Nice overview, Michael! I understand that the bankers' favorite Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, was vocal in his belief that the Jews were God's chosen people. Thanks!
What must yet be understood and rebutted (but can it be?) is the idea that certain prophetic writings in the Old and New Testaments must necessarily involve the nation-state / land mass Israel. For biblical literalists — those who view the scriptural texts as infallible — there can be no fulfillment of the plan of God other than by restoration and no Israel except political Israel since there is only one reading possible of these various texts. Supercessionists largely are not “flat Bible”
adherents and not controlled by any given text and therefore may miss this epistemological point. I daresay most Christian Zionists are motivated not by warm relationships with Jews or the appeal of restorationism but by largely unchallenged beliefs about the prophetic passages in their holy Book. No challenge to the authority of the Book, no humanizing literary critique or relativistic analysis, will sway them. The historical Jesus rather than the interpretations given to him would be dispositive, but Paul and his disciples made that impossible for this camp. Perhaps a literalist Paul-friendly treatment compatible with replacement theology has been written but if so I’m not aware of it.
Fantastic summary, Dr Rectenwald! God bless you - I hope your heart surgery and following recovery go smoothly. There is so much more you can contribute, I am sure, in exploring this subject. And I pray God gives you many more days on Earth to do so!
I would argue that the Judaizing of Christianity began with the writing of the gospel of Matthew by an anti-Pauline 'Christian' then Luke and Acts trying to reconcile everything. Consider the Epistle of Barnabas which I discuss in my book "From Paul to Mark". Paul was clearly done with Judaism and the gospel of Mark makes this abundantly clear for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. BUT, Paul did try the Universalist/unifying approach. Barnabas was written in objection to the Judaizing movement taking over. Barnabas declares that the covenant promises belong only to the Christians (4:6–8). Circumcision and the entire Jewish sacrificial and ceremonial system are due to misunderstanding. Jewish scriptures, rightly understood, contain no such injunctions (chapters 9–10). In places, the author comes across as Paul-on-steroids reinterpreting the Torah.
When Marcion came along, he suspected that the teachings of Jesus and Paul had been enveloped by a Judaizing development in the Christian movement. What if Marcion was right? What if Paul’s letters were touched up in order to incorporate his ideas and authority into a wing of the Christian movement that did not agree with some of his more radical positions, such as we see with the editorial maneuvers of Matthew in respect of Mark?
The Matthean evangelist used about 90% of the Gospel of Mark in the composition of his text. David O. Smith’s "Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul" exposes undeniable evidence that the author of Mark used the epistles of Paul as well. And yet, as David Sim shows, Matthew was clearly un-Pauline and represented a type of Christianity that was completely uninfluenced by Paul. Yet, he used Mark and reveals pretty clearly that he was not favorably disposed toward him either! It appears that the ‘first evangelist’ (in order in the NT, not in order in time), wrote his own Gospel with the intention of replacing Mark completely.
Michael D. Goulder and Thomas L. Brodie thought that Paul was an authority for Matthew. However, Sim concludes that Matthew was not just un-Pauline; he was openly anti-Pauline and his utilization of Paul was to refute, not confirm, his ideas. In this, Sim is following S.G.F. Brandon, who proposed that Matthew’s Gospel critiqued Paul on several points. Brandon, a classical historian using standard historical methods in his analysis, was soundly ripped to shreds by Congregationalist minister and Professor of New Testament studies William D. Davies; for the NT crowd, that was good enough, so the topic faded into obscurity until Ulrich Luz came along in 1993. Luz claimed that Matthew stood very close to the ‘Judaisers’ who opposed Paul in Galatia, but did not think that the Gospel contained any anti-Paul polemic. He noted that Paul and Matthew apparently agreed on many points, such as the priority of Grace, the theology of works, righteousness, love as the core of the Law, and the universality of faith in Christ.
Sim states that it is only natural for Paul and Matthew to agree, since they were both Christians and “followers of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they jointly regarded as Messiah and Lord, as crucified and vindicated, as the fulfiller of the ancient prophecies, and now residing in heaven with all power and authority until his triumphant return at the judgement.”
But is it really that simple? All the evidence suggest a very different scenario: that there was no ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ he was simply a creation of Mark’s designed to allegorize Paul’s life and theology, with Paul’s Christ dimly in the background, represented by a Jewish peripatetic messianic healer loosely based on Judas the Galilean, and the whole project was intended to reconcile Gentile and Jewish Christians at a time fraught with peril because of the latter’s association with the rebel Zealots who opposed Rome and brought on the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple there. So how can it be said that Matthew’s Christ and Paul’s Christ were one and the same person?
I would suggest that it was certainly true that Matthew belonged to another Christian tradition, the very one that opposed Paul, but that he was at least a generation after Mark. Matthew was also certainly aware of what Mark had done in writing his Gospel and generally approved of the tactic, even if he did not agree with the theology. And so, he took the project even further into myth by creating a birth story that began with a most interesting genealogy that began – surprise, surprise! – with Abraham, the same figure that most crucially interested Paul in his own arguments for the Gentiles being the seed of Abraham.
Luz acknowledged that the major issue that separated Paul and Matthew was the role of the Torah. Considering the fact that this was the very issue that divided Paul from the Jerusalem Christians and led Paul to state that they worshipped another Christ and were enemies of the cross, I don’t think it is safe to assume that Matthew was even writing about the same ‘Jesus,’ even if he was using Mark as his platform.
It wasn’t just an argument over Torah; it was an argument over who Christ really was, and Matthew knew the differences and sought to replace a story that was gaining ground with a different version that was at least theologically more acceptable, even if he knew that he still could not tell the truth about the messiah of the Jerusalem Christians: that he was supposed to have come with legions of angels to destroy Rome, but had failed to show up and the destruction of Jerusalem could be laid at the door of the Christians there, Zealots all. So I don’t think it was a matter of a common commitment to the same messiah.
In a 1998 monograph, Sim argued that Matthew and Paul stood on different sides of the early Christian factional dispute and, further, that Matthew, in his Gospel, included critiques of the Law-free theology of Paul, on full display in Mark. You could say he was fighting fire with fire. In the years since, Sim has continued to work on his arguments, summarizing them as follows:
The triad of sayings in Matt 5:17-19, whereby Jesus dispels the notion that he has abolished the Torah and affirms that every part of the Law is to be obeyed, is a clear refutation of the Pauline position that the Torah was only a temporary measure that has been brought to an end by Christ (cf. Gal 3:23-25; Rom 10:4).
The eschatological scenario in Matt 7:21-23, in which Jesus condemns those who call him Lord because of their lawlessness, is a strict condemnation of Law-free Christians and recalls Pauline passages such as Rom 10:9-10 and 1 Cor 12:3. Likewise, the material created by Matthew in 13:26-43 makes the point that the Law-free Christian tradition has its origin in Satan and its members will be punished in the fires of Gehenna.
The evangelist also confronts the issue of the leadership of the early Christian movement. While Mark presents the future leaders of the Jerusalem church, the disciples and the family of Jesus, in a very poor light, Matthew rehabilitates both groups. In the heavily edited material in 16:17-19, Jesus proclaims the supremacy of Peter as the head of the church using the very language and motifs that Paul employs when referring to his own divine call and mission (Gal 1:12-17). At the end of the Gospel the risen Christ commissions the disciples to lead and oversee both the Jewish and Gentile missions (28:16-20), which completely undercuts Paul’s constant claim to have been appointed the apostle to the Gentiles (e.g. Rom 15:16; Gal 1:16).
Sim’s point is to show that Matthew didn’t just differ from Paul (and Mark), but that he was consciously responding to, and criticizing, particular claims and theological positions that are clearly Pauline. There are parallels and intertextual echoes between certain Pauline texts and Matthean texts. Thus, there appears to be no doubt that Paul’s letters were available to the author of Matthew, and that Matthew was rather hostile toward Paul.
Anti-Zionist Christians claim that the term “Judeo-Christianity” is a misnomer?
The very notion of Messiah is Jewish, and presupposes that Israel is God’s chosen nation. From the Jewish point of view, Christianity is a heretical Judaism.
Christians agree with Jews that God had revealed Himself uniquely to Abraham, Jacob and Moses—while all other civilisations, Romans included, were devil-worshippers—, and that God planned to send the Messiah to Israel.
The only disagreement is about the Messiah. If Jesus Christ, besides being the Son of God, is Israel’s Messiah, then truly, “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22).
To the extent that people are Christians, they are Judeo-Christians. The only Christians who were not Judeo- were those who rejected the Old Testament, like the Manichean Faustus who called Augustine a half-Christian because he worshipped the Jewish god
Christianity is Jewish infiltration of Roman civilisation from the start.
In his Epistle to the Romans, certainly one the most influential texts in the New Testament, Paul asserts that God’s promise to Israel is eternal and that the Jews “are still well loved for the sake of their ancestors. There is no change of mind on God’s part about the gifts he has made or of his choice”.
More and more anti-Zionist Christians will find themselves forced to choose between being anti-Zionists or being Christians, realising that you cannot defeat Jewish Power by telling Jews that they “used to” be chosen by their DNA, but “no longer”.
Really good, really frightening explanation. But praise the Lord; His will be done.
\\][//
Nice overview, Michael! I understand that the bankers' favorite Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, was vocal in his belief that the Jews were God's chosen people. Thanks!
EXCELLENT!!!
What must yet be understood and rebutted (but can it be?) is the idea that certain prophetic writings in the Old and New Testaments must necessarily involve the nation-state / land mass Israel. For biblical literalists — those who view the scriptural texts as infallible — there can be no fulfillment of the plan of God other than by restoration and no Israel except political Israel since there is only one reading possible of these various texts. Supercessionists largely are not “flat Bible”
adherents and not controlled by any given text and therefore may miss this epistemological point. I daresay most Christian Zionists are motivated not by warm relationships with Jews or the appeal of restorationism but by largely unchallenged beliefs about the prophetic passages in their holy Book. No challenge to the authority of the Book, no humanizing literary critique or relativistic analysis, will sway them. The historical Jesus rather than the interpretations given to him would be dispositive, but Paul and his disciples made that impossible for this camp. Perhaps a literalist Paul-friendly treatment compatible with replacement theology has been written but if so I’m not aware of it.
Fantastic summary, Dr Rectenwald! God bless you - I hope your heart surgery and following recovery go smoothly. There is so much more you can contribute, I am sure, in exploring this subject. And I pray God gives you many more days on Earth to do so!
Good post. As I read it, it strikes me... How can 𝙖𝙣𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 actually believe and cling to all this religious BS? And stake their very life on it?
SMH...
I would argue that the Judaizing of Christianity began with the writing of the gospel of Matthew by an anti-Pauline 'Christian' then Luke and Acts trying to reconcile everything. Consider the Epistle of Barnabas which I discuss in my book "From Paul to Mark". Paul was clearly done with Judaism and the gospel of Mark makes this abundantly clear for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. BUT, Paul did try the Universalist/unifying approach. Barnabas was written in objection to the Judaizing movement taking over. Barnabas declares that the covenant promises belong only to the Christians (4:6–8). Circumcision and the entire Jewish sacrificial and ceremonial system are due to misunderstanding. Jewish scriptures, rightly understood, contain no such injunctions (chapters 9–10). In places, the author comes across as Paul-on-steroids reinterpreting the Torah.
When Marcion came along, he suspected that the teachings of Jesus and Paul had been enveloped by a Judaizing development in the Christian movement. What if Marcion was right? What if Paul’s letters were touched up in order to incorporate his ideas and authority into a wing of the Christian movement that did not agree with some of his more radical positions, such as we see with the editorial maneuvers of Matthew in respect of Mark?
The Matthean evangelist used about 90% of the Gospel of Mark in the composition of his text. David O. Smith’s "Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul" exposes undeniable evidence that the author of Mark used the epistles of Paul as well. And yet, as David Sim shows, Matthew was clearly un-Pauline and represented a type of Christianity that was completely uninfluenced by Paul. Yet, he used Mark and reveals pretty clearly that he was not favorably disposed toward him either! It appears that the ‘first evangelist’ (in order in the NT, not in order in time), wrote his own Gospel with the intention of replacing Mark completely.
Michael D. Goulder and Thomas L. Brodie thought that Paul was an authority for Matthew. However, Sim concludes that Matthew was not just un-Pauline; he was openly anti-Pauline and his utilization of Paul was to refute, not confirm, his ideas. In this, Sim is following S.G.F. Brandon, who proposed that Matthew’s Gospel critiqued Paul on several points. Brandon, a classical historian using standard historical methods in his analysis, was soundly ripped to shreds by Congregationalist minister and Professor of New Testament studies William D. Davies; for the NT crowd, that was good enough, so the topic faded into obscurity until Ulrich Luz came along in 1993. Luz claimed that Matthew stood very close to the ‘Judaisers’ who opposed Paul in Galatia, but did not think that the Gospel contained any anti-Paul polemic. He noted that Paul and Matthew apparently agreed on many points, such as the priority of Grace, the theology of works, righteousness, love as the core of the Law, and the universality of faith in Christ.
Sim states that it is only natural for Paul and Matthew to agree, since they were both Christians and “followers of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they jointly regarded as Messiah and Lord, as crucified and vindicated, as the fulfiller of the ancient prophecies, and now residing in heaven with all power and authority until his triumphant return at the judgement.”
But is it really that simple? All the evidence suggest a very different scenario: that there was no ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ he was simply a creation of Mark’s designed to allegorize Paul’s life and theology, with Paul’s Christ dimly in the background, represented by a Jewish peripatetic messianic healer loosely based on Judas the Galilean, and the whole project was intended to reconcile Gentile and Jewish Christians at a time fraught with peril because of the latter’s association with the rebel Zealots who opposed Rome and brought on the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple there. So how can it be said that Matthew’s Christ and Paul’s Christ were one and the same person?
I would suggest that it was certainly true that Matthew belonged to another Christian tradition, the very one that opposed Paul, but that he was at least a generation after Mark. Matthew was also certainly aware of what Mark had done in writing his Gospel and generally approved of the tactic, even if he did not agree with the theology. And so, he took the project even further into myth by creating a birth story that began with a most interesting genealogy that began – surprise, surprise! – with Abraham, the same figure that most crucially interested Paul in his own arguments for the Gentiles being the seed of Abraham.
Luz acknowledged that the major issue that separated Paul and Matthew was the role of the Torah. Considering the fact that this was the very issue that divided Paul from the Jerusalem Christians and led Paul to state that they worshipped another Christ and were enemies of the cross, I don’t think it is safe to assume that Matthew was even writing about the same ‘Jesus,’ even if he was using Mark as his platform.
It wasn’t just an argument over Torah; it was an argument over who Christ really was, and Matthew knew the differences and sought to replace a story that was gaining ground with a different version that was at least theologically more acceptable, even if he knew that he still could not tell the truth about the messiah of the Jerusalem Christians: that he was supposed to have come with legions of angels to destroy Rome, but had failed to show up and the destruction of Jerusalem could be laid at the door of the Christians there, Zealots all. So I don’t think it was a matter of a common commitment to the same messiah.
In a 1998 monograph, Sim argued that Matthew and Paul stood on different sides of the early Christian factional dispute and, further, that Matthew, in his Gospel, included critiques of the Law-free theology of Paul, on full display in Mark. You could say he was fighting fire with fire. In the years since, Sim has continued to work on his arguments, summarizing them as follows:
The triad of sayings in Matt 5:17-19, whereby Jesus dispels the notion that he has abolished the Torah and affirms that every part of the Law is to be obeyed, is a clear refutation of the Pauline position that the Torah was only a temporary measure that has been brought to an end by Christ (cf. Gal 3:23-25; Rom 10:4).
The eschatological scenario in Matt 7:21-23, in which Jesus condemns those who call him Lord because of their lawlessness, is a strict condemnation of Law-free Christians and recalls Pauline passages such as Rom 10:9-10 and 1 Cor 12:3. Likewise, the material created by Matthew in 13:26-43 makes the point that the Law-free Christian tradition has its origin in Satan and its members will be punished in the fires of Gehenna.
The evangelist also confronts the issue of the leadership of the early Christian movement. While Mark presents the future leaders of the Jerusalem church, the disciples and the family of Jesus, in a very poor light, Matthew rehabilitates both groups. In the heavily edited material in 16:17-19, Jesus proclaims the supremacy of Peter as the head of the church using the very language and motifs that Paul employs when referring to his own divine call and mission (Gal 1:12-17). At the end of the Gospel the risen Christ commissions the disciples to lead and oversee both the Jewish and Gentile missions (28:16-20), which completely undercuts Paul’s constant claim to have been appointed the apostle to the Gentiles (e.g. Rom 15:16; Gal 1:16).
Sim’s point is to show that Matthew didn’t just differ from Paul (and Mark), but that he was consciously responding to, and criticizing, particular claims and theological positions that are clearly Pauline. There are parallels and intertextual echoes between certain Pauline texts and Matthean texts. Thus, there appears to be no doubt that Paul’s letters were available to the author of Matthew, and that Matthew was rather hostile toward Paul.
related interesting post
https://substack.com/home/post/p-193913303
Anti-Zionist Christians claim that the term “Judeo-Christianity” is a misnomer?
The very notion of Messiah is Jewish, and presupposes that Israel is God’s chosen nation. From the Jewish point of view, Christianity is a heretical Judaism.
Christians agree with Jews that God had revealed Himself uniquely to Abraham, Jacob and Moses—while all other civilisations, Romans included, were devil-worshippers—, and that God planned to send the Messiah to Israel.
The only disagreement is about the Messiah. If Jesus Christ, besides being the Son of God, is Israel’s Messiah, then truly, “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22).
To the extent that people are Christians, they are Judeo-Christians. The only Christians who were not Judeo- were those who rejected the Old Testament, like the Manichean Faustus who called Augustine a half-Christian because he worshipped the Jewish god
Christianity is Jewish infiltration of Roman civilisation from the start.
In his Epistle to the Romans, certainly one the most influential texts in the New Testament, Paul asserts that God’s promise to Israel is eternal and that the Jews “are still well loved for the sake of their ancestors. There is no change of mind on God’s part about the gifts he has made or of his choice”.
More and more anti-Zionist Christians will find themselves forced to choose between being anti-Zionists or being Christians, realising that you cannot defeat Jewish Power by telling Jews that they “used to” be chosen by their DNA, but “no longer”.
I think I have some sort of impediment, in a literary sense; -
a dyslexia in a prosaic observation of good, or "qualitative"
writing. I feel compelled to comment before I've even read
the article; - and this is in a common sense; - and given
imputational logic, - to reason, and rationale. I, of course,
don't know the ethical guidelines in this respect, [sic] if it is
anything outside of what's considered, or supposed to be
substantively, if not culturally or customarily moral. The
didactic imposition is not one of functional knowledge, or
information, primarily. These are all disclamations
in respect of the "clerical error," - and as far as gossip goes,
I guess that speaks for itself. I'm trying to brainstorm the topic,
without getting so totally submersed in it, that I can't get out
or maneuver in it. I'm not sure if this is the best way to go about it; -
haphazardly and without necessary "order." On this particular topic,
the greatest particular óbject of it is in the Christian transference
of specific principles that are incompatible with the indomitable
American ethic of "the separation of church and state." The Jewish
imperative in an absence of Christ creates a hollow in the paradigmatic
Christian spirit that allows for a holistic approach to the Universe.
In its absence the foundational premise upon which the United States
is founded is left in a sort of "protestant" void, that knows only the
assumptions of Islam, Judaism, and the Tao, or Buddhism.
So you think it’s a Christian cult that’s really pulling the levers here?
No, Michael is revealing a Zionist cult that includes pathological Jews and misguided Christians.
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A cults a cult, I guess.