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Early Christianity has its roots in Hellenistic Judaism and Jewish messianism of the first century. It started with the ministry of the Second-Temple rabbi Yeshua, and his deification after his death.

Early on, a number of related but divergent Christian communities and intepretations developed during the first and early second century CE, which gradually departed from the Pharisees and other Jewish sects. From the former eventually arose "orthodox" Christianity, while the latter developed into Rabbinic Judaism.

Jewish-Hellenistic roots

Christianity arose in the syncretistic Hellenistic world of the first century CE, which was dominated by Roman law and Greek culture.

Hellenistic Judaism

Hellenistic culture had a profound impact on the customs and practices of Jews, both in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora. The inroads into Judaism gave rise to Hellenistic Judaism in the Jewish diaspora which sought to establish a Hebraic-Jewish religious tradition within the culture and language of Hellenism.

Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE, and became a notable religio licita after the Roman conquest of Greece, Anatolia, Syria, Judea, and Egypt, until its decline in the 3rd century parallel to the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity.

According to Burton Mack, the Christian vision of Jesus' death for the redemption of mankind was only possible in a Hellenised milieu. According to Price, "Once it reached Hellenistic soil, the story of Jesus attracted to itself a number of mythic motifs that were common to the syncretic religious mood of the era."

Jewish messianism

Jewish messianism has its root in the apocalyptic literature of the 2nd century BCE to 1st century BCE, promising a future "anointed" leader or messiah to restore the Israelite "Kingdom of God", in place of the foreign rulers of the time. This corresponded with the Maccabean Revolt directed against the Seleucids. Following the fall of the Hasmonean kingdom, it was directed against the Roman administration of Judea Province, which, according to Josephus, began with the formation of the Zealots and Sicarii during the Census of Quirinius (6 CE), although full scale open revolt did not occur till the First Jewish–Roman War in 66 CE.

Judaism at this time was divided into antagonistic factions. The main camps were the Pharisees, Saducees, and Zealots, but also included other less influential sects, like the Essenes. The 1st century BCE and 1st century CE saw a number of charismatic religious leaders, contributing to what would become the Mishnah of Rabbinic Judaism, including Yohanan ben Zakkai and Hanina ben Dosa. The ministry of Jesus, according to the account of the Gospels, falls into this pattern of sectarian preachers or teachers with devoted disciples (students).

Pharisees

Although the gospels contain strong condemnations of the Pharisees, Paul the Apostle claims proudly to be a Pharisee, and there is a clear influence of Hillel's interpretation of the Torah in the Gospel-sayings. Belief in the resurrection of the dead in the messianic age was a core Pharisaic doctrine.

Jesus

There is widespread disagreement among scholars on the details of the life of Jesus mentioned in the gospel narratives, and on the meaning of his teachings. Scholars often draw a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and two different accounts can be found in this regard.

According to Christian denominations the bodily resurrection of Jesus after his death is the pivotal event of Jesus' life and death, as described in the gospels and the epistles. According to the gospels, written decades after the events of his life, Jesus preached for a period of one to three years in the early 1st century. His ministry of teaching, healing the sick and disabled and performing various miracles culminated in his crucifixion at the hands of the Roman authorities in Jerusalem. After his death, he appeared to his followers, resurrected from death. After forty days he ascended to Heaven, but his followers believed he would soon return to usher in the Kingdom of God and fulfill the rest of Messianic prophecy such as the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment.

Critical scholarship has stripped away most narratives about Jesus as legendary, and the mainstream historical view is that while the gospels include many legendary elements, these are religious elaborations added to the accounts of a historical Jesus who was crucified under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in the 1st-century Roman province of Judea. According to E. P. Sanders, a main proponent of the New Perspective on Paul, Yeshua was a Second Temple Jewish rabbi, who, consistent with Jewish beliefs and practices of the time, as recorded by the rabbis, commonly associated illness with sin and healing with forgiveness. His remaining disciples later believed that he was resurrected.Porter.1999">

According to Ehrman, a central question in the research on Jesus and early Christianity is how a human person came to be deified in a short time. While Jewish Christians like the Ebionites had an Adoptionist Christology and regarded Jesus as the Messiah while rejecting his divinity, According to Ehrman, it was only after his early followers had visions of Jesus after he died that Jesus came to be regarded as 'the Son of God'. But how soon the earthly Jesus was regarded to be the incarnation of God is a matter of scholarly debate. Paul saw Jesus as the incarnation of God on earth who's death atoned humankind. According to Erhman the gospels show a development from a "low Christology" towards a "high Christology." Yet, Paul's epistles are the oldest Christian writings, and others have argued that this "high Christology" was in place very soon after Jesus' death.

Another point of debate is how Christians came to belief in a bodily resurrection, which was "a comparatively recent development within Judaism." According to Dag Øistein Endsjø, "The notion of the resurrection of the flesh was, as we have seen, not unknown to certain parts of Judaism in antiquity," "but Paul rejected the idea of bodily resurrection, and it also can't be found within the strands of Jewish thought in which he was formed." According to Porter, Hayes and Tombs, "the Jewish tradition emphasizes a continued spiritual existence rather than a bodily resurrection." Nevertheless, the origin of this idea is commonly traced to Jewish beliefs, a view against which Stanley E. Porter objected. According to Porter, Jewish and subsequent Christian thought were influenced by Greek thoughts, were "assumptions regarding resurrection" can be found, which were probably adopted by Paul. However, Porter also states that "Bodily resurrection is not part of such cults and their beliefs."

Early Christianity

According to Ehrman, a number of early Christianities existed in the first century CE, from which developed various Christian traditions and denominations, including proto-orthodoxy. Those arly communities may have had different views on Jesus' divinity. According to Burton L. Mack the early Christian communities started with so-called "Jesus movements," new religious movements centering on a human teacher called Jesus. A number of these "Jesus movements" can be discerned in early Christian writings. According to Mack, within these Jesus-movements developed the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, and had risen from death. Yet, the incarnation and extaltation of Jesus seems to have been part of Christian tradition a few years after his death, and over a decade before the writing of the Pauline epistles.

Jewish Christianity

Beliefs of early Christians

The Pauline letters incorporate creeds, or confessions of faith, of a belief in an exalted Christ that predate Paul, and give essential information on the faith of the early Jerusalem community around James, 'the brother of Jesus'. This "cult" venerated the risen Christ, who had appeared to several persons. 1 Corinthians 15:3-9 gives an early testimony of the appearance of the risen Christ to "Cephas and the twelve," and to "James and all the apostles," possibly reflecting a fusion of two early Christian groups:

3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4 and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures;
5 and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve;
6 then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep;
7 then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles;

8 and last of all, as to the untimely born, he appeared to me also.

Philippians 2:6–11 contains the socalled Christ hymn, which portray Jesus as an incarnated and subsequently extalted hevenly being:

5 Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

6 who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men;
8 and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name;
10 that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

These pre-Pauline creeds date to within a few years of Jesus' death and developed within the Christian community in Jerusalem. Scholars view these as indications that the incarnation and extaltation of Jesus was part of Christian tradition a few years after his death and over a decade before the writing of the Pauline epistles.

Ebionites

The Ebionites were a Jewish Christian movement that existed during the early centuries of the Christian Era. They regarded Jesus as the Messiah while rejecting his divinity and his virgin birth, and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish law and rites. They used the Gospel of the Ebionites, one of the Jewish–Christian gospels; the Hebrew Book of Matthew starting at chapter 3; revered James the brother of Jesus (James the Just); and rejected Paul the Apostle as an apostate from the Law.

Distinctive features of the Gospel of the Ebionites include the absence of the virgin birth and of the genealogy of Jesus; an Adoptionist Christology, in which Jesus is chosen to be God's Son at the time of his Baptism; the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices by Jesus; and an advocacy of vegetarianism.

Nazarenes

The Nazarenes originated as a sect of first-century Judaism. The first use of the term "sect of the Nazarenes" is in the Book of Acts in the New Testament, where Paul is accused of being a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes ("πρωτοστάτην τε τῆς τῶν Ναζωραίων αἱρέσεως"). The term then simply designated followers of "Yeshua Natzri" (Jesus the Nazarene), but in the first to fourth centuries the term was used for a sect of followers of Jesus who were closer to Judaism than most Christians. They are described by Epiphanius of Salamis and are mentioned later by Jerome and Augustine of Hippo, who made a distinction between the Nazarenes of their time and the "Nazarenes" mentioned in Acts 24:5.

The Nazarenes were similar to the Ebionites, in that they considered themselves Jews, maintained an adherence to the Law of Moses, and used only the Aramaic Gospel of the Hebrews, rejecting all the Canonical gospels. However, unlike half of the Ebionites, they accepted the Virgin Birth.

The Gospel of the Hebrews was a syncretic Jewish–Christian gospel, the text of which is lost; only fragments of it survive as brief quotations by the early Church Fathers and in apocryphal writings. The fragments contain traditions of Jesus' pre-existence, incarnation, baptism, and probable temptation, along with some of his sayings. Distinctive features include a Christology characterized by the belief that the Holy Spirit is Jesus' Divine Mother; and a first resurrection appearance to James, the brother of Jesus, showing a high regard for James as the leader of the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem. It was probably composed in Greek in the first decades of the 2nd century, and is believed to have been used by Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Egypt during that century.

The Gospel of the Nazarenes is the title given to fragments of one of the lost Jewish-Christian Gospels of Matthew partially reconstructed from the writings of Jerome.

Pauline Christianity

Pauline Christianity refers to the form of Christianity associated with the beliefs and doctrines espoused by the Apostle Paul in the Pauline epistles. According to Ehrman, "Paul's message, in a nutshell, was a Jewish apocalyptic proclamation with a seriously Christian twist."

The early Christian community in Jerusalem, led by James the Just, had a strong influence on Paul. Fragments of their beliefs in an extalted and deified Jesus, what Mack called the "Christ cult," can be found in the writings of Paul. According to the New Testament, Saul of Tarsus first persecuted the early Jewish Christians, but then converted. He adopted the name Paul and started proselytizing among the Gentiles, adopting the title "Apostle to the Gentiles." He persuaded the leaders of the Jerusalem Church to allow Gentile converts exemption from most Jewish commandments at the Council of Jerusalem, which opened the way for a much larger Christian Church, extending far beyond the Jewish community.

While Paul was inspired by the early Christian apostles, his writings elaborate on their teachings, and also give interpretations which are different from other teachings as documented in the canonical gospels, early Acts and the rest of the New Testament, such as the Epistle of James.

Jewish Christians, including the Ebionites and Nazarenes, rejected Paul for straying from normative Judaism.

Hellenistic influences

Talmud scholar Daniel Boyarin has argued that Paul's theology of the spirit is more deeply rooted in Hellenistic Judaism than generally believed. In A Radical Jew, Boyarin argues that the Apostle Paul combined the life of Jesus with Greek philosophy to reinterpret the Hebrew Bible in terms of the Platonic opposition between the ideal (which is real) and the material (which is false). Judaism is a material religion, in which membership is based not on belief but rather descent from Abraham, physically marked by circumcision, and focusing on how to live this life properly. Paul saw in the symbol of a resurrected Jesus the possibility of a spiritual rather than corporeal messiah. He used this notion of messiah to argue for a religion through which all people — not just descendants of Abraham — could worship the God of Abraham. Unlike Judaism, which holds that it is the proper religion only of the Jews, Pauline Christianity claimed to be the proper religion for all people.

By appealing to the Platonic distinction between the material and the ideal, Paul showed how the spirit of Christ could provide all people a way to worship the God who had previously been worshipped only by Jews and Jewish proselytes, although Jews claimed that he was the one and only God of all. Boyarin roots Paul's work in Hellenistic Judaism and insists that Paul was thoroughly Jewish, but argues that Pauline theology made his version of Christianity appealing to Gentiles. Boyarin also sees this Platonic reworking of both Jesus's teachings and Pharisaic Judaism as essential to the emergence of Christianity as a distinct religion, because it justified a Judaism without Jewish law.

Proto-Gnosticism - Marcionites

Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144. Marcion asserted that Paul was the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ.

Marcion believed Jesus was the savior sent by God, and Paul the Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. This belief was in some ways similar to Gnostic Christian theology; notably, both are dualistic, that is, they posit opposing gods, forces, or principles: one higher, spiritual, and "good", and the other lower, material, and "evil" (compare Manichaeism). This dualism stands in contrast to other Christian and Jewish views that "evil" has no independent existence, but is a privation or lack of "good", a view shared by the Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides.

Characterisation of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity

Several Jewish sects are known to have existed during the 1st century CE: the Essenes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and Christians. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, most of these sects vanished, but Christianity and the Pharisees survived, with Christianity gradually becoming a separate religion, and the Pharisees developing into Rabbinic Judaism, or simply Judaism. Rather than a sudden split, there was a slowly growing chasm between Christians and Jews in the 1st centuries, and it took centuries for a complete break to manifest.

Long-term process

According to historian Shaye Cohen, writing in 1988, the separation of Christianity from Judaism was a process, not an event. The essential part of this process was that the church was becoming more and more gentile, and less and less Jewish, but the separation manifested itself in different ways in each local community where Jews and Christians dwelt together. In some places, the Jews expelled the Christians; in other, the Christians left of their own accord.

According to Cohen, this process ended in 70 CE, after the first Jewish-Roam war, when various Jewish sects disappeared and Pharisaic Judaism evolved into Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity emerged as a distinct religion. Many historians argue that the gospels took their final form after the Great Revolt and the destruction of the Temple, although some scholars put the authorship of Mark in the 60s, and need to be understood in this context. They view Christians as much as Pharisees as being competing movements within Judaism that decisively broke only after the Bar Kokhba's revolt, when the successors of the Pharisees claimed hegemony over all Judaism, and – at least from the Jewish perspective – Christianity emerged as a new religion.

Yet, Robert Goldenberg asserts that it is increasingly accepted among scholars that "at the end of the 1st century CE there were not yet two separate religions called "Judaism" and "Christianity". According to Philip Jenkins, as late as the end of the second century, Christianity and Judaism had a lot in common, and Christian denominations were still strongly divided on the meaning and interpretation of their own faith.

According to Daniel Boyarin, "Without the power of the orthodox Church and the Rabbis to declare people heretics and outside the system it remained impossible to declare phenomenologically who was a Jew and who was a Christian. At least as interesting and significant, it seems more and more clear that it is frequently impossible to tell a Jewish text from a Christian text. The borders are fuzzy, and this has consequences. Religious ideas and innovations can cross borders in both directions".

Differences

Jesus as Messiah

According to Cohen, most of Jesus' teachings were intelligible and acceptable in terms of Second Temple Judaism; what set Christians apart from Jews was their faith in Christ as the resurrected messiah. Belief in a resurrected messiah is unacceptable to Rabbinic Judaism, and Jewish authorities have long used this to explain the break between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus' failure to establish the Kingdom of God and his death at the hands of the Romans invalidated his messianic claims for Hellenistic Jews (see for comparison: prophet and false prophet).

Some Christians believed instead that Jesus was the Christ, rather than being the Jewish messiah, was God made flesh, who died for the sins of humanity, and that faith in Jesus Christ offered eternal life (see Christology).

Abandonment of Jewish practices

According to historian Shaye Cohen, "Early Christianity ceased to be a Jewish sect when it ceased to observe Jewish practices. Among the Jewish practices abandoned by proto-orthodox Christianity, circumcision was rejected as a requirement at the Council of Jerusalem, c. 50. Sabbath observance was modified, perhaps as early as Ignatius' Epistle to the Magnesians 9.1. Quartodecimanism (observation of the Paschal feast on Nisan 14, the day of preparation for Passover, linked to Polycarp and thus to John the Apostle) was formally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea. According to Eusebius' Life of Constantine, Constantine's speech at the council included: "Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way."

Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism and early Christian communities

First Jewish–Roman War (66-73 CE)

As a result of the First Jewish-Roman War the city of Jerusalem was sacked and Herod's Temple was destroyed. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities in the Jewish diaspora.

The destruction of the Temple by the Romans not only put an end to the revolt, it marked the end of an era. Revolutionaries like the Zealots had been crushed by the Romans, and had little credibility. The Sadducees, whose teachings were so closely connected to the Temple cult, disappeared. The Essenes also vanished, perhaps because their teachings so diverged from the issues of the times.

According to fourth-century church fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius, the Jerusalem Jewish Christians were able to flee to Pella before the beginning of the war.

Two organized groups remained after the war, the Early Christians and the Pharisees. The destruction of the Second Temple was a profoundly traumatic experience for the Jews, who were now confronted with difficult and far-reaching questions. Some scholars, such as Daniel Boyarin and Paula Fredriksen, suggest that it was at this time, when Christians and Pharisees were competing for leadership of the Jewish people, that accounts of debates between Jesus and the apostles, debates with Pharisees and anti-Pharisaic passages were written and incorporated into the New Testament.

Bar Kokhba revolt (132-136 CE)

Following the destruction of the Temple, Rome governed Judea through a procurator at Caesarea and a Jewish Patriarch. A former leading Pharisee, Yohanan ben Zakkai, was appointed the first Patriarch (the Hebrew word, Nasi, also means prince), and reestablished the Sanhedrin at Javneh under Pharisee control. Instead of giving tithes to the priests and Temple sacrifices, the rabbis instructed Jews to give money to charities and study in local synagogues, as well as to pay the Fiscus Judaicus.

The Bar Kokhba revolt was the third major rebellion by the Jews against the Romans and the last of the Jewish–Roman Wars. Simon bar Kokhba, the commander of the revolt, was acclaimed as a messiah, a heroic figure who could restore Israel, by some of the leading sages of the Sanhedrin such as Rabbi Akiva.

Up until this time a number of Christians were still part of the Jewish community. Although Jewish Christians hailed Jesus as the messiah and did not support Bar Kokhba, they were barred from Jerusalem along with the rest of the Jews. Traditionally it is believed the Jerusalem Christians waited out the Jewish–Roman wars in Pella in the Decapolis. After the suppression of the revolt the vast majority of Jews were sent into exile; shortly thereafter (around 200), Judah haNasi edited together judgements and traditions into an authoritative code, the Mishnah. This marks the transformation of Pharisaic Judaism into Rabbinic Judaism.

Although the rabbis traced their origins to the Pharisees, Rabbinic Judaism nevertheless involved a radical repudiation of certain elements of Phariseeism, elements that were basic to Second Temple Judaism. Members of different sects argued with one another over the correctness of their respective interpretations, but after the destruction of the Second Temple these sectarian divisions ended. The term "Pharisee" was no longer used, perhaps because it was a term more often used by non-Pharisees, but also because the term was explicitly sectarian. The rabbis claimed leadership over all Jews, and added to the Amidah the birkat haMinim, a prayer which in part exclaims, "Praised are You O Lord, who breaks enemies and defeats the arrogant". This shift by no means resolved conflicts over the interpretation of the Torah, but relocated debates between sects to debates within Rabbinic Judaism.

See also

• Christ myth theory
• Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy
• Hellenization
• Higher criticism
• History of early Christianity
• History of Judaism
• Karaite Judaism

Notes

1. Eddy & Boyd (2007), p. 136: "Burton Mack argues that Paul’s view of Jesus as a divine figure who gives his life for the salvation of others had to originate in a Hellenistic rather than a Jewish environment. Mack writes, "Such a notion cannot be traced to old Jewish and/ or Israelite traditions, for the very notion of a vicarious human sacrifice was anathema in these cultures. But it can be traced to a Strong Greek tradition of extolling a noble death." More specifically, Mack argues that a Greek "myth of martyrdom" and the "noble death" tradition are ultimately responsible for influencing the hellenized Jews of the Christ cults to develop a divinized Jesus."
   Eddy & Boyd (2007), p. 93further note that "The most sophisticated and influential version of the hellenization thesis was forged within the German Religionsgeschichtliche Schule of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—now often referred to as the “old history of religions school.” Here, the crowning literary achievement in several ways is Wilhelm Bousset’s 1913 work Kyrios Christos. Bousset envisions two forms of pre-Pauline Christianity: "
2. Price (2000), pp. 88, 92, 94, n. 17, §. The Christ Cults: " banquets held in honor of the gods, e.g., “Pray come dine with me today at the table of the Kyrios Serapis.” It is no doubt such social events which trouble Paul in 1 Cor. 8–11, where he admits that indeed “there are gods aplenty and Kyrioi aplenty” (1 Cor. 8:5), but seems to need to remind his Corinthian Christians that “for us there is but one God, the Father, who created all things, and one Kyrios, through whom all things were made” (1 Cor. 8:6). Richard Reitzenstein and Wilhelm Bousset were two scholars who did manage to grasp the relevance of these ancient faiths for the study of early Christianity. Their conclusion was a simple and seemingly inevitable one: Once it reached Hellenistic soil, the story of Jesus attracted to itself a number of mythic motifs that were common to the syncretic religious mood of the era."
3. Porter, Hayes and Tombs: "Stanley Porter's paper brings together a body of literature, hitherto largely neglected, which highlights the fact that the Greeks, contrary to much scholarly opinion, did have a significant tradition of bodily resurrection, and that the Jewish tradition emphasizes a continued spiritual existence rather than a bodily resurrection. Thus, Paul in the New Testament probably adopted Graeco-Roman assumptions regarding the resurrection, although he was not blindly derivative in developing his conceptual framework."
4. Kloppenborg 1994, pp. 435–9; p. 435 – "This belief, known as "adoptionism", held that Jesus was not divine by nature or by birth, but that God chose him to become his son, i.e., adopted him."
5. Vielhauer & Strecker 1991, pp. 166–71; p. 168 – "Jesus' task is to do away with the 'sacrifices'. In this saying (16.4–5), the hostility of the Ebionites against the Temple cult is documented."
6. Acts 24:5 "For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes."
7. As the Hebrew term נוֹצְרִי (nôṣrî) still does
8. Edward Hare The principal doctrines of Christianity defended 1837 p318: "The Nazarenes of ecclesiastical history adhered to the law of their fathers ; whereas when Tertullus accused Paul as "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes," he accused him as one who despised the law, and " had gone about to the temple," Acts xxiv, 5, 6. "
9. The term "Pauline Christianity" is generally considered a pejorative by mainstream Christianity, as it carries the implication that Christianity is a corruption of the original teachings of Jesus, as for example in the belief of a Great Apostasy as found in Restorationism. Most of orthodox Christianity relies heavily on these teachings and considers them to be amplifications and explanations of the teachings of Jesus.
10. According to MackMack (1988), p. 98, "Paul was converted to a Hellenized form of some Jesus movement that had already developed into a Christ cult. Thus his letters serve as documentation for the Christ cult as well." Price (2000), p. 75, §. The Christ Cults comments: "By choosing the terminology “Christ cults,” Burton Mack means to differentiate those early movements that revered Jesus as the Christ from those that did not. Mack is perhaps not quite clear about what would constitute a Christ cult. Or at least he seems to me to obscure some important distinctions between what would appear to be significantly different subtypes of Christ movements."
11. Segal: "one can speak of a 'twin birth'" of two new Judaisms, both markedly different from the religious systems that preceded them. Not only were Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity religious twins, but, like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, they fought in the womb, setting the stage for life after the womb."
12. Paula Fredriksen, in From Jesus to Christ, has suggested that Jesus' followers could not accept the failure implicit in his death. According to the New Testament, some Christians reported that they encountered Jesus after his crucifixion. They argued that he had been resurrected (belief in the resurrection of the dead in the messianic age was a core Pharisaic doctrine), and would soon return to usher in the Kingdom of God and fulfill the rest of Messianic prophecy such as the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment.
13. Such as:<
    • How to achieve atonement without the Temple?
    • How to explain the disastrous outcome of the rebellion?
    • How to live in the post-Temple, Romanized world?
    • How to connect present and past traditions?

References

1. ^ Mack 1995. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMack1995 (help)
2. Leman 2015, p. 145-146.
3. Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee by Mark Allan Powell 1998 ISBN 0-664-25703-8 page 181
4. Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (2nd ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. xxiii
5. Ehrman (2012)
6. Stanton (2002), pp. 143ff. sfnp error: no target: CITEREFStanton2002 (help)
7. E.P. Sanders 1993 The Historical Figure of Jesus 213
8. ^ Porter 1999.
9. ^ Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden religion swept the World
10. ^ Ehrman 2014. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFEhrman2014 (help)
11. Kloppenborg 1994, pp. 435–9.
12. "Ebionites". Encyclopædia Britannica.
13. ^ Bouma, Jeremy (27 March 2014). "The Early High Christology Club and Bart Ehrman — An Excerpt from "How God Became Jesus"". Zondervan Academic Blog. HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
14. Stanley E. Porter, The Pagan Christ, p.91
15. Dag Øistein Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity, p.169
16. ^ Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs (1999), Foreword, p.18. In: Resurrection, edited by Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs, Sheffield Academic Press
17. Dag Øistein Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity, p.12
18. Stephen J. Bedard, HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE IDEA OF RESURRECTION IN JEWISH APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE, responds to Porter's thesis, referencing Porter as stating such.
19. Ehrman 2005.
20. ^ Mack 1997.
21. Colin G. Kruse (2012), Paul's Letter to the Romans ISBN 0802837433 pp. 41–42
22. David E. Aune (ed.)(2010), The Blackwell Companion to The New Testament ISBN 1405108258 p. 424
23. Ralph P. Martin (1975), Worship in the Early Church, ISBN 0802816134, pp. 57–58
24. 1 Corinthians 15:3-9
25. Price (2003), pp. 351–355, §. Conclusion: The Name of the Lord – The Name Above All Names
26. Philippians#2:6–11
27. Creeds of the Churches, Third Edition by John H. Leith (1982) ISBN 0804205264 p. 12.
28. Cross, EA; Livingston, FL, eds. (1989). "Ebionites". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press.
29. "Ebionites". Encyclopædia Britannica.
30. Kohler, Kaufmann (1901–1906). "Ebionites". In Singer, Isidore; Alder, Cyrus (eds.). Jewish Encyclopedia.
31. Hyam Maccoby (1987). The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity. HarperCollins. pp. 172–183. ISBN 0-06-250585-8., an abridgement
32. David C. Sim The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism 1998 p182 "The Nazarenes are first mentioned by Epiphanius who records that they upheld the Torah, including the practice of circumcision and sabbath observance (Panarion 29:5.4; 7:2, 5; 8:1-7), read the Hebrew scriptures in the original Hebrew"
33. Petri Luomanen "Nazarenes" in A companion to second-century Christian "heretics" pp279
34. Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley - Page 670 The term Ebionites occurs in Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius but none makes any mention of Nazarenes. They must have been even more considerable in the time of these writers,
35. Krauss, Samuel. "Nazarenes" (Document). Jewish Encyclopedia. {{cite document}}: Unknown parameter |accessdate= ignored (help)
36. Hegg, Tim (2007). "The Virgin Birth – An Inquiry into the Biblical Doctrine" (PDF). TorahResource. Retrieved 2007-08-13. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
37. Cameron 1992, pp. 105–6.
38. Koch 1990, p. 364.
39. Lapham 2003, pp. 159, 163.
40. Mack 1995. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMack_1995 (help)
41. Maccoby 1986.
42. Boyarin 1999 (?)
43. Boyarin 1999 (?)
44. (115 years and 6 months from the Crucifixion, according to Tertullian's reckoning in Adversus Marcionem, xv)
45. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Prima Pars, Q. 14 A. 10; Q. 49 A. 3.; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, 4; iv. 31
46. Guide for the Perplexed 3,10
47. Alan F. Segal, Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.Page= ???
48. Cohen, Shaye J.D. (1988). From the Maccabees to the Mishnah ISBN 0-664-25017-3 p. 228
49. Cohen, Shaye J.D. (1988). From the Maccabees to the Mishnah ISBN 0-664-25017-3 pp. 224-225
50. Michael Cook 2008 Modern Jews Engage the New Testament Jewish Lights Press ISBN 978-1-58023-323-2 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum p. 19
51. Fredriksen, Paula (1988. From Jesus to Christ ISBN 0-300-04864-5 p.5
52. Meier, John (1991), A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historial Jesus Volume I: The Roots of the Problem and the Person,. Doubleday Press. pp. 43–4
53. Sanders, E.P. (1987). Jesus and Judaism, Fortress Press ISBN 0-8006-2061-5 p.60
54. Robert Goldenberg. Review of "Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism" by Daniel Boyarin in The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 92, No. 3/4 (Jan. - Apr., 2002), pp. 586-588
55. Philip Jenkins (2018), When the Jesus Movement Became the Christian Church
56. Daniel Boyarin. "Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism" [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 15.
57. Shaye J.D. Cohen 1987 From the Maccabees to the Mishnah Library of Early Christianity, Wayne Meeks, editor. The Westminster Press. 167-168
58. ^ Shaye J.D. Cohen 1987 From the Maccabees to the Mishnah Library of Early Christianity, Wayne Meeks, editor. The Westminster Press. 168
59. Paula Fredricksen, From Jesus to Christ Yale university Press. pp. 136-142
60. Ignatius to the Magnesians chapter 9 at ccel.org
61. Eusebius, Life of Constantine Vol. III Ch. XVIII Life of Constantine (Book III), Chapter 18: He speaks of their Unanimity respecting the Feast of Easter, and against the Practice of the Jews.
62. Eusebius, Church History 3, 5, 3; Epiphanius, Panarion 29,7,7-8; 30, 2, 7; On Weights and Measures 15. See: Craig Koester, "The Origin and Significance of the Flight to Pella Tradition", Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51 (1989), p. 90-106; P. H. R. van Houwelingen, "Fleeing forward: The departure of Christians from Jerusalem to Pella", Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003); Jonathan Bourgel, "The Jewish Christians’ Move from Jerusalem as a pragmatic choice", in: Dan Jaffe (ed), Studies in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, (Leyden: Brill, 2010), p. 107-138 (https://www.academia.edu/4909339/THE_JEWISH_CHRISTIANS_MOVE_FROM_JERUSALEM_AS_A_PRAGMATIC_CHOICE).
63. Jacob Neusner 1984 Toah From our Sages Rossell Books. p. 175
64. for the year 136, see: W. Eck, The Bar Kokhba Revolt: The Roman Point of View, pp. 87–88.
65. Justin, "Apologia," ii.71, compare "Dial." cx; Eusebius "Hist. Eccl." iv.6,§2; Orosius "Hist." vii.13

Sources

• Burridge, Richard A.; Gould, Graham (2004). Jesus Now and Then. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8028-0977-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cameron, Ron (1992), "Hebrews, Gospel of the", in Freedman, David Noel (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3 (1 ed.), Doubleday, pp. 105–6, ISBN 978-0-385-42583-4 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Eddy, Paul Rhodes; Boyd, Gregory A. (2007), The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, Baker Academic, ISBN 978-0-8010-3114-4
• Ehrman, Bart (2005), Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-518249-1
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2012), Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, HarperOne, ISBN 9780062206442 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ehrman, Bart (2014), How Jesus became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, Harper Collins
• Kloppenborg, John S. (1994) , "The Gospel of the Ebionites", in Miller, Robert J. (ed.), The Complete Gospels, Polebridge Press, pp. 435–40, ISBN 0-06-065587-9
• Koch, Glenn Alan (1990), "Hebrews, Gospel of the", in Mills, Watson E.; Bullard, Roger Aubrey (eds.), Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, Mercer University Press, p. 364, ISBN 978-0-86554-373-7
• Lapham, Fred (2003), An Introduction to the New Testament Apocrypha, Continuum, ISBN 978-0-8264-6979-3
• Leman, Johan (2015) , Van totem tot verrezen Heer. Een historisch-antropologisch verhaal (second ed.), Pelckmans
• Maccoby, Hyam (1986), The Mythmaker. Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Barnes & Noble
• Mack, Burton L. (1988), "The Congregations of the Christ", A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, Fortress Press, ISBN 978-0-8006-2549-8
• Mack, Burton L. (1995), Who wrote the New Testament? The making of the Christian myth, HarperSan Francisco, ISBN 978-0-06-065517-4
• Mack, Burton L. (1997) , Wie schreven het Nieuwe Testament werkelijk? Feiten, mythen en motieven, Uitgeverij Ankh-Hermes
• Porter, Stanley E. (1999), "Resurrection, the Greeks and the New Testament", in Porter, Stanley E.; Hayes, Michael A.; Tombs, David (eds.), Resurrection, Sheffield Academic Press
• Price, Robert M. (2000), Deconstructing Jesus, Prometheus Books, ISBN 9781573927581
• Price, Robert M. (2003), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?, Prometheus Books, ISBN 9781591021216
• Stanton, Graham (1989), The Gospels and Jesus, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192132415
• Vielhauer, Philipp; Strecker, Georg (1991), "Jewish–Christian gospels", in Schneemelcher, Wilhelm; Wilson, Robert McLachlan (eds.), New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and Related Writings Volume 1 (2 ed.), John Knox Press, pp. 134–78, ISBN 0-664-22721-X (6th German edition, translated by George Ogg)
• Van Voorst, Robert E. (2003). "Nonexistence Hypothesis". In Holden, James Leslie (ed.). Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 2: K–Z. ABC-CLIO. pp. 658–660. ISBN 978-1-57607-856-3. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Mack, Burton L. (1995), Who wrote the New Testament? The making of the Christian myth, HarperSan Francisco, ISBN 978-0-06-065517-4
• Ehrman, Bart (2014), How Jesus became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, Harper Collins

External links

• The history of Christianity, Encyclopedia Britannica
• Origins of Christianity, patheos.com
• originsofchristianity.net

• Christianity and Judaism related controversies
• Early Christianity
• Hellenism and Christianity
• Hellenistic philosophy and religion
• Judaism in the New Testament