Jewish Christians

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As Jewish Christians are Jews referred to a belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah confess.. To about 100 AD, the Jewish majority of early Christianity .. Whose descendants were to 400 AD to Christian minorities with Judaizing tendencies, since individual from the Judaism leached baptized Jews. There is no continuous Jewish Christian tradition in either Judaism or Christianity. In contrast to crypto Jews who no longer publicly practiced their Jewish religion due to public pressure, Jewish Christians converted to Christianity out of conviction.

In contrast, Christians of non-Jewish origin are called Gentile Christians . They only formed a majority in some of the churches founded by Paul of Tarsus from around 50 onwards.

There is no historical connection with the modern Messianic Jews .

Early Christianity

Self-image

After the death of Jesus of Nazareth , early Christianity was formed as a special group within Jews that saw itself as part of Judaism and was not marginalized by the Pharisees of the time , but defended against the Sadducees .

All early followers of Jesus , almost all authors of the New Testament (NT) and most of the early Christians in the 1st century were of Jewish origin, i.e. Jewish Christians.

The Acts of the Apostles tells that the early community in Jerusalem followed Jewish regulations such as visiting the temple (Acts 2.46; 3.1) even after Jesus' death and made sacrifices there (Acts 21:26). Like Simon Peter (Acts 10:14) and James the Just (Acts 15:20), she also kept Jewish dietary laws , the Shabbat and circumcision .

These early Christians differed from other Jews with baptism , the common Lord's Supper , their own house worship services, the community of property and the emphasis on their belief in the imminent final judgment . Initially, they preached their doctrine exclusively to Jews and displaced persons from the house of Israel. In doing so, they referred to traditional Jesus' words such as Mt 15.24  EU and 10.5ff. EU :

"I am only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

"Do not go to the Gentiles or enter any Samaritan city, but go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

First of all, Palestinian fellow Jews were recruited to follow Jesus. The promise of Isa 49.6  EU , to which Jesus referred according to Mt 5.17  EU , also played a role : The chosen people of Israel was determined to be the “light of the peoples” through their exemplary fulfillment of the Torah .

Accordingly, the early Christian missionaries concentrated on their fellow believers and proselytes . Isolated baptisms and fully valid conversions of non-Jews with circumcision to Judaism were particularly valued as a great exception (Acts 10).

First conflicts

The Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul , the Epistle of James and other NT texts show that in some early Christian communities conflicts arose over the mission to the Gentiles and the continued application of the Torah for baptized Gentiles without circumcision and full conversions to Judaism ( Acts: 1 LUT ; 10.45 LUT ; 11.3 LUT ). Initially, two groups faced each other:

  • The leaders of the early church emphasized the indissoluble interdependence of the early Christians in Judaism by their number of twelve. James, the eldest brother of Jesus, Simon Peter and John had the leading role as missionaries and administered donations from other congregations, but already gave up partial powers to care for them ( Acts 6 : 1-6  LUT ). As a rule, newly baptized people were not released from the Jewish laws, but should be circumcised ( Acts 15.1  LUT ), not least in order not to endanger the position of the Jewish Christians within the reach of the Sadducees in Jerusalem.
  • Other Jews with Greek names, on the other hand, the so-called Hellenistic Jewish Christians, began the mission among the “godly” in the Jewish diaspora . One of them was Stephen , the first Christian martyr . His missionary sermon ( ActsLUT ), which is critical of the temple and the law, and the popularity he gained, evidently triggered a first conflict with the Sanhedrin , which is said to have sentenced him to death after a religious trial. The Pharisee Paul of Tarsus is said to have participated in his stoning ( Acts 8,1  LUT ).

The Pauline Mission

It was Paul who, after his conversion to early Christianity ( Damascus experience ), evangelized predominantly non-Jews and issued or exempted them from circumcision, the commandments of purity and food and the Shabbat ( Acts 13:36  LUT ; Gal 5,6  LUT ). He founded his own Gentile Christian churches for about ten years. But he also recognized the Jerusalem apostles as authorities, called for donations for them ( Rom 15.25f  LUT ) and finally sought their legitimation for his mission to the people ( Gal 2.2  LUT ).

At a council of apostles in Jerusalem (around 48) both sides tried to come to an agreement. Luke ( Acts 15.29  LUT ) claims that a minimum of food and purity laws (the "James Clauses") were recommended to non-Jews, while Paul ( Gal 2.6  LUT ) emphasizes the complete release from the Torah. Ultimately, Paul probably got his way by saying that nothing should be imposed on non-Jewish Christians.

This Pauline theology ushered in the separation of Christianity from Judaism. There after 70 the direction of the Pharisees ( rabbis ) gained a leading role.

Demarcation from the Christian side

After adherence to Jewish regulations was no longer a prerequisite for the Christian way of life, Gentile Christians increasingly dominated the Christian communities. The imitation of Jewish behavior by Gentiles - that is, the subsequent circumcision, which obliged to keep all Torah commandments - rejected Paul and his disciples as incompatible with the gospel . Paul covered competing preachers who demanded exactly this of the Christians in his congregations with the first anathema in church history ( Gal 1 :EU ). But he also recommended that Christians freed from the Torah should sovereignly observe the Jewish dietary laws for the sake of love , so as not to provoke their Jewish brothers and not to divide the community ( Rom. 14:21  EU ).

Parts of Ignatius' letters to the Magnesians (8–10) and Philippians (3–4,6,8) indicate that Jewish traditions within Christianity persisted around 110. Ignatius of Antioch strictly rejected them and judged them to be an apostasy from true Christianity.

In the epistle of Barnabas (1st or early 2nd century), the entire Jewish history of salvation is downplayed as outdated, so that one can actually only be either a Jew or a Christian. This is where the substitution theology meets , according to which Christianity is the “true Israel” in relation to the finally “rejected” people of Israel. The christological belief … and is in no other salvation is exclusively related to the church ; therefore, only through baptism can a Jew attain eternal salvation. This represents the continuity of Christian anti-Judaism .

Even with Justin ( Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon , 2nd century) one recognizes the attitude that Jewish Christians may behave according to Jewish law themselves, but may not ask anyone to do the same. But he also makes it clear that not all of his Christian contemporaries are so tolerant.

Demarcation from the Jewish side

Ever since the persecution of the Jews by the Diadochi , the Jewish laws, observance of the Shabbat, circumcision and the temple cult were considered to be the identity of the Jewish community. The fact that it was precisely these that were suspended from Christianity was viewed as heresy and persecuted. Especially Jewish Christians came into the crosshairs, as they were viewed as apostates of the faith and traitors to the people of Israel.

After the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in AD 70, the temple- oriented direction of the Sadducees lost its leadership role in favor of the rabbinical Pharisees. Although the so-called Synod of Jabne did not exist according to the current state of research, the scholars living in this city between 70 and 132 succeeded in giving a new direction to the religious community with priests and sacrifices, which was previously oriented towards the Jerusalem temple. The rabbis saw strict but flexible and realistic observance of the Jewish Torah, as it was interpreted in the oral Halacha and later fixed in the Talmud , as decisive for Judaism. Hillel 's interpretation of the Torah was given preference over that of Shammai , so that the teachings of the Talmud were very close to Jesus’s interpretation of the Torah in many ways (e.g. equality of love for God and neighbor, breaking the Sabbath in the event of mortal danger, caring for the poor).

However, as a messianic group, the Christians, of whom the Hellenists in particular had expressed criticism of the temple, were indirectly held to be complicit at the end of the temple, especially since they interpreted this event as God's judgment on Israel for the execution of Jesus. So they - together with other Jewish sects - were excluded from Judaism by 100 with an addition in the eighteen prayers as "heretics".

The early church had left Jerusalem shortly before the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 and had largely relocated to the East Bank. It suddenly lost its primacy in Christianity and finally lost it to the church in Rome .

When Emperor Vespasian forbade all Jews to settle in Jerusalem, Judaism completely lost its previous religious center. This made a common tradition of faith all the more important for the exiled Jews in order to preserve their identity and prevent them from being absorbed by the peoples.

A new phase came after the failed Bar Kochba uprising in 135. Since the Christians also refused to share arms with the Jewish fighters, they were attacked by them themselves. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity was not yet formulated at this time and was not at the center of the mutual demarcation between Jews and Christians. But the Mishnah, as a preliminary form of the Talmud, already reacted to the Gospels by denying the virgin birth of Mary and thus Jesus' sonship and interpreting his preaching as false prophecy, idolatry and seduction of the people into false gods.

Judaizing Christians in the 2nd Century

With the decline of the early Jerusalem community and the mutual demarcation, Jewish Christianity hardly emerged as an independent entity. The Jewish Christians were no longer the decisive majority, but an insignificant and theologically devalued minority. Scattered groups tried to cling to the most diverse elements of Judaism against the Gentile Christian majority (see Judaizers ). They rejected the lawless pagan mission coined by Paul and demanded that non-Jewish Christians observe various Jewish Torah regulations. These groups viewed Paul as a " heretic " and traced themselves back to Peter or the gentleman brother James. So you described the result of the Apostolic Council in the opposite direction to the letters of the Pauline School.

From around AD 100, Gentile Christian theologians referred to these Judaizing groups as "Jews" in order to marginalize them. Church theologians now regarded their theological and practical positions as false doctrines (heresies) that had to be combated. The church fathers , who formulated the doctrine of the large church, gave them names such as Ebionites (Ebioneans), Elkesaites , Hebrews , Nazoraeans or Nazarenes. They ascribed their own writings, which are largely lost. The great heretic warriors Hegesippus , Eusebius of Caesarea and Irenaeus of Lyons mention:

  • a Nazarene Gospel: Today this is mostly seen as an Aramaic translation of the Gospel of Matthew , i.e. not as heretical.
  • an Ebionean Gospel : This too was probably a Greek variant of the Gospel of Matthew, which, however, left out the birth stories (Mt 1–2). The reason for this could be a denial of the virgin birth, which has already become dogma . It was the Ebioneans who, according to Eusebius, exiled the early community 62 in Pella (Jordan) and saved it from destruction in the Jewish uprising . They point to the existence of Jewish Christian communities in the East Bank and Syria .
  • a Hebrew Gospel : This was also written in Greek, called the Holy Spirit "mother of Jesus" and described his baptism as a rapture (cf. Mk 9.2). It could refer to Egyptian Jewish Christians who spoke Aramaic Greek: God's spirit is feminine in Aramaic and Hebrew (ruach Elohim ) .

Only fragments and indirect quotations exist from these original sources, especially in the dialogue with the Jew Tryphon by Justin and in the Kerygmata Petrou of the pseudo-clementines .

Conditional conclusions on these groups allow New Testament writings, the authors of which advocated an emphatically Jewish-Christian theology towards Paul, above all the Epistle of James , and in another way also the Revelation of John .

Since Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), Christian church and dogma historians have often used the term “Jewish Christianity” indiscriminately for all these groups, in order to separate them from Gentile Christianity following Irenaeus. Their origin, size and their influence on the development of the whole church are highly controversial in historical research.

Late antiquity and the Middle Ages

In late antiquity , at the beginning of the 4th century, all these groups were excluded from the church and only existed as sects in the outskirts of the Roman Empire . The elevation of Christianity to its state religion (380) completed the separation not only from Judaism, but also from Jewish-Christian theology in Christianity. From now on, Jews who were baptized - initially the decisive majority - were a rare exception. “Jewish Christians” were now only called individual Jews who had to give up their Judaism completely when they were baptized. The internal and external turning away from Judaism was expected and / or forced from them.

Since the church consistently saw itself as the victorious “true Israel” against the defeated “Satan synagogue”, its mission to the Jews soon took on the character of a systematic persecution of the Jews: In Spain , in the 7th century , the Visigoths saw massive baptisms and then pogroms , especially during the Reconquista of the 12th to 15th centuries.

Baptized Jews - called marranos (pigs) by other Christians in Spain - often secretly clung to their traditions or became the most ardent advocates of mission to the Jews. Either way, they mostly remained outsiders in the Church and were exposed to particular suspicion among their fellow Christians. Nevertheless, there were very seldom Jews who became Christians out of genuine conviction. B. the archbishops Julian of Toledo († 690) or Paulus von Burgos (1351-1435).

Modern times

In the wake of the Reformation in modern times, Martin Luther's hatred of Jews in Protestant territories tended to lead to a return of Judaism to the Talmud or the mystical Kabbalah . But there were now Jewish Christians who made the conversion of the Jews a special task and who tried to overcome language barriers above all. For this purpose translated z. B. Immanuel Tremellius (1510–1580) at the University of Heidelberg Johannes Calvin's first Geneva catechism " Instruction et Confession de Foy dont on use en l'Eglise de Genève " from 1536 into Hebrew .

In the wake of the Enlightenment , some Jewish Christians in particular exercised great influence on the Orthodox Protestantism of their countries. B. Isaäc da Costa (1798–1860) and Abraham Capadose (1795–1874) on Calvinism in the Netherlands , August Neander (1789–1850) and Friedrich Adolf Philippi (1809–1882) in Germany and Carl Paul Caspari (1814– 1892) in Norway on Lutheranism .

In the emerging German Diakonie played Regine Jolberg (1800-1870), with the Anglicans , the first Protestant Bishop in Jerusalem, Michael Solomon Alexander (1799-1845), in Catholicism z. B. Johann Emanuel Veith (1787–1876) and Edith Stein (1891–1942) played an outstanding role. However, these individual cases did nothing to change the social exclusion of Jews and Jewish Christians in the ecclesiastical societies of Europe.

Now, however, occasional associations of baptized Jews emerged in Western Europe who saw mission to the Jews and Jewish emancipation in Christian-dominated societies as their special task:

  • In 1770, analogous to the Freemasons, a kind of lodge of Jewish Christians was established in Amsterdam .
  • The Moravian Brethren planned a Jewish-Christian offshoot, but this never happened.
  • In the Russian Orthodox Church a group of "Judaizers" formed as a sect.
  • In Poland , the Jewish Christian Jakob Joseph Frank (1726–1791) appeared as the Messiah from 1755 and rallied the “Frankists” to fight against Talmudic Eastern Jewry.
  • As a supporter of Hasidism, Jechiel Lichtenstein (1831–1912) founded a group of Jews in Romania who studied the New Testament and saw themselves as members of the early community of Jesus without joining a church.
  • Joseph Rabinowitz (1837–1899) founded a “New Covenant Community of Israelites” in Kishinew under the influence of the pogroms there in 1884. It was intended as an independent collecting basin to protect Jews persecuted in Eastern Europe, observed the Sabbath and circumcision, and celebrated the Lord's Supper as a Passover meal. However, he did not achieve official recognition, so that the movement disintegrated after his death and only survived in remnants until 1939.
  • Christian Theophilus Lucky (actually Chajim Jedidjah Pollak; 1854–1916) tried something similar in Galicia : his group adhered to the Talmudic food commandments in order to win Jews over to Jesus, and at the same time cultivated contacts with Christians. He won friends among them, including the Protestant pastor August Wiegand , but not the desired state recognition as a religious community with equal rights.
  • Since the late 19th century, communities of Christians of Jewish origin emerged who retained elements of the Jewish religion and continued to cultivate them in contact with Judaism. Some of them call themselves Messianic Jews .

In addition to such individual initiatives, there were also attempts to organize cross-denominational Jewish Christians:

  • In London in 1813 the association of the "Sons of Abraham" was founded, made up of baptized Jews who remained members of their free churches , but who wanted to proselytize Israel and reform the churches.
  • This resulted in the founding of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (IHCA) in 1925 . At its 5th conference in Budapest in 1937 , the majority rejected an independent Jewish Christian church. As a result, national offshoots formed in most European countries, the USA , Israel , South Africa and Australia . They tried to help Jewish Christians in Germany to leave the country between 1939 and 1945. Today they train missionaries and try to gain understanding for special concerns of the Jewish Christians, especially in Israel and ecumenism .
  • 1947 Foundation of the Jewish Christian Congregation (JCG) and Jewish Christian Congregation (JCC) in London, Germany and Israel (Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv and Petach-Tikwa). Publication of the sheet: The Jewish Christian Congregation and Jerusalem (English) by Abram Poljak .

time of the nationalsocialism

An independent Jewish Christian tradition no longer existed in the Middle Ages; The Holocaust interrupted new attempts since the modern era in the period of National Socialism . The policy of harmonization of the Nazi regime prepared him and also affected the organizations of the churches. The “ Aryan proof ” required by the state in 1934 affected all Jews, including baptized Jews. Because of the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, they were still considered "full Jews" according to their origin and were later sent to the extermination camps . Non-Jewish spouses and children were treated as " valid Jews " and also disenfranchised, but saved from annihilation .

The Aryan paragraph put the German Evangelical Church in particular before an acid test. The German Christians wanted to eliminate the “Jewish influence” on Christianity as a whole and to push Christians of Jewish origin into a “Jewish Christian Church” of lesser law. The regional churches in Thuringia, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Anhalt and Lübeck that they run have excluded Christians of Jewish descent since 1939 and forbidden the baptism of Jews.

On the other hand, the Confessing Church was established in 1934 , which illegally trained pastors and tried, with its Grüber office, to help Jewish Christians either illegally to branch offices or to leave the country since 1938 . On the Catholic side, the German Caritas Association under Gertrud Luckner did this . Such attempts at help were limited to the area within the church. There was hardly any resistance from the churches to the racist legislation and state persecution of Jews. From autumn 1941, Christians of Jewish origin had to wear the yellow star in Protestant services . Even “professing” Christians only occasionally protested against the state's anti-Jewish measures of violence, the concentration camps , the Nuremberg race laws or the “ Reichskristallnacht ”.

The philosopher and later nun Edith Stein, baptized Catholic in 1922, symbolizes the fate of the Jewish Christians . In 1938 she moved to the Netherlands out of caution , but was caught there by the National Socialists in 1942 and killed in Auschwitz .

The victims of the Holocaust were, for example, Evangelical Lutheran Christians of Jewish origin Elisabeth Braun, Hans Leipelt and Werner Sylten from Bavaria before 1933 . They helped other Jewish Christians before they were murdered or perished. Elisabeth Braun bequeathed her house to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria, whose bishop Hans Meiser had disregarded her petition letters. Hans Leipelt was arrested and executed after distributing the last White Rose leaflet . Werner Sylten died in the Dachau concentration camp .

Since 1945

In the post-war period, the First Hebrew Christian Synagogue of Rabbi Arthur Michelson ( Los Angeles , USA) provided a wide range of help to the needy Jewish Christians in Europe.

The first German church confessions of guilt remained silent about the murder of the Jews and continued the old doctrine of disinheritance. Only very gradually did a broad theological rethinking set in; Christian-Jewish cooperation has made a significant contribution to this , especially since around 1965. This has resulted in a new turn to Jewish traditions, which has influenced the self-understanding of Christianity in many ways.

The "rejection" of Israel as the people of God is considered heresy in many particular churches today. This also goes hand in hand with a better understanding of the Jewish Christian traditions in the New Testament. A growing number of New Testament scholars and systematic theologians in Germany today see these traditions not only as a historical origin, but also as a permanent normative orientation for the entire Church. Since the center of the Christian faith is a Jew who first saved his people and thus also opened up salvation to the people, all Christians should understand themselves as “Jewish Christians”. On the basis of the understanding of this “non-denounced covenant ” ( Martin Buber ), the mission to the Jews is partly uncompromisingly rejected today, partly modified.

The “Messianic Jews” (Hebrew Meschichijim ) are to be distinguished from Jewish Christians in the traditional sense - Christians of Jewish origin in the early church or individual Jews who converted to Christianity : These are heterogeneous communities of Jews who have Jesus Christ as the Messiah Recognize Israel while maintaining their Jewish tradition. Their forerunners are those groups that emerged in the 19th century, mainly among Russian or Polish Jews, and that preserved Talmudic rules.

As early as 1935 Abram Poljak (1900–1963) founded the “Jewish Christian Union” in Jerusalem , which in 1950 tried to establish itself as the “Union of Messianic Jews” without success. The merger raised fears of an infiltration of Judaism as well as the exclusion of Arab Christians living in Israel from the churches. In Europe, Poljak then represented a kind of eschatological Zionism , which sought to proclaim the state of Israel as a sign of the near end times and home for all Jews, but also met with rejection among European Jewish Christians.

In the 1960s, numerous Jewish-Christian groups without fixed forms and norms (Jews for Jesus) emerged among the academic youth in the USA . In many cases, these groups have found no real home either in the churches or in Judaism. Since the beginning of the 1980s, more and more “Jewish-messianic” congregations have emerged in Europe, which, as free churches, predominantly belong to the evangelical spectrum, are partly charismatic and operate a controversial Jewish mission among immigrants.

In 1996 the psychologist Franklin A. Oberlaender drew attention to the identity conflict of Christian Germans of Jewish origin.

The question of an independent Jewish Christianity outside the evangelical area is still open. The theses of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (IHCA), founded in Bossey in 1956, could be an attempt to establish a valid location :

"The Christian coming from Judaism serves the church as a constant reference to God's faithfulness to the promises of his covenant, and he serves the Jewish people as a living reference to the salvation which God's almighty power works through Jesus Christ."

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Judenchrist  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Online Journal of Christian Theology and Philosophy ( Memento from May 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. Reza Aslan: Zealot. Jesus of Nazareth and his time. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-498-00083-7 , p. 231 f.
  3. Alexander Dubrau: Jabne / Jabneel . Biblical Lexicon (Bibelwissenschaft.de)
  4. cf. Peter Shirokov, Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg: Council of Jamnia and Old Testament Canon. Israel Institute of Biblical Studies , March 2014: Whether the sages held a special council or if their discussions about the holy books were ongoing, the enduring significance of Jamnia lies not in the closing of the Jewish canon, but in ensuring the cultural and religious survival of the Jewish people. Prior to 70 AD, Judaism was fragmented into various sects. The Jamnia sages intentionally promoted an inclusive, pluralistic and non-sectarian Judaism. In light of new circumstances, they created a more flexible system of Torah interpretation that accounted for diversity and charted a new way to relate to God and his covenant with Israel (Shaye Cohen). They shaped the possibility of new Jewish faith and life without sacrifices, priesthood and the centrality of the Jerusalem Temple.
  5. http://www.israelinprophecy.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/Poljak/Orientierungsplan
  6. http://www.israelinprophecy.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/Poljak/BiographischeDaten
  7. Bayerischer Rundfunk, November 21, 2007: Jutta Neupert: "God trust and civil courage". A film about Protestant victims of National Socialism. ( Memento from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  8. Franklin A. Oberlaender: "But we are not fish and not meat". Christian “non-Aryans” and their children in Germany. Vs Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3-8100-1466-4 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 10, 2005 .