The First Orthodoxy

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded The Legacy of F.C. Baur with the following words from Jeffrey J.

Butz:

 

 

(p.160) Both in spite of and because of this serious shortcoming of the

Tubingen theory, a revival of Baur's theories is occurring under the influence

of the third-quest school of thought, especially in the writings of extremely

liberal Christian scholars, such as Michael Goulder and Gerd Ludemann, and

controversial Jewish scholars, such as Robert Eisenman and Hyam Maccoby. (p.161)

Even mainstream Christian scholars, such as James Dunn and Bruce Chilton, and

conservative scholars, such as Craig A. Evans, are opening the door to a new

acceptance of Baur's theories, but in a revised form that more accurately

reflects the complexity and diversity of early Christianity. Dunn, however,

warns against falling into the trap that caught Baur: There was no polar

opposition between two monolithic camps. In line with his emphasis on the wide

but continuous spectrum of belief in the early church, Dunn says, " I go along

with the older F.C. Baur thesis at least to the extent that emerging catholicism

was a catholic synthesis of several strands and tendencies (and factions) within

earliest Christianity. " [14]

 

This leaves us still facing the vital question, Amid all of the variety of

early Christian belief, what was the original " orthodoxy " ? What was the nature

of the originating source from which all of these " strands and tendencies " first

divided, and then later re-coalesced to produce a " catholic synthesis " ?

 

The Brother of Jesus (And the Lost Teachings of Christianity) Chapter 8, pg.

160-61.

 

Here now, is The First Orthodoxy.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

 

The First Orthodoxy

 

(p.161) James Dunn, like Maccoby, believes that when one tries to get to the

root of the earliest, most primitive strand of belief from which the diversity

of early Christianity sprang, one is led right back to Jewish Christianity. This

might seem rather obvious since Jesus, his family, and his apostles were all

Jews. But while this is usually obvious to someone coming at it from outside the

Christian tradition, for those inside the Christian tradition the obvious has

not always been easy to recognize. In this case, the overgrown and tangled

branches of accumulated Christian tradition obscure the forest. Just as often,

traditional Christian scholars have harbored a subconscious desire not to 'want'

to know the truth, which, of course, makes it all the more difficult to see the

real picture.

 

James Dunn is one leading scholar who has made the effort to rise above the

treeline. In his examination of the three distinguishing features of later

Jewish Christian communities such as the Ebionites (faithful adherence to the

Law of Moses, reverence for James, and an adoptionist christology), Dunn sees

something the majority of Christian scholars would prefer to ignore:

 

If these are indeed the three principal features of heretical Jewish

Christianity, then a striking point immediately emerges: 'heretical Jewish

Christianity would appear to be not so very different from the faith of the

first Jewish believers'. [15]

 

The three main tenets of Jewish Christian belief and practice that Dunn

enumerates are what led to the Jewish Christians being labeled as heretics by

the emerging Catholic Church. The Jewish Christians, on the other hand,

thoroughly rooted in the teachings of James and the apostles, thought of the

Pauline churches as the heretics. And this brings us to the trickiest question

in the study of Christian origins: What is orthodoxy, and what is heresy? Dunn

notes that by the second century

 

'there was no uniform concept of orthodoxy at all--only different forms of

Christianity competing for the loyalty of believers. In many places,

particularly Egypt and eastern Syria [centers of Jewish Christianity], it

is...likely that what later churchmen called [Jewish] Christianity was the

initial form of Christianity...The concept of orthodoxy only began to emerge in

the struggle between different viewpoints--the party that won claimed the title

" orthodox " for itself!' [16]

 

Or, to put it in other words, orthodoxy is merely the most successful heresy.

 

These observations on the nature of orthodoxy and heresy become clearer when

one understands that the word " heresy " comes from the Greek 'haeresis', which

carries the root meaning of an " opinion " or a " party line. " Therefore, in the

strict sense of the word, all of the early Christian communities had their own

heresy--their own opinion about who Jesus was. It was only many years later--at

the Council of Nicaea in 325--that by majority vote it was permanently decided

what would forever be the acceptable heresy, which then, by definition, became

orthodoxy. Walter Bauer (no relation to F.C. Baur), most well known today for

his monumental Greek-English Lexicon, wrote the seminal volume on this idea,

'Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity', in 1934, a groundbreaking work

that has had an ever-increasing influence on New Testament scholarship. Bauer

powerfully demonstrated that it is difficult to maintain that there ever was any

pristine unified doctrine in the early church, only many competing heresies.

(p.163) British scholar, Michael Goulder, who is one of today's strongest

supporters of the Tubingen theory, provides a succinct analysis of the situation

revealed to us in the light of the ideas of Baur and Bauer:

 

When in church life there is an irreconcilable difference over important

doctrine, there are winners and losers. The winning party becomes the church,

and its opinion is orthodoxy...the losing party is driven out of the church and

becomes a sect...or heresy...In the early Christian church the Petrines won at

Antioch (Gal.2:11-14); but Paul played his cards carefully, and did not split

away. In the second century the Paulines won and the Aramaic [Jewish Christian]

churches split away...and became heretical sects called the Ebionites and the

Nazarenes. [17]

 

As we have noted before, the Ebionites claimed that they were in fact the

direct descendants of the Jerusalem church. Wishing to keep its blinders on,

most Christian scholarship has dismissed this claim, but there is the

fascinating legend recorded in Eusebius and Epiphanius of the escape of the

Jerusalem Christians prior to the Roman invasion thanks to the warning of a

prophecy, whence they fled to Pella in Transjordan. If this legend has any basis

in fact (and most legends have at least some basis in fact), it would be from

Pella that the later Jewish Christian communities such as the Nazoreans, the

Ebionites, and the Elkesaites developed. The flight to Pella could explain how

the Jewish Christian " heresy " spread beyond Palestine.

 

One of the first heresy hunters of the emerging Catholic Church was the

church father Irenaeus, who wrote the mammoth five-volume 'Against Heresies'.

Irenaeus sums up the distinctive beliefs and practices of the heretical

Ebionites thus:

 

They use the gospel according to Matthew only, and repudiate the apostle Paul,

maintaining that he was an apostate from the Law...[T]hey practice circumcision,

persevere in those customs which are enjoined by the Law, and are so Judaic in

their style of life that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of

God. ('AH'1.26.2)

 

We can see from Irenaeus's description that the Ebionites plainly fit the

criteria of " Jewish Christian. " (p.164) It is quite likely that all of the later

Jewish Christian groups ultimately derived from a Nazirite movement in Jerusalem

in which, as we saw in Acts 21, James was closely involved.

 

Mainstream Anglican scholar Bruce Chilton, one of the organizers of the

international Consultation on James, has come to the conclusions that James was

indeed a Nazirite, that he most likely had at least some connection with this

strict sect, and that this is the most likely reason that Jesus was called Jesus

" of Nazareth " :

 

[M]y suggestion that James was a Nazirite, and saw his brother's movement as

focused on producing more Nazirites, enables us to address an old and as yet

unresolved problem of research. Jesus, bearing a common name, is sometimes

referred to as " of Nazareth " in the Gospels...There is no doubt but that a

geographical reference is involved (see John 1:45-46). But more is going on

here. Jesus is rarely called " of Nazareth " or " from Nazareth " ...He is usually

called " Nazoraean " or " Nazarene. " Why the adjective, and why the uncertainty in

spelling? The Septuagint [the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible] shows us

that there were many different transliterations of " Nazirite " : that reflects

uncertainty as to how to convey the term in Greek...Some of the variants are in

fact very close to what we find used to describe Jesus in the Gospels...

For James and those who were associated with him, Jesus' true identity was

his status as a Nazirite. [18]

 

Conservative scholar, Craig Evans, coeditor with Chilton of the compendium of

research papers 'James the Just and Christian Origins', follows the trail of

evidence to another startling conclusion. He notes some astonishing

commonalities between James and Jesus regarding the reason for their deaths:

 

According to the four New Testament Gospels, Jesus engaged in controversy with

the ruling priests, a controversy which included a demonstration in the Temple

precincts, and was subsequently handed over to the Roman governor, who executed

him as the " king of the Jews. " ...

Although different at points, the fate that overtook James, the brother of

Jesus, is similar...

Jesus had been accused of blasphemy, while James later was accused of being a

lawbreaker. Both were condemned by High Priests--High Priests who were related

by marriage. (P.165) Jesus was handed over to the Roman governor, who complied

with the wishes of the ruling priests, while James was executed without the

approval of Roman authority...In the case of Jesus, Pilate saw warrant in

execution, for a serious political charge could be made (i.e., " king of the

Jews " ). In the case of James, however, evidently no such compelling case could

be made. [19]

 

Of this interesting set of parallels, Evans reaches a conclusion quite

similar to that of John Dominic Crossan:

 

That both brothers, Jesus and James should be done away by Caiaphas and his

brother-in-law Ananus is surely more than mere coincidence. A Davidic

element...complete with devotion to the Temple...and probable criticism of

Temple polity...seems to be the thread that runs throughout.

The line of continuity between Jesus and brother James, the leader of the

Jerusalem church, supports the contention that Jesus and James may very well

have advanced the same agenda over against the Temple establishment, and both

suffered the same fate at the hands of essentially the same people...The

subsequent, partially parallel career of James moves us to view the activities

of his brother Jesus in terms of the Jewish Temple and teachings that his

contemporaries understood as holding serious implications for this sacred

institution. For this reason we must eschew recent faddish scholarship that

minimizes the role of the Temple in the life and ministry of Jesus.

 

In the scholarship of Evans and Crossan, we find another instance of scholars

from the conservative and liberal camps reaching the same conclusion on the

thorough Jewishness of James and Jesus. One of the very few common conclusions

reached by the many scholars engaged in the current quest for the historical

Jesus is that Jesus' arrest and crucifixion were a direct result of his

terroristic protest in the Temple, which is, significantly, one of the few

stories relayed in all four Gospels (Matt. 21:12-17; Mark 11:15-18; Luke

19:45-48; John 2:13-22).

 

According to the synoptic gospels, Jesus was arrested not long after his

attempt to cleanse the Temple. And if Jesus was indeed of the line of David,

this attempt to purify the Temple would have been his royal prerogative. This

was the temple envisioned by David and built by his son, Solomon. (p.166) And

the Temple was the house of God (in Jesus' words, " my Father's house, " as stated

in Luke 2:49 and John 2:16). Jesus and James apparently shared the same agenda

of reforming (or perhaps even doing away with) the corrupt leadership of the

aristocratic ruling Sadducees.

 

And let us not forget that Jesus was executed on the Roman charge of

treason--for claiming to be the " king of the Jews. " While most modern scholars

have eschewed the idea that Jesus was actually of Davidic descent (the generally

accepted idea being that this was a later claim of the early church), the

Davidic ancestry of Jesus is one of the core claims of the New Testament. It is

rather ironic that Jewish scholars have taken the Davidic claim more seriously

than Christian scholars. Again, Hyman Maccoby notes what many Christian scholars

have failed to see:

 

[T]he Gospels say quite distinctly that Jesus founded a Church. Why, then, did

the Apostles of Jerusalem act as if no Church had been founded, and they were

still members of the Jewish religious community? This leads to the further

puzzling question: if Jesus, as the Gospels say, chose Peter as the leader of

the Church, why were the Nazarenes, after Jesus' death, led not by Peter, but by

James...a person who is not even mentioned in the Gospels as a follower of Jesus

in his lifetime? This is the kind of contradiction that, if logically,

considered, can lead us to the true picture of the history of Jesus' movement in

Jerusalem, as opposed to the picture which the later Church wished to propagate.

[20]

 

The two questions that Maccoby puts forth are the main questions we have had

to face in our investigation into the mystery of James. The answers are obvious

when we fully understand the reasons for which Jesus and James were put to

death. Maccoby's explanation is well worth quoting at length as a summary of

where we have arrived in our own investigation:

 

To understand...we must remind ourselves of what Jesus really was. He was not

the founder of a Church, but a claimant to a throne. When Peter...hailed Jesus

as " Messiah, " he was using the word in its Jewish sense, not in the sense it

acquired in the later Christian church. In other words, Peter was hailing Jesus

as King of Israel. Jesus' response was to give Peter his title of " Rock " and to

tell him that he would have " the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. " (p.167) The

meaning of this phrase, in its Jewish context, is quite different from what

later Christian mythology made of it, when it pictured Saint Peter standing at

the gates of Heaven, holding the keys, and deciding which souls might

enter...the reference is not to some paradise in the great beyond, but to the

Messianic kingdom on Earth, of which Jesus had just allowed himself to be

proclaimed King--i.e., the Jewish kingdom, of which the Davidic monarch was

constitutional ruler, while God was the only real King.

By giving Peter the " keys of the kingdom, " Jesus was appointing him to be his

chief minister...

...This explains fully the relationship between Peter and James...in the

movement, and why James suddenly rises to prominence at this point. When Jesus

became King, his family became the royal family, at least for those who believed

in Jesus' claim to the Messiahship. Thus, after his death, his brother James, as

his nearest relative, became his successor; not in the sense that he became King

James, for Jesus was believed to be alive, having been resurrected by a miracle

of God, and to be waiting in the wings for the correct moment to return to the

stage as the Messianic King. James was thus a Prince Regent, occupying the

throne temporarily in the absence of Jesus.

Further proof that this was the situation can be derived from what is known

about other members of Jesus' family. After James...was executed...he was

succeeded by another member of Jesus' family, Simeon, son of Cleophas, who was

Jesus' cousin. This again shows that the structure of the " Jerusalem Church " was

monarchical, rather than ecclesiastical. Moreover, there is evidence that the

Romans saw the matter in this light, for they issued decrees against all the

descendants of the house of David, ordering them to be arrested; and

Simeon...was eventually executed by the Romans as a pretender to the throne of

David.

 

Maccoby's assessment neatly ties together all of the evidence we have

evaluated in our investigation of James. Another controversial Jewish scholar,

Robert Eisenman, summarizes the conclusion our investigation has brought us to

quite succinctly: " Once James has been rescued from the oblivion into which he

has been cast...[it] will...no longer be possible to avoid, through endless

scholarly debate and other evasion syndromes, the obvious solution to the

problem of the Historical Jesus...the answer to which is simple. Who and

whatever James was, so was Jesus. " [21]

 

(p.168) The answer is indeed quite obvious, once one sees the larger picture

that comes into view when all of the puzzle pieces are put together. But the

emergent picture is not easy for many Christians to take in all at once. Now

that we have completed the puzzle, we find ourselves facing a revolutionary (not

to say heretical) paradigm--that not only were James and the apostles thoroughly

Jewish in their beliefs and practice, but so was Jesus: the original orthodoxy

was in fact a strict form of messianic Judaism. And we have been led to this

conclusion, inexorably and step by step, by none other than the brother of the

Messiah himself, James the Just--the unsung hero of Christianity.

 

The Brother of Jesus (And the Lost Teachings of Christianity)

Chapter 8, pg. 161-168

Jeffrey J. Butz

Inner Traditions - Rochester, Vermont

ISBN 1-59477-043-3

 

Notes:

 

[14] Dunn, 'Unity and Diversity', xxix.

 

[15] Ibid., 242.

 

[16] Ibid., 3.

 

[17] Goulder, 'St. Paul versus St. Peter', 108.

 

[18] Bruce Chilton, " James in Relation to Peter, Paul, and Jesus, " in Bruce

Chilton and Jacob Neusner, eds., 'The Brother of Jesus: James the Just and His

Mission' (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 155-56.

 

[19] This excerpt is from Craig A. Evans, " Jesus and James: Martyrs of the

Temple, " in Chilton and Evans, eds., 'James the Just', 233-35; the following

excerpt is from ibid., 249.

 

[20] This and the following extract are from Maccoby, 'The Mythmaker', 120-23.

 

[21] Robert Eisenman, 'James the Brother of Jesus', 963.