Hi Ahaunu —
Intersting notes from Küng — always entertaining.
... parts of the earliest community emigrated from Jerusalem to Transjordan (Pella) as early as 66, after the execution of James, the leader of their community--in other words, before the outbreak of the war between the Jews and Rome.
I think they saw the writing on the wall. They Jews had killed Stepehen, and then they killed James, who might not have been their leader, but was a constant presence in the Temple. Once he was dead, I would have thought no Christian could rest easy. There were running street-battles in Rome between Christians and Jews recorded about this time. Also, there was a general exodus of Christians from Jerusalem in the face of constant Jewish provocation of the Roman authorities.
... the fateful year 135 also brought about the end of the Jewish-Christian community of Jerusalem and its dominant position in the early church.
The center 'center' had shifted to Rome by then, surely? The Jerusalem see was always an hnourarey rarther than actual or effective see. Rome was the administrative center, Alexandria and Antioch centres of catechesis.
Soon Jewish Christianity and its christology with a Jewish stamp, along with its observance of the law, was perceived by the gentile Christian church as merely a sect surviving from an earlier stage.
well that was decided by 50AD, as we can read in Acts?
However, where these Jewish Christians preserved the oldest beliefs and patterns of life, they represented the legitimate heirs of early Christianity.
He simply can't say that, it assumes far too much. Küng would be obliged to prove that 'Jewish Christianity' — and there was not one single strand, so it's a bit of a misnomer in itself — was the legitimate heir. Where is the evidence that demonstrates this legitimacy?
... The earliest followers of Jesus were known as Nazarenes, and perhaps later, Ebionites, and form an important part of the picture of Palestinian Jewish groups in late 2nd Temple times.
Really? Again, evidence? I don't dispute they existed, I do dispute they fully understood who Christ was.
The Ebionite/Nazarene movement was made up of mostly Jewish/Israelite followers of John the Baptizer and later Jesus, who were concentrated in Palestine and surrounding regions and led by "James the Just" (the oldest brother of Jesus), and flourished between the years 30-80 C.E.
I rather think this is over-stated, also.
The Essenes (possibly from 'Ossim, meaning "Doers of Torah"), who wrote or collected the Dead Sea Scrolls, pioneered certain aspects of this "Way" over 150 years before the birth of Jesus.
Nonsense — or rather, erroneous and super-ceded scholarship. The Essenes pioneered a very fundamental and hard-line way, not the way of Jesus at all ... the socialism of Jesus would have appalled them, and his mixing with the sinner and the impure would have horrified them. His way was not Essene at all. The Essenes were also a militant society, and would not endore Jesus' message of love, forgiveness and peace, they embraced none of that.
In that sense you might call the Jesus movement a further developed messianic "Essenism," modified through the powerful, prophetic influence of Jesus as Teacher.
Not really — it was a different message altogether.
What we have to keep in mind in reading these accounts from the Church fathers is that they are strongly prejudiced against this group(s) and claim to have replaced Judaism entirely with the new religion of Christianity, overthrowing the Torah for both Gentile and Jew.
OK, but what we also have to accept is Küng is making a number of assertions founded on nothing but his own assumptions, it seems to me.
I think it best today to use the collective term Ebionite/Nazarene in an attempt to capture the whole of this earliest movement, and it would be useful to revive the term Yachad as a collective designation for the community of the Hasidim/Saints.
But it would be the same inaccurate catch-all as using the term 'gnostic' to brand every strand of thought that turned up in the 2nd century. It's best because it suits the author's polemical position, not because it accurately reflects the reality.
For too long we've assumed Judaism was set into the classic Pharisee/Sadducee/Herodian/Essene mould — and now we know the picture was a lot more sophisticated and nuanced than that. This author seems intent on bringing back the old, simple, designations, to infer quite inaccurately and polemically that there was an 'orthodoxy' contrary to the Christian position.
Jerusalem, the home of the earliest Christian Church, was no more.
OK — but the Christian Church was never made at home there, was it?
And remember, if the Jerusalem Christians had their way, there would always be Jewish Christians, to whom the promises of Christ applied, and Gentile Christians, who would always be second-class citizens and to whom the promises would not necessarily apply, as they were not covered by the Covenants made to Israel and recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.
So we see the point at which Christianity might have been enveloped by Jewish nationalism, or burst out of that confinement to become a truly universal Way.
The Hellenization of Christianity came from these apologists (such as Justin).
Who were all Greek, so please don't beat up the Roman Church on this point! Be that as it may, the crucial distinction id between the Hellenisation of Christianity, and the 'Baptism of Hellenism', and that has been a constant tension. To put it starkly: Do we use our minds, or do we not?
Remember that the Hellenization itself began in the face of a philosophical critique that said Christian doctrine was superstitious nonsense of the ill-educated. The Father believed that if it was true, it was legitimately a subject for intellectual contemplation. And people like Arius and later Origen were challenged for attemption to Hellenize Christianity, and others besides.
Having said that, I think there is an unfortunate dimension in the loss of an Hebrew cultural heritage, and an unfortunate aspect in the almost wholescale adoption of a Roman one, and questionable aspects of the Hellenic ...
One effect of this is the strong focus we see in the Catholic Church on what you believe; however, the truth of Christianity, the one with Hebraic origins, was not seen through theoretical concepts, like the Trinity, but it was practiced: Jesus is "the way, the truth, and life" (John 14.6). Hebraic Christianity was practical; Hellenistic Christianity was about revealed teachings.
Whoa here!
Christianity was, and is, practical. The fact that it does not appear so today, does not mean it was not in the time of which this writer speaks. I think it was, in its earliest, tremendously practical. The Christian community in Rome had a social services programme that was better than anything the Romans even bothered to attempt, so I find this argument just too simplistic.
Problem is, one can't separate the revealed teaching from the message of Christ, so this is a bit of a red herring. It's like saying, if the Christians had remained Jewish, and ignored everything that set them apart from the Jews, then they would be authentic Christians ... but they wouldn't, they'd be Jews ...
So the Trinity is a theoretical concept? But Abraham isn't? The Law isn't? Someone has shown his hand here, methinks ...
A focus on the law in the former, a focus on orthodox beliefs in the latter.
So the former believes but doesn't understand, whereas the latter understand, but don't believe? I don't think it can be simplified like that.
Unfortunately, these orthodox believers would reject Jewish Christians as false teachers or heretics.
Like whom?
God bless
Thomas
