From: btiffany@pbs.org
Newsgroups: alt.messianic
Subject: Re: UMJC
Date: 15 Oct 92 17:19:00 GMT
Organization: PBS:Public Broadcasting Service, Alexandria, VA

#3378

Subject: Re: UMJC (was Re: Gentile Christianity is false?)
From: levene@aplpy.jhuapl.edu (Robert A. Levene)
Date: 5 Oct 1992 22:25:03 -0500

>strom@Watson.Ibm.Com writes:
>...
>> Many Messianics on this newsgroup have countered
>> that Messianic "Judaism" is an ancient tradition
>> going back to the time of the original Jewish
>> disciples of Jesus.

>I don't think they trace themselves to the original
>disciples of Jesus, or else they'd be calling themselves
>"Evyonim" (Ebionites), who fled Jeruslem in poverty to Syria.

It's Natzratim, and they didn't flee to Syria.

You must have ignored what I told you a couple of years ago.  Here it is
again:

***************************************************************************

Here's the scoop, very briefly:  Yeshua's first followers were all Jews.
It came as a surprise to them that God wanted them to tell Gentiles, too,
about salvation from God through the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua.  There was
an internal debate over whether Gentiles had to convert and become Jews and
be circumcized in order to become followers of Yeshua, or whether they could
remain Gentiles and didn't have to adopt Judaism.  This is detailed in
Galatians and in Acts.  The council held at Jerusalem decided they did not
have to become Jews or be circumcised.  Thus, the news of reconciliation to
God through the atonement of the Jewish Messiah spread rapidly to the
Gentiles.  So followers of Yeshua, or "Messianics", could be Messianic
Jews or Messianic Gentiles.  Together, these groups became known as
"Christians", which simply means Messianics.

Meanwhile, the Pharisees (P'rushim) and other non-Messianic Jewish leaders
continued to persecute the Messianic Jews unmercifully.  They also resented
the fact that the Gentiles were flocking to the Messianics, when they had
been working so hard among the Gentiles to gain converts (so much for
Jews "not proselytizing").  Gentiles weren't too thrilled about keeping
613 laws which had no particular meaning to them, or undergoing painful
circumcision.  When they found out they could come to God by faith, through
Yeshua, without adopting all the Jewish rituals, they came in droves.  Also,
tens of thousands of Jews in Israel became Messianic.  Most of them were
known as Natzratim, or "Nazarenes", and together with the P'rushim, the
Tzdukim (Sadducees) and the Essenes they formed one of the major sects of
Judaism.

So far so good.  At this point nobody denied that Jews who believed in
Yeshua were Jewish.  When the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the Nazarenes
fled to the hills for safety.  This alienated them from some Jews, who felt
they were cowards.  On the contrary:  Yeshua had explicitly stated the temple
would be destroyed, and told what signs would indicate its destruction was
imminent, and told them to high-tail it for the hills when they saw the signs.
They were smart.  Those Jews who did not accept Yeshua unfortunately had no
such advance warning to take cover.

Then there arose a feller named Bar Kochba who led a movement against the
Romans.  Many Nazarenes supported him, until Rabbi Akiva declared him to be
the Messiah.  At this point all the Nazarenes (i.e., the Messianic Jews)
dropped their support of him, and the revolt was crushed.  This further
alienated them from those Jews who felt they should've supported the
movement against the oppressors, but of course they had only *one* Messiah,
Yeshua (Jesus), and could not follow an imposter.

As time went on, persecution against Messianic Jews by the Jewish leadership
(it was *not* a generalized persecution by all Jews!) continued.  After
the upheavals of 70 AD and the Bar Kochba revolt, only the Pharisees remained
as a strong sect within rabbinic Judaism.  Meanwhile, the number of
Messianic Gentiles had been exploding throughout the known world, and many
Messianic Jews found it expedient to assimilate with them, because of the
persecution they endured from the Pharisees for believing in Yeshua, and
from non-Messianic Gentiles for being Jewish.  Then some leading Messianic
Gentiles started a doctrine that God had rejected the Jews entirely, a
pernicious belief which is unfortunately still with us to this day in some
quarters, given a major boost by Augustine.  The non-Messianic Jews reacted
by declaring that anyone who is a follower of Yeshua is not a Jew.  Both
these positions were really stupid, to say the least, but that's what happened.
The rabbis changed the historic positions on what the Messiah was to be,
since the historic Jewish positions tended to indicate rather strongly that
Jesus was the Messiah, but they rejected Jesus, so they had to change the
interpretations of the prophecies which pointed so clearly to Jesus.  Thus
a real antagonism began between Jews developing an anti-Messianic "Oral
Tradition" and an increasingly apostate "church" of Messianic Gentiles,
many of whom no longer actually walked in the faith of the original followers
of Jesus, but had -- like the Jewish leadership -- lost the original
relationship with God and replaced it with a system of religiosity.  The
Orthodox Jews of today are the descendants of the Pharisees of those days.

Messianic Jews and the Gentiles who have joined with them call for a return
to the Jewish roots of the Christian faith, still without requiring Gentile
believers to become Jews or adopt Jewish ways, or requiring Jewish believers
to stop being Jews and adopt Gentile culture.  This is really a return
to the original faith of Abraham and the patriarchs who walked with God in
a genuine relationship, not trying to achieve righteousness through
performing good deeds, or Mitzvot.  They also see the central position of
Israel as the banner nation of all followers of Yeshua, and the coming
redemption of all Israel and restoration of the world, or tikkun ha olam.

If you'd like to study this further, I can recommend some reading.

Anyway, the baseless cries of the SCJers that Messianic Jews aren't really
Jews is pure hogwash, but it's a traditional position going back to the
early days of the Messianic Community.  Nevertheless, it wasn't for quite
some time after the days of the original disciples that this doctrine
developed.  For a long time even the Pharisees regarded Messianic Jews as
Jews, even though they rejected the Messiahship of Yeshua themselves.

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-- BT