How Jewish were Jesus and the Apostles?

[Rainbow Mage]

I mean, were they like really Jewish, or were they more like what we'd call born Jews who do something else? Like did they consider themselves to be starting a new Jewish sect, or did they actually believe they were starting a new religion?

 

[fallingblood]

They were practicing Jews. Most likely, they saw themselves as very devout Jews.

The most likely weren't creating a new sect during the life of Jesus. They were just one more group of Jews.

To understand Jesus, one must understand that he was fully Jewish. He may have had some debates with other Jewish groups, but that was a common occurrence between different groups within Judaism.

 

[Oberon]

I mean, were they like really Jewish, or were they more like what we'd call born Jews who do something else? Like did they consider themselves to be starting a new Jewish sect, or did they actually believe they were starting a new religion?

I think a bigger issue is what being jewish meant in first century palestine.

 

[Rakhel]

I don't think anyone is debating the Jewishness of Jesus. What they are debating is whether his teachings constitute a new, or better, religion.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

I don't think anyone is debating the Jewishness of Jesus. What they are debating is whether his teachings constitute a new, or better, religion.

I think debating the Jewishness of Jesus' teachings is a valid premise, especially since many of his teachings seem to coincide with Zoroastrian and Buddhist/Hindu ideas and not Jewish ones. Like think about some of the things Jesus said, really think, and tell me how Jewish they are. Claiming he is one with the father, and claiming other people can be too. Claiming he is the bread of life and that a person can eat him to attain mystic union with him.

 

[fallingblood]

I think debating the Jewishness of Jesus' teachings is a valid premise, especially since many of his teachings seem to coincide with Zoroastrian and Buddhist/Hindu ideas and not Jewish ones. Like think about some of the things Jesus said, really think, and tell me how Jewish they are. Claiming he is one with the father, and claiming other people can be too. Claiming he is the bread of life and that a person can eat him to attain mystic union with him.

One has to differ between the actual sayings of Jesus, and things that were later attributed to him.

 

[Levite]

I mean, were they like really Jewish, or were they more like what we'd call born Jews who do something else? Like did they consider themselves to be starting a new Jewish sect, or did they actually believe they were starting a new religion?

It's hard to know just what Jesus and his disciples were thinking, since all we have concerning them are either the stories of Jesus and his followers that early Christians wrote, or stories about Jesus and early Christianity that the Rabbis of the Talmud wrote, except for that brief mention in Josephus that everyone likes to quote, and of course that was still after the fact-- potentially some time after the fact, depending on when in his lifetime one believes Josephus actually wrote his histories.

Given, however, that we know there was a vast surplus of guys running around ancient Israel at that time claiming that redemption was at hand and they were the messiah, I have always thought it was fair to make a few assumptions.

My guess is that Jesus himself and his actual disciples were observant Jews according to the lights of that time. Jesus himself is said, in the Talmud, to have once been a student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Prachyah, and given that the synoptic accounts of Jesus teachings-- which I have always suspected were the parts least monkeyed around with by later authors, as opposed to the narrative of the events and deeds of his life, which I have always suspected was heavily redacted-- bear more resemblance to Pharisaic use of midrash than to Saduceeic priestly materials, to the ascetic apocalyptic proto-midrash discovered from Qumran and other such ascetic Essene-like communities, or to any sort of Hellenic Jewish writings (to say nothing, of course, of any style of writing done by non-Jews in the area), I tend to believe that story. Especially as several other promising students are known to have been tossed out of the Pharisaic and Tannaitic (post-Pharisaic) rabbinical academies for heresy of one sort or another.

In any case, most of the stuff that Jesus seems to have taken issue with in terms of Pharisaic practice was in what he saw as an excessive focus on the details of halakhah, as opposed to practical spirituality, and a lack of ascetics in Pharisaic teachings (which is true). But he doesn't seem to have questioned the actual commandments and the practicing thereof, which, according to such vague details as we get, he seems to have done roughly according to the Pharisaic way, with some deviations out of his own ascetic and charismatic ideas.

In fact, given that he is said to have had followers that numbered in the thousands, it is deeply unlikely that he would have broken with the covenant to the degree that Paul indicates is appropriate Christian doctrine. No significant number of Jews would have accepted such a move, and it can be hardly coincidental that Paul instigates it largely because he sees Jewishly observing Christian communities waning, and those who are unobservant and made up of non-Jewish Christians waxing and strengthening.

It is, IMO, almost certainly not Jesus or his disciples who set out to create a new religion, or to introduce material incompatible with Jewish thought. Personally, I am not even convinced Jesus claimed messiahship, and I am certain he would never have publicly claimed divinity. Though as mainstream Judaism rejected the proto-Christian movement, and almost instantly (as far as I can tell) syncretism began to creep in from various points, IMO, it is Paul who truly creates Christianity as such, and severs the last links between the new religion and Judaism.

 

[KennethM]

Jesus, his disciples, and mostly all Christians WERE Jews. For some time Christianity was not a new religion so to speak, it merely was, in the Christians' eyes, the correct way of being a Jew. This is why Matthew's gospel draws so many parallels between Jesus and Moses, why Luke goes through all the painstaking lengths to show the amount of Jewishness in Jesus' family (notice that both the Magnificat resembles the Song of Hannah and the Benedictus resembles a psalm) and compares Jesus to Elijah and Elisha, and both Matthew and Luke give long (albeit different) genealogies going back to King David (and beyond in Luke's case).

 

[Ilisrum]

Given what we can glean from Paul's, letters, it appears that they were as Jewish as Jewish can be. (His brother at least)

BTW, I have an interest in James the Just so don't hold me for it.:shout

 

[Rainbow Mage]

So if they were very piously Jewish, why are so many non-Jewish ideas in the NT writings? Did the Christians just abrogate these in later?

 

[fallingblood]

So if they were very piously Jewish, why are so many non-Jewish ideas in the NT writings? Did the Christians just abrogate these in later?

How are they non-Jewish? There wasn't just Judaism during that time. It was more like there were multiple Judaisms circulating at that time. We have people from Philo promoting somewhat of a hellenistic form of Judaism, to Paul promoting a more encompassing form of Judaism.

 

[KennethM]

How are they non-Jewish? There wasn't just Judaism during that time. It was more like there were multiple Judaisms circulating at that time. We have people from Philo promoting somewhat of a hellenistic form of Judaism, to Paul promoting a more encompassing form of Judaism.

This is pretty true. Speaking about Judaism in any sort of concrete singular form is fairly anachronistic.

 

[Levite]

How are they non-Jewish? There wasn't just Judaism during that time. It was more like there were multiple Judaisms circulating at that time. We have people from Philo promoting somewhat of a hellenistic form of Judaism, to Paul promoting a more encompassing form of Judaism.

With all respect, fallingblood, I don't think it's quite the same thing. I agree, Philo's Hellenized Judaism is, by Rabbinic standards, nearly as heretical as early Christianity, but Philo, at least was trying to achieve a balance between Hellenism and Judaism that favored Judaism. He did, technically, defend keeping the commandments and remaining monotheistic, and so forth, even if he did do so in ways not acceptable to Rabbinic Judaism at that time (although he gets used by some rabbis way later, post-Renaissance, to some degree).

Now, it seems pretty clear that Jesus, though he was something of an ecletic in his Jewish ideas, drawing from Pharisaic and quasi-monastic ascetic Judaisms, along with his own ideas, was much closer to Pharisaic thought that he was to Hellenic Judaism as it stood in Exilic communities at that time, or to Saducceic Judaism, or even to Qumrani/Essene Judaism. He uses midrash like a Pharisee; his ritual practice is judged even in the synoptic gospels according to its variance with Pharisaic Judaism, not with the other models and traditions; his modes of address and teaching are Pharisaic-- the Rabbinic tradition itself names him as an expelled student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Prachyah, and they certainly would have been delighted to name him as an Essene or a Saducee or an Apikoros (Hellenistic hereitc, Aramaicized after the term "epikureisti") if they had thought him as such. It is, IMO, quite reasonable to assume that he conceived of Judaism as something relatively close (at least within theological/ritual practical shouting distance) to Pharisaic Judaism, except, of course, more ascetic, perhaps more apocalyptic, and probably actively messianic.

Paul, however, actively becomes apostatic. He doesn't merely introduce syncretisms, but actively tears down structures of Jewish thought and replaces them with other, non-Jewish ideas, wellnigh expressly for the purpose of opening Christianity to non-Jews. What Paul does is antithetical not only to Pharisaic Judaism, but to Saducceic, Essenic, Qumrani, even to Philo's nebulous Hellenicized Judaism.

Jesus may have been heretical by Rabbinic Jewish standards, but at least he was, in his way, doing just what other charismatic reformers (including the prophets) had tried to do, and tried to do after him: that is, to encourage Jews to practice Judaism in a more spiritually energized way, and to try to raise up the downtrodden a little, make the world a better place. That is deeply Jewish, and not at all foreign to any of the Jewish traditions that were vying for the main stream at that time. What Paul did is deeply un-Jewish, and entirely foreign to all of the Jewish traditions that were vying for the main stream at that time.