Messianic History

We learn from the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, by Brown, article Pasaginians," that:

"A denomination which arose in the twelfth century, called the circumcised. Mosheim says, 'the meaning of the term Pasaginian is unknown, but they seem to have been a remnant of the Nazarenes.' They seem to have been a remnant of the Nazarenes, and have distinguishing tenants: 1) that the observance of the Law of Moses in everything except the offering of sacrifices was obligatory upon Christians. 2) That Christ was no more than the first and purest creature of God which was the doctrine of the semi-Arians."

http://www.giveshare.org/churchhistory/churchhistorylectures/lecture13.html

William Jones, in History of the Christian Church, says:

"Investigators made a report to Louis XII, King of France that they had visited all the parishes that they (Waldenses) dwelt and had inspected their place of worship and found no images nor signs of the ornaments belonging to the mass not any of the ceremonies of the Roman church.... On the contrary, they kept the Sabbath Day, observed the ordinance of baptism according to the primitive church, instructed their children in the articles of the Christian faith and the commandments of God." p. 260

http://www.giveshare.org/churchhistory/churchhistorylectures/lecture15.html

Persecutions and Atrocities on the Vaudois, says:

"They observed the seventh day of the week according to the commandments, immersed for the believers baptism, and kept the Passover or the Lord's Day, once a year in the first month." p. 348-349

http://www.giveshare.org/churchhistory/churchhistorylectures/lecture15.html

The term Subbotniki means "Saturday People" and is used to describe Russian peasants who left the Russian Orthodox Church in the 16th Century and who started practicing Judaism.

One of the Russian rationalistic bodies known under the general name of "Judaizing sects" (see Judaizing Heresy). On the whole, the Subbotniki differ but little from the other Judaizing societies. They first appeared in the reign of Catherine II., toward the end of the eighteenth century. According to the official reports of the Russian government, most of the followers of this sect practise the rite of circumcision, believe in one God, do not believe in the Trinity, accept only the Old Testament portion of the Bible, and observe the Sabbath on Saturday instead of on Sunday. According to the same source, however, some of them, as, for instance, the Subbotniki of Moscow, do not practise circumcision; moreover, they believe in Jesus, but regard him as a saint and prophet and not as the son of God. Others await the coming of the Messiah as king of the earth. Some of them revere the New Testament; others place it on a lower level than the Old Testament.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1146&letter=S

They were then called in the Russian official documents "heretics" and "Sabbatarians," who followed certain Jewish dogmas and rites, e.g., the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision. The first official reports about them appeared in 1811, almost simultaneously from the governments of Tula, Voronezh, and Tambov.

From the investigation it became apparent that the Judaizing heresy had spread to the governments of Orel, Tula, and Saratov. About 1,500 members confessed it openly, and many more kept their belief secret. The sect, according to the opinion of the metropolitan, was not a distinctly Old Testament cult, but was characterized by the observance of certain Jewish rites, e.g., the celebration of the Sabbath, circumcision, contracting marriages and dissolving them at will, peculiar burial ceremonies, and manner of assembling for prayer. The sectarians declared that they did not condemn the Christian faith, and, therefore, did not consider themselves apostates; and they insisted that they never had been Christians, but had only adhered to the faith of their fathers, which they would not forsake.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=668&letter=J

The Nazarenes become a Heretical Jewish Sect

As previously stated, the Nazarenes were Torah observant and within Judaism at first, but after a generation had passed with no return of their candidate for the messiah whom they asserted was still alive, they were labeled as a heretical Jewish sect for not giving up their belief in this same messiah. Gentile Christianity, not being part of Judaism, was not so labled, though anyone leaving the Jewish religion for another (Gentile Christianity was and is most certainly another religion), abrogating the eternal covenant, was an apostate to Judaism and is so today.

Around 85, the judgment was incorporated in the synagogue liturgy: 'May the Nazarenes and the heretics be suddenly destroyed and removed from the book of life.'

Maccoby's Revolution in Judea gives the inital view that the Nazarenes were labeled as heretics in 90 C.E. His later book, The Mythmaker revises this date to the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt.



Thus a new Jewish sect arose known as the Nazarenes under the leadership of....James, based on the belief in [J's] continued Messiahship. The Pharisees did not regard this sect as heretical. Indeed, the Nazarenes were regarded as being within the Pharisee party until about 90 [C.E.].
- (Revolution in Judea, p168, italics mine for emphasis)

And more:

The event, however, that weakened the Nazarenes fatally and gave the victory to the Paulinists was the siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 [C.E.]. The Nazarenes, as loyal Jews, took part in the defense of the city, and in the ensuing massacre most of them died. A few survived to continue an enfeebled existence... The remnants of the Nazarenes ... were regarded as heretics by the main body of Christians. To add to their miseries, they now for the first time came into conflict with their fellow-Jews, the Pharisees, who regarded the development of the anti-Semitic Christianity as proof that [Jesus/Yehoshua] could not have been the Messiah, and requested the Nazarenes to give up the Messianic belief that differentiated them from their follow-Jews In about 90 [CE] the Nazarenes were finally expelled from the Jewish Synagogue and became a heretical group in Judaism as well as Christianity. The Nazarenes continued to exist until about 400 [CE] declaring to the last that [Jesus/Yehoshua] was the Messiah, that he would soon return, that he was the Son of [G-d] but not divine himself, that the Jewish law had never been abrogated by him, and that Paul was a deceiver who had perverted [Jesus/Yehoshua's] message.
- (Revolution in Judea, p 181, italics mine for emphasis)

Further evidence that the Nazarenes were labeled heretics in Judaism comes from Maccoby's The Mythmaker in footnote 10 on page 219:


The common scholarly opinion that the Nazarenes were excluded from the synagogue in about 90 [CE] at the 'Synod of Javneh' by the formulation against them of the birkat ha-minim has been refuted by Kimelman (1981). The actual exclusion of the Nazarenes did not take place until the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in which the Nazarenes refused to take part. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/1551/history/nazarens.htm

GerTzedek said:

The Nazarenes/Nazareans are the one group I do find interesting, but it's too hard to find reliable information. I'm not sure if they were heretical or not. The gentile Church confused them with the Ebionites, which WERE a heretical sect, and made statements about the Nazarenes which might have been more true about the Ebionites than the Nazarenes, and there is just no way to know anymore.

Click to expand...

That last document on Nazareans was a study on the relationship of Judaism and Nazarenes who believed in Yeshua and how it deteriated around the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt because of the clash between the faith in two different Messiahs.

The criteria for believers was

whether jew or gentile groups... they must believe in more than two of the following under this criteria:

Here are the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Yeshua.

Click to expand...

- mainly that the law was still valid and therefore must keep the sabbath

- believe that Yeshua is the Messiah

variences could be in

dietary laws
circumcision
keeping feasts of God
One God
etc

Just like the Messianic of today... varied but united on some matters of faith.

Back to OP....

Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE, by Michele Murray. Studies in Christianity and Judaism/Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme 13. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004. 240 pp. $44.95.

The book is a contribution to the ongoing field of research that no longer treats early Christianity as a movement distinct from Judaism... at least it was the writer's attempt.

I disagree with some things...

She re-contextualizes a large amount of this anti-Jewish rhetoric, arguing that it should not be understood as directed toward Jews (or even Jewish Christians), but rather against Gentile Christian judaizers.

Click to expand...

That was news to me.

Murray argues that Gentile Christians' practicing Jewish customs and rites was especially disturbing to early Christian leaders. In particular, they found these Gentiles "playing a Jewish game" to be "dangerously blurring the boundaries between Christianity and Judaism," and therefore attempted to suppress it

Click to expand...

Highighted part I definitedly disagree with... since at that point, everyone was still meeting in the synogoues when Paul rebuked Peter sbout stopping his kibitizing with gentiles when the "judaizers" entered the building.

The reason I brought it up, was because I thought it was interesting that at least there was some scholarly attempt at the "field of research that no longer treats early Christianity as a movement distinct from Judaism."

However, I do not think she saw that Christianity was suppose to be a sect of Judaism. There should have never been a split in the first place. It would have never been thought as separate if the revolt didn't put the nail on the coffin. The only difference should have been that the Messiah Yeshua Judaic sect made them distinct within Judaism because of their faith.

That most hallowed name, desposyni, had been respected by all believers in the first century and a half of Christian history. The word literally meant, in Greek, "belonging to the Lord." It was reserved uniquely for Jesus' blood relatives. Every part of the ancient Jewish Christian church had always been governed by a desposynos, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Jesus' family---Zachary, Joseph, John, James, Joses, Simeon, Matthias, and so on. http://www.dhushara.com/book/yeshua/desposyn.htm

"Ever since the Emperor Hadrian had conquered Jerusalem in the year 135, all Jews, and that included Jewish Christians, had been forbidden to enter Jerusalem under pain of instant death...."

Gentile Christians then had Jerusalem, that is Aelia Capitolina, as their own.

"They therefore asked Silvester to revoke his confirmation of Greek Christian bishops in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Ephesus, in Alexandria, and to name instead desposynos bishops...."

On the subject of more recent messianic history

The Ascendance of "Messianic Judaism" in the Context of "Hebrew Christianity"

http://mcu.edu/papers/mess_jud.htm

This is a quote from a book by dan juster on the history of the modern movement
http://tjcii.org/books/Booklet02.pdf

The Messianic Jewish movement proper comprises those Jews who
have come to faith in Jesus of Nazareth – whom they normally call
Yeshua – as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Savior of the world
- who hold this faith specifically as Jews, and who refuse assimilation
into Gentile Christianity. That is to say, Messianic Jews challenge
the received Christian and Jewish consensus that when Jews
come to faith in Jesus they cease to be Jews and become Christians
instead.

Click to expand...

In this paper refers to Hebrew speaking Jewish believers in Yeshua in the Land of Israel in the first and second century. This name is found in the New Testament in Acts 24:5. Perhaps they received this name because they were followers of the Notsri, Yeshua, called that because he grew up in Natzeret. There is some evidence that Hebrew speaking Jewish believers frequently cited Isa 11:1 in support of their loyalty to Yeshua, And there shall go forth a branch from the stock of Jesse, and a shoot (Netzer) from his roots will be fruitful..
A similar view on the name and the character of the Jewish believing community in Israel of the times is found in The Jewish Christian Sect of the Nazarenes , Ray Pritz, 1981, a doctoral dissertation presented to the faculty at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

http://www.netivyah.org.il/English Web/MidrashaArticles/breaking_bread.html#_ftn1

Yariv Eyal says that Nazarene was the Hellenized form of the word meaning branch, or offshoot, referring to a branch of Judaism:


Jesus was widely known to the Israelites as Yeshu haNotsri in their language, which means Jesus the Notsri. He is called this to this day, and his followers are called Notsrim after him and his movement. The word nazarene is the Hellenized [3] form of notsri. Most of Yeshu's followers, either uneducated Jews or non-Jews, didn't know why he was called Notsri or what it meant. The word notsri, which is an adjective, comes from netser, which means sprout or branch or offshoot. (See also, Romans 11:20-23) [4] Since Jesus was a member, or perhaps the former member, of an offshoot group which sprouted off of mainstream Judaism, he was called Jesus the Notsri. The Hebrew word for Christian to this day is Notsri.

Yariv Eyal is a US born Israeli citizen. Beside receiving a secular education, he was educated in orthodox Jewish yeshivas in the US and Israel, and is fluent in Hebrew and English and has taught Hebrew to new immigrants and Christian missionaries in Israel.
http://members.aol.com/JAlw/savior_from_nazareth.html

How close do Rabbis come to acknowledging Yeshua and become Messianic?

Our rabbis of blessed memory with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King Messiah, and we ourselves shall also adhere to the same view. click here

Rabbi Moshe El-Sheikh of Safed: a disciple of Joseph Caro the author of the Shulchan Arukh (late 6th Century CE) Commentaries on the Earlier Prophets. [/QUOTE]

Jonathan ben Uzziel interprets it in the Targum of the future Messiah; and this is also the opinion of our own learned men in the majority of their Midrashim.

Rabbi don Yitzehak Abarbanel (circa 1500 CE)

Click to expand...

...In the words of Isaiah, when describing the manner in which the kings will hearken to him, "at him kings will shut their mouth; for that which had not been told them have they seen, and that which they had not heard, they have perceived."
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) (12th century CE)

Click to expand...

and

I am surprised that Rashi and David Kimchi have not, with the Targum, applied them to the Messiah likewise.

Rabbi Naphtali ben Asher Altshuler (circa 1650 CE)

Click to expand...

and there is my favorite..

God hath from the beginning made a covenant with the Messiah and told Him, "My righteous Messiah. Those who are entrusted to you, their sins will bring you into a heavy yoke; your ears will hear great shame; your mouth will taste bitterness, and your tongue will cleave to the roof of your mouth, and your soul will be weakened in grief and sighing. Are you satisfied with this?" And He answered, "I joyfully accept all these agonies in order that not one of Israel should be lost." Immediately, the Messiah accepted all agonies with love, as it is written in Isaiah 53:7, "He was oppressed and he was afflicted."

Rabbi Moshe Ha-Darshan (10th, 11th century CE)

Click to expand...

Midrash on Bereshit
The Messiah what is his name? The rabbis said: His name is the Leper Scholar as it is written "surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted."

The Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 98b

Click to expand...

and

The expression "My Servant" they [certain contemporary commentators] compare rashly with Isaiah 41:8 "thou Israel art my servant", where the prophet is speaking of the people of Israel (which would be singular): here, however, he does not mention Israel, but a simply says "My Servant": we cannot therefore understand the word in the same sense...

I am pleased to interpret it in accordance with the teaching of our rabbis of the King Messiah, and will be careful, so far as I am able, to adhere to the literal sense: thus, possibly, I shall be free from the forced far-fetched interpretations of which others have been guilty."

Rabbi Moshe Kohen ibn Crispin (circa 1350 CE)

Click to expand...

In the Garden of Eden there is one palace called the palace of the sufferers. When the Messiah goes into this palace and calls to all the sufferers and grieving ones, all the agonies of Israel come upon Him. If the Messiah would not relieve Israel from the agonies and take them upon Himself, no one else could suffer the punishment of Israel for the transgression of the law. As it is written in Isaiah 53:4, "Surely he hath borne our griefs."

The Zohar

Click to expand...

and

Thus saith Rabbi Jose of Galilee, "Come and learn of the merits of the King Messiah who grieves for our transgressions, as it is written in Isaiah 53:5, But he was wounded for our transgressions."

Click to expand...

That most hallowed name, desposyni, had been respected by all believers in the first century and a half of Christian history. The word literally meant, in Greek, "belonging to the Lord." It was reserved uniquely for Yeshua's blood relatives. Every part of the ancient Jewish Christian church had always been governed by a desposynos, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Yeshua's family---Zachary, Joseph, John, James, Joses, Simeon, Matthias, and so on. http://nesarim.org/articles/desposyni-sylvester.php

St. Justin's "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew", chapter xlvii (about A.D. 140), where he speaks of two sects of Jewish Christians estranged from the Church:

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Ebionites

After years of gentilization.... there was a return to the roots...

At the third national conference of the HCAA, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1917, a Jewish immigrant from England by the name of Mark Levy presented a paper in which he criticized the Church for "Gentilizing" Jewish believers. He argued that Jewish believers should be allowed "to exercise their Jewish national loyalty." His views were not well received because at that time most all Jewish believers had been assimilated into churches. Dr. Robert I. Winer, The Calling: The History of the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, 1915-1990, (Wynnewood, PA: Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, 1990), pp. 5, 101-105.


Levy pushed his view by introducing a resolution that read as follows:

Resolved, that the HCAA endorse the resolution that our Jewish brethren are left free to admit their children into the covenant of Abraham [circumcision] and observe other God-given rites and ceremonies of Israel, if they so desire, when they accept... Messiah... provided that it is distinctly understood that neither Jew nor Gentile can be saved by works of the Law, but only through the merits and mediation of our compassionate Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of God.



But that was soundly defeated...

Articles - The Jews - In Prophecy - Messianic Judaism