strong he accuses them of preaching ‘a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you’. He says, ‘let that one be accursed!’[35]Paul describes these Jewish Christians as ‘the circumcision faction’[36]

We might ask, what was the disagreement between Paul and those known as the circumcision? James D.G. Dunn makes the conclusion that the faction is,

“a social entity marked out and bounded by law and circumcision in particular….. the group’s social identity arises out of their practice of the law and the fact of circumcision (covenantal nomism). But this also means a group who regard covenant grace as restricted to that ethnic unit, dependent on being within the boundaries of the law denoted above all by circumcision. It is this to which Paul objects. The response of faith to electing grace cannot be so restricted and determined by national and ethnic boundaries.”[37]

It seems that Paul and those he represented were in strong disagreement with the circumcision faction. Also it seems the circumcision faction thought that in order to become a Christian you needed to become ethnically Jewish first. This was surely the background to a later parting of the ways. If Pauline Christians thought they were preaching a different gospel, and furthermore Jewish Christians were adding the above restriction, I’m not surprised that this led to working and living separately at an early stage.

Two important historical events had an impact on conservative Jewish Christianity. The Jewish revolution from 66-70 CE resulted in the destruction of the temple and the second Jewish revolt in 132 CE resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem after which the Romans forbade the Jews to live there. After 70 CE Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai lead a regrouping of Judaism at Yamnia. At this time there was an attempt to exclude deviant Jews (including Jewish Christians) in response to the crisis. Alan Segal argues that a primary reason they were excluded was on Christological grounds. That they saw Jesus as a second power in heaven along with God.[38]

Jewish Christians were assaulted verbally, flogged and excluded from the synagogues. One way of excluding Christians from the synagogues was the addition of a prayer to the synagogue liturgy called, the Birkat ha-Minim (Blessing of Heretics). This blessing wasn’t a blessing at all but a curse. In order not to be cursed heretics would not attend synagogue worship. A number of references to the minim in rabbinic literature suggest that Christians were among the minim cursed by the prayer. In the Tosephta it is said that Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus from about 100 CE accounted for an accusation of heresy against him by recalling that he was once pleased when a certain Jacob repeated a saying of Jesus to him in the town of Sephoris.[39]

The same story with variations is contained in the Babylonian Talmud[40] and the Qoheleth Rabbah, a Rabbinic commentary on Ecclesiastes.[41]

There is much about the contents of Matthew’s gospel that indicate that it was the product of a conservative Jewish Christian community. Unlike Mark, Matthew doesn’t bother to explain Jewish customs and terms.[42] In order to avoid offending pious Jews, Matthew uses the term, ‘kingdom of heaven’ rather than ‘kingdom of God’ to avoid using the name of God. Matthew affirms the continuing validity of the law.[43] In Matthew, Jesus reinterprets the law in such a way that makes the law more demanding, not ruling out the commands of the past.[44] Jesus seems also to affirm the oral law[45], but again reinterprets it.[46] However Jewish the contents of Matthew seem to be, passages like Jesus’ woes against the Pharisees in Matthew 23 seem to reflect some hostility between Christians and Pharisees at the time of the writing of the gospel, as well as Jesus disagreements with them. Matthew also seems to indicate that Christians were receiving persecution from Jews.[47]

Is Instone-Brewer right about the date of separation?

There is much evidence, as I’ve noted in this essay so far, that earliest Christianity was a spectrum of different views of the need to keep the Jewish law or not. Certainly a large proportion of the early church seems to be have been of the liberal Christian variety, i.e. Gentile Christians, Hellenistic Christians and Jewish Christians, who agreed that Gentile converts need not keep the Jewish law. This decision that keeping the Jewish law was not necessary, was the key factor that effectively separated this large group of Christians from Judaism in the years after the Council of Jerusalem in 48 or 49 CE. In my opinion, it is likely that within a decade or two, many of these Christians would have forgotten any Jewish religious background they had, possibly by 70 CE. It seems unlikely that conservative Jewish Christian were separated from Judaism by 70 CE, but it seems that even these Christians were excluded from the synagogues in the decades after the fall of Jerusalem and certainly by the time of the Jewish blessing of Heretics in about 85 –95 CE. An indicator of when conservative Jewish Christians were excluded might be reinforced by an earlier rather than a later dating of Matthew. While the majority of twentieth century scholars want to place Matthew’s composition in the final quarter of the first century A.D., there is a weighty minority wishing to push the date back before A.D. 70.[48]

It seems entirely reasonable then to conclude that almost the entire church lost touch with its Jewish roots before the time of the early church Fathers. Groups such as the Ebionites existed until 300-400 CE but only in small numbers.[49]

It is my view that Instone Brewer is largely right and Christians may well have forgotten the Jewish background and so misunderstood some of the teachings of Jesus. In the rest of this essay I intend to briefly examine just two, first divorce and remarriage and second the use of violence by Christians.

Divorce and Remarriage

Instone-Brewer argues that, in Matthew 19:3, Jesus was being invited to join in the Rabbinic debate on divorce and remarriage[50]. We can still find the record of that debate in the Mishnah.[51] ‘Mishnah’ means ‘to repeat’ or ‘to memorise’ because that’s what the Pharisees did; they memorised summaries of important debates on the meaning of the law. These summaries are highly abbreviated to aid memorisation and they miss out details or phrases that would have been obvious to a first century Jew.[52] We find the same kind of abbreviation in the gospels especially in Mark but to a lesser extent in Matthew and Luke.[53]

Instone Brewer argues that when Jesus is asked, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any matter?”, he is being asked to join in the debate between the Shammaites and the Hillelites.[54] There is not enough room in a short essay to rehearse the whole argument but there is room to point out the background of the outline debates suggested by the New Testament.

The Hillelites and Shammaites disagreed over the meaning of a phrase in Deuteronomy 24:1 “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house…….”

The Hebrew of what is translated here as ‘something indecent’ is literally “indecency of a matter” which is as strange in Hebrew as it is in English.

The Shammaites said that it should be understood as something indecent – adultery or refusing to have a sexual relationship with your partner or refusing to provide your partner with the basic necessities of life e.g. food and clothing.

The Hillelites on the other hand interpreted Deuteronomy 24:1 as giving two grounds for divorce “indecency” and “a matter” where “a matter” could mean anything, even something as minor as burning a meal.[55]

The gospel passages on divorce are also difficult for us to understand because they are abbreviated as well.[56] The parallel passages from the synoptic gospels are Matthew 19:3-9 and Mark 10:2-12. (See Appendix A)

Matthew includes two vital phrases that are missing from Mark, though Matthew is still very brief. The two phrases are, “for any or every reason” and “except for marital unfaithfulness”. Jesus is effectively being asked, ‘do you agree with the Shammaites or the Hillelites?’

When Jesus answers that no-one can divorce, “except for marital unfaithfulness” he is effectively agreeing with the Shammaites. Any first century Jew would have understood this debate and would have mentally added to Mark the two phrases included in Matthew.[57] Matthew was probably written for Christians who were beginning to loose touch with their Jewish roots and so he added the phrases to clarify the debate.[58] It is obvious that the question put to Jesus in Mark is abbreviated, because otherwise it just doesn’t make sense. If Jesus was simply being asked, “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” he would have simply replied, ‘of course it is – it’s written in the law isn’t it?’[59]

If Instone-Brewer is correct then Jesus’ agreement with the Shammaites on this issue was highly controversial because most of the divorces in the time of Jesus were based on the teaching of the Hillelites. What Jesus was saying was that if you have been divorced according to Hillel’s rules and you get remarried you are committing adultery because you were not lawfully divorced.[60]

In a church wedding we are urged to keep our marriage vows with the words of Jesus, “what God has joined together, let man not separate”. Traditionally the church has taught that it is impossible to break a marriage until one partner dies. But if that was the case Jesus would have said “What God has joined together man cannot separate”. I have no doubt that Jesus believed divorce based on biblical grounds leaves a person free to remarry. Divorce under the law meant divorce was administrated by a Rabbinic court. We know that such divorces meant that the person was free to remarry from documents of the period. Instone-Brewer gives the example of a divorce certificate from 72 CE found at Masada which says .. “You are free to marry any Jewish man you may wish” [61]

Christ and Violence

What did Jesus and the earliest Christians teach about the use of violence? Many scholars have argued that in the early centuries of the church, Christians were exclusively pacifist. For example Ronald Sider claims, “For three hundred years every extant document from the Christian church that deals with the issue of war and killing says that it has been excluded by Jesus”.[62]

Paul Ramsey, a defender of the just war tradition among Christian ethicists, conceded, “for almost two centuries of the history of the early church Christians were universally pacifists”.[63]

Ronald Sider represents here many that have argued for pacifism and non-resistance based on their understanding of the New Testament. Michel Desjardins in his book Peace and Violence in the New Testament[64] comments about this viewpoint that it, “is supported by a selective reading of the texts and by what is thought to be……the ‘essence’ of the New Testament message. There are explicit examples to the contrary……The least that can be said is that the New Testament’s open acceptance of soldiers and armies has continued to legitimate Christian participation in wars and violence”.[65]

Could the fact that the writings of the early church fathers seem to back a pacifist viewpoint be linked with the early Christians losing touch with their Jewish background?

Jesus’ thinking on the subject of violence, it is assumed by the pacifist viewpoint, is summarised in sayings like, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”[66]. This has led to the idea that Jesus was in favour of not resisting violence, that if you are attacked you should not injure or kill to defend yourself, your family or your country. David Bivin and Roy Blizzard argue that this has never been characteristic of Jewish thought which is summed up in the Talmud, “If someone comes to kill you, anticipate him and kill him first”[67]

They ask the question, was Jesus the first and only Jew to teach pacifism? They conclude this seems unlikely, especially as Luke tells us in his gospel that Jesus disciples were armed and Jesus even suggested that they buy swords.[68]

We might well ask, what is Jesus actually saying in his comments on violence?

The idea that Jesus held a pacifist ethic is apparently reinforced by most English bible translations of Matthew 5:21 e.g. The A.V. the RSV and the Jerusalem Bible translate this as “You shall not kill”. Jesus is quoting from Exodus 20:13 in which the Hebrew word used is Murder (ratzach) and not kill (harag). In Hebrew the words mean very different things. Ratzach means specifically premeditated murder, harag includes all the other types of killing such as killing someone in self-defence or killing an enemy soldier in war. It is strange that the translators made this error since it is the Greek word for Murder (foneu,w) not kill (apokteinw) which is used in Matthew 5:21. This error is corrected in recent translations like the NRSV and the NIV to “You shall not murder”.

Another saying of Jesus often used to support a pacifist view is Matthew 5:39a often translated, “Do not resist evil” or “Do not resist one who is evil”. If Jesus really said this he is contradicted by Paul who writes, “hate what is evil”[69] and James who writes “resist the devil”[70].

Bivin and Blizzard suggest that if this verse is translated back into Hebrew it can be seen that Jesus was not saying something new but quoting a well-known Old Testament proverb that appears in Psalm 37:1,8 and Proverbs 24:19. They say, “In Modern English we would translate this maxim: ‘Don’t compete with evildoers.’ In other words, do not try to rival or vie with a neighbour who has wronged you.”[71]

They further explain that Jesus was not teaching that his disciples should submit to evil, rather, they should not seek revenge. As (Proverbs 24:29 NRSV) says “Do not say, ‘I will do to others as they have done to me; I will pay them back for what they have done.’”

It follows, according to Bivin and Blizzard, that Jesus’ teaching here applies to disagreements and disharmony with friends and neighbours and not when threatened by a murderer, rapist or an enemy in battle. It follows that Matthew 5:39b, “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”, has nothing to do with war or defending yourself against a murderer or rapist but is an illustration of how to deal with an angry friend or neighbour. His or her anger will only be temporary if we respond in the biblical fashion. This is in tune with the thinking of Paul, who writes, “See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.”[72] and Peter, who writes, “Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called--that you might inherit a blessing”.[73]

Conclusion

The separation of Christianity from Judaism seems to have been caused by a number of factors. First and foremost, the acceptance by a large proportion of the early Christians that Gentile converts need not keep the Jewish Law caused an early rift. Christians who remained as Jews experienced condemnation as heretics in the years after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; this effectively forced them out of the synagogue. In my view it is possible that the separation of the vast majority of Christians from their Jewish roots was complete by the early decades of the second century. In order not to misunderstand the teaching of Jesus, Christians and Jews ought to be more thorough in their investigation of Christianity’s Jewish origins. I believe that David Instone Brewer is right, that Christians have effectively misunderstood Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage for nearly two millennia. Study of the Mishnah and other Rabbinic texts, along with an appreciation of the Hebraic background of the New Testament, may help us not to make mistakes by just interpreting the texts at face value. With regard to the idea that Jesus taught pacifism it is my view that when the relevant passages are viewed from a Jewish perspective they lead us to a very different conclusion. That Jesus did not teach against war and self-defence but taught against taking revenge.

Appendix A

(Matthew 19:3 NIV) Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"

(Mark 10:2 NIV) Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

(Matthew 19:9 NIV) I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

(Mark 10:11-12 NIV) He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. {12} And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

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Instone Brewer, D Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible Eerdmans 2002

Instone Brewer Divorce and Remarriage in the Church Paternoster Press 2003

Lundström, G, The Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus. A History of interpretation from the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day, 1947; ET Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd 1963

Neusner, J – The Rabbinic traditions about the Pharisees before AD 70, Leiden: Brill 1971

Ramsey, P – War and Christian Conscience Duke University Press, Durham, 1961

Sider, R & O’Donovan, O – Peace and War: A Debate about Pacifism Grove Ethics No. 56 1985

Segal, A – Two powers in heaven: Early Rabbinic reports about Christianity and Gnosticism. Studies in Judaism and Late Antiquity 25; Leiden:Brill, 1977

[1] Instone Brewer, D Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans 2002) p238 [2] Instone Brewer Divorce and Remarriage in the Church (Paternoster Press 2003) p5 [3] Baur F.C. Paul: the Apostle of Jesus Christ 1845 (ET London: Williams Norgate 1873) Vol 1, p3 [4] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (SCM Press 1991) p5 [5] Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, III p.271; cited by G.Lundström, The Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus. A History of interpretation from the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day, 1947; ET Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd 1963, p.5 [6] Harnack, A – What is Christianity?, London: Williams & Norgate 1901; 5th edition, London: Benn 1958, p110. [7] Ibid. pp 23-24 [8] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism p7 [9] Ibid. p8 [10] Bousset, W, Kyrios Christos 1913 ET Nashville: Abingdon 1970, ch 3 [11] Bultmann, R, Theology of the New Testament SCM Press 1952 [12] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism p8 [13] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism p9 [14] Ibid. [15] Hengel, M – Judaism and Hellenism 2 Vols, SCM Press/ Philadelphia: Fortress 1974 [16] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism p10 [17] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism p11 [18] Neusner, J – The Rabbinic traditions about the Pharisees before AD 70, Leiden: Brill 1971 [19] Dunn, James D.G. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism p13 [20] Ibid. p14 [21] Callan , T – Forgetting the Root, the emergence of Christianity from Judaism (Paulist Press 1986) p19 [22] Callan , T – Forgetting the Root, the emergence of Christianity from Judaism p19 [23] Dahl, N.A. – The Crucified Messiah and Other Essays (Minneapolis: Augsburg 1974) pp10-36 [24] Bivin, D & Blizzard, R – Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus (Destiny Image/ Centre for Judaic Christian Studies 1994) [25] Ibid. pp82-84 [26] Ibid. pp 7-16 [27] Bivin, D & Blizzard, R – Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus pp82-84 [28] Callan, Forgetting the Root p20 [29] Acts 10:44-48; 11:15-18 [30] Callan, Forgetting the Root pp21-22 [31] Callan, Forgetting the Root p22 [32] Ibid. pp22-23 [33] Callan, Forgetting the Root pp23-24 [34] Dunn, James. D.G. – Mark 2:1 – 3:6: a Bridge between Jesus and Paul on the question of the law NTS 30 (1984) pp395-415 [35] Galatians 2:1 [36] Galatians 2:12 [37] Dunn, James D.G. in Hengel, M and Heckel, U – Paulus und das antike Judentum p312 [38] Segal, A – Two powers in heaven: Early Rabbinic reports about Christianity and Gnosticism. Studies in Judaism and Late Antiquity 25; Leiden:Brill, 1977 [39] Tosephta T. Hull 2.24 [40] Babylonian Talmud (b. A.Z. 16b –17a) [41] Qoheleth Rabbah 1.8.4 [42] Compare Matthew 15:1-20 with Mark 7:1-23 [43] Matthew 5:17-20 [44] Matthew 5:21-48 [45] Matthew 23:2 [46] Matthew 23:16-22 [47] cf. Matthew 23:29-39; 10:16-33; 5:10-12 [48] Davies, W.D and Allison, D The gospel According to Saint Matthew [49] Callan, Forgetting the Root p44ff [50] Instone Brewer, D Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans 2002) pp133-136 [51] Mishnah Gittin 9:10 [52] Instone Brewer, D Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans 2002) pp162-167 [53] Ibid. pp159-167 [54] Ibid. pp110-114 [55] Ibid. pp 111-112 [56] Ibid. pp133-136 [57] Instone Brewer, D Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans 2002) p134 & p161 [58] Ibid. p175 [59] Ibid. p 135 [60] Ibid. pp177-183 [61] Instone Brewer, D Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans 2002) p208 [62] Ronald Sider & Oliver O’Donovan – Peace and War: A Debate about Pacifism (Grove Ethics No. 56 1985) p6 [63] Ramsey, P – War and Christian Conscience (Duke University Press, Durham, 1961) pp xv-xvi. [64] Desjardins, M – Peace and Violence in the New Testament (Sheffield Academic Press 1997) [65] Ibid. p78 [66] Matthew 5:39 [67] Sanhedrin 72a [68] Luke 22:38, Luke 22:50, Luke 22:35-37 [69] Romans 12:9 [70] James 4:7 [71] Bivin, D & Blizzard, R – Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus p70 [72] 1 Thessalonians 5:15 see also Romans 12:14, 17-19 [73] 1 Peter 3:9