Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni.cristiani
Titolo: Risposta sui giudeo-cristiani (possibile duplicato)


Stiamo parlando di due cose diverse. Gli Ebrei Messianici sono un
fenomeno moderno (e non è che siano del tutto ignorati dai Cattolici:
nelle Librerie Paoline trovate dei dischi di musica ebraica incisi
proprio da Ebrei Messianici), mentre i Giudeo-Cristiani di cui il
prof. aveva parlato a Yunan sono un fenomeno antico.
Non ho il tempo di approfondire l'argomento, e perciò, mi spiace, mi
tocca "scaraventarvi" un articolo dell'Encyclopaedia Judaica in
proposito:
Ciao.
Also:   Ebionites (J. Chr. sect);  Jewish-Christians
JEWISH CHRISTIAN SECTS, groups composed of early Christians who were
born as Jews and kept their traditional Jewish way of life "according
to the law" even after accepting the mission of Jesus as teacher,
prophet, or even a messianic figure. The history of the Jewish
Christians was deeply affected by two major crises: their final
rejection by the Jews in the last third of the first century; and
their expulsion as heretics from the Church under the authority of
Rome after 150 C.E. Both ruptures influenced the historiography of the
Jewish Christian sects. In fact, the Jewish-Christian historians
reversed chronology by claiming that their split from gentile
Christianity originated at an earlier time in an argument between Paul
and Peter on the Christianization of the gentiles.
The earliest Christians were Christian Jews whose mission was directed
toward the Jews. Even Paul's activity, largely responsible for the
creation of a gentile church, was partly carried out in the synagogues
of Asia Minor, Cyprus, Macedonia, and Greece. The earliest Christians
were made up of two groups: one group accepted proselytes on the
condition that they keep the Noachide laws (Acts 15:19f.); while the
other objected to the admission of proselytes who did not accept
halakhah. This latter group even accused Peter of social intercourse
with the uncircumcised (Gal. 2:12; Acts 11:3), and formed the
ideological ancestors of the later Jewish Christian sects. Thus,
Justin Martyr, in the middle of the second century, still
differentiated between the radical Christians of Jewish origin who
demanded that the gentiles observe mitzvot, and the moderate ones who
were ready to accept Christian believers who did not practice halakhah
(Dialogus cum Tryphone 47).
There are three partially conflicting traditions about the destiny of
the Christian community of Jerusalem. According to Eusebius (Historia
Ecclesiastica, 4:5) there were bishops of Jewish origin (ex
circumcisione or one who had been circumcised) in the city until the
time of Hadrian; Eusebius (ibid., 3:5, 4) also tells of the flight of
this community to Pella in Transjordan, shortly before the destruction
of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. (This tradition could indicate that high
tension already existed between the Jews who were fighting for their
independence and the deserting Christians; but it should also be
remembered that the Jewish parties were deeply divided among
themselves.) Shlomo Pines (see bibliography) tells of an inner
Christian conflict that resulted in the Roman persecution of the
radical wing of the Christian community and caused them to flee the
country. Later descriptions and indications show Transjordan and Syria
as centers of Judeo-Christian activity. Epiphanius (Panarion 29), for
example, mentions specifically the Decapolis and the city of Beroea
(Aleppo). This is corroborated both by Georg Strecker's observation
that the heresiological typologization accepted in the West at the
beginning of the third century (Irenaeus; Hipolytos) is varied still
by Eusebius more than 100 years later, and by the polemic against a
Jewish-Christian movement found in the Didascalia Apostolorum (third
century, Syria).
Besides these hostile documents directed against Jewish-Christian
activity there exist two major and some minor original texts which
reveal the sects' beliefs. The two major texts are Kerygmata Petri
("The Preachings of Peter"), embodied in the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies, a series of fictional sermons of Peter and his disputations
with Simon the Gnostic; and that published by Pines (see
bibliography). The minor texts are fragments of Ebionite Acts along
with Ebionite and Nazarene Gospels according to the Hebrews, preserved
only in random citations in patrological literature. Though scanty and
fragmentary, the evidence on Jewish-Christian sects indicates that
their practices and beliefs were diverse and that there was not one
such sect at a certain point in history but a variety of movements at
different stages of development. Even their names have been confused,
one sect being referred to by the name of another. The name Ebionites
comes from Hebrew evion, meaning the poor; Nazarenes is the name given
the Christians in Acts 24:5; and the Elchasaites are named after the
reputed founder of the sect, one Elxai or Elchasai, who lived in the
time of Trajan. The theology of the Elchasaites centers on the holy
book The Apocalypse of Elchasai, which combined Jewish, Christian, and
Gnostic features.
The unique characteristics of the Jewish Christians can be seen in two
general areas: their basic adherence to Jewish practices; and their
understanding of the nature and mission of Jesus, and the early
history of Christianity. The heresiologists time and again polemicized
against the Ebionites' stubborn adherence to the Torah, particularly
their performance of circumcision, their observance of Jewish
festivals, and of the Sabbath-a practice for which the Jews had been
previously attacked in pre-Christian Hellenistic literature. But
Eusebius (op. cit. 3:27) asserts that some sects kept-in addition to
the Sabbath-the days of the Lord, i.e., Sundays, in memory of the
resurrection. Along with initiating baptism (see Ablution), there is
evidence that Ebionites attended ritual baths (see mikveh) regularly,
abstained from eating pork, and, with other sects, apparently held the
Hebrew language in high esteem (Epiphanius, Panairion 1:29, 7 and 9;
Pines, p. 12, 17). A peculiarity of the Jewish sect described in
Kerygmata Petri is their vegetarianism based on the verse "Only flesh
with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat"
(Gen. 9:4). Another point of difference from Christian custom is that
they faced Jerusalem when praying (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1:26).
But on the practice of animal sacrifice the sects disagreed among
themselves. In Pines' texts (p. 12) the practice was approved, but it
was rejected in Kerygmata Petri which claims that Moses instituted
sacrifices only after he saw that the people could not do without some
material expression in the worship of God. Furthermore, this text
claims that Jesus replaced sacrifice with baptism, canceling the
precepts on sacrifice in the Pentateuch. Similarly discarded were all
the passages providing for kingship-an institution which they
abhorred-all anthropomorphic expressions of God, and unpraiseworthy
stories about the representatives of true prophecy, e.g., Adam's sin,
Noah's drunkenness, Abraham and Jacob's polygamy, etc.
Jewish-Christian sects not only saw the events of biblical history in
a new light but also formulated the stories about the beginnings of
Christianity in a way other than in Acts and in Paul's letters, and
gave them a different interpretation from that of the Church. In
Pines' texts, Paul is described as a villainous and domineering Jew
who first helped the Jews against the Christians, then, following a
vision, changed sides and told the Christians to separate from the
Jews and to become allied with people hostile to the Jews. It was
because of his propaganda that the Romans killed a great many Jews and
carried away their treasures (Pines, pp. 26-28). The Jewish-Christian
opposition to Paul, traditionally ascribed to Peter, was based not
only on his use of magic to make an impression on the Romans and his
denial of the Mosaic laws, but also on the derivation of his apostolic
mission from a spurious vision, whereas the true apostles were sent
out by Jesus himself. Moreover, they could not accept his preference
for proselytizing the gentiles before the Jews. This, however, was not
Paul's innovation, but the practice of a part of the congregation in
Jerusalem (Acts 11:20). The sect in Pines' text regarded this as a
practice performed by wicked Christians who, for love of power,
assisted the Romans against the Jews, and eventually against its own
community which refused to abandon the Jewish law or to have their
Gospel defiled by the Romans. Since these proselytizers had no access
to the original Hebrew Gospel, they composed new ones according to
what they remembered from other languages to avoid being challenged by
learned men, and thereby forfeited the opportunity to convince the
unbelievers among the Jews. Turning to the foreigners, these
Christians accepted the Roman way of life, and ultimately forced the
Jewish Christian of Jerusalem to emigrate.
Finally, the sects' understanding of the nature and mission of Jesus
was distinctly different from that in the canonic Gospels (see Bible,
In Christianity) and from interpretations of the great Church. The
Jewish Christians held that Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter,
was the prophet announced by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15, and that "He
came to vivify and establish the Torah" (Pines, p. 5). They believed
that he preached the resurrection, rose from the dead, and was to
reappear in the end of days with angelic features. In addition, they
equated Jesus with Moses, and saw the former as the prophetic lawgiver
who renewed the Torah; therefore conversion to Jesus and conversion to
the Jewish law are identical. The Jewish Christians saw the
abandonment of the law, and thus the Jewish nation, as an aberration
from Jesus' teaching and a fateful mistake on the part of the early
Christians. The doctrines of some of the Jewish-Christian groups
(e.g., the Ebionites and Elchasaites) were Gnostic in character and
would, for that reason alone, be considered heretical both by Jews and
by the Church.
[Jacques Yakov Guggenheim]
--
ICQ# 193805427 - bSanhedrin 34b - Gregorius Magnus (1:7:8)
Abraham Joshua Heschel: "La Bibbia non è la storia del popolo ebraico,
ma la storia di D%o che cerca l'uomo giusto" (L'uomo non è solo)

SECTS,
che apertura, ragazzi...
pit bull

 pit bull
mi pare che in inglese non abbia lo stesso valore spregiativo
che viene dato da alcuni in italiano alla parola "setta/sette",
valore spregiativo che invece, mi pare, avrebbe la parola
"cults".
comunque sia tu che parola avresti usato ?
visto che si usano il plurale per indicare questi
gruppi di giudeo-cristiani quanta unione
ed "ecumenismo" c'erano fra loro e 
gli eventuali altri cristiani ?
questo (mi) domando io.
ciao,
Mauro di A.