Judaizers: Difference between revisions

Judaizers is a pejorative term used, particularly after the third century, to describe Jewish Christian groups like the Ebionites and Nazarenes who believed that Greek followers of Jesus needed to go through circumcision - a shorthand term to describe the oral tradition of conversion of a Gentile into Jew in order to be able to keep the Jewish Law.

Origin of the word

The word "Judaizer" is never used in the Bible, even in the Epistles of St. Paul. The meaning of the word Judaize, from which "Judaizer" is derived, can only be derived from its various historical uses. Its Biblical meaning must also be inferred and is not clearly defined beyond its obvious relationship to the word "Jew." The Anchor Bible Dictionary, for example, says: “The clear implication is that gentiles are being compelled to live according to Jewish customs."

It (the Koine Greek Ιουδαϊζω) occurs once in the Septuagint, in Esther 8:16-17 written around 200 BC in Susa, Persia:

And the Jews had light and gladness, in every city and province wherever the ordinance was published: wherever the proclamation took place, the Jews had joy and gladness, feasting and mirth: and many of the Gentiles were circumcised, and became Jews, for fear of the Jews. (Brenton Translation [1]).

It occurs once in the New Testament, in Paul's Epistle to Galatians 2:14 (part of the "Incident at Antioch") written around the year 50:

But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" (NRSV)

It occurs once in Josephus' Jewish War 2.18.2, referring to the Great Jewish Revolt (66-73), written around the year 75:

. . .when the Syrians thought they had ruined the Jews, they had the Judaizers in suspicion also (Whiston Translation [2]).

It occurs once in Plutarch on Cicero 7.6 written in about 75:

When a man named Caecilius, one of the freed slaves, who was said to be given to Jewish practices, would have put by the Sicilians, and undertaken the prosecution of Verres himself, Cicero asked, "What has a Jew to do with swine?" verres being the Roman word for a boar. (Dryden Translation [3]).

The Romans may have considered all Christians to be Judaizers. According to Suetonius, during the reign of Domitian (81-96):

Besides other taxes, that on the Jews [A tax of two drachmas a head, imposed by Titus in return for free permission to practice their religion; see Josephus, Bell. Jud. 7.6.6] was levied with the utmost rigor, and those were prosecuted who, without publicly acknowledging that faith, yet lived as Jews, as well as those who concealed their origin and did not pay the tribute levied upon their people [These may have been Christians, whom the Romans commonly assumed were Jews]. I recall being present in my youth when the person of a man ninety years old was examined before the procurator and a very crowded court, to see whether he was circumcised. (Suetonius on Domitian 12.2, Rolfe Translation [4]).

It occurs once in the Apostolic Fathers collection, in Ignatius's letter to the Magnesians 10:3 written around the year 100:

It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God. (Roberts-Donaldson Translation [5]).

It occurs once in the Acts of Pilate, chapter 2, roughly dated from 150 to 400:

And Pilate, summoning the Jews, says to them: You know that my wife is a worshipper of God, and prefers to adhere to the Jewish religion along with you. . . . Annas and Caiaphas say to Pilate: All the multitude of us cry out that he [Jesus] was born of fornication, and are not believed; these [who disagree] are proselytes, and his disciples. And Pilate, calling Annas and Caiaphas, says to them: What are proselytes? They say to him: They are by birth children of the Greeks, and have now become Jews. (Roberts-Donaldson Translation [6]).

The Synod of Elvira [7] of around 306 prohibited Christians from marrying, worshipping with, or publicly eating with Jews, Pagans and Heretics.

The Council of Laodicea of around 365 decreed 59 laws, #29:

Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord's Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ. (Percival Translation [8]).

In the Early Church

See also: Early Christianity

It is widely held that Paul accused Judaizers of teaching that observance of the Abrahamic ritual was necessary to be justified and hence saved, i.e. Legalism, (see New Perspective on Paul). These groups taught that Gentile followers of Jesus needed to become Jewish proselytes and by so doing also observe the various requirements of the written Torah and oral Torah. According to Eusebius' History of the Church 4.5.3-4: the first 15 Bishops of Jerusalem were "of the circumcision".

The issue was an early source of controversy in the church of and came to a head during the Council of Jerusalem. According to the account given in Acts 15, it was determined that Gentile converts to Christianity did not have to go through the proselyte ritual to secure a place in the World to Come; but in addressing the second question as to whether or not they should obey the Torah they encouraged the Gentiles to "abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication," in order for the Gentiles to be able to immediately participate in Jewish community: "For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. (Acts 15:22)" The expectation was that the Gentiles, upon immediately renouncing their idolatrous practices and ways (the four prohibitions), could now get through the door of a synagogue and hence learn the rest of Torah in the synagogues where they were still expected to attend.

Paul also addressed this question in his Epistle to Galatians in which he condemned those who insisted that the proselyte ritual had to be followed for justification as "false believers" (Galatians 2:4):

But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us — we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you. And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) — those leaders contributed nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do. [. . .] "We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners" - yet we know that a person is justified not by the group requirements for getting "in" to the Jewish family through the proselyte ritual, but through faith in Jesus Christ! And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by becoming Jewish according to the way of Jewish authorities, because no one will be justified by becoming Jewish in the way proscribed by the Jewish authorities. (Galatians 2:3-9, 15-16 NRSV)

Also Paul implored, using a subtle turn of phrase ("cut off"): "Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves go through the man-made ritual of the proselyte and seek to place your faith in an identity of being Jewish, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself become a proselyte according to the Jewish authorities, that he is obliged to obey all the man-made laws of the Jewish authorities - including disassociating with other Gentiles! You who want to be justified by identity as a Jew through the proselyte ritual have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." (Galatians 5:2-4). The Epistle to Titus 1:11, often attributed to Paul, is, according to some Biblical scholars, also a condemnation of these practices.

The influence of the Judaizers in the church diminished significantly after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Jewish-Christian community at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans during the Great Jewish Revolt.

However, Christian groups following Jewish practices did not completely vanish (see History of Christian Torah-submission), although they had been designated by the Catholic Church as heretical by the 5th century. Old Testament practices are still practiced among Gentiles to this day, including circumcision (see also Christian View of the Law). The Coptic churches practice circumcision, but this may reflect ancient Egyptian influence or be a response to the culture of the Islamic majority (see also Abrahamic religions). In Torah-submissive Christian groups which include the Ethiopian Orthodox church, dietary laws and Saturday Sabbath are observed as well. [9]

The Jewish Encyclopedia: Gentiles: Gentiles May Not Be Taught the Torah makes the following observation:

R. Emden (), in a remarkable apology for Christianity contained in his appendix to "Seder 'Olam" (pp. 32b-34b, Hamburg, 1752), gives it as his opinion that the original intention of Jesus, and especially of Paul, was to convert only the Gentiles to the seven moral laws of Noah and to let the Jews follow the Mosaic law— which explains the apparent contradictions in the New Testament regarding the laws of Moses and the Sabbath.

Marcion

In the second century, Marcion opposed the Judaizers. According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article on Marcion: "It was no mere school for the learned, disclosed no mysteries for the privileged, but sought to lay the foundation of the Christian community on the pure gospel, the authentic institutes of Christ. The pure gospel, however, Marcion found to be everywhere more or less corrupted and mutilated in the Christian circles of his time. His undertaking thus resolved itself into a reformation of Christendom. This reformation was to deliver Christendom from false Jewish doctrines by restoring the Pauline conception of the gospel, Paul being, according to Marcion, the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ. In Marcion's own view, therefore, the founding of his church—to which he was first driven by opposition—amounts to a reformation of Christendom through a return to the gospel of Christ and to Paul; nothing was to be accepted beyond that. This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics. A dualist he certainly was, but he was not a Gnostic." But like the Gnostics, Marcion believed that the Jewish God Yahweh had created the world, was lesser in status to the unreachable higher God, and was evil, see also Dualism. Against this view, Irenaeus of Lyons's Against Heresies 3.12 section 12 ridiculed those who think they are wiser than the Apostles because they were still under Jewish influence.

Judaizing Teachers

The Judaizing teachers were a group of Jewish Christians who taught that converts to Christianity must first be circumcised (i.e. become Jewish through the ritual of a proselyte) in order to observe the Law of Moses (as well as the oral traditions of the authorities making the proselyte ritual mandatory for Gentiles to secure a place in the World to Come) in order to be justified. This group was very active in the church of the first century AD prior to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in the Great Jewish Revolt. These requirements made Christianity a much less appealing religious choice to many Gentiles.

Paul saw these teachers as being both dangerous to the spread of Christianity and propagators of grievous doctrinal error. Many of his letters included in the New Testament (the so-called Pauline epistles) contain considerable material disputing the view of this group and condemning its practitioners. In 2 Corinthians 11:5 and 12:11 he called his opponents super-apostles. Also, in 2 Corinthians 11:13 -15 Paul refers the Judaizers as False Apostles. Paul publicly condemned Peter for his seemingly ambivalent reaction to the Judaizers, embracing them publicly in places where their concepts were popular while holding the private opinion that the teachings were erroneous, for example 1 Cor 9:20–23.

The Catholic Encyclopedia: Judaizers notes: "Paul, on the other hand, not only did not object to the observance of the Mosaic Law, as long as it did not interfere with the liberty of the Gentiles, but he conformed to its prescriptions when occasion required (1 Corinthians 9:20). Thus he shortly after circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:1–3), and he was in the very act of observing the Mosaic ritual when he was arrested at Jerusalem (21:26 sqq.)."

Judaizing teachers are even more strongly condemned in the Epistle of Barnabas. (Although it did not become part of the New Testament canon, it was widely circulated among Christians in the first two centuries.) Whereas Paul acknowledged that the Law of Moses and its observance were good when used correctly ("the law is good, if one uses it lawfully", 1 Tim 1:8), the Epistle of Barnabas condemns most Jewish practices, claiming that Jews had grossly misunderstood and misapplied the Law of Moses.

Later effects of Judaizer controversy

The eight homilies Adversus Judaeos (against the Judaizers) of John Chrysostom (347 - 407) deal with the relationship between Christians, Jews and Judaizers.

At various times since the second half of the fifteenth-century, the Russian Orthodox Church has described several related heretical groups as having a Judaizing character; the accuracy of this label - which was influenced by the early Christian polemics against Judaizers - has been disputed. (See Sect of Skhariya the Jew.)

The letter to the Galatians strongly influenced Martin Luther at the time of the Protestant Reformation because of its exposition of Justification by Grace. See also Law and Gospel.

See also

• Law and Gospel
• Judeo-Christian
• Judaism and Christianity
• Christianity and anti-Semitism
• Ebionites
• Heresy
• Legalism (theology)
• Circumcision in the Bible
• Council of Jerusalem
• Council of Jamnia
• Early Bishops of Jerusalem
• Sabbatarianism
• Christian Torah-submission
• Expounding of the Law
• Millerites
• Sect of Skhariya the Jew
• Seventh-day Adventist Church
• Jehovah's Witnesses
• Mormonism and Christianity
• Messianic Judaism
• Restorationism
• Restorationist (Church of Christ-Elijah)
• Herbert W. Armstrong
• Shabbat
• Sabbath
• Subbotniks
• Hellenization
• John Chrysostom#The Homilies against the Judaizers
• Armstrongism

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia: Judaizers
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Judaizers
• Gentiles and Circumcision