In arguing against the theories of “Zeitgeist, the Movie”, I have been presenting a three-part series of posts relating to the first century Jewish culture from which Christianity was birthed. This is the final part of that series. Though I have not directly countered specific points in the movie in these posts, I have established a historical case to demonstrate that first-century monotheistic Judaism was not doctrinally influenced by the cultural worship of various pagan deities.
Devotion to Jesus Emerged from Jewish Monotheism
The earliest Christians’ devotion to Jesus should be understood as emanating from first-century Jewish Monotheism.[1] In 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul applauds the church in Thessalonica for her commendable faith and discusses these believers’ conversion from the worship of pagan idols to “serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (v.9b – 10). This stark contrast between the pagan gods and the one true God (also in association with Jesus) is also seen in 1 Corinthians 8. In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul warns believers not to knowingly partake in food that has been offered to pagan idols. According to Hurtado, “Paul is pointing out the sharp distinction between the Gentile polytheistic environment of the Gentiles and the exclusivist monotheistic stance; look at the language used ‘idols’ versus ‘a living and true God.’”[2] Paul uses the term, eidōlothyta, “things offered to idols,” which is clearly a contemptuous characterization of the pagan’s offering.[3] This disdain of all other deities lines up with the exclusivism of first-century Judaism.[4]
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul further demonstrates the exclusivity of Judaism by admonishing believers to “flee from idolatry.”[5] His language takes on a stronger contempt for the polytheistic environment of the Roman gods. Paul compares the partaking of pagan rituals as participating with ‘demons.’ He emphatically demands that a believer participating in drinking from the cup of the Lord, cannot also drink from the cup of demons. Clearly, Paul is demonstrating that, although he was raised in a polytheistic culture (Tarsus), and would have been aware of the mystery-religion culture of his time, he emphatically refused to adopt or allow any of the pagan practices into his monotheistic view of God or into the fellowship, at all.[6] “Essentially, Paul directs his converts to shun any overtly pagan religious activity and practice, and he does so in the strongest kind of terms.”[7]
Conditions in the Early Church: Ritual, Law, and Paul
The early church apparently struggled with adherence to the rituals (including the Temple cult), customs, and other traditions of their Judaism.[8] In Acts 21, the news of Paul’s preaching reaches the church in Jerusalem. The report on Paul’s mission work is that he is misleading full Jewish converts by instructing them not to observe the Judaic rituals in obedience to the Law. Upon Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem, James and the brethren required Paul to answer for his instruction.[9] The brethren “demanded that because of this suspicion he undergo the usual purity probe in the Temple and that four oath-bound penitents be called in.”[10] Paul accepted their demands, however when numerous of the Diaspora[11] saw Paul in the temple, they grew furious and sought to lynch him because he: “(1) allegedly agitated against the law and Temple cult, hence, preached apostasy toward the law (among Jews!) and because he (2) had brought a non-circumcised (Trophimus) into the Temple (which Luke disputes).”[12] An exclusivist, ritualistic environment is clearly demonstrated in this passage, even among the Christian believers, as evidenced in James’ request of an explanation for Paul’s ‘defiant’ teachings towards the rituals of the Law. Obviously, the early believers still identified themselves with the rituals and practices of Judaism.
Further, in the second chapter of the book of Galatians, Paul confronts Peter for alleged hypocrisy in dealing with Jewish versus Gentile believers. Paul’s accusation is founded on Peter’s actions of eating with the Gentiles and then drawing away from them when the brethren associated with James arrived. The word used by Paul to describe Peter, kategnōsmenos, is translated “clearly in the wrong.”[13] The main problem was most likely Peter’s adherence to the Jewish food-laws that forbade social interaction between Jew and Gentile.[14] In this passage, again, we have an example of an early believer (another one of the leaders of the Christian Church) struggling with issues arising from a strong adherence to their Jewish faith. As has previously been shown, this first century Jewish faith entailed a strict adherence to the one true God and abhorred the pagan deities. Therefore, it is an illegitimate argument to say that these Jewish men allowed Hellenistic pagan religion influences to guide any formation of their Christology.
CONCLUSION
MJ
Footnotes
Interesting blog. Stop by my blog Think Virtue! I have a post about that talks about Jews, Judaism and Jesus (Yeshua).
Thanks for stopping by solshine7. I tried to check out your blog Think Virtue! but it didn’t work. Do you have a url?
While in the Oneness Pentecostal cult, we often spoke of this strict monotheistic background of the apostles as PROOF that they could not have possibly thought of Jesus as a distinct person from the Father in the Eternal Godhead. It would be interesting to read an entry from Two Chix showing how the apostles used language to describe the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three distinct persons yet one God.
Will do. First, we have to get a handle on what first century Jewish monotheism understood about the uniqueness of God and how they drew a distinction between what was God and what was not God. This is important, because the earliest Christians were also monotheistic Jews of the first century and would have this understanding of God. The God of Judaism has a personal identity as is seen in the narratives of Israel’s history; he is not only an essence or has only a divine nature, but he also has an identity. God plays an identifiable role in Israel’s history, like Abraham and David. This separates him from a mere philosophical abstraction to which contemporary intellectuals of the day ascribed. So in order to figure out how the Jews of the first century knew “God” from “not God,” such as pagan gods, we have to look at their ways of characterizing His unique divine identity.
Two distinctions of characterization:
1) Those characteristics which identify God in his relationship to Israel
2) Those characteristics which identify God in his relation to all reality
1) To Israel God revealed his name, YHWH, which to Jews (including our first century Jewish-Christians), names the unique identity of God. His identity is also known to Israel by the recital of his acts through history and from the revelation of his character to Israel. So his identity is known to Israel through consistency between his character and his acts.
2) Also, he is identified as YHWH by his unique relationship to the whole of reality. God is sole Creator of all things and sole Ruler of all things. This answer of sole Creator and sole Ruler is given over and over again in Jewish literature (references available upon request, too numerous for this post).
An unwavering doctrine of first-century Judaism is that only the God of Israel is worthy of worship because he is sole Creator and sole Ruler of all things (exclusive monotheism). Other beings who may be thought of as divine were, by this criteria, his creatures and subjects; in other words, not worthy of worship. By contrast, a typical Hellenistic view was that worship was a matter of degree, because divinity was a matter of degree. However, Jews understood their exclusive worship of God was required by his unique divine identity as Creator of everything else (why would one worship anything but that which created all else?).
To make an already long post longer…. Here is the quick version of how Jesus and the Holy Spirit figure into the picture. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are found in the Scriptures as being equated with God’s unique divine identity which the Jews utilized to clarify “God” from “not God.” Both are seen as taking part in the role of sole Creator: Genesis 1:1-3 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Colossians 1:16-17, “For by him [Jesus] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Jesus is seen to have taken part in the role of sole Ruler over all things in Ephesians 1:21-22, “[God] raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet…” In a Jewish context, the name that is above all other names would be YHWH, the very name of God. To further affirm this inference, Paul declares that at this name, the name of Jesus Christ as Lord, “EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Paul alluded to Isaiah 45:22-23, in which God’s supreme power and authority are displayed, “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other….That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.” Therefore, an explicit connection was made between Jesus’ name and God’s name as bearing the worth of receiving the worship of all beings.
So the concept of YHWH, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus as all being a part of a monotheistic view of God comes from understanding the unique divine identity of God as seen by the Jewish faith. Each of the three participate in the Sole Creator and/or the Sole Ruler aspect of God’s unique divine identity and are therefore equated with the monotheistic Godhead.
Please realize there is much more to this argument than I have sketched here. The full argument for God’s unique divine identity and for the earliest Christians’ equating Jesus with that identity can be found in Richard Bauckham’s book, “God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament.” Also, Larry Hurtado’s books, “Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity,” “How On Earth Did Jesus Become A God?: Historical Questions About Earliest Devotion To Jesus,” and “One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism.”
Thanks,
MJ
Correction: God plays an identifiable role in Israel’s history, like Abraham and David. This separates him from a mere philosophical abstraction to which contemporary *Greco-Roman intellectuals of the day ascribed.
This writings of this post indicate a view that Christianity and Judaism are two compatible religions.
(le-havdil), A analysis (found here: http://www.netzarim.co.il (that is the only legitimate Netzarim)) of all extant source documents and archaeology using a rational and logical methodology proves that the historical Ribi Yehosuha ha-Mashiakh (the Messiah) from Nazareth and his talmidim (apprentice-students), called the Netzarim, taught and lived Torah all of their lives; and that Netzarim and Christianity were always antithetical.
Judaism and Christianity have always been two antithetical religions.
The mitzwot (directives or military-style orders) in Torah (claimed in Tan’’kh (the Jewish Bible) to be the instructions of the Creator), the core of the Judaism, are an indivisible whole. Rejecting any one constitutes rejecting of the whole… and the Church rejected many mitzwot, for example rejecting to observe the Shabat on the seventh day in the Jewish week. Examples are endless. Devarim (“Deuteronomy”) 13.1-6 explicitly precludes the Christian “NT”. Devarim 13:1-6 forbids the addition of mitzwot and subtraction of mitzwot from Torah.
Ribi Yehoshuas talmidim Netzarim still observes Torah non-selectively to their utmost today and the research in the above website implies that becoming one of Ribi Yehoshuas Netzarim-followers is the only way to follow him.