Some basic facts about Judaism and Christianity.

 

This sketch focuses on the earliest period of Christian history.  Click here for a very brief broader overview of Jewish-Christian history from earliest times to the present.

 

Judaism.

"Jewish" is the name of an ethnic group. Today not all ethnic Jews (Jews by ancestry) practice the Jewish religion, "Judaism." Today, the term "Judaism" is the usually name of a religion different from "Christianity." This makes for some confusion when studying early Christian writings, because this division was not yet in place.

Around 1000 B.C. Jews (aka "Hebrews") were an ethnic group who ruled an area on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean now known as "Israel" or "Palestine." This group thought of themselves as the chosen people of their God, whom they called Yahweh. At this early period, Judaism was not a religion separate from the Jewish political state. The Jewish people lost their political independence to the Babylonians in 586 B.C. They continued to live in Israel and develop Judaism as a religion, but they were ruled by foreign rulers, first Babylonians, then Persians, then Greeks, then Romans, who ruled Israel at the time of Jesus.

At the time of Jesus, there were also many Jews living outside of Israel in other parts of the Roman Empire. At this time, there was no central authority controlling Judaism as a religion. Jews living both inside and outside of Israel held widely differing and conflicting opinions as to what constituted "true Judaism," which was an important issue since only "true Jews" would inherit the status of the true "chosen people" of God. These conflicts were sometimes violent.

At this time there were also many people from different, non-Jewish, ethnic groups in the Roman Empire who were attracted to Judaism as a religion. Judaism was one of the most popular of the "Eastern religions" (Eastern Mediterranean) attracting people who had lost their own ethnic traditions but were unwilling to adopt the officially sponsored Greek-Roman culture and religious traditions. All those interested in Judaism would have been attending gatherings in various cities, along with ethnic Jews, to hear preachers preach a variety of interpretations of the Jewish scriptures (now called by Christians "the Old Testament"). These gatherings were called "synagogues" (Greek for "gathering"), but not all took place in buildings referred to today as "synagogues."

 

Jesus and Jesus-followers.

Jesus was born in Israel, around the year 0 on the modern calendar ("b.c." stands for "Before Christ," "a.d." stands for the Latin "anno domini," "[the] year of [the] lord.")

Modern academic scholars do not regard early Christian writings as reliable historical documents (they were written as a kind of preaching, not for the purpose of accurate historical reporting), and this will be a source of some confusion for modern readers who are accustomed to accept the Gospel stories as accurate biographies of Jesus, and the New Testament writing called the Acts of the Apostles, as an accurate account of the history of the earliest communities of Jesus-followers.

Among academic scholars today there are widely differing accounts of the actual life of Jesus. Jesus was certainly an ethnic Jew, practicing some version of Judaism. He was from Galilee in the northern part of Israel. Most likely he and his Galilean followers did come into conflict with Jews advocating a different version of Judaism. The Gospel accounts call these other Jews "Pharisees," but picture Jesus as also in conflict with Jewish priests at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, in the south of Israel. Jesus was executed (crucified) by Roman authorities just outside Jerusalem around 30 A.D. The Christian Gospels picture the Roman governor as acting under pressure from the Pharisees and temple priests. Romans regularly executed anyone they considered a threat to social order (only Roman citizens were entitled to a trial).

There was constant turmoil in Israel around this time, due to Jewish groups wanting to overthrow Roman rule over Israel. Romans put down these revolts very brutally, and in the course of this they destroyed the city of Jerusalem with its temple, in 70 A.D. Because of this, modern academic scholars think it is difficult to reconstruct the religious views of the earliest disciples of Jesus living in Israel in the period immediately after Jesus’ death. The writings that make up the Christian New Testament were written in Greek, by and for communities of Jesus-followers outside of Israel.

Various beliefs connected with Jesus very soon became widely popular in synagogue gatherings outside of Israel, but most likely these differed widely from each other even at the earliest traceable stage. (See Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, and Elaine Pagels’ popularizing of Bauer’s account in The Gnostic Gospels.) These various interpretations of the teaching of Jesus and the meaning of his life, death, and reported resurrection from the dead, were spread by wandering preachers. It is uncertain whether any of these were among the followers of Jesus in his lifetime. There was probably no central authority controlling either synagogue communities or the Jesus-preachers who were among those preaching in synagogues.

 

Paul

A Jewish person named Paul, who was born just northwest of Israel in the southeastern part of modern-day Turkey, was among the most influential of these wandering Jesus-preachers. Paul says that he initially belonged to a Jewish sect called Pharisees, and that at one time he went around to synagogue communities combating those spreading a message centered on Jesus. At some point he became converted to this movement he had been combating, and from then on he traveled to synagogue gatherings preaching a message centering on an interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection which he claims to have learned through a personal revelation.

Paul thought of his message as "true Judaism." But he was aggressively insistent that, after the coming of Jesus, being a true Jew no longer required obeying the laws recorded in traditional Jewish scriptures, which included especially the circumcision of males and the observation of certain dietary ("kosher") rules. According to his own account in the Letter to the Galatians, this element in his message brought him into conflict with several individuals named in the Gospels as immediate followers of Jesus (Peter, James, and John), leaders of Jesus-followers then residing in Jerusalem (though Paul also says that he managed to convince them to agree with him that non-Jews who wanted to become Jesus-followers did not have to be circumcised or follow Jewish dietary rules). But it is important to see that these early quarrels, as well as quarrels between Jesus-followers and Pharisees, were quarrels within Judaism – many if not most of the participants were ethnically Jewish, and all of them thought of their religion as "true Judaism."

Paul founded many communities of Jesus-followers along the shores of modern day Turkey and Greece. (Click here for maps.) Members of these communities apparently sent him letters as he traveled, asking questions about problems arising in their communities. He replied with letters, many of which were then copied and circulated widely among other communities. A hundred years later, when authorities in Christian communities put together the authoritative anthology that Christians call The New Testament, they gave more space to Paul’s letters than to any other single author.

Modern academic scholars look upon the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life as evidence, not for Jesus himself, but for the beliefs of communities of Jesus-followers outside of Israel. These accounts are most likely based on events in the life of the real person Jesus, but they have been greatly shaped by the questions, problems, conflicts, and ways of thinking arising in these communities, which would have been different in many respects from the problems, questions, and ways of thinking prominent in Galilee in Jesus’ own life. So for example stories in the Gospel of Mark about conflicts between Jesus and Pharisees, probably reflect conflicts between Jesus-followers and Pharisees in some Jewish synagogue gathering outside of Israel. (Some scholars even doubt whether there were any people calling themselves "Pharisees" in Galilee in Jesus’ time.)

Pharisees advocated an interpretation of Judaism that insisted on many customs (circumcision and dietary rules) that had become important to ethnic Jews outside of Israel as part of their ethnic identity. After the devastation of Israel, this form of Judaism eventually became the most popular form of Judaism among ethnic Jews, and is the origin of the "Judaism" that we think of today as a religion separate from the "Christian" religion. (Some scholars call this "Rabbinic Judaism," Judaism led by leaders called "rabbis".)

And on the other hand, interpretations like that of Paul, which insisted on de-emphasizing these Jewish ethnic customs, became the most popular interpretation of Judaism among non-Jews. This is the origin of the idea that "Christianity" and "Judaism" are two entirely different religions. Modern Christians recognize Jewish scriptures as part of their "Bible," and regard themselves as "God’s chosen people."  But most do not understand that the writings of the Christian New Testament record conflicts taking place primarily among Jews, standing within the Jewish tradition. They think of Jesus and Paul, not as Jews but as "Christians," and many still blame "Jews" as an ethnic group for killing the "Christian" Jesus.

 

Click here for a very brief broader overview of Jewish-Christian history from earliest times to the present.

 

Appendix: Jewish and Christian "Bible"

The Christian bible is an anthology of writings written from about 1000 b.c. to 100 a.d., divided into what Christians call "The Old Testament" and "The New Testament."  (In old English usage, "Testament" referred to various kinds of written agreement.  The name "Old Testament" refers to the Christian idea that this part of the bible anthology outlines a kind of agreement between God and the Jewish people, superseded by a different agreement outlined in the writings of the "New Testament.")

Since Judaism does not acknowledge New Testament writings as part of sacred scripture, it does not speak of an "Old Testament."  What Christians call "The Old Testament," Judaism calls simply "the Bible"  (or sometimes TaNaK, an acronym [TNK] for three sections, called in Hebrew Torah [the first five books of the bible], Nebiim [books written by prophets], and Ketubim (other miscellaneous writings]).

No one sat down to "write a bible."  Rather, there were many religious writings circulating in Jewish and in early Christian circles.  Eventually, some of these were preserved and passed on because they were most popular, and eventually came to be regarded as classic expressions of their respective traditions. 

By the time of Jesus, there already existed a collection of writings regarded as sacred scripture by Jews at the time, existing in Hebrew (their original language), but newly translated into Greek as well  -- although there was not yet complete agreement as to which books belonged in this category and which did not.

The Christian New Testament came into existence sometime in the middle of the second century after Jesus, and consists of a particular selection among the many books associated with Jesus that were then circulating.  Again there was not at this time complete agreement as to which books belong in the New Testament and which do not -- debates about some particular books (such as the last book, the Book of Revelation) lasted well into early modern times.

Surviving books from this same period that did not make it into either the Old or New Testaments are often published today under the titles "Apocrypha" and "Pseudepigrapha."

Mainstream Christian believers and modern academic scholars today have different views about how the New Testament came into being.

Mainstream Christians generally believe that there was initially only one single "true Christianity" taught by Jesus to his immediate followers, the twelve apostles, and passed on in writings associated with the names of some of them which now make up the Christian "New Testament."  Even authors like Paul, Luke, and Mark, who were not among Jesus' original twelve apostles, are supposed to have passed down the one true Christianity taught by Jesus to these immediate twelve followers.  At any rate, those early Christian books not included in the New Testament, even if they are associated with the name of one of the twelve apostles, do not have the same "sacred" status as the writings that were included, and some (such as the newly discovered Gospel of Thomas) are obviously "heretical," teaching obviously false Christianity.

  Modern academic scholars, on the other hand, think that already in the first generation after Jesus there existed a great variety of teachings associated with him.  Going by historical evidence alone, it is difficult to discover the teachings of Jesus' immediate followers, who lived in Israel and spoke Aramaic, a Hebrew dialect spoken by Jesus.  Israel was devastated by Roman armies crushing Jewish revolts, culminating in the complete destruction of its capital Jerusalem in 70 a.d., about forty years after Jesus' death.  Communities tracing a direct line to Jesus in Israel disappeared from history, together with any books they may have written in Aramaic. The earliest Christianity we are actually able to trace is the Christianity that spread among Greek-speaking communities around the Mediterranean world outside of Israel (all New Testament writings are written in Greek).  It is already very diverse, and our problems are compounded by the habit of putting all kinds teachings into the mouth of Jesus (a common habit in the ancient world), making it nearly impossible today to distinguish which of these were actually spoken by Jesus and which were not.

The writings of Paul, the earliest still extant Christian writings, which also give classic expression to mainstream Christian thought on essential matters such as the saving death of Jesus, were written by a person who never knew Jesus personally, never reports any teaching given by Jesus, and in his Letter to the Galatians records his strong agreement with three of Jesus' immediate twelve apostles (Peter, James, and John).  The earliest life of Jesus was written by an otherwise unknown individual named Mark, whose story pictures the twelve apostles in a very negative light as people who failed to understand what Jesus represented and abandoned him at his death.

Modern academic scholars think that there were many disputes about what constituted true Christianity, beginning already in the first generation and increasing in the generations immediately following.  They think the New Testament is the product of one particular group who felt the need for some agreement setting some boundary as to what could be considered true Christianity and what could not.  Part of the intention was to exclude some contemporary teachings associated with Jesus, such as so-called "Gnostic" interpretations of Christianity.  Most of the books that conflict with the message of books gathered into the official New Testament eventually disappeared, although some of them have been recovered in recent times.

(I think a great deal can be said in favor of Gnostic interpretations of the Christian message.  I showed in my doctoral dissertation that one Gnostic book called the Acts of Thomas gives a very sophisticated interpretation of Christian teaching greatly influenced by Platonist thought, presenting what is in itself a highly admirable worldview.  It seems to me however highly unlikely that Jesus himself was greatly influenced by Platonism or its Gnostic transformation.  I think the recent popular book The DaVinci Code, suggesting the opposite is interesting fiction based on gossip gathered from a hodgepodge of mostly later propagandistic literature.)