Do you think Christianity became too Greek?

ToBeLoved said:

Can you explain point #1?

What is it or was it about Greek culture that affected the Jews!

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The Greek language was the lingua franca of the day. Through it they became increasingly exposed to Gentile (pagan) ideas particularly Greek philosophy which the early Christian Church adopted uncritically.

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

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I totally agree.
I don't lament the loss of Judaistic stuff, but the Romanized Greek influence is fatally toxic if God isn't keeping us.
Not a "Joo-hater", I'm more of a conspiracy nut who believes both ends are being played against the middle, so to speak. I'm not much of a joiner because I "got saved" at around 3&1/2 years old. My personal spiritual relatiomships were always stronger than my earthly ones. Parochial school catechism was especially difficult.
Nice to know you are concerned and open to hearing different viewpoints. Thanks for the thread.

To some degree I think the shift to Greek and other languages and from Israel to other nationalities was prophesied.

Israel was always only intended to be ground zero and a microcosm of God's bigger plan.

"In your seed [Abraham] all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” Genesis 22:18 NKJV

"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts of the Apostles 1:8 NKJV

"After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'” Revelation 7:9-10 NKJV

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

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When God destroyed Jerusalem and the whole mosaic system of worship, he ended Judiams as Moses had delivered it. Ended it forever. So as God told Abraham that all nations would be blessed through him, so the kingdom of God was never meant to be primarily Jewish. They were chosen to deliver the Messiah and the Kingdom news. After that it would be for every people, not particularly the Greeks nor the Jews. God sent it to the Gentiles and they were told not to put the new wine into old wineskins. Hard to complain against what God had planned all along.

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

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I've heard a number of testimonies about Jews who have become believers in Messiah and one of the things that was commonly mentioned upon reading the NT for the first time was that they were shocked to see how Jewish it was. Jesus did not come to start his own religion following a different god, but rather he was born a Jew, raised a Jew, became a Jewish rabbi, had Jewish disciples, fulfilled Jewish prophecy, and came to bring fullness to Judaism as it Jewish Messiah. Jesus was sinless, so he set a perfect example of how to practice Judaism by keeping all of its laws, and as his followers we are told to follow his example (1 Peter 2:21-22). The goal of a disciple was to learn from their rabbi how to walk out the Torah by memorizing their teachings and by imitating their actions, so that is what Jesus taught to his disciples, and we are told to walk in the same way he walked (1 John 2:1-6) and to be imitators of him (1 Corinthians 11:1). All of the books of the NT were written by Jews and all Christians were Torah observant Jews for roughly the first 7-15 years after Messiah's resurrection up until the inclusion of Gentiles in Acts 10, so Christianity at its origin was a sect of Judaism.

However tensions between Christians and non-believing Jews caused them to polarize over time, with Judaism becoming those Jews who followed the Torah, but rejected their Messiah, with Christianity becoming those who followed Christ, but not the Torah he followed, and with both following only half the truth. The Torah is the way (Deuteronomy 10:11-12, Psalm 119:1, Jeremiah 6:16-19), the truth (Psalm 119:142, Psalm 19:7, Nehemiah 9:13), and the life (Deuteronomy 30:15-16, Proverbs 3:18, Matthew 19:17), Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), the Torah is God's Word and and Jesus is God's Word made flesh, so they are the same way, truth, and life, and there is no following one apart from following the other.

I have an acquaintance who went to seminary who told me that if they had told him that Jesus was Jewish, then that would have completely changed his outlook on the Bible. So today Jesus is often treated like he was a white European Gentile and many are surprised to find out he was Jewish and most likely didn't look anything like his painting, so I would certainly agree the statement in the OP. The way that those who grew up in Judaism understand the NT is different than from how Gentiles understand it because they tend to have a much better understanding its Jewish cultural and historical context, so I there is much depth of understanding of the Bible that can be gained by studying it through this perspective.

For example, the understanding that many people have of the Pharisees is limited to only what is recorded about them in the Bible, so without background knowledge they are lacking a good understanding who they were, what they were about, and why Jesus had such as big problem with them. We have the stated position of the Pharisees and of Jesus, but what most Christians are lacking is the position of what Judaism of that day taught on that topic. For instance, Jesus could have argued with the Pharisees by quoting Rabbi Yehudah as saying that his disciples were permitted to crush grains of wheat with their hands on the Sabbath as long as they didn't use a tool, or by quoting Rabbi Yehudah as saying that washing hands before eating a meal is optional, but instead of debating matters of halakhah, Jesus always went to the heart of the matter.

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

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But didn't it start under Rome? I would be strange if it wasn't less "Jewish", whatever that means. Considering at those times Jesus was speaking to a wide range of cultures, it will naturally take a lot of emphasis off of some of the practices.

In terms of holding a lot of the Jewish traditions, Jesus was the fulfillment. That probably gave opportunities for people to not be required to follow the traditions as a Jew would. It also allowed gentiles to be engrafted into the fold.

David Cabrera said:

I agree with 2 of the arguments presented here:
1. Most of the Jews at the time of Jesus were influenced by Greek Culture.
2. That Gentiles would outnumber Jews.

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Jesus himself came from Galilee, an area that had many Greek/Roman settlements.

Sabertooth said:

That is likely to be true [of Greek] for the western Church. I think it is probably less of an influence on Thomas' outreach.

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They made Christianity more Hindu.

The notion there is a significant tension between Greek and Jewish influences in Christianity rests a great deal of late 19th century German scholarship and their stereotypes of both Judaism and Hellenistic culture. It was influenced by their theological liberalism and embarrassment in the wake of the scientific revolution. They wanted to argue that "true" Christianity was never philosophical or metaphysical in its presuppositions, but was always ethical and "Jewish".

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

Click to expand...

Galatians 3:27-29 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. (28) There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (29) And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

To get caught up on Jews versus Greek is to pursue a false gospel. If anyone is in Christ, regardless of their ethnicity, they are my brother in Christ. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

Click to expand...

For the first thousand years Greek culture was the most fertile soil for the Gospel and arguably dominated the Christian church. Many of the more influential councils were Held in Greek speaking Areas. But cultural tensions between Rome and Jerusalem and Athens have always been present. Sometimes those tensions have been productive provoking Reform and in depth discussions and other times very Counter productive - e.g. The sack of Constantinople.

You could argue that the tensions between the Greek speaking Byzantine Empire and the Arab /Syriac peoples was behind the birth and spread of Islam in its early years. When Byzantine represented Christianity a lot of People ended up looking elsewhere.

At the end of the day we look at the Septuagint, Massorectic Text, Peshitta, Dead Sea Scrolls etc etc and use the best of each to find the original Gospel untarnished and undistorted by the powerful cultures which it transformed. God is not Greek, not Jew, not Roman nor Arab but can Appeal to all of them and reject the worst of each of them.

I would say it became just Greek enough that it held on to the Gospel and accepted those elements of Greek Philosophy that were true while rejecting those elements which were false.

I was undecided at first... until I recalled my research into the history of anti-Semitism by lay Christians and the Church itself. If the Early Church had not thrown out Jewish Christians, we would probably not have had the acts of violence and discrimination against the Jews throughout Christian Europe for about 1700 years. I challenge all of you to do some research yourself into the subject and most of you will be shocked by what you find. Synagogues were burned, tens of thousands were murdered during one of the Crusades, untold numbers were expelled from one nation after another, thousands were forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition and in one of the worst acts of all, they were forced to wear a forerunner to the armbands that were later required under Nazi Germany. They were also banned from most of the better occupations at various times. Quite frankly, Jews were considered second class citizens by Christian Europe, if they were allowed to be citizens at all, as they were often expelled, as I stated earlier.

Hence, I am no longer on the fence. I will say that yes, the Church/Christianity sadly became too much Gentile/Greek/Roman and should have remained somewhat more Jewish.

Basil the Great said:

I was undecided at first... until I recalled my research into the history of anti-Semitism by lay Christians and the Church itself. If the Early Church had not thrown out Jewish Christians, we would probably not have had the acts of violence and discrimination against the Jews throughout Christian Europe for about 1700 years. I challenge all of you to do some research yourself into the subject and most of you will be shocked by what you find. Synagogues were burned, tens of thousands were murdered during one of the Crusades, untold numbers were expelled from one nation after another, thousands were forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition and in one of the worst acts of all, they were forced to wear a forerunner to the armbands that were later required under Nazi Germany. They were also banned from most of the better occupations at various times. Quite frankly, Jews were considered second class citizens by Christian Europe, if they were allowed to be citizens at all, as they were often expelled, as I stated earlier.

Hence, I am no longer on the fence. I will say that yes, the Church/Christianity sadly became too much Gentile/Greek/Roman and should have remained somewhat more Jewish.

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This seems unwarranted. Jews during the lifetime of the Apostles showed themselves willing to persecute those they perceived as heretics and that attitude didn't change within Judaism until fairly recently when along with the Christian world Jews abandoned the idea of religion having societal ramifications. In Medieval Spain within their own communities the Punishment for heresy within the Jewish community was death.

Ancient attitudes valued religious orthodoxy more than we do so today and that includes the Jewish community.

Yes, you do make a valid point. Still, we do have the problem of terrible anti-Semitism and persecution of the Jews, especially in Western Europe, and this remains a stain within the history of Christianity.

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

Click to expand...

As one of Jesus Christ's brothers, it doesn't matter much to me in a direct personal sense.

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29, 1984 NIV)

What matters is whether or not people are correctly revealing the Word to others.

David Cabrera said:

I hear some Christians saying that the gentiles took over Christianity and made it less Jewish.
I disagree but I want to hear your opinion.

Click to expand...

After all the ministry of the two witnesses after where Christ left off from when he brought salvation to the Jews first under the Mosaic Law is to the Gentile nations of the world.

It is the two witnesses within the Church both Jews and Gentiles (two olive trees) who are preaching the Gospel to the Gentile world at large.

Since the recipients are Gentiles after the sealing of the 144,000 firstfruits of the harvest who are from every tribe of Judah from Moses to the Cross, then it would essentially be Gentile driven to cater for the Gentiles until they come to a full number within the Book of Life (Romans 11:25).

Revelation 14:1,3-4
Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.
No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.
They were purchased from among mankind and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb.

Then after the 144,000 Mosaic Jews are sealed through Christ's ministry at the Cross then the Gospel goes out to the Gentile nations as his Church's ministry who are the two witnesses.

Revelation 14:6
Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people.

Revelation 11:2-4
But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”

To have a deeper understanding of my post #39 above please refer to the link below that is from the thread topic Revelation 12: what do the 3.5 years represent? post #319

Revelation 12: what do the 3.5 years represent?