What is the Evidence for 'Jewish Christianity' Beyond Literary References?

[Secret Alias]

If Hegesippus is the source for the desposyni the tradition becomes suspect because Hegesippus is unreliable - cf. the account of the martyrdom of James and this nonsense:

This apostle was consecrated from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor fermented liquors, and abstained from anima food. A razor never came upon his head, he never anointed with oil, and never used a bath. He alone was allowed to enter the sanctuary. He never word woollen, but linen garments. He alone was allowed to enter the sanctuary. He was in the habit of entering the Temple alone, and was often found upon his knees, interceding for the forgiveness of the people; so that his knees became as hard as camels’, as a result of continually kneeling in prayer before God. And indeed, on account of his exceeding great piety, he was called the Just

The odds are not good that the desposyni narrative is historical.

[Ben C. Smith]

It is curious that Africanus mentions Herod's destruction of toledoth:

Herod, knowing that the lineage of the Israelites contributed nothing to him, and goaded by the consciousness of his ignoble birth, burned the registers of their families.

If Herod really did destroy these scrolls it is hard to see how this would affect proofs of descent from Jesus for the desposyni:

A few, however, of the studious, having private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting at them in some other way from the archives, pride themselves in preserving the memory of their noble descent; and among these happen to be those already mentioned, called desposyni, on account of their connection with the family of the Saviour.

Instead what Africanus's source has in mind is their descent from David....

I think that is what Africanus himself has in mind, too. The whole letter is about the biblical genealogies, not any genealogy from Jesus onward. He says that the family was "called desposyni on account of their connection with the family of the Savior," but not that this family connection with Jesus had anything to do with the genealogy he is discussing, which he says derived at least in part from Chronicles (= "the book of days").

ETA: I am not sure Africanus himself knows that "the book of days" means Chronicles, however. Still, though, he is concerned with the genealogies leading up to Jesus in this letter, not with those leading down from Jesus.

[Joseph D. L.]

One can be sceptical of sources, but does that mean we absolutely cannot utilize them or use them in anyway? If we have two or more corroborative sources, can we use them?

My own opinion is that "Jewish Christians" were those who held to Lukuas and bar Kochba being respective messiahs.

[davidmartin]

davidmartin wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 5:47 pm
Clement seems to be the sanest one and the one I enjoy reading for what its worth

Which Clement

Clement of Alexandria. He's quite early too and seems a likeable enough chap. I mean put in order the church fathers you'd like to have dinner with just as people, i think he's up there in the top 3, maybe an Origen or even a Hippolytus. This ordered list is as good as any for rating the trustworthiness of what they say.

[Secret Alias]

Again, Christianity is SO different from what we might call 'normative' Judaism it seems odd to me that 'Jewish Christianity' as described in Irenaeus should be so 'white bread.'

1. Those who are called Ebionites agree that the world was made by God
2. but their opinions with respect to the Lord are similar to those of Cerinthus and Carpocrates.
3. They use the Gospel according to Matthew only, and
4. repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the law.
5. As to the prophetical writings, they endeavour to expound them in a somewhat singular manner
6. they practise circumcision, persevere in the observance of those customs which are enjoined by the law, and are so Judaic in their style of life,
7. that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God.

For me again, this is not a description of the beliefs who wrote the Clementine literature. Yes, he believed God made the world rather than the angels (against the heretics). Yes, he calls Jesus the prophet and stresses his humanness. Yes, there is an element which repudiates Paul. Maybe there is respect for circumcision, the customs enjoined in the law, 'Jewishness' and Jerusalem. But surely we'd expect most of these things from any Jewish sect.

The issue for me is that Irenaeus and others have a predisposition - even an obsession - with demonstrating that Christianity could co-exist with Roman values. To this end, 'monarchianism' is chief among these 'values.' Check for the Ebionites and problem for dualistic sects like the Marcionites. While Irenaeus doesn't come out and say that Christianity 'developed' from the Ebionites - he couldn't say that. It would contradict his central narrative of a 'direct pipeline' from Jesus to the Church via the apostles. What he does instead is develop a brief portrait of the Jewish converts to Christianity whom the Catholic Pauline epistles say opposed Paul. He also makes the case in Book 3 that 'Matthew' the gospel of the Ebionites was written in 'the Hebrew dialect' opening the door to an early date for the Ebionites. He never accuses the Ebionites of corrupting Matthew only of using Matthew - that is, Matthew in the form but not (at least implicitly) the language (Ebion is Semitic) of the Church.

My point then is that when you go down this list of 'characteristics' identified for the Ebionites you actually end up with a sect which acts as a foil for the Church which ultimately strengthens its legitimacy. Indeed what's really that shocking in this list. (1) is orthodox. (2) adoptionism was not orthodox but it wasn't monstrously egregious either. (3) was orthodox - no one could be expect to hold four texts as 'the gospel' until Irenaeus. (4) similarly Paul wasn't the apostle to the Jews (according to the Catholic canon) so what crime was it for Jews not to recognize him as an apostle? (5) I don't even understand the issue raised here. (6) Paul says that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is in itself right or wrong so again no crime here - a tolerable shortcoming. (7) Christians have always been attracted to Jerusalem.

So when you go down the list you realize at once rather than a 'heresy' per se you have a group which - seen from the perspective of Irenaeus and others - simply hadn't grown into the proper orthodoxy. The analogy would be a child who can add and subtract but cannot multiply. If Irenaeus had written that they opposed the idea that Jesus was a god (like Islam today) that would be a more serious accusation. As such what Irenaeus does in fact is create a description of an immature faith rather than a 'heresy' per se.

Now the question becomes did Christianity emerge from a Jewish sect like this? I certainly don't think so. I don't even think this is a description of an actual sect that existed in the first century. This to me seems to epitomize something like the Nazoraeans or Nazarenes - a late second century development. That the characteristics of this group resemble 'Jewish sects' like those attested in Qumran is hardly surprising. Irenaeus's list here represent nothing more than characteristics of Jewish identity. Seriously, consider the following:

1. As a Jew I believe God created the world
2. I think Moses was an ordinary man for whom the holy spirit was involved in his birth
3.
4. I repudiate those who reject the Law
5. I believe in the prophetic writings too and read them after the manner of my ancestors
6. I practice circumcision, the custom of my ancestors, and maintain a Jewish way of life
7. I adore Jerusalem

In short all of these characteristics attributed to the Ebionites aren't so much beliefs of the sect regarding Jesus or the Christian faith but signs of belonging to the Jewish race. As such they are meaningless and generic. They can't be used as an explanative tool for the origin of Christianity out of Judaism. Rather they are warnings against Christians identifying themselves as Jews after baptism.

[Secret Alias]

So if Irenaeus's caricature of a 'Jewish Christian' community who opposed Paul what do we make of the references in Paul's letters to 'Jews' who opposed him? I strongly suspect that these comments were references to actual Jews rather than 'Jewish Christians.' To be sure that presents a problem for Galatians chapter 2. But I have long suspected that this biographical material was a later interpolation. I don't think that the author of Against Marcion 4 is commenting on this material as if it were in the Marcionite canon. Rather I think - as I have consistently argued - that the author is arguing from his Galatians-first canon of Pauline writings rather than the Marcionite variant.

I've also made the case - with prominent support here at the forum - that Against Marcion goes back to a lost-ur text. The introduction to Against Marcion makes that explicit. While the author said he's restored the text to its original integrity after 'corruption' occurred when it ended up in the hands of an 'apostate' I doubt that happened. The text was altered from its original integrity by Irenaeus. The Luke-based arguments are not original to the text. Nevertheless certain anomalies remain - namely the Galatians-first Pauline canon which is known to have been preserved in the Near East.

The importance for us here is that since the Galatians-first canon is not Marcionite but representative of the tradition associated with Ephrem, not only is the original author's use of a gospel harmony confirmed but more importantly that he is using his Galatians not Marcion's Galatians. While I can't prove that Marcion's Galatians didn't have the bit about those coming from James slipping into Paul's church (i.e. infiltration from Jewish Christians) it is strongly inferred by the lack of mention of Marcion in the section in Justin's use of Origen's Commentary on Galatians which makes frequent allusion to Marcionite exegesis of Galatians.

Moreover, circumstantially, it is worth noting that Galatians 2 forms the basis of Against Marcion's thrust against Marcion. In Book 4 after making the case that Marcion falsified Luke (by no means a proven hypothesis) the author (who is necessarily not the original author according to my understanding) goes on to say the following:

It is another matter if in Marcion's opinion the Christian religion, with its sacred content, begins with the discipleship of Luke. However, as it was on its course even before that, it certainly possessed an authoritative structure by means of which it reached even to Luke: and so with the support of its evidence Luke also can find acceptance. But Marcion has got hold of Paul's epistle to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,a and accuses also certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ: and on this ground Marcion strives hard to overthrow the credit of those gospels which are the apostles' own and are published under their names, or even the names of apostolic men, with the intention no doubt of conferring on his own gospel the repute which he takes away from those others.

To a naive observer, one who is unaware of the ACTUAL Marcionite understanding, this argument sounds quite convincing. Marcion read Galatians 2 and expanded on Paul's rather limited objection to 'Jewish Christianity' exaggerating his opposition because Marcion knew and opposed the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John.

Not only is this a stupid position for Marcion (Luke is clearly not an ur-gospel; the opening lines disprove that) it goes against what we know to be the actual position of the Marcionites from Adamantius. It is there we hear quite clearly that the Marcionites denied that any of the gospels were written by disciples. To that end, it is hard to believe Marcion would have read Galatians 2 and recognized that Matthew (for Matthew is that only gospel that makes sense in this context) was being promoted against Luke. After all, the Marcionites believed that Matthew was pseudepigraphal. To that end, we have to begin to suspect that exact opposition of Against Marcion occurred - Galatians 2 was interpolated into Paul's warning against the corruption of his gospel in order to contextualize and ultimately 'soften' the import of these words.

For the Marcionites clearly believed that Paul wrote a written gospel. This is without a doubt. As such the claim about Marcion stealing Luke is contrived. Moreover it subordinates the gospel of Luke because it was 'apostolic' (a contrived use of the original adjective) rather than one written by an apostle. Indeed if we look carefully at what follows in Book 4, rather than be as certain as he first claims, the author goes on to admit he has no idea what the Marcionites actually claimed:

And yet, even if there is censure of Peter and John and James, who were esteemed as pillars,b the reason is evident. It was that they appeared to be altering their manner of life through respect of persons. Yet since Paul himself made himself all things to all men so that he might gain them all,c Peter too may well have had this in mind in acting in some respect differently from his manner of teaching. And besides, if false apostles also had crept in, their character too is indicated: they were insisting on circumcision, and the Jewish calendar. So it was not for their preaching but for their forms of activity that they were marked down as wrong by Paul, though he would no less have marked them wrong if they had been in any error on the subject of God the Creator, or of his Christ. Therefore we have to distinguish between the two cases. If Marcion's complaint is that the apostles are held suspect of dissimulation or pretence, even to the debasing of the gospel, he is now accusing Christ, by thus accusing those whom Christ has chosen. If however the gospel which the apostles compared with Paul's was beyond reproach, and they were rebuked only for inconsistency of conduct, and yet false apostles have falsified the truth of their gospels, and from them our copies are derived, what can have become of that genuine apostles' document which has suffered from adulterators—that document which gave light to Paul, and from him to Luke? Or if it has been completely destroyed, so wiped out by a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge, then not even Marcion has a true one. Or if that is to be the true one, if that is the apostles', which Marcion alone possesses, then how is it that that which is not of the apostles, but is ascribed to Luke, is in agreement with ours? Or if that which Marcion has in use is not at once to be attributed to Luke because it does agree with ours—though they allege ours is falsified in respect of its title—then it does belong to the apostles. And in that case ours too, which is in agreement with that other, no less belongs to the apostles, even if it too is falsified in its title (i.e. the 'apostolic').

What the author finds difficult to reconcile - i.e. the Marcionite habit of calling the gospel 'apostolic' (sing.) - is plainly comprehensible. The text was identified as 'apostolic' because it belonged to the apostle - i.e. Paul - viz. it was his written gospel.

As such if the author was able to lie about 'Luke' being involved in the transmission of the Marcionite gospel he is more than capable of lying about an interpolated section in Galatians 2. Note the number of times 'if' is used in the section 'even if' there is this, 'if' false apostles crept in, 'if' Marcion's complaint is this, 'if' the Marcionites claimed the 'apostolic gospel' was beyond reproach, 'if' the Marcionites claim this 'apostolic' gospel was destroyed, 'if' the Marcionites claimed a number of other things - why doesn't the author know what the Marcionites said about Galatians 2 if he attributes that their arguments about Paul's warning about the corruption of the gospel come from that section.

'If' is used ten times in this section. This belies the fact that the author in fact does not know that the Marcionites used this section to make their case. He has no idea how or 'if' the Marcionites used this section. He's just found a useful way of limiting their claims by making a section where Paul makes up with Peter and tolerates and even subordinates himself and his tradition to the apostolic one. This is all lies. This was a massive interpolation for a deliberate purpose - viz. to de-legitimize the central Marcion claim that 'the apostle' wrote the original gospel called by them 'the apostolic.'

[Secret Alias]

So my point is that Galatians 2 narrative about 'Jewish Christians' creeping in to Paul's community is a massive interpolation. The original anti-Judaic arguments were made against Jews not Jewish Christians. The reason this is significant is that this posed a problem for Christianity because it made it supported all the things Celsus said to delegitimize the religion viz. that it was based on sedition. After all, Judaism was a recognized religion in the Empire. Paul was preaching to Jews (something forbidden or denied in Catholic Christianity) to leave their ancestral religion (something opposed by Roman sensibilities) and join a new religion with him as 'the apostle' (Moses was the original 'apostle'). This is why the portrait of the Jewish Christians is so critical. Not only do they represent a continuation of tradition (which the Romans liked) Paul - in the canon of the author of Against Marcion - goes so far as to say that he subordinated himself to the authority of those Judaizers (those who accepted Jewish tradition) in order to bring unity to the Church. This implausible behavior was only designed for one audience (or perhaps two) - the Roman state and the converts to Christianity (who would hopefully emulate this bowing down to recognized authority).

[Secret Alias]

I am not sure how to read this in Against Marcion 5. The author begins the book by essentially saying we can't know Paul without knowing Acts. Then he turns his attention to the 'first' gospel - Galatians. He notes that Paul says there is no other gospel but adds:

perhaps, to escape from this (i.e. that Paul acknowledged the same gospel as the other apostles),you will say, And that is why he subjoined, Though an angel from heaven preach the gospel otherwise, let him be anathema.

After acknowledging he doesn't know how the Marcionites interpret Galatians (notice the 'perhaps') he goes through what follows in his book of Galatians:

After that, as he briefly describes the course of his conversion from persecutor to apostle he confirms what is written in the Acts of the Apostles, in which the substance of this epistle is reviewed; namely, that certain persons intervened who said the men ought to be circumcised, and that Moses' law must be kept, and that then the apostles, when asked for advice on this question, reported on the authority of the Spirit that they ought not to lay burdens upon men which not even their fathers had been able to bear Now if even to this degree the Acts of the Apostles are in agreement with Paul, it becomes evident why you reject them: for they preach no other god than the Creator, nor the Christ of any god but the Creator, since neither is the promise of the Holy Spirit proved to have been fulfilled on any other testimony than the documentary evidence of the Acts (Quodsi et ex hoc congruunt Paulo Apostolorum Acta, cur ea respuatis iam apparet, ut deum scilicet non alium praedicantia quam creatorem, nec Christum alterius quam creatoris, quando nec promissio spiritus sancti aliunde probetur exhibita quam de instrumento Actorum). And it is by no means reasonable that that writing should in part agree with the apostle, when it relates his history in accordance with the evidence he supplies, and in part disagree, when it proclaims in Christ the godhead of the Creator, with intent to make out that Paul did not follow the preaching of the apostles, though in fact he did receive from them the pattern of teaching how the law need not be kept.

Is the only thing that the author is saying Marcion rejects is Acts or are (the Catholic edition) Paul and Acts the things rejected. Notice that Acts is said to be the 'instrument' in relation to the account of (Catholic) Galatians "that the performance of the promise of the Holy Ghost cannot be otherwise proved, but from the instrument of the Acts."

The section begins with "congruunt Paulo Apostolorum Acta" and ends with the idea that Acts is an instrument in relation to Galatians. I am not sure that we can simply assume that Marcion had Galatians 2. Otherwise why reject Acts? If Galatians had all of these details it is immaterial whether they were also in Acts. The assumption seems to be that the Marcionites recognized Acts as an 'instrument' of Galatians which doesn't make sense given that Tertullian's use of 'instrument' is quite unusual.

[Secret Alias]

Quodsi et ex hoc congruunt Paulo Apostolorum Acta, cur ea respuatis iam apparet ... quando nec promissio spiritus sancti aliunde probetur exhibita quam de instrumento Actorum

Now and since Paul agrees with Acts of the Apostles, now it appears why they (you) reject ... whilst the promise of the Holy Ghost is shown to have been fulfilled in no other instrument (than) Acts.

Clearly the author is alluding to Galatians 3:22:

so that by faith in Jesus Christ the promise might be given to those who believe.

As such Acts itself is the promise Paul referred to here?

[Secret Alias]

The Marcionites clearly thought Paul himself was the Paraclete; the Catholics the Holy Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 1). Does the rest of the juxtaposition follow? That the Marcionites thought the apostle himself was the promise of the Holy Spirit?