As strange as it may seem, many of the practices of sincere Christians are incompatible with the teachings of Scripture. This is because traditional Christianity takes its doctrine and practice from the Greco-Roman orthodoxy of the second century and later, rather than tracing its history, beliefs and practices to the original Christianity of the first-century Jerusalem Church. So what role did the Jerusalem Church play in informing the first Christians and what practices did they follow? How did their beliefs and practices differ from those introduced in the second century? And how did Greco-Roman orthodoxy end up gaining ascendancy and control of the early Christian movement? Scripture reveals the startling answers.
The Apostles’ Doctrine
Prior to 70 CE, the Church of God at Jerusalem — the seat of Judeo-Christianity — remained the center of operations for the whole Church worldwide. During this time, the cultural heritage of Christendom remained decidedly Judeo-Christian. As virtually every biblical historian readily admits, the first-century Christians of Jerusalem observed the seventh-day Sabbath, the annual holy days and the Ten Commandments, just as Jesus Himself had set the example. The believers referred to their fellowship as the Church of God, in Hebrew qehal’el, the contraction of qehal ha-elohim (Assembly of God), understanding it to be the company elect of God and determined by God to be the center and crystallization-point of eschatological Israel.
The congregation at Jerusalem was the very first Christian church known as “the mother of all churches.” It had its beginnings on Sun., June 17, 31 CE, the first Pentecost of the New Testament era. Believers looked to the Church at Jerusalem as the headquarters church. It was initially taught and guided by the original twelve Apostles, and later presided over by James, a half-brother of Jesus of Nazareth. If any Christians could be expected to have firsthand knowledge of what Jesus Christ actually said and did, it would be these. Even the New Testament itself is the product of their work.
The apostles Peter and John took responsibility for assembling, editing and sanctioning specific writings of their own, in addition to those of their associates John Mark, Luke, James and Jude, as scripture for the Church. They did not let this task rest with Christians of later generations or with Christian groups not in fellowship with the Church of God as overseen by the apostles themselves and their immediate successors. Late in the first century, the Apostle John wrote the Apocalypse (our book of Revelation), the last authoritative book to be given to the Church by the apostles, thus completing the canon of the New Testament (Warfield “The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible 1959:415).
The twenty-seven writings of the New Testament constituted, together with the Hebrew Scriptures, the complete set of scriptures for the Church. These writings provide the people of God with a means of knowing or recalling the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles for all time (see Ogwyn “How Did We Get the Bible?” Tomorrow’s World (4:1) 2002:27.
In ca. 68 CE, when Peter wrote his second epistle, he knew his death was near. He said that the time and manner of his death would be “just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me” (2 Peter 1:14). He then disclosed his intent to bequeath to the Church a legacy far greater than his two short epistles. “Moreover,” he wrote, “I will see to it that after I am gone you will have means of remembering these things at all times” (2 Peter 1:15 NEB). The Expositor’s Greek Testament states that Peter was about to leave “some systematic body of instruction” (Robertson The Expositor’s Greek Testament, Vol. 5, 1956:129). Peter was in process of assembling a permanent written reminder of apostolic teachings—the New Testament—to inform future generations of the Gospel and the Christian Way of Life.
The Apostle Peter, however, was not the only one involved in establishing this permanent compendium of the Apostles’ doctrines, as evidenced by the references to “we” in 2 Peter 1:16-19. Notice verse 18: “And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain” i.e., the Mount of Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:18 cf. Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36). We who? The brothers James and John were with Peter on that mount. But by the time Peter wrote his second epistle, James had been martyred, which left John as the only Apostle beside Peter who had been there to hear the voice.
Peter’s death ca. 68 CE left John as the last remaining Apostle of the original twelve—at least as far as we know. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the others were still alive at that point. As the only surviving original Apostle, John became Peter’s legitimate successor, responsible for the overseeing of the church-at-large and the task of completing the New Testament. In fulfilling his charge, he penned his gospel account, three epistles, and finally Revelation.
Paul Looked to Jerusalem
The Apostle Paul taught his converts to look to Judea and the Jerusalem Church for their example, and specifically commended the Thessalonian brethren for doing so (1 Thessalonians 1:6-7; 2:14). When points of controversy arose early in his ministry, he and Barnabas brought them to the Apostles and elders in Jerusalem, looking to the leaders in the “mother” church for clarification (Acts 15:2). Paul consistently pointed his Gentile converts to Judeo-Christianity and the Jerusalem Church, not to some “new” approach taught elsewhere! He was readily identified in the Gentile world as a Jew who taught Romans to abandon their pagan practices and follow Judeo-Christian customs (Acts 16:19-21).
In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul tells of a private visit he made to Jerusalem after being inspired to do so in a revelation. He travelled to the headquarters Jerusalem Church to privately confer with James, Peter, and John and “set before them the gospel” that he preached to the Gentiles. He did so because he wanted to make sure that he was not erring in what he preached, or running “in vain” (Galatians 2:1-2; cf. Philippians 2:16). In the epistle, Paul recounted his efforts to present his ministry to the Apostles for their review and agreement, who confirmed his teaching as identical to their own.
The Apostle Paul did not teach a Gospel contrary to that of Jesus Christ. To the Christians at Corinth he wrote: “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). He said: “I urge you, imitate me. For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church” (1 Corinthians 4:16-17).
Perhaps the most significant example of the Apostle Paul pointing to the leadership of the original Church is found in Colossians at 2:16-17. Paul wrote his epistle to the Colossians while under house arrest at Rome sometime around 61 CE after learning that Essene Jews had disrupted the Colossian congregation (New Bible Commentary 1994:1261; McDaniel Combating the Rhetoric of Essenism, A Paper Submitted to the National Communication Association 2008).
The Apostle instructed the Colossians not to allow these intruders to judge the congregation with respect to holy days, that is, those Sabbath days which are a shadow of things to come (Colossians 2:16). It is important to note that the Essenes significantly differed with the leadership of the early Church of God regarding the issues outlined in Colossians 2:16 — eating, drinking, festivals, new moons and holy days. The calendar used by the Essenes was not that followed by the early Church, nor did it abide by the dietary practices advanced by the Essenes, nor did it observe the Essenes annual Sabbaths.
At issue was the “Sabbath days which are a mere shadow of what is to come” (i.e. annual Sabbaths with prophetic symbolic meaning for Christians), not the weekly Sabbath. At that time the weekly Sabbath was the common day of worship for traditional Jews, Essene Jews, and the Church. For all three groups, this day of corporate worship extended from sunset Friday night to sunset Saturday night.
The point made by the Apostle Paul was that in such matters the local congregation was not to let anyone, and in particular the Essenes, judge them about the keeping of the annual Sabbaths, but (or, except for) the “body of Christ” (Colossians 2:17, see marginal notes in the NASB). Paul was claiming the right of the apostolic church to be their judge, not Essene Jews.
Now, in the immediate context of Colossians and the greater context of the rest of the Apostle Paul’s writings, to what does the metaphor “the body of Christ” refer?
In his epistles the Apostle Paul consistently utilized the metaphor of the “body of Christ” as being the qehal’el (Greek: ekklesia), that is the “Church of God” (see 1 Corinthians 12:12–28; Ephesians 1:22–23, 4:12; 5:30; Colossians 1:18; 1:24; 2:17–19; 3:14-15). How can we understand this phrase in any other way without violating the biblical text? We can’t. The context, specifically in Colossians itself, requires that the metaphor “body of Christ” in Colossians 2:16-17 refers to the original apostolic Church under the leadership of the Apostles themselves.
This normative authority of the Apostles and their headquarters Church in Jerusalem is available to us today in the apostolic anthology we call the New Testament.
Apostasy Troubles the East
During the inter-war period, from 73-132 CE., Christianity became increasingly Greco-Romanized as more and more Gentiles became Hellenistic Christians. By 135 CE about one in every four Christians in the Diaspora was of Gentile descent. The Hellenistic form of Judeo-Christianity, though challenged by the rise of splinter and dissident groups, remained a significant force in the Greek speaking East. It was especially vigorous in Asia Minor with its substantial Jewish population.
During the First Jewish War (66-73 CE), when Peter wrote his second epistle, he warned the brethren in Asia Minor that “there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber” (2 Peter 2:1-3, emphasis added). The Apostle Peter warned of a coming apostasy (a deliberate rejection or abandonment of the truth of God after it is known). In the epistle of Jude you see his words fulfilled!
As we place the writing of Second Peter at ca. 68 CE and Jude at ca. 85-90 CE, two decades had passed between the writing of these epistles, providing ample time for the apostasy to reach full bloom. Jude reports: “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). He then says, “But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts” (Jude 17-18). It is no wonder that Jude implored his readers to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3, emphasis added).
In the messages to the seven congregations in Asia Minor, set forth in Revelation 2-3, we see a description of these Judeo-Christian congregations in ca. 96 CE, with comments about their spiritual circumstances. Some of them were clearly embroiled in the controversy instigated by false teachers and dissidents. This attack by Satan should come as no surprise. The Bible pictures the Church as a woman—Christ’s virgin bride (2 Corinthians 11:2, Revelation 19:7-8) and we find a description of Satan’s attempt to make war with the “woman”—the Church—later on in Revelation 12.
A Differing Christianity Arises in the West
Christianity in the west also began to take on a significantly different character due in part, to the following:
1. The remoteness of the Latin western churches from Jerusalem and its Judeo-Christian authority figures and leadership, plus their leaders’ reliance on the swelling assumption that Peter and Paul vested the church at Rome with its own doctrinal truth and authority;
2. The Jewish population in the Latin-speaking western part of the Roman empire was fairly small and scattered, and clustered in Jewish neighborhoods of Roman cities and settlements; hence Gentile Christians in the region were less familiar with basic Jewish traditions and the essentials of Judeo-Christianity;
3. A rapidly expanding belief system based upon dreams, hearsay (oral traditions), philosophy, politics, superstition and visions;
4. A tendency to be more tolerant of adapting Christianity to facilitate local cultural conventions, thereby providing greater cultural continuity to Gentiles;
5. A moving away from the legalistic ideas of the Jews and the idealism of the Greeks toward a more utilitarian approach to religion, including the Christianizing of pagan customs, ideas, festivals, and holidays through diffusion;
6. The adoption of an independent authoritarian approach, vested in the clergy and particularly in the overseers, and centralization of authority in the local bishops;
7. Gentilization, in general, and the lack of continuity inherent in a youth-centered religion, which was a reflection of the high mortality rate of an empire wherein one’s life expectancy at birth was less than 30 years; and
8. The leading clergy’s embracement of the ethnocentric, condescending and elitist attitudes of imperial Romans toward the ideas and culture of non-Latin peoples such as Greeks and Jews.
All of these differences were evident at the beginning of the second century. A ca. 96 CE. letter from the Church of God at Rome, sent by bishop Clement (88-97 CE, cf. Philippians 4:3) to the Church of God at Corinth, reflected a Roman advocacy of independence and authoritarianism for the clergy (Richardson Early Christian Fathers 1970:43-73; Pagels The Gnostic Gospels 1979:34-35; Johnson A History of Christianity 1976:56). Moreover, Eusebius reports that, a few years later, the Roman bishop Sixtus I (ca. 115-25 CE) forbade the biblical practice of observing the Christian Passover on Nisan 14, and taught instead the celebration of the day of Resurrection at the close of the Pascal season on the Lord’s-day, that is, on Sunday (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 3.5, 5.24; Boyle The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphilus 1955:86, 210). This Greco-Roman Lord’s-day, which they argued was the day of the risen Lord and the gift of the Holy Spirit, became known as Easter Sunday.
Late in the second century this teaching gave rise to the impassioned Quartodeciman Controversy when Roman bishop Victor I (189-199 CE) sought to abolish the observation of the Christian Passover on Nisan 14 in favor of the observance of the Lord’s-day (i.e. Pascal Sunday) in its place. This motivated local synods of orthodox bishops to convene throughout Christendom to consider the matter and to determine the extent of the two customs. Accordingly, in 196 CE the Council of Caesarea convened with bishops of Gentile stock from all over Palestine present and ruled that the Lord’s-day celebration would be the exclusive Christian practice in the region. Victor I undertook to excommunicate the churches in the East as heterodox because they would not cease from observing the Christian Passover, but he relented under pressure from Irenaeus and other Latin bishops (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.24; Boyle 1955:209).
Judeo-Christians, well into the fifth century, continued to observe the Christian Passover at the beginning of Nisan 14. Indeed, according to Franciscan historian and archaeologist Bellarmino Bagatti, (a Roman-Catholic priest at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum of Jerusalem specializing in the study of the first Jewish-Christian communities), the practice was so much a part of Judeo-Christian practice that as late as the time of Constantine the Great, “Judaeo-Christians were convinced that the traditional day of Nisan the 14th was not capable of change” (Bagatti 1971a:10). Bagatti says this was due to “the common belief among the [Christian] Jews that the date had been fixed by the Lord and was, therefore, unchangeable. Many believed that this date was superior even to the sabbath itself” (Bagatti The Church from the Circumcision 1971a:81).
Heresy and Apostasy Thrive
The rise of diverse Christian groups in the east and west, rife with heresies and protracted fragmentation, characterized Christianity in the second and third centuries. Historian Justo González holds that as to the Hebrew-speaking branch of Judeo-Christianity: “the ancient Jewish church, rejected by both Jews and Gentiles, found itself in increasing isolation. Although by 135 CE a number of Jewish Christians returned to Jerusalem, their relationship with the rest of Christianity had been almost completely severed, and leadership had passed to Gentile Christians…. When, in later centuries, Gentile Christians deigned to write a few words about that forgotten community, they would speak of its heretics and its strange customs, but they would have little of positive value to say about that church, which faded out of history in the fifth century” (González The Story of Christianity 1984:22) .
Persecution and the rapid succession of bishops at Rome produced inevitable instability, and the opportunity for heresy to mature. As Jews, Judeo-Christians, Gentile Christians, and Christianized Gentiles separated, the meeting places of Greco-Roman congregations lost, or more precisely abandoned, the sense of synagogue. The culture of the early Church during this transitional period, 70-135 CE, particularly outside of Eretz Israel (“the land of Israel”, or by then “Roman Palestine”) was marked by the decline of Jewish life ways and the evolving new diverse Greco-Roman Christian way of life—and emerged as neither distinctly Jewish nor pagan Gentile. Its character, reflecting the new reality of Greco-Roman Christianity, became that of a separate religion within the cultural framework of Hellenistic Judaism (Frend The Rise of Christianity 1984:137).
This diverse rising Greco-Roman Christianity—or more specifically Gentile Christianity—increasingly viewed itself as orthodox. To these Gentile Christians, influenced by both dissident teachers and the syncretism of the times, the Judeo-Christianity of the Apostles and the Jerusalem Church followed the antiquated way of recalcitrant Jews and their followers, who resisted progressive change and the leadership of the Spirit of God.
The Great Separation
The Second Jewish War (the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132–135 CE) facilitated the presence of Gentile Christians in Roman Palestine both in regard to residence and pilgrimage. Bagatti held that this precipitated Gentile Christian contact with indigenous Judeo-Christians, leading to conflict and the motive to begin a religious war. According to Bagatti: “In fact some gentile Christians could not bear that their coreligionists should perpetuate, more than a century after the death of Christ, those Jewish rites which they, on reading St. Paul, believed had been juridically abolished. The Christians of Jewish stock, on the contrary, thought that it was wrong to abandon those rites,…” (Bagatti The Church from the Circumcision 1971a:78).
Christendom emerged in the second century as the church of the circumcision (Judeo-Christianity in its Hebrew and Greek divisions) and the church of the Gentiles (Greco-Roman Orthodox Christianity in its Latin and Greek [Byzantine] counterparts), in a less than amicable manner. By the late second century these groups had fragmented into many Christianities. Diverse factions, some Judeo-Christian and others wholly Gentile in composition and character, all claimed to be the purveyors of the true doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth. These were at times in radical conflict with the Judeo-Christian teachings of the Jerusalem Church of apostolic times. There were those, often labeled “false ministers” by their opponents, who adopted the name of Jesus of Nazareth to form their own groups. Some actively peddled differing gospels and their own version of Jesus to meet their own ends. Ignatius of Antioch, who held a theology in agreement with Polycarp, observed in ca. 120 CE, “Some, indeed, have a wicked and deceitful habit of flaunting the Name about, while acting in a way unworthy of God” (Ignatius, Ephesians 7.1; Richardson Early Christian Fathers 1970:89).
This Church of the Gentiles arose among Greco-Romans of pagan stock as a result of the influx of Gentiles into Judeo-Christianity in the Diaspora. Greco-Roman Christianity, declaring itself to be Orthodox (from Greek orthodoxos “having the right opinion”) and Judeo-Christianity heterodox (opinion based on incomplete education or faulty reasoning), swamped the original Judeo-Christianity of the first two centuries and distanced itself from the actual beliefs, customs, and teachings of the Apostles and the Jerusalem Church.
The Orthodox, culturally Greco-Romans, turned upon and crushed Judeo-Christianity in the fourth century, forcing many of the true people of God to flee from the Roman Empire to the Alpine regions (primarily Piedmont in northern Italy) and east into Armenia. The Orthodox used the power of the Roman state to strip Judeo-Christians of their meeting places and to eliminate their observance of the Sabbath, annual Sabbaths, and the Nisan 14 Christian Passover. Roman Emperor Theodosius I followed a policy of “national unity” and was “the staunchest supporter of Orthodoxy” (Gregory and Kazhdan “Theodosios I” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 1991:2050-2051). Theodosius I summoned the First Council of Constantinople (May–July 9, 381) with 150 orthodox bishops present, although there were no western representatives (Papadakis “Constantinople I” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 1991:512).
Following the Council, Theodosius I, baptized in 380 CE, issued an edict on July 30, 381, proclaiming his belief in Christ and the Trinity, stating that all of his subjects were to share the same views, holding that any people with differing views were “extravagant madmen” and heretical (Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2; Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 3, 1993:86). Theodosius I ordered the immediate surrender of all non-orthodox “churches” to the Orthodox Greco-Roman bishops, thereby authorizing seizure of all Judeo-Christian synagogues and ending any accommodation with Judeo-Christianity.
By the fifth century, the Orthodox, peopled by millions of Greco-Romans, had evolved into a massive movement, described in Revelation 17 as a great harlot, or “fallen woman,” representing a false church that has not been faithful to Christ, seeking exclusive control of Christendom. In Revelation 2-3 Jesus Christ identified this emerging movement. He said, “I know the blasphemy of those who say they are [spiritual] Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9) and “I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are [spiritual] Jews and are not, but lie—indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you” (Revelation 3:9). This Orthodox Christianity, claiming that it was apostolic and catholic, formed an aggressive and distinctive Gentile religion in its own right, determined to eliminate all dissenting belief and practice.
Ambitious Roman “Christians” sought to attract adherents by “Christianizing” popular pagan customs. They also used the political prestige of their imperial city to gain control of the Christian movement in the Latin west. This struggle was not fully resolved in their favor until the time of Emperor Constantine, with whom the bishop of Rome made an alliance.
In the fifth century, at the time of the barbarian invasions, the Greco-Roman bishop of Rome, Leo “the great”, became the first real “pope” (Latin papa meaning father), convinced that “Jesus had made Peter and his successors the rock on which the church was to be built, and that therefore the bishop of Rome, Peter’s direct successor is the head of the church” (González The Story of Christianity 1984:243; see also Winnail “Papal Primacy?” Tomorrow’s World (11:2) 2009:16).
In the eleventh century, Orthodox Greco-Roman Christianity split into two factions in the Great Schism of 1054, and was formally divided into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches. These later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church (of Constantinople) and the Roman Catholic Church (of Rome), respectively. The final break came for several reasons, as the Eastern Orthodox faction rejected the Pope’s claim to universal jurisdiction over Christendom, clerical celibacy, the celebration of communion with unleavened bread, the Filioque [an addition to the Nicene Creed reading: “and from the Son”] and other doctrinal concerns (González The Story of Christianity Vol. 1, 1984:264-265).
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century swept away some of Orthodox Greco-Roman Christianity’s deviations from Scripture, but retained many customs that traced back to paganism. By this time, the professing Christian world had long since ceased to use the Jerusalem Church as a model—and instead, had taken its identity from this false church. After its ascendancy, original apostolic Christianity did not just disappear; it simply became a movement of mostly scattered believers, often persecuted by this false church and its protesting spinoffs, as prophesied in Scripture. Yet even today, the people of God faithfully and truthfully preach, teach, and live by the same message taught nearly 2,000 years ago by the Jerusalem Church.
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