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In the previous article I shared with you the dynamics for how the Biblical Messiah and concepts concerning with him were altered by apocalyptic sects within Second Temple Judaism. As you saw for yourself you now understand how the apocalyptic Essenic believers in Messiah attached their beliefs to Yeshua in hopes of deliverance and salvation from the Roman yoke of bondage. Up to this time we have only theological diversity within Judaism. Notice I said "within Judaism". Now let us focus on how the Messianic Ideal, as taken from Jewish Scriptures, broke from Judaism and literally created for itself a new religion patterned after pagan mystery religions. Let us proceed.
But with the coming of Paul, a generation after the time of Yeshua, the Nazarenes would wholly adopt his views—a theology so far removed from the strict monotheism Jews had nurtured that it would be obvious that Paul was, in fact, founding a new religion. Indeed, he himself understood this, for he had successfully held out against James, the brother of Yeshua, who had urged a "mission" only to their fellow Jews, while Paul turned his attention to the pagan, gentile world as the major target for his Christianizing. Paul's religion used Judaism as its base, but it was equally indebted to the pagan and Greek mystery cults he had known in his native town of Tarsus, in Asia Minor, while still known by his Hebrew name of Saul. Pauline religion was thus no longer only a variant form of Judaism and to expect Jews to accept his paganized reinterpretation of their own ancestral heritage as the "real Judaism" is not merely wrong; it is nothing less than far-fetched, wishful thinking.
Answer for yourself: In what way did Paul's new religion, which constitutes the basic Christian theology that has endured through the centuries, differ from, and even appear to subvert, the meaning of Judaism itself?
The New Testament, as a result of Paul's radical revamping of Jewish doctrines and his borrowings from pagan cults, differs fundamentally in major respects from all Jewish literature, including the apocalyptic, messianic writings of some small sects; or the Dead Sea scrolls; or any rabbinic works. "The New Testament," writes one Jewish scholar, Tells us about the death of a g-d who was resurrected on the third day. Unless the death of a divine figure marks the end of an outworn religious cult, like the death of Pan, it can be given meaning only in terms of a scheme of salvation: and this is how the New Testament interprets it. The death of Yeshua atones for the sins of mankind, who can escape damnation only by sharing in his death and resurrection.
Answer for yourself: Where in Jewish literature is the concept of the death of G-d to be found?
The answer is simple: nowhere.
Such a concept as the death of a g-d, associated everywhere in the ancient world with the renewal of nature in the spring, was banished forever from Judaism by its theology of a G-d superior to nature.
Hyam Maccoby, "Christianity's Break with Judaism," Commentary, August, 1984, p. 39, states: "Maccoby, correctly in my view, links Paul with the pagan Gnostic sects. Earlier, he wrote: "It used to be thought that the Gnostic sects, of which there were many, were all heresies derived from Christianity, but it seems probable that Gnostic sects existed before Christianity began, and it may be closer to the facts to explain Pauline Christianity in terms of Gnosticism rather than the reverse . . . In Gnosticism there was a Savior (in Greek, 'Soter') who was one of a Trinity of divine beings . . . He redeemed mankind by his suffering and then ascended to Heaven to sit by the side of the Father in glory. An interesting and significant fact is that the Gnostic writings, even before the birth of Christianity, were bitterly anti-Jewish.'' Accordingly, Maccoby pointedly concludes: The bulk of Paul's adherents certainly had a pagan Hellenistic background which enabled them to respond to the Gnostic aspects of his teaching" (Revolution in Judaea (New York: Taplinger, 1981), p. 88.
The above information is available to the reader from hundred of sources that exist today. This I assure you is not an isolated example or some weird idea I cooked up. The reason most are not aware is that they have never know that such materials exposing the falsehood of their Messianic beliefs exist. I found them by accident when looking and studying in-depth. Others who never study or look never find them.
Answer for yourself: But if this is the Jewish view, are there no Christians who see these matters in a similar vein?
Unfortunately, the answer is mostly negative.
Answer for yourself: What of Christian scholars? Are they not also committed to "objective research," and do they not also seek to reconstruct the past through true scholarship?
Again, the reply is hardly positive. Very few of them are willing to open up a wide and ranging discussion of these topics with laymen; and even within their own circles, a certain conservative reticence reigns—this because many academic Christians are also ordained clergymen, whose intention is to preserve the older tradition, not amend it. Their paychecks depend upon it. They continue to hold to the "consensus" of church tradition, for the most part. Few indeed have written for general consumption and discussion what A. Powell Davies has done so compellingly in his popular book on the scrolls:
"The traditional view of the founding of Christianity taken by the typical layman is that Yeshua preached its gospel, died as Messiah and Redeemer, arose from the dead and founded the Christian church, which spread out through the world, beginning with the work of the apostles. Or, if he does not believe in the Resurrection, he supposes that the apostles, moved by the spirit of Yeshua, founded the church upon his gospel . . .
. . . In any case, he assumes the originality of Christian doctrine, and it does not occur to him that much of it existed previously (except perhaps as it was foreshadowed by Moses and the prophets), or that a great deal of it is indebted to sources that do not appear in the Bible.
What the layman does not know, and the scholar does, is that there were many Pagan deities for whom quite similar claims were made and in whose names were preached quite similar doctrines. Mithras was a Redeemer of mankind; so were Tammuz, Adonis, and Osiris. The view eventually taken of Yeshua as a Redeemer was not a Judaic concept; nor was it held by the first Christians in Palestine. The Messiah the Jews and the Judaic Christians expected was not the Son of G-d but a messenger from G-d, not one who saved by blood-atonement but one whose salvation came from his rule of the earth in a Messianic kingdom....
. . . It was when Christianity spread out into the Pagan world that the idea of Yeshua as a Savior G-d emerged. This idea was patterned on those already existing, especially upon Mithras. It was the birthday of Mithras, the 25th of December (the winter solstice) that was taken over by the Pagan Christians to be the birthday of Yeshua. Even Sabbath, the Jewish seventh day appointed by G-d in the Mosaic Law and hallowed by his own resting on this day after the work of Creation, had to be abandoned in favor of the Mithraic first day, the Day of the Conquering Sun…
. . . In the Mediterranean area during the time of Christian expansion, nowhere was there absent the image of the Virgin Mother and her Dying Son. Originally, it was the earth itself that was the g-ddess, virginal again with every spring. Her son was the fruit of the earth, born only to die, and in dying, to be implanted once more in the earth, as the seed that would renew the cycle. This was the "vegetation myth" from which the drama of the "Savior-g-d" and the "Mater Dolorosa" was drawn, soon to be elaborated . . .
. . . These examples are but the barest indications of what must be encountered in the quest for historicity in the New Testament scriptures . . .
. . . This obviously does mean . . . that when there are new suggestions, such as those arising from the discovery of the (Dead Sea) Scrolls, it is entirely appropriate to give them full consideration. If they are disturbing to the consensus, or quasi-historical field of reference, formerly arrived at by scholars, it may be because we need a new consensus (A. Powell Davies, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: New American Library, 1961), pp. 89-92).
Several truths now emerge. In the first instance, there can be no doubt that in its origins what we now call Christianity was a Jewish sect. The first followers of Yeshua, we have seen, were sectarian Jews— not yet full-blown Christians—who differed from other Jews principally in believing that their messiah-claimant had not died but would soon return to resume his interrupted mission of liberating his people from Roman rule. It was Paul, as we have seen, tilting toward the pagans after the days of Yeshua, whose missionary zeal latched onto ideas anchored in the Greek and pagan mystery cults. In so doing, he de-nationalized Judaism, divided faith from Biblical facts, and transformed the meaning of the death of Yeshua into a world-wide invitation to share in the salvation offered by his atoning sacrifice. One would hardly expect the mass of Palestinian Jews, with their undiluted loyalties to their own people, to accept his bidding. But as the eminent classicist Michael Grant has shown, even "the Jews of Asia Minor [who were acculturated to Greek ideas] mostly rejected Paul because they regarded his doctrine of the divinity of Yeshua Christ as a blasphemous betrayal of their tradition of monotheism.
So Paul turned to the Gentiles instead, infusing his reinterpretation of Yeshua's message, at times, with some degree of Hellenism in order to make it more palatable" (Michael Grant, From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellenist World (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982), p. 79). In the process of becoming the Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul also became the "arch-apostate" of the Jews.
Indeed, Grant suggests that Paul not only changed but also subverted the teachings of Yeshua. "Comparisons," he notes, "between the instruction ascribed to Yeshua and to Paul scarcely even touch on the most vital difference between them. The faith which Paul himself came to hold, and desired others to hold with him, was faith in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Yeshua Christ and in the consequences of those events for mankind. This was by far the most important part of his beliefs and his preachings and teachings, and it means that they can scarcely be compared at all with those of Yeshua. For, even if Yeshua in his last days came to foresee his own violent death as in some way redemptive, this idea had manifestly not stood in the forefront of his ministry which, throughout his career, had centered instead upon the dawning and shortly to be consummated Kingdom of G-d. It was scarcely surprising, then, that Paul showed so little interest in Yeshua's life. What the two men preached was quite different, and the Christianity that we have today is largely Paul's creation" (Michael Grant, Saint Paul (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), p. 194).
How Paul won the day in his desire to attract new converts has been pithily described by one acute observer:
The infant Church was split in twain on the issue of the validity of Mosaic precepts for Gentile proselytes. The Gentile converts brought with them into Christianity their own legalist and cultural system; they viewed with abhorrence the civilization and law of Jewry, both on theological and national grounds. Peter and the so-called "Judaizing" group championed the opinion that no Gentile could enter Christianity except through the gate of Judaism; Paul on the other hand urged the admittance of Gentiles without circumcision and observance of Jewish food-laws. The Council of Jerusalem discussed these problems and attempted to fix rules for future action. The Gentile group in the Christian communion triumphed; Paul, though at moments he relapsed into adherence to the Old Law, rejected its authority and literal validity for Christian believers (Louis I. Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925), p. 9).
Paul, however, could never fully resolve the internal Jewish contradictions of his Christianizing theology, which, as I have been seeking to demonstrate, has remained at the heart of the continuing Christian problem. Paul needed to retain his ties to his Jewish heritage in order to validate Yeshua as the true Messiah. This is why some regard him as a Jewish "loyalist" who was still able to think of himself as a committed Pharisee even after his conversion. "Brethren," he said, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees." (Acts 23:6.) Yet Paul also needed to discard the Jewish nation—his very own—as a living organism, since it was the essential vehicle of the ongoing expression of the fullness of the Jewish faith he was rejecting, as surpassed by Christ. It thus turns out that Paul needed the Jews for their past—but as for their future, as a "real-life" people, I believe that he needed them not at all. He was preoccupied as the Apostle to the Gentiles. The future he foresaw for Jews was only as a Christianized "Israel"—either converted in this life, or restored to Christ in the world to come.
Even when Paul referred to "Israel" as the "old stock whom G-d will not forever reject and which could flower again," which Israel did he really mean? "Paul takes Israel seriously," a Jewish writer correctly observed, "but it is an Israel in which no Jew believed. The Israel of Paul is a theological construction and a theological necessity; it is an intermediate device which must be employed [by him] that the pagan world be redeemed in Christ—at which point, hopefully in the spirit of Romans (11:1-24), G-d might return to graft on once more the broken shoots of the old stock of Israel. Israel is for Paul and for the Christian the first thought and the last [in the end of days] but the middle is all of Christ. Such a use of the presence of Israel cannot be less than a falsehood in our Jewish] sight."
In my view, I also see him as guilt-ridden, ambivalent, and, at times even a self-hating Jew, whose relationship to his Pharisaic roots after his "conversion to Yeshua" on the road to Damascus bears all the marks of the love-hate mechanism of many another apostate. To prove the zeal of their new love, they often go to odd lengths to reject their old one. Following what sociologist Lewis Coser has said about the nature of social conflict—"the closer the relationship, the more intense the conflict"—Paul's volatile and often contradictory views about the destiny of a Christless Jewry may perhaps be traced to his obsessive remorse and his wrenching, inner conflicts as an apostate Jew.
Finally, to conclude this discussion of what the generations after Paul had made of Yeshua as the Christ, I rely on the historical record to substantiate my claim that Christians have a moral, psychological, and spiritual problem, not only with Jews and Judaism, but also with themselves. To that record I would also add this personal, admittedly, subjective, intuition: I continue to ask myself whether Christians— unwittingly, and even unconsciously—have perhaps often understood (as did Paul, on many introspective, mystical occasions) that it was they who were the renegades—from Judaism. It has been said that the renegade is one whose "attack on the values of his previous group does not cease with his departure, but continues long after the rupture has been completed.'' It strikes me that this psychological side of The Christian problem"—its "protesting too much" against Judaism for long centuries after the initial rupture took place—has not been sufficiently probed or discussed.
The position which sees Christianity as the religious heir of Judaism is a rather extravagant view, as we have seen. It should be clear that Yeshua himself could never repudiate, deny, revile, or wish to expunge his own people from the annals of history and of human hope. Even if, in the confusion or insecurity of their own hearts, some Christians still feel that they "owe" Jews nothing, they surely owe Yeshua this much: to resolve this Pauline-Christian problem they have made of the Jews, in his name. Shalom.
Bennoah1@verizon.net