Boundaries then and now: Whatever happened to Jewish believers since Acts?
A historian once observed: “History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.”
My aim today is not merely to repeat history, but to learn from it.
How about you?
The history of what happened to Jewish believers since the first century can teach us much about the boundaries
that distinguish Messianic Judaism from other Judaisms and Christianities.
The boundaries that distinguish us define our unique identity and calling.
A danger is that boundaries can also become barriers that can marginalize us, putting us outside the boundaries.
So are you ready to learn from history?
In Acts 21:19-20, when Sha'ul arrived in Yerushalayim, the elders of the Jerusalem congregation greeted him, then:
Sha'ul described in detail each of the things God had done among the Gentiles through his efforts. On hearing it,
they praised God; but they also said to him, "You see, brother, how many tens of thousands of believers there are
among the Judeans, and they are all zealots for the Torah.
So according to Acts, there were tens of thousands of Torah-observant Jewish believers.
What happened to them?
Though the persecutions of Sha'ul had scattered thousands of Jewish believers
from the city, by this time (a bit after 50 CE),
there were now tens of thousands of Jewish believers in the city.
Note that Sha'ul affirmed the calling of Jewish believers to live as Jews, keeping the covenant of brit Milah,
the Torah of Moshe and other Jewish traditions, by joining in a purification ritual before entering the Temple.
What happened to this understanding about Jewish believers?
Moreover, we also know that Jewish emissaries such as Sha'ul, Barnabus, Apollos, Timothy, Priscilla and Aquila
proclaimed the good news about Messiah in the diaspora, first to the Jews.
Acts 13:43 notes that, “When the synagogue meeting broke up, many of the born Jews and devout proselytes
followed Sha'ul and Bar-Nabba, who spoke with them and urged them to keep holding fast to the love and kindness of God.”
Alas, many Jews rejected the message, while many Gentile G-d fearers more readily received it.
Nevertheless the good news made an impact in the Jewish diaspora.
 The Roman historian Seutonius mentions that because: “the Jews were continually making disturbances
at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Emperor Claudius] expelled them from Rome.”
So Acts 18:2 records that Sha'ul “met a Jewish man named Aquila, originally from Pontus
but having recently come with his wife Priscilla from Italy, because Claudius had issued a decree
expelling all the Jews from Rome.”
Apparently the message of Chrestus (Greek for Moshiach or Messiah) stirred a controversy among the Jews,
leading to public disturbances, as it did when Sha'ul and Barnabus proclaimed the message in Asia Minor.
Presumably Jewish emissaries, possibly Aquila and Priscilla, had proclaimed the good news there, a few Jews and
more Gentile God-fearers believed, and the Jewish authorities objected, leading to disturbances about Chrestus.
So Jewish believers were interacting with the Jewish communities, for better or worse.
What happened to them?
Two major traumas in the history our people also profoundly affected Jewish believers.
First, the Roman siege of Jerusalem culminating in its destruction in 70CE.
Perhaps a million Jews perished in this war and undoubtedly many Jewish believers suffered along with their people,
just as many Jewish believers died in the holocaust.
Many others heeded the warning that Yeshua gave, according to Matthew 24:16,
“that will be the time for those in Y'hudah to escape to the hills.”
Their escape might not have endeared the believes to other Jews.
On the other hand, the Mishna records the escape of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai in a coffin!
After the Jewish revolt failed, the Roman general then Emperor Titus paraded thousands of Jewish slaves
along with the menorah and other holy articles from the Temple—still visible in Titus's column in Rome today, seen below.
Rome, which had distrusted the Jews, now scorned them, and imperial anti-Jewish attitudes gradually crept into teachings of Gentile Christians.
The epistle of Barnabus (not the Jewish Barnabus of Acts), dating to the end of the first century, claimed that the Jews never received
the covenant at Sinai (because Moses broke the tablets) so that the covenant with God was hidden and later given to Gentiles through Christ,
and urged abandonment of dietary laws, allegorizing each prohibited animal with a particular vice, etc.
A second Jewish rebellion around 130CE made the situation worse.
The picture shows a coin issued by Bar Kochba, depicting the Temple, which he and his followers wanted to rebuild.
Jewish believers may have supported the rebellion at first, but when Rabbi Akiba declared that Bar Kochba,
the leader of the revolt, was the Messiah, the believers had a problem.
They could not support a false Messiah.
Bar Kochba was notorious for slaughtering other Jews whom he regarded as traitors….
Around this time, an additional bracha or prayer condemning minut or heretics was inserted into the Shemoneh Ezreh or Eighteen Benedictions,
the Amidah prayer that is a central part of the daily synagogue service. The Birkat HaMinim originally read:
“And for heretics (Hebrew minim) let there be no hope, and may all the evil in an instant be destroyed and all Thy enemies
be cut down swiftly; and uproot and break and destroy and humble the evil ones soon, in out days. Blessed art You, LORD,
who breaks down enemies and humbles sinners.”
· Later, perhaps due to pressure from the imperial Church, the word minim was changed to malshihim or slanderers.
The Encyclopedia Judaica notes that in the early Christian period, “"minim" usually indicates the Judæo-Christians, the Gnostics,
and the Nazarenes, who often conversed with the Rabbis on the unity of God, creation, resurrection, and similar subjects.”
On the other hand, the Encyclopedia Judaica notes, “some Rabbis lived on friendly terms with the minim. Rabbi Eliezer,
who denied to the heathen a share in the future life, is said to have discoursed with the Judaeo-Christian Jacob of
Kefar Sekanya and to have quietly listened to the interpretation of a Biblical verse he had received from Yeshua (‘Ab. Zarah 16b; Eccl. R. i. 8).
Ben Dama, a nephew of R. Ishmael, having been bitten by a snake, allowed himself to be cured by means of an exorcism utered by the min Jacob.”
These friendly feelings, however, gradually gave way to violent hatred, as the minim separated themselves from all connection with the Jews
and propagated writings which the Rabbis considered more dangerous to the unity of Judaism than those of the pagans.
“The writings of the minim, says R. Tarfon, “deserve to be burned, even though the holy name of God occurs therein, for paganism is less
dangerous than ‘minut'; the former fails to recognize the truth of Judaism from want of knowledge, but the latter denies what it fully knows”
(Shab. 116a).
And the Talmud later adds this ruling, “If the chazan makes a mistake in any other of the blessings they do not remove him,
but if he makes a mistake when saying the Birkat HaMinim they remove him because he is suspected of being a min himself” (B'rakhot 28b).
In at least three places in his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr, writing around 160 CE, refers to a curse that Jews pronounce
on Christians during their prayer, which may have been the Birkat HaMinim, the curse on heretics.
 In his recently published book Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity, Daniel Boyarin observes:
“It is no accident that the term min first appears n the rabbinic textual scene at approximately the same time that
the term heresy shifts in meaning from philosophical choice to demonized other in the work of Justin [Martyr]...
Both Justin and the Mishna were engaged in the construction of the borders of orthodoxy via the production of others
who are outside them. These are the heretics, the minim.” (p. 66)
In other words, in the 2nd through 4th centuries, the Rabbis and early Church fathers were each involved
in the project of defining boundaries for themselves, with orthodoxy as “in” and heresy as “out”.
Boyarin writes:
“Heresiology--the "science" of heresies--inscribe the border lines, and heresiologists are the inspectors of religious customs.
Ancient heresiologists tried to police the boundaries so as to identify and interdict those who respected no borders,
those smugglers of ideas and practices newly declared to be contraband, nomads who would not recognize the efforts
to institute limits, to posit a separation between :two opposed places," and thus to clearly establish who was and who
was not a "Christian,' a "Jew." Authorities on both sides tried to establish a border, a line that, when crossed, meant that someone had definitely
left one group for another. They named such folk "Judaizers" or minim, respectively, and attempted to declare their beliefs and practices,
their very identity is, as out of bounds.” (p. 2).
Nevertheless, communities of Jewish believers survived for several centuries.
In Acts 24:5, they are called Nazarenes:
"For we have found this man to be a plague, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the Roman world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes!"
(the JNT translation, Natzratim).
The word Nazarene probably comes from the Hebrew word Netzer (drawn from Isaiah 11:1) which means "a Branch"—so the Nazarenes
were the "Branchites" or followers of the one they believed to be the Branch or Messiah.
 Jerome, who moved from Rome to the holy land and eventually produced the Latin Vulgate translation
of the Bible, had described the Nazarenes in the late 4th century (circa 380):
"In our own day there exists a sect among the Jews throughout all the synagogues of the East,
which is called the sect of the Minei, and is even now condemned by the Pharisees.
The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes; they believe in Christ the Son of God,
born of the Virgin Mary, and they say that He who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again,
is the same as the one in whom we believe. But while they desire to be both Jews and Christians,
they are neither the one nor the other." (Correspondence to Augustine.)
Jerome's phrase “sect of the Minei” probably picks up the Rabbinic term “minim”.
· It appears that the Nazarenes were minim to the Rabbis and “neither the one nor the other” to the Church fathers—
they share many of the core beliefs of the Church, but continued to keep Torah.
· Straddling the border lines, they were acceptable to neither one side nor the other.
In his Scripture commentaries, Jerome made several references to the teachings of the Nazarenes.
Jerome's discussion of Isaiah 8:14 gives us some insight into the Nazarenes.
Isaiah 8:14. He is there to be a sanctuary. But for both the houses of Isra'el he will be a stone to stumble over, a rock obstructing their way;
a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Yerushalayim.
Jerome comments:
“The Nazarenes, who accepts Christ in such a way that they do not cease to observe the old law, explain the two houses
as the two families, that is of Shamma and Hillel, from whom originated the Scribes and the Pharisees. Akiba, who took over their school,
is called the master of Aquila the proselyte, and after him came Meir who has been succeded by Joannes the son of Zakkai and after him
Eliezer … up to the capture of Jerusalem…. And these are the two houses who did not accept the Savior who has become to them destruction
and shame.”
From this passage we can infer that the Nazarenes continue to observe the Torah (“the old law”) but engage in a polemic against rabbinic authority (tracing their authority
from Akiba and Meir back to Yochanan ben Zakkai).
By this time, the Rabbis were developing the Talmud and halakhah, but the Nazarenes were rejecting rabbinic authority.
By the 4th century, the Nazarene communities, probably in what is now modern Syria, were small.
Indeed some scholars questions whether they even still existed.
Jerome may only have indirect contact with them, through manuscripts he acquired for study.
After Jerome, there are no references to direct contact, only castigations on the Church side.
Ostracized by both the Rabbis and Church fathers, they dwindled on the margins.
If they continued, the Nazarene communities were probably destroyed with the coming of Islam.
In his tract Jewishness and Jesus, Daniel Juster mentions the discovery of an Arab community that combines Jewish symbolism along
with the cross and wonders,“Could they vestiges of Mohommed's forced conversions?”
I began by saying that my aim today is not merely to repeat history, but to learn from it.
Here's what I think we, as Messianic believers, can learn from the history of the Nazarenes:
On the one hand, we need to be clear about the boundaries that define our identity and calling.
On the other hand, we need to be guard against letting the boundaries become barriers that will marginalize our movement out of existence.
Boundaries or border lines are important.
· If we cannot define who we are, how will explain who we are to others?
· That's why the UMJC has come out with a definition of Messianic Judaism.
· It may be controversial; it may need revision (Dan Juster recently told me that it has been revised).
“Messianic Judaism is a movement of Jewish congregations … committed to Yeshua the Messiah that embrace the covenantal responsibility
of Jewish life and identity rooted in the Torah … and renewed and applied in the context of the New Covenant.”
· Messianic Judaism is a Jewish congregational movement; it's not just Jews going to Church.
· The Scriptures provide a more general term for all people who trust in Yeshua as Lord: believers.
· For example, in Acts 5:12, “All the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade.”
· Or in Acts 10:45, “The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit
had been poured out even on the Gentiles.”
· "Jewish believers" is a fine descriptor.
· Messianic Judaism, a visionary revival movement since the 70's, affirms Jewish life and identity.
· It's not claiming that there is “one law” for the whole body of Messiah, nor does it accept the claim that Gentile believers
are actually descended from the tribe of Ephraim or any of the 10 lost tribes.
· To be sure, this definition doesn't account for all the Gentile believers, who like Ruth, have found their calling in identification
with Israel in Messianic Jewish congregations… So it needs work…
We also need to guard against letting boundaries become barriers.
· Messianic Judaism emerged in part because historic barriers came down somewhat.
· On the Evangelical Christian side, the birth of Israel has developed an excitement about Israel in eschatology, the last days,
and an appreciation for the Jewish roots of the faith.
More broadly, the holocaust shocked many Christians into remorse about anti-Semitism.
· So the late Pope visited a synagogue, the Kohel or Western Wall,
and even Yad Vashem— who'd a thunk it, when my parents were growing up?
· On the Jewish side, the barriers are still up with most Rabbis and people
who trust what they say, but Marc Chagall saw Yeshua as a symbol of Jewish suffering.
· Many Jews are willing to consider Yeshua seriously as a prophet,
and the intermarriage rate is soaring.
· Most Jews who come to faith do so in part because Gentile believers who respect
the Jew as a Jew.
A lesson to learn from the ancient Nazarenes is that be thankful that we live in such
a time as this, and make every effort to keep the barriers between Jews and Christians down.
· That's why the UMJC invited Rabbi Kohn-Sherbok, a Reform Rabbi and author who wrote a book
concluding that Messianic Judaism a legitimate branch in the menorah of Judaism.
 · That's why the MJAA leadership has in the past few years invited major Christian leaders
such as Coach McCartney, Pat Robertson and T. D. Jakes to the Messiah conference.
Here's what Joel Chernoff said on the Rabbis forum:
"Several years ago the MJAA embarked on two fold program which represented a major adjustment
in the direction the Messianic community had been traveling. This adjustment in the leadership's view
represented a step forward to our prophetic destiny both with Israel and the Gentile body of believers.
First, the Lord was leading us to lovingly, humbly and yet persistently reintegrate into the mainstream
Jewish community [thus, seeking to lower the barriers on the Jewish side].
We began to move in this direction
through projects that ministered to the traditional Jewish community (I Peter 2:17: “Be respectful to all -
keep loving the brotherhood”). Some of the fruit that has come of that adjustment were programs like
the Messianic Forest, the Joseph Project and the Russian Emergency Aliyah Fund.
The second adjustment was a new effort to begin to connect as a community with the greater Christian body at large.
Our main endeavor in this area has been through our national conference. We instituted a program to invite one major Christian speaker
each year with a mission to accomplish the following:
1. to expose the highest levels of Christian leadership to the existence of the Messianic community.
2. to build a growing unity between our community and the Christian community at large.
3. and finally by this exposure, to prevent our own community from becoming to insulated or even in some cases hostile towards
the Christian community thus hindering us from fulfilling our pastoral and prophetic destiny as a "light to the nations."
Coach McCartney and Raleigh Washington's attendance literally changed their lives and ministry direction. Pat Robertson had no clue that
the revival was as large as it is until he saw it with his own eyes. That revelation changed his view of us and how he is to relate to Israel.
We believe that it will be the same with T.D. Jakes and others who will interact through our conferences and catch the vision."
Does this strategy make sense?
In Luke 14:23, Yeshua gave us an illustration: “The master said to the slave,
`Go out to the country roads and boundary walls,
and insistently persuade people to come in, so that my house will be full.”
How can you go out to boundary walls and invite people to come in—so that his house may be full?
|
