The New Understanding Regarding the Gentiles:
It is my contention as I have already intimated, that the Apostle
Paul was the first Israelite to be given the revelation that Gentiles now could
become ‘joint heirs’, that is, members of the Kingdom with equal status to the
natural born children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (without becoming
Jews, that is, without proselytization). If the generally accepted chronologies
are correct, Paul was given this revelation around 33-35 CE. It would not be
until around 45 CE that the Apostle Peter would have the same revelation
directly confirmed to him through the Cornelius episode. This new revelation
was then confirmed by the leaders of the Messianic community around 49 CE with
the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15)[1].
Two portions of Paul’s epistles that speak of this new revelation
are Ephesians 3 and Col 1:25-27.
“It is a consequence of
this that I, Paul, am a prisoner of the Messiah Yeshua on behalf of you
Gentiles. 2 I assume that you have heard of the work God in his grace has given
me to do for your benefit, 3 and that it was by a revelation that this secret
plan was made known to me. I have already written about it briefly, 4 and if
you read what I have written, you will grasp how I understand this secret plan
concerning the Messiah. 5 In past generations it was not made known to mankind,
as the Spirit is now revealing it to his emissaries and prophets, 6 that in union with the Messiah and through
the Good News (of the Kingdom of
God) the Gentiles were to be joint
heirs, a joint body and joint sharers with the Jews in what God has
promised.” - Ephesians
3:1-6
“I have become its
servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness -- the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages
and generations, but is now disclosed to
the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the
glorious riches of this mystery, which is Messiah
Yeshua in you, the hope of glory.” - Col 1:25-27
You will note here that Paul is speaking to Gentiles; that he is
arguing that it was by direct revelation and not purely from the study of the
Tanakh, that Paul was made aware of this ‘end-times’ plan, of how Gentiles
could become equal members of the Kingdom of God, thanks to the crucifixion and
resurrection of Yeshua.
We also see that Paul believed his was he was empowered as an
agent or emissary (Hebrew = ‘shaliach’, translated to ‘apostle’ in English) to
the Gentiles.
This new revelation that Gentiles, who were joining the Jewish
communities and becoming part of sub-groups who believed that Yeshua was the
Messiah, were to remain Gentiles, was a most difficult challenge because of the
societal protocols and expectations by both the Roman administration as well as
the Jewish communities.
If this is the correct understanding of Paul’s revelation; we
would expect him to primarily spend his energies convincing the God-fearing
Gentiles (who by definition were already attending synagogues) to more fully
participate in the Jewish communities they had some relationship with. At the
same time, this new revelation changed nothing in terms of how the Jewish
people were to relate to God through their covenants and their Torah observant
lifestyles.
Thus we would expect to see/read of Paul encouraging Jews to
maintain their Jewishness and Gentiles to join their Jewish communities in
observing the commandments but doing so without the rites of proselytization.
Even a cursory view of the history of Rome and its provinces at
the time will indicate that such a situation would be most difficult. The
Jewish people had special dispensation to avoid the standard cultic ceremonies
and means by which the Roman people worshipped and paid homage to the ‘gods’ of
Rome. Part of this ‘deal’ involved a daily tax to Rome at the Temple in
Jerusalem. While, it had been acceptable for Gentiles to attend the Synagogue
on the Sabbath where possible, they were still expected to observe all the
cultic practices of the Roman ‘religion’.
To now follow Paul’s lead and have these Gentiles become Jewish in
their practices and religious observances without being able to claim the
special Jewish dispensation was hugely problematic. It was a problem for the
Jewish communities because it threatened their special status, as well as a
problem for the Gentiles who were now being ‘disobedient’ in their behaviour
and even in their homes, to their Roman ‘religion’.
No wonder Paul called these Jewish and Gentile followers of Yeshua
in Rome ‘strong’, as they would both have faced some serious opposition!
What is the historical evidence for this situation, this very new situation
that would have brought considerable societal disruption? While Prof. Mark
Nanos spends some considerable time addressing this evidence, I will only
briefly touch on it here. I do most strongly recommend Nanos’ ‘The
Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letters’ for great
detail on this evidence and approach.
I will just give a few examples for now:
Here is a excerpt from a commentary on Tacitus, a Romans Historian
(65 – 120 CE) wrote about Nero’s fire of 64 CE:
“Rome
was destroyed by fire in July 64; Tacitus' story suggests that the Christians
were killed in the same summer. The early Christian tradition adds some
details, such as the decapitation of Paul and the crucifixion of Peter. There
is no reason to be skeptical about these traditions, although it must be noted
that there was a very old tradition that Paul was executed in Hispania (First
letter of Clement 5.7).
Why
did Nero blame the Christians? The answer may be that they were living near the
place where the fire started: the eastern part of the Circus Maximus. It should
be noted that the first Roman Christians
were Jews and probably lived with the other Jews. (The separation of Judaism
and Christianity probably took place in the second quarter of the second
century CE.) One of the Jewish quarters in Rome was just east of the
Circus, near the Capena Gate. It is described by the Roman author Juvenal as a
slum area:…
That there were Christians living among the Jewish proletariat, is
also suggested by the presence of a very ancient church, the SS. Nereo ed
Achilleo, which is, in a venerably old legend, connected with Peter's last days.
Both
the Capena Gate and this church are situated on the Appian Road, which was also
connected with the last days of Peter. So, there were Jews living near the
place where the fire started, and there was another reason to suspect the
people near the Capena Gate: their part of the city was not destroyed by the
fire. But Nero could never punished the Jews of Rome: there were thousands of
them. The Christians, on the other hand, were an easy target.
Moreover,
there may have been some element of distorted truth in the accusation, because
the Christians believed that Rome would be destroyed during Christ's return.
They must have responded enthusiastically when they saw "Babylon"
burning, and in fact, Tacitus tells us that at least some of them pleaded
guilty, i.e. admitted something that their interlocutors interpreted as a
confession.” - from http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/christianity/tacitus.html
And: “The result of this was that to almost every one of the Jewish communities of the dispersion
there was attached a following of “God-fearing” Gentiles who adopted the Jewish
(i.e. .... the monotheistic and imageless) mode of worship, attended the Jewish
synagogues, but who, in the observance of the ceremonial law. restricted
themselves to certain leading points, and so were regarded as outside the
fellowship of the Jewish communities. …
Now
if we ask ourselves what those points of the ceremonial law were which these
Gentiles observed, we will find them plainly enough indicated in the passages
already quoted from Josephus, Juvenal,
and Tertullian. All three agree in this, that it was the Jewish observance of
the Sabbath and the prescriptions with regard to meats that were in most
general favour within the circles in question.” P314
Schurer “The Jewish People in the Times of Jesus”.
Note that Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal,
was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century
CE.
In
this respect, Juvenal is a good example, for his words
display some of the derision felt by most ‘elite Roman’ pagans with respect to
Jewish rituals: “There were three things
in particular which the educated world of the time made the butt of its jeers,
viz. the abstinence from the use of swine’s flesh, the strict observance of the
Sabbath, and the worship without images.
While
in Plutarch it is seriously debated whether the abstinence from the use of
swine’s flesh may not be due to the fact of divine honours being paid to this
animal, Juvenal again jokes about the land where “the clemency of the days of
old has accorded to pigs the privilege of living to a good old age,” and where
“swine’s flesh is as much valued as that of man.”
Then
as for the observance of the Sabbath, the satirist can see nothing in it but
indolence and sloth, while he looks upon Jewish worship as being merely an
adoring of the clouds and the skies.
It would appear again that contemporaries with
a philosophical training had, in like manner, no appreciation whatever of the
worshipping of God in spirit”. Schurer
ibid p295.
This would certainly indicate that the Gentile elite would not be
impressed with any gentiles who became God-fearers and started observing these
‘rituals’.
The following references are from ‘The Mystery of Romans’ by Mark Nanos: E. Judge and G. Thomas, in ‘The Origin of the Church at Rome’,
observe similarly that those addressed
in Romans are still meeting under the umbrella of the synagogues rather than
forming their own church (p. 91)
J.
Ziesler, ‘Paul's letter to the Romans’, p. 18: ‘The Romans as a church had some sort of relationship with the
synagogue’
Brown
and Meier, ‘Antioch and Rome’, argue throughout that the dominant Christianity at Rome had been shaped by the Jerusalem
Christianity associated with James and Peter, and hence was a Christianity
appreciative of Judaism and loyal to its customs (p. 110)
Cited
by Wedderburn, Reasons, p. 51. Cf. Brown and Meier, Antioch and Rome, pp.
110-11.’In fact, it is possible that the
Christians in Rome continued to be part of the Jewish communities and
synagogues for a long time as there arc several references to synagogue
meetings in “Shepherd of Hermas” (ca. 100-140 CE)’
So I hope that these few references may at least offer some
evidence of the proposition that the Gentile believers in Yeshua were not only
joining the Jewish communities as much as possible, but that their inclusion as
‘uncircumcised’ members would have created considerable tension and debate,
that can be seen very clearly in Paul’s letters when approached from this
perspective.
Next: Part 5 - Conflicting Evidence
Or get the whole book from here http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Apostle-Paul-Weighing-ebook/dp/B009TLLK0U/
[1] See my ‘Circumcision: A Step of
Obedience?’ article for details on this - at www.circumcisedheart.info http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Apostle-Paul-Weighing-ebook/dp/B009TLLK0U/
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