Now, do these Jews that have converted represent the Jews corporately?
How can any person or group pf people represent an ethnicity corporately? This is my point - as an ethnic group, as opposed to a religious identity, we have substantial persons of Hebraic ethnicity, descended from the tribes of Benjamin, Judah, the Levites and the Kohanim subset of Levites (a name one will encounter among Christians in the Middle East, sometimes Arabized to Khoury, although not all named Khoury are descended from Kohanim, since the name is also taken by families with a noted Orthodox priest as an ancestor), and probably in the case of Samaritan converts Ephraim and Manessah, who practice Christianity, in the Eastern church, and in the Western church*, and so consequently the idea of Israel rejecting Christ in a corporate manner doesn’t work. This is in addition to the Messianic Jews.
It is certainly the case that most of those who still identify as Jews do not recognize our Lord as their Messiah, although Messianics are changing this equation, since other identities were taken up by those Jews who joined the early Church, primarily Christian as a religious identity, with the qualifiers of Orthodox, Catholic and Apostolic, so as to differentiate them from sects such as the Docetics, Valentinians, Montanists, Arians and so on, and with demonyms uniting them with gentile converts, such as Suroye, which came to refer to both Jewish and Gentile speakers of Aramaic in the Roman provinces of Syria and Asia Minor and in Mesopotamia, Nasrani, which came to refer to the related group of Jewish and indian Christians converted by the same St. Thomas the Apostle who evangelized so many in Syria and Mesopotamia, and Abyssinian and later Ethiopian to refer to those Ge’ez speaking converts, primarily from the Beta Israel, but also from some indigenous tribal religions present in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea (with Eritrea becoming a recent demonym for those living in the now-independent coastal region of Ethiopia, which separated following a civil war, one of many disasters caused by the Derg communist regime, with Eritrea now being under the heel of a brutal dictator; Eritrea further fared particularly horribly during the Italian Fascist occupation of the Empire of Ethiopia that began in the mid 1930s under Mussolini. However, the change of demonyms as a unitive fact does not obliterate Jewish heritage, which is my point.
Now, I am by no means denying that many, most probably a majority of Jews at the time did not embrace Christ, and this led to later misfortunes such as the Bar Kochba revolt, and it is also the case that the most ethnically Jewish church, that of Ethiopia, was the result of a mass conversion in the fourth century, around the same time St. Nino, an Armenian princess, via interesting circumstances, persuaded the largest of the kingdoms that comprise what is now Georgia to convert to the same religion recently adopted by Armenia in 306 following the miracle at Holy Etchmiadzin, thanks to the missionary work of St. Gregory the Illuminator, which built on the missionary work of St. Bartholomew the Apostle.
My eschatology is probably different than yours and I don’t wish to debate it.
We share a profound disinterest in debating eschatology. Just for the record, as a point of information, I hold to the amillenial Patristic interpretation that is de rigger among the traditional liturgical churches, in the event this is the same view you hold.
My brother you have taken the relatively easy verses that I posted and have created a tremendous back story that, frankly, you cannot prove to justify your position.
What do you mean by that? Are you asserting my claims of Jewish inheritance in the Syriac, Ethiopic, Indian and other Levantine churches, is something I fabricated? Because if so, you are completely misinformed about early church history. Everything I’ve written about the history and ethnic composition of the Eastern churches can be verified. I would suggest the Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity as a good, general starting point, as it covers the history of all of the Eastern churches, and then any history of Christian liturgy in the East, since these document the Jewish influences on the development of Christian worship, which are still particularly prevalent in churches of the East Syriac tradition (the Assyrian Chruch of the East, Ancient Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church), such as the Anaphora of Saits Addai and Mari, which has the structure of a Jewish table blessing and is known for being one of the three oldest Eucharistic prayers (along with the ancient anaphora of Antioch, which is used in variant forms in the Ethiopian and Syrian churches, and which is attested to in the third century Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome), and the ancient Alexandrian anaphora, attested to by the Strasbourg papyrus and the Euchologion of St. Sarapion of Thmuis (the oldest complete surviving liturgical service book, used by an Egyptian bishop in the fourth century). As for the genetic composition of these churches, this is also a matter of record. Indeed the current Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of the Western US has a name that makes his Jewish ethnicity particularly evident - Mor Clemis Eugene Kaplan. Speaking of the Syriac Orthodox Church, The Hidden Pearl is a particularly valuable resource for studying its history.
*This is in addition to mention converts over the centuries such as St. Paul, St. Gregorios bar Hebraeus, a much loved Syriac Orthodox Maphrian (Catholicos or vice-Patriarch, the second bishop in order of precedence, at the time responsible for the Syriac Orthodox in what is now Iraq) from the Medieval period, and more recently the likes of David Suchet (who has marvelously represented Christian values as a member of the Church of England and was also responsible for enriching the Poirot series with a Christian moral sensibility).
