The Jewish roots of Christianity
By Judie Jacobson
One can hardly turn on a TV set this time of year without facing a sea of stories surrounding the birth of Jesus and the Christian faith. Few shows, however, focus on what may be the true miracle of Christmas n that is, that Christianity survived at all.
Now, a sweeping two-hour CNN documentary to be aired Saturday, Dec. 23 and Sunday, Dec. 24 at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., does just that.
“CNN Presents: After Jesus n The First Christians” will focus on the tumultuous early years of Christianity, examining how the earliest Christians spread their message, despite infighting over the faith and violent persecution by Rome.
The documentary features University of Hartford excavations in Israel and interviews with Prof. Richard Freund, director of the University’s Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies and leader of the Bethsaida Excavations Project in Israel. His expedition at Israel’s Cave of Letters was the feature of a previous CNN NOVA program.
Freund has led a host of teams who have conducted archaeological excavations at Bethsaida, located along the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee and a very important site in the history of early Christianity; Qumran, the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found; Yavne, where Rabbinic Judaism took root after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.; and Nazareth.
Recently, the Jewish Ledger spoke with Freund about the CNN special and Christianity’s role in Jewish history.
Q: How were the archaeological excavations relevant to the CNN special?
A: We went to Bethsaida n the Jewish town that we’ve been excavating for the past 20 years where, according to the New Testament, the apostles and Jesus met for the first time. Today we know that the group of people who met for the first time with Jesus were middle class Jews who knew about religion. We know that they probably kept some form of kashrut. They probably prayed in their homes, since synagogues didn’t exist yet in the land of Israel n they only existed in the far flung areas of the Diaspora. They probably maintained an identity that allowed them to be Jews and to be good Roman citizens at the same time.
The city of Bethsaida was not only a place that was the center of Galilean Judaism, it was also the center of Roman religion n non-Jewish, pagan, imperial, cult religion. We know today that the apostles and Jesus must have been really ticked off, not necessarily by Judaism, but by Roman religion itself, and their criticism of religion became a sect that is today called Christians. They weren’t happy with Jerusalem Judaism either. They said, “These people are sitting in Jerusalem and making all these different pronouncements, how does this affect us sitting in Galilee?” The interesting thing in terms of the history of Judaism is that this is the same question that has been asked by Jews in the Diaspora. When Jesus and the apostles met in Bethsaida for the first time, it was an important event. They said we have to think about what it is that makes sense for Judaism outside of the area of Jerusalem.
We also took them [CNN crew] to the excavation at Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The people there were not exactly Orthodox Jews. They were “heterodox” Jews. These Jews lived very close to Jerusalem n only about 25 miles n and yet they lived lives that were very different than the Jews in Jerusalem. Did they keep Jewish law? Yes n but in different ways than they did in Jerusalem. We learn from this group of people, sometimes called the Essenes n who lived in Qumran, that first century Judaism was not homogeneous. It was a variety of different Judaisms that functioned together. Did they all believe that a Torah was given by God on Mount Sinai? Yes. Did they all believe that the land assigned to them was the land of Israel? Yes. Did they believe that there was one God? Yes. Did they all believe in a messiah? Yes.
I also took the CNN crew to our excavation at Yavne n known as the second Jerusalem. In the year 70 C.E., just as Jerusalem was about to be destroyed by the Romans, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai escaped from Jerusalem and fled to Yavne where he created a new Judaism n a Judaism that was not like the biblical Judaism that Jesus was angry at. It was not like the Judaism that Mary and Joseph knew. It was not the Judaism of the Essenes. It was a Rabbinic Judaism that was directed by study and internal piety. It was directed by a totally different idea that prayers would be in place of sacrifices and that Jews would gather in a place called synagogue to pray. Instead of doing exactly what had been done in the temple in Jerusalem they would develop new ways of doing things.
To my mind, as a historian of Judaism, all these things are connected. The archaeological data we get from cities like this helps us to understand that Judaism was different groups with a variety of different beliefs. That was the dynamic that led to today’s Judaism.
Q: How does Christianity figure into all this?
A: Christianity was one of those different groups with different beliefs within Judaism. The big difference was that all these other beliefs were based on the idea that Judaism is for people who are Jews. They are not seen as systems that everybody in the world must embrace. Christianity’s mission, however, was the inclusion of non-Jews as its principal base. That happened simply because one man n Paul of Tarsis, who had the Jewish name Shaul and who studied with Rabbi Gamliel n had a different idea. Paul, who never knew Jesus in the flesh, believed that everything that Judaism said was not directed only at the Jews, but also at pagans. He started recruiting people. It was a brilliant move because, if not, Christianity would have remained a tiny sect within Judaism. It probably would have ended up with Rabbi Gamliel and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai in Yavne. Christians would have been different than the Rabbinic Jews who were there, but they still would have been Jews. What differentiated this whole system was Paul, who said that, for the salvation of the world, everyone should embrace this belief.
Today, there are scholars who believe that Paul and this form of Christianity is what disseminated Judaism n albeit a different type of Judaism n to the world. And so a billion Christians and a billion Muslims are nothing but a projection of Judaism. In a way, just as much as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai saved Judaism from ending in the dustpan of the history of religion in Yavne, so Paul of Tarsis saved a different form of Judaism and that is what is called Christianity.
Even with the great idea that Paul had of changing Judaism into an international religion that would missionize every non-Jew who it met, it still would not have become the big religion that it became were it not for one fortuitous moment. That moment came when, first, the wife of Constantine the Great, the emperor of the combined empires of Rome, converted to Christianity, then his mother converted and, finally, he converted. When Constantine the Great became Christian, technically the entire Roman Empire became Christian.
Q: What do we actually know about Jesus?
A: The information we have on Jesus in Jewish sources is very bad because it is written by people who had no contact with him and therefore had no idea who he was.
There is only one Jew who actually knew Jesus and wrote about him in his own time period n that was Josephus Flavius. The problem is we are not altogether sure if he actually wrote what he is said to have written because the manuscripts are written in Greek and are maintained by the Catholic church. They sound too much like what’s written in Christian texts. But today we have a variety of other texts that came out of the Egyptian desert n the Nag Hammadi texts. These are gospels that did get into the canon of the New Testament and they provide a greater understanding of who Jesus was.
But while archaeology shows us the background of who these Jews were, there is no artifact that even mentions Jesus by name. Of course, there is also nothing about Moses, King David, King Solomon, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, either n they are all still in this mist of the ancient world. We can throw up our hands and say we can’t know anything. Or, we can we collect all the literary information that we have and compare and contrast with artifacts and discoveries that have been made from places where Jesus was supposed to have been and then we can hypothesize who this person was.
As a historian, I have to be very careful. I try to say Jesus as a man existed as the gospels and the other sources tell us. But as for what he looked like, how he dressed, etc…the only thing I can tell you is what people looked like during that time, how they dressed, etc., because we have a picture of what other Jews looked like during that time period .
The problem inherent in this is that, as you go through the history of Christianity, you will see that everyone is trying to make Jesus in their own image. For example, there is a group of African American scholars who regularly tell me that Jesus was black because Mary and Joseph, according to one of the gospels, go down to Egypt to hide from Herod who was trying to kill all the children n very similar to what pharaoh did. If they’re hiding out in Egypt, which is, of course, in Africa, then they can only hide out if they look like other Africans. So, they conclude, they must be black. But what they don’t know is that there was a Jewish community in North Africa, especially in Egypt, and we have sarcophagi that tell us what these first century Jews looked like and they weren’t necessarily black.
Q: Did Paul intend for Christianity to remain, then, a part of Judaism?
A: He did. Paul called this religion the New Israel. He really felt in his heart of hearts that what he was selling was authentic, post-Temple Judaism. He sold it as the idea that the messiah had come n the messiah that had been predicted by the Hebrew Bible n and that messiah was Jesus. He really thought that the whole universe was going to radically change. When he died in Rome in 65 n 5 yrs before the temple was destroyed n he was living in a really chaotic time. Because he was living in the time of Nero, who put him to death. Nero was absolutely out of his mind. Half of Rome was burned down in a fire that we think started in the royal palace area and he must have thought that the entire world that he knew was coming to an end. He must have thought that the messianic kingdom that Jesus had initiated was going to be initiated in his own day. So when he died in prison in 65 I don’t think he had any doubt that what he was preaching was an apocalyptic end-time that had been predicted by the Hebrew Bible and that the New Israel was going to emerge with as many people as he was able to gather in. He succeeded immensely. I don’t think that he could have imagined that Christianity would move from a totally apocalyptic end-time religion to being a religion of a state, of a place, of a time, with bishops and churches and laws and regulations. I think that he thought that it was going to be just a new emerging kingdom.
Q: If Paul did not intend Christianity to become its own religion, what happened?
A: Judaism itself was searching for its own identity during the same time period when Christianity was coming along. What we know from the Cave of Letters excavation, which is what NOVA did an entire documentary about, is precisely at what point Christianity spun off and was no longer a part of Judaism. It was during the Bar Kochba rebellion. Christians and Jews were together during the rebellion because the Jews, especially Rabbi Akiva, said that Bar Kochba was the messiah and many Christians felt that he was in fact the second coming of Jesus, which they had started to believe was going to happen. Halfway through the rebellion, Christians decided that Bar Kochba was not their messiah. There is a letter from Bar Kochba to his generals that we have saying that if those Christians don’t stay loyal to us, lock them up in chains, don’t allow them to become traitors against us. Suddenly, right around 134 of the Common Era, just when the rebellion was going to be put down, Hadrian appointed for the first time a bishop in Jerusalem who was not Jewish, he was pagan.
We have in our prayer book, in our daily “Amidah” a 19th prayer n even though we call it the 18 prayers, there was a prayer added probably during this time period. And the prayer is very unusual. It says that we should exclude from our midst the groups of people who are no longer with us, and it lists those groups, one of which -- and, of course it gives them code names n is the Christians. We think that it was at this point that it entered into the liturgy. And the reason is that no self-respecting Christian could go into a Jewish synagogue anymore and say the statutory prayer of the Amidah because it was really excluding them.
When you take all these different literary pieces and the archaeological information, that’s what we know, that starting in about 135 after the Bar Kochba rebellion, Christians were different than Jews.
Q: So, while the CNN special is about Christianity, it actually also tells the story of the Jews, at least in part?
A: The funny thing for me is that this will be for many Christians an eye opening experience where they are going to discover that their view of Christianity is really not the same as the way it was started, and what is important for them to study in order for them to understand themselves is the history of Judaism.
I take students to these places and they excavate with their own hands and rediscover history. The vast majority of the students that I take are not Jewish. They go to Israel because they want to rediscover who they are and they discover something about Judaism. They discover that the most fascinating time period also has implications for today.
Q: What are those implications?
A: When people ask me why there are a variety of groups within Judaism practicing rituals that are very different from other groups within Judaism who are practicing different rituals n and they’re all supposedly under the umbrella of Judaism, I say welcome to the history of Judaism. This is what has made Judaism dynamic today. Because it allows for the vast differences that people may have. Judaism has given to the world great gifts. At the same time, every once in awhile people like to see what the mother ship is saying about itself. So Judaism has, I think, a great role to play, even though we’re only 13 million people worldwide, we have a tremendous role to play.
Q: Is the existence of the different denominations that exist under the umbrella of Judaism today n Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc. n a variation of the same theme?
A: Yes. Look at the different time periods of Judaism. In antiquity we have the Bible and the different northern and southern tribes who had very different views of what religion should be. When we go into the Roman period, we find a proliferation of Jewish groups who are all very different from one another n the Pharises, the Sagises, the Zealots, the Essenes, the Christians. In the medieval period we find that there are Karaites, Samaritans…and a whole group which we call Ashkenazic Jews who have completely different views than the Sephardic Jews. In the modern period we have a proliferation after the enlightenment in the 19th and 20th century of different groups.
There are people who see the proliferation of so many different sects, groups, denominations and ideas within Judaism as a bad thing. And there are others who say, no, that tension is what has kept us alive for so long. We only start to have problems from the moment that we start to exclude groups from the mix and can’t see that we all share this series of different understandings of the importance of Judaism.
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Prof. Richard Freund will appear in the documentary, “CNN Presents: After Jesus n The First Christians,” on Saturday, Dec. 23 and Sunday, Dec. 24 at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Comments? Email judiejacobson@jewishledger.com