The Jewish-Christian schism

[Vouthon]

What are your thoughts on why and when this schism took place?

This was one of the most important and consequential religious schisms in human history, given the fact that Christianity would go on to spread worldwide and become the state religion of the Roman Empire, while Rabbinic Judaism would crystallise as the only remaining orthodox strand of its Second Temple precursors. I would argue that it is far more significant than the Catholic - Orthodox schism, the Sunni - Shia or the Catholic - Protestant, not least since it produced two definable separate faiths.

Talmudist and professor of Jewish studies Daniel Boyarin opines that Judaism and Christianity "were part of one complex religious family, twins in a womb," for at least three centuries. Alan Segal, a scholar of ancient religions, ventured to go further: "one can speak of a 'twin birth' of two new Judaisms, both markedly different from the religious systems that preceded them. Not only were Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity religious twins, but, like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, they fought in the womb, setting the stage for life after the womb."

According to Robert Goldenberg, it is increasingly accepted among scholars that "at the end of the 1st century CE there were not yet two separate religions called 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'".

Regardless, in the early first century CE following the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the early Christian movement existed as a Jewish sect within the broader social milieu of Second Temple Judaism. First, some more scholarship.

The New Testament scholar J.P. Meier has noted how, in the first century, "the majority of Palestinian Jews were happy to practice the basics of their religion: circumcision, Sabbath observance, food laws, and pilgrimage to the Jerusalem temple (when possible) for the great feasts" such that, "together with nonsectarian groups like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, these ordinary observant Jews made up what various scholars call "mainstream" or "common" Judaism in 1st-century Palestine" which looked to "the Jerusalem temple as its cultic center".

He then notes: "It was this mainstream Judaism of Palestine that Jesus the Jew addressed, wooed, and warned. Indeed, it was from this mainstream Judaism that Jesus emerged, and it was in relation to this Judaism that Jesus defined his special role". As Meier reminds us, the Judaism of this period was also heterogeneous, as he says: "Judaism even within Palestine was remarkably varied in belief and practice. Placing both the Pharisees and the Sadducees in this "mainstream" Judaism is meant to underline that point". (J.P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol.2, p. 9).

E.P. Sanders furthers this contention when he writes that, "The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the members of the ‘fourth philosophy’, the common people, the Hellenistic Jewish philosophers such as Philo all disagreed on lots of points. They all belonged, however, to Judaism. Where most of them agree is where we find “common Judaism” ’ (Sanders 2008: 19). As such, Jesus had his own idiosyncrasies and unique innovations, like the founders of all the other Jewish sects and schools i.e. ‘Without insisting that he be unique, or to be understood in “opposition” to “Judaism”, we should still note the possibility, even likelihood, that such an influential figure, an apparent catalyst for subsequent change, will be distinctive’ (Arnal 2005: 31; cf. Holmén 2013).

All contemporary scholars, nevertheless, concur in placing Jesus in the mainstream of Second Temple Judaism. His teachings evidence that he was 'part of the national' conversation, so to speak, in debating points of halakha with the Pharisees. Jesus thus engaged in debates about the interpretation of Torah, about the Sabbath, where he took a lax position compared to the Pharisees (e.g., Mark 2:23–8, 3:1–6; Matt. 23). In the case of divorce Jesus sided with the more stringent halakhah of Shammai in his prohibition (Matt. 5:31–2).

As E.P. Sanders noted in his landmark study The Historical Figure of Jesus: "As a devout Jew, Jesus thought that God had previously intervened in the world in order to save and protect Israel...In the future, Jesus thought that God would act even more decisively: he would create an ideal world. He would restore the twelve tribes of Israel, and peace and justice would prevail. Life would be like a banquet".

One of the great ironies of history, is how such an avowedly and proudly Jewish figure - who uttered, according to the gospels, such religio-patriotic phrases as "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24); "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22); "Go nowhere among the Gentiles" (Matthew 10:5); "Until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Torah...So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:18-19); "The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them" (Matthew 20:25); - became in time the central figure of an overwhelmingly, indeed almost uniquely, Gentile church that eventually split from Judaism to become a distinct religion, which would persecute many Jews at different times throughout history. Evidently, Jesus never envisioned that this would happen, being himself a practising Jew till the day he died.

From this consideration, the question naturally arises: when did the Early Christian schism from Judaism actually occur and over what reasons?

Certainly not in Jesus's lifetime, nor for decades after, since the early apostles continued to worship in the temple and undergo Nazarite vows (Acts 2:46), while St. James the Just, Jesus's brother, led the overtly Torah-observant Jerusalem church (which had precedence over all others in the first century). By the time the gospels were written in the 60s - 80s CE, Sanders notes that a full split had not yet taken place: "When the gospels were written, however, Christology (theological explanations of the person and work of Jesus) was at an early stage, and the separation of Christianity from Judaism not yet complete."

According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, "the separation of Christianity from Judaism was a process, not an event".

And why did early Christianity become a distinct religion? The Books of the Maccabees provide evidence for Hellenized Jews who stopped circumcising their children and covering up the marks of circumcision (1 Macc. 1:15, 48, 60; 2 Macc. 6:10; cf. Josephus, Ant. 12.254). The early Jewish believers in Jesus continued to circumcise in accordance with the Mosaic covenant into the fourth century CE, so that's not a reason in itself. Philo of Alexandria condemns a group of Jewish philosophers who interpret the Mosaic laws allegorically (as he himself does), to the extent that they have stopped observing these mitzvot. Early Jewish Christians still kept kosher and the other commandments. So, again, that doesn't explain it.

Some scholars have pointed to the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE as the deciding factor, including D.G. Dunn:

The period between the two Jewish revolts (66–70 and 132–135) was decisive for the parting of the ways.

After the first revolt it could be said that all was still to play for. But after the second revolt the separation of the main bodies of Christianity and Judaism was clear-cut and final, whatever interaction there continued to be at the margins. (2006, 312)​

The Professor of Dead Sea Scrolls study, Lawrence H Schiffman, concurs:

The Jewish-Christian Schism - Biblical Archaeology Society

Early in the first century C.E. there coalesced around Jesus a group of disciples attracted to his teachings and to his expectations of the dawn of a new age. His crucifixion at the hands of the Romans transformed him in the eyes of his disciples into a Messianic figure, whose death in some way paved the way for redemption. As such, his followers, still living as Jews and basically following the mandates of Jewish law, were distinguished only by their belief that the Messiah had come in the person of Jesus.

In the aftermath of the destruction [of the Second Temple in CE 70], the tannaim attempted to draw Judaism together around a common tradition. They regarded Christianity as heretical, and branded the early Christians as minim, Jews holding incorrect beliefs. Although they regarded the Christians as Jews, since they were Jews according to halakhah, the tannaim took a strong stand.

They excluded the Christians from serving as precentor in the synagogue, then declared their scriptural texts to have no sanctity, even if they contained the name of God, then prohibited certain forms of commercial and social contact. Yet throughout this first period, there was no challenge to their halakhic status as Jews and no decree that prohibited marriage with them...

[However] during the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Christians, unable to support the Messianic pretensions of Bar Kokhba, sided with the Romans. By the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Rabbis regarded the entire Christian community as non-Jewish. Even the Bishop of Jerusalem was now gentile since Jews (even Jewish Christians) were prohibited from living in the Holy City. It no longer mattered that a few of the Christians were technically Jewish. The lack of Jewish status of the group as a whole led the Rabbis to disqualify them as a whole. Henceforth, from the Rabbinic perspective, the Christians were a separate religion and a separate people. Marriage with them was now prohibited.
​

Christian Jews could not fight in Bar Kokhba's armies since he claimed to be the messiah, whereas for Christians Jesus was the Messiah. Accordingly, the Christians were deemed traitors and national deserters from the cause of Judeaen independence from Rome, and this widened the emerging ideological split, resulting in the Rabbis re-classing Christian Jews from being minim (Jews with heretical beliefs) to being non-Jews.

Scholars recognise that the Gospel of John was written, partly as a polemic, by a group of seriously disgruntled Jewish Christians upset at being 'de-synagogued' by the rabbinic sages:


How Jewish Christians Became Christians | My Jewish Learning

Tannaitic Judaism was already the dominant form of Judaism, for the Pharisees had emerged from the revolt against Rome as the main influence within the Jewish community. After the destruction, the tannaim immediately recognized the need to standardize and unify Judaism.

At the same time, they expanded an old prayer to include an imprecation against the minim, Jews with incorrect beliefs. In this period, this could only have meant the early Jewish Christians, who observed the laws of Judaism but accepted the messiahship of Jesus. Although the rabbis continued to regard the early Christians as Jews, they reformulated this prayer in order to expel them from the synagogue, as testified to by the Gospel of John and the church fathers.​

 

[Fool]

Talmudist and professor of Jewish studies Daniel Boyarin opines that Judaism and Christianity "were part of one complex religious family, twins in a womb," for at least three centuries. Alan Segal, a scholar of ancient religions, ventured to go further: "one can speak of a 'twin birth' of two new Judaisms, both markedly different from the religious systems that preceded them. Not only were Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity religious twins, but, like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, they fought in the womb, setting the stage for life after the womb."

i deleted most of your post to reflect imo what i believe the problem to be


when the romans forced idolatry upon the jewish people and turned christianity into a cult of personality, things went down hill. to love someone and believe upon them is reverential but to set them up as something greater than god was an abomination. jesus said call no man good, only the Father in heaven is good. this is why he said that the Father was greater than him.

 

[Brickjectivity]

What are your thoughts on why and when this schism took place?

I don't have any useful thoughts on it, just lots of ideas and models that help me skip over this point in History. Its like a singularity for me. Go around not through.

 

[Vouthon]

I don't have any useful thoughts on it, just lots of ideas and models that help me skip over this point in History. Its like a singularity for me. Go around not through.

If I may ask, why do you skip over it?

 

[Brickjectivity]

If I may ask, why so?

I feel that something bad happened that people were not able to forgive and that its best left forgotten. Another possibility is that Christianity failed completely and was rebuilt from the ground up. On video I listened to suggested Christianity and its first bishops were created from the existing pagan priesthood. There are worse possibilities. What if the faith of every Christian and every Jew failed? We don't have the means to find out what really happened, anyway; but we might stumble across the truth. Whatever it was it seems like they forgot it on purpose.

There is a positive spin in science fiction if you read Aasimov's Foundation series. Isaac Asimov doesn't speculate on what happened, but he does write a fictional tale which is strangely reminiscent of the situation. That is complete fiction however. If we translate his fictional tale into History, he has it that the Jews and Christians part company in friendship secretly in order to insure success of the common mission of bringing civilization back in only 1000 years instead of 10000. Foreseeing the coming Dark Age they are nevertheless not able to prevent it but only to speed up its demise. He never suggests its anything besides fiction. Frank Herbert's Dune also carries a similar idea, although I like Foundation better.

 

[Vouthon]

I feel that something bad happened that people were not able to forgive and that its best left forgotten. Another possibility is that Christianity failed completely and was rebuilt from the ground up.

Your instincts here are right. Schisms always occur because of something bad that leads to ingrained enmity, and this particular schism was probably the most indelible of all.

I concur with the scholars who see the beginning of the end, or end of the beginning, of Jewish Christianity in the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE, although it's true to say that it wasn't absolutely final until about a century or so later.

The Bar Kokhba letters reveal that harsh measures were applied against people who refused to participate in the war.

Thus, in one interesting letter, Bar Kokhba threatens to put a certain Yeshua ben Galgoula in fetters for refusing to follow orders. The letter reads:

• “From Shimeon ben Kosiba [Bar Kochba] to Yeshua ben Galgoula and to the men of the fort, peace. I take heaven to witness against me that unless you mobilise [destroy?] the Galileans who are with you every man I will put in fetters on your feet as I did to benAphlul” (trans. from Yadin 1971, 137–38).

We know that the Jewish Christians couldn't participate in the war effort, since it would effectively be denial of Jesus's messiahship. So, they effectively had to choose between their people or Jesus.

And neither side forgave the choice, so it seems, or the hurts endured.

In his First Apology, the second century church father Justin Martyr (100 - 165), who lived at the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, asserts that Bar Kokhba commanded that Christian Jews should suffer persecution unless they would deny Jesus Christ and utter blasphemy (1 Apol. 31.6):

• “For in the Jewish war which now occurred, Bar Kokhba, the leader of the revolt of the Jews, ordered that Christians alone should be led to terrible punishments unless they would deny Jesus, the Christ, and blaspheme.

In this passage Justin Martyr describes the Bar Kokhba Revolt as an event that occurred recently in his own day and was still raw, both for Judean Jews (who were massacres and dispersed by the Romans in what some scholars regard as the first genocide) and by the Christian Jews, whom Bar Kokhba appears to have savagely persecuted.

Goodblatt claims a strong priestly support for Bar Kokhba. It was in the interest of the priests to see the Temple rebuilt. And since only the priests were known to have previously persecuted followers of Jesus, Goodblatt maintains that they played an integral role in fermenting persecution against them during the Bar Kokhba Revolt (1983, 11).

On the Judean Jewish side:

[12] Taylor, J. E. The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea. Oxford University Press.

"Up until this date the Bar Kokhba documents indicate that towns, villages and ports where Jews lived were busy with industry and activity. Afterwards there is an eerie silence, and the archaeological record testifies to little Jewish presence until the Byzantine era, in En Gedi.

This picture coheres with what we have already determined in Part I of this study, that the crucial date for what can only be described as genocide, and the devastation of Jews and Judaism within central Judea, was 135 CE and not, as usually assumed, 70 CE, despite the siege of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction"​

That the Jewish believers in Jesus apparently took the Roman side, albeit because they didn't want to deny Jesus and we're horribly persecuted by Bar Kokhba, in light of the horrors and depopulation and enforced slavery and dispersal that the Romans meted out to their fellow Jews...this was not forgiven, to use your words.

Obviously, the Christians didn't take kindly to the rabbinic sages banning them from the synagogues as minim or heretical Jews in the late first century (the hostile references to the "Judaens" in the Gospel of John were written in this context, not as anti-Semitic barbs but rather as still intra-Jewish sectarianism).

But this wasn't enough.

The Second Great Revolt, and the Christian inability to back it because it's leader thought himself to be the Messiah, seems to have really turned the screw and accelerated the schism in two separate faiths. After this, the rabbic sages deemed the Christians to be clearly non-Jews, while Christians likewise viewed Jews as "old Israel" with the birth of supersecessionist theology that cast the church as "new Israel".

 

[lewisnotmiller]

What are your thoughts on why and when this schism took place?

Unfortunately I'm more interested in the answers that able to contribute. However, ham-fisted as they might be, here are my thoughts on this based on my reading...

To be fair, my reading is based on historical sources, and mostly a result of my interest in Roman and Byzantine history. I'm not a great student of Jewish history.

Everything I've read would agree with many of your premises in the OP. It was both possible and indeed assumed that people identifying as followers of Jesus were also Jewish. There was no immediate schism, and indeed even later there was not a cataclysmic event triggering the split at any point. When I initially became aware of this, it was a little bit of a revelation to me, but that has long since passed, and everything I read seems to agree with that version of history (at least, at a high level).

I think there are a couple of other points at play here which you are probably already completely aware of, and which you alluded to in the OP.

Christianity was not streamlined, or working from a single clear dogma. Nor any clear dogma at all. This was the case for a long time after the death of Christ (insert jokes here about how it's still the case) and in the end the political power of Constantine was really important in beginning to enforce a single view of Christian doctrine. Churches were very much loose groupings of people, with self-elected bishops driving the doctrinal views of these groups. Taken with a more modern, strictly theological view, there were a wide variety of heresies supported by groups, both small and large. (insert jokes here about modern understandings of the Trinity...ahem...)

What I had not understood until more recently though was that Judaism had some of the same practical issues. Well...issues isn't the right word. There was likewise large amounts of local variance amongst Jews.
Whilst rabbi were working on studying and codifying behavior well before such orthodoxy was introduced to Christianity, I had always assumed these rabbi were working amongst the Jewish people, and were providing guidance to Jewish orthodoxy at a local level. That seems completely mistaken based on more recent readings I have done.

So I wonder what impact it had when these rabbi did become more engaged and connected with the Jewish people?
I have to admit to being quite ignorant of how this occurred, and the practical impacts of it though, so it's just me surmising a potential point of impact.

Would be very interested in the views of any of the much more learned people here with regards to Jewish history, and the introduction of orthodoxy in more general terms.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Fascinating info, thanks for posting!
The only unity, imo, between the two was that both groups, at the start of Christianity anyways, worshipped the same God, Yahweh. This is readily seen in that the First-Century Christians worshipped at the temple. (Acts of the Apostles 5:42) Worship in that place was solely directed to Yahweh/Jehovah. Worshipping another god there, was punishable by death.

 

[wizanda]

What are your thoughts on why and when this schism took place?

It took place at Yeshua's teachings, as he was teaching beyond the Dharma, and they simplified it into their perspective.

Thus it is more divided than many see, as Yeshua in the Synoptic Gospels stands against Pharisaic Christianity (John, Paul, Simon the stone (petros)).

In my opinion.

 

[Dawnofhope]

What are your thoughts on why and when this schism took place?

Thank you for providing valuable insights from history into the schism between Judaism and Christianity.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

i deleted most of your post to reflect imo what i believe the problem to be

when the romans forced idolatry upon the jewish people and turned christianity into a cult of personality, things went down hill. to love someone and believe upon them is reverential but to set them up as something greater than god was an abomination. jesus said call no man good, only the Father in heaven is good. this is why he said that the Father was greater than him.

This is an all too common misunderstanding of Christianity. Not saying it's yours either. Jesus's actual teaching is that God is within us. In other words, Christianity is a sort of panentheistic Judaism. He got crucified because his words sounded like heresy. Jesus, the person is not The Son of God, rather he was put on this Earth to be the Way, Truth, and Life. The Way that all of us understand that God is with us, that all are sons and daughters of God. The Truth that we don't need priests and secret rooms (see also, the Temple curtain getting torn) we can have a direct relationship with God. And the Life everlasting.

Jesus as a person isn't part of the Trinity. Jesus as spokesman for humanity, having died on the cross is Son of God. He's more than a person but a concept. Emmanuel. God With Us.

 

[Tumah]

Here are my points:

I agree with the existence of what I would call a "layman's Judaism", the Judaism that was practiced by the unlettered masses.
A significant section of Jewish Law addresses the technical problems that arise from interacting with "laymen" who were not learned enough (or perhaps interested) in Jewish Law. However, I wouldn't say that this was a competing sect of Judaism. It was simply the extent that was practiced by the ignorant layman who followed the customs he may have inherited from his family or community. We have a similar Jewish group today and I believe the same thing occurs among Muslims.
I also agree that the NT authors (perhaps excluding Paul) addressed their books towards these laymen. The arguments in them can only be described as being formed for them.

Some of the quoted authors attribute more to Jesus than the scholarly consensus confirms. It's hard to draw an historically accurate picture from events that may not have happened at all. Some of these events may be true of his later followers, proto-Christians and NT authors, but very little is actually considered fact about the man himself.

It's hard to see Jesus as taking part in a "national Halakhic debate" for a few reasons: (1) the Rabbis sometimes taught out in the street, but they did not debate Law on the streets, they did so in study houses, (2) outside the Talmud's account, no Rabbi is attributed to teaching Jesus, he would have no standing in the Pharisaic world, (3) the arguments the NT puts forth in these so called "Halakhic debates" do not follow the exegetical process used by the Pharisees. I think it makes more sense to assume the NT authors put forward arguments that they wanted the laymen to consider in place of those of the Pharisees.

Following that though, there were many theological debates that occurred between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and quite likely occurred to a more limited extent, between the Pharisees and early Christians. The distinction that I intend to draw here is that there is a difference between a sect and a school in this context. A sect is a competing theological position. A school is a competing juridical position. Two schools may be part of the same sect. Two sects cannot be part of the same school. The Sadducees and early Christians should be described as sects, not schools as they are coming from completely different theological stances, not from different interpretive tools.

You point to the irony in the contrast between passages from the book of Matthew attributed to Jesus, with how events eventually played out. But I think it's closer to the truth to say that Matthew and Paul were attempting to direct the growth of Christianity in different ways. Matthew clearly directs his arguments to encouraging Jewish people to join his faith. He speaks about the primacy of Jewish Law and Jewish people. Paul appears to do exactly the opposite in order to encourage the Gentile to join him. Matthew's eventual lack of success in turning Judaism into Christianity alone would have been the end of the nascent religion. It's ultimately Paul's success that allowed Christianity to flourish. And it's the contrast of Paul's success with Matthew's lack that you're noting.

I don't know how much can be attributed to Bar Kokhba himself. Not all Rabbis (perhaps even a majority) considered him to be the Messiah either. At the same, I did find a few different Talmudic narratives of Rabbis encountering early Christians during the 60 years between the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kokhba revolt. So animosity towards early Christians may have started with the Rabbis - with whom Bar Kokhba originally was aligned.

I don't think enough attention is drawn to the distinction between the Jewish ethnicity and the Jewish religion and how they are perceived by Jewish people. I think it's an important point, because I think the start of the split into different religions can only occur there. Jewish ethnic status probably played a-if-not-the decisive role here. Jewish Law doesn't recognize other religions for Jewish people. So long as a person is ethnically Jewish, their status will be "apostate Jew" and not "member of X religion", hence the concept of Min as a Jewish heretic. I might even go so far as to argue that the recognition of a split in the religion could only have begun among Gentile Christians who did not associate ethnicity with religion. So to me it seems that if we want to look at where the split began, we should look at when the Gentile Church became self-sufficient. From the point of the Jewish people, they would not be of the Jewish religion (which is passed ethnically), and from the point of the Gentile Church, they have become the true "Jewish religion" now divorced from the Israelite ethnicity.

I think the enactments against Christians are somewhat overstated. I don't believe there are any enactments specifically targeting Jewish Christians of the time (outside the prayer against the Min). There are enactments regarding heretics under which early Christians would have fallen, but they are only one of the groups that would fall there.

Lastly, I think there is a difference between how Rabbinic Judaism developed and how early Christianity developed and I think it is wrong to call them "twins from the womb". The procession between the era before the destruction of the Temple and the era after is gradual for Judaism. Originally, the two highest leaders were the High Priest and the Head of the Sanhedrin. In 175 BCE the Hellenized Jews of the time gained control of the High Priesthood via Jason. Because of that, the High Priest lost his spot as the major religious leader (obviously for the non-Hellenized Jews) and was replaced by the position called the President of the Sanhedrin. This starts a time (called the era of the "Pairs") lasting approximately 200 years until the Sanhedrin moved out of the Chamber of Hewn Stone at the Temple about 40 years before it's destruction. At that point, the authority of the Sanhedrin was heavily diminished and with it, the authority of the Head of the Sanhedrin. From their, the President of the Sanhedrin takes the reigns and this carries on until about 200 CE.

The last of the "Pairs" was the President of the Sanhedrin Hillel the Elder, progenitor of the House of Hillel and his Head of the Sanhedrin Shammai, progenitor of the House of Shammai. Hillel the Elder's grandson the President of the Sanhedrin, Rabbi Gamliel the Elder oversaw the move of the Sanhedrin from the Chamber of Hewn Stone. His grandson was the President of the Sanhedrin, Rabbi Judah the Prince, compiler of the Mishnah. Although there would obviously need to be changes to the structure of the religion with the loss of the Temple again, these changes were built into a structure that already existed. The Pharisees before the destruction of the Temple were differentiated by their belief in the Oral Torah and the Rabbis after the destruction of the Temple were characterized by their belief in the same Oral Torah. Early Christianity came out of nowhere, disposed of the Oral Torah to a large extent and introduced an entirely new book.

So although we actually use that analogy of Jacob and Esau in describing the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, I don't think the birthing part of the analogy is accurate at all. If we would say that First Temple Judaism gave birth to post-First Temple Judaism which gave birth to Second Temple Judaism which gave birth to post-Second Temple Judaism, then maybe. But that's really just using the word "birth" very loosely to describe the natural adjustments the nation has to make in order to succeed in the next leg of it's journey. Early Christianity is not a natural adjustment the nation had to make in order to succeed in the post-Second Temple era. It is a splinter, yes, but I don't see how it could be described as a natural continuation to the religion in the way that Rabbinic Judaism was. I see the relationship between that period of Judaism and early Christianity as the Rabbis trying to hamper the encroachment of Christianity, not compete with it.

 

[rosends]

There is always the article from 1950, Julius Greenstone, which discusses the rabbinic stories about the schism...
Simon Peter was a Jew article

 

[sayak83]

What are your thoughts on why and when this schism took place?



Some scholars have pointed to the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE as the deciding factor, including D.G. Dunn:

The period between the two Jewish revolts (66–70 and 132–135) was decisive for the parting of the ways.

After the first revolt it could be said that all was still to play for. But after the second revolt the separation of the main bodies of Christianity and Judaism was clear-cut and final, whatever interaction there continued to be at the margins. (2006, 312)​

The Professor of Dead Sea Scrolls study, Lawrence H Schiffman, concurs:

The Jewish-Christian Schism - Biblical Archaeology Society

Early in the first century C.E. there coalesced around Jesus a group of disciples attracted to his teachings and to his expectations of the dawn of a new age. His crucifixion at the hands of the Romans transformed him in the eyes of his disciples into a Messianic figure, whose death in some way paved the way for redemption. As such, his followers, still living as Jews and basically following the mandates of Jewish law, were distinguished only by their belief that the Messiah had come in the person of Jesus.

In the aftermath of the destruction [of the Second Temple in CE 70], the tannaim attempted to draw Judaism together around a common tradition. They regarded Christianity as heretical, and branded the early Christians as minim, Jews holding incorrect beliefs. Although they regarded the Christians as Jews, since they were Jews according to halakhah, the tannaim took a strong stand.

They excluded the Christians from serving as precentor in the synagogue, then declared their scriptural texts to have no sanctity, even if they contained the name of God, then prohibited certain forms of commercial and social contact. Yet throughout this first period, there was no challenge to their halakhic status as Jews and no decree that prohibited marriage with them...

[However] during the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Christians, unable to support the Messianic pretensions of Bar Kokhba, sided with the Romans. By the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Rabbis regarded the entire Christian community as non-Jewish. Even the Bishop of Jerusalem was now gentile since Jews (even Jewish Christians) were prohibited from living in the Holy City. It no longer mattered that a few of the Christians were technically Jewish. The lack of Jewish status of the group as a whole led the Rabbis to disqualify them as a whole. Henceforth, from the Rabbinic perspective, the Christians were a separate religion and a separate people. Marriage with them was now prohibited.
​

Christian Jews could not fight in Bar Kokhba's armies since he claimed to be the messiah, whereas for Christians Jesus was the Messiah. Accordingly, the Christians were deemed traitors and national deserters from the cause of Judeaen independence from Rome, and this widened the emerging ideological split, resulting in the Rabbis re-classing Christian Jews from being minim (Jews with heretical beliefs) to being non-Jews.

Scholars recognise that the Gospel of John was written, partly as a polemic, by a group of seriously disgruntled Jewish Christians upset at being 'de-synagogued' by the rabbinic sages:


How Jewish Christians Became Christians | My Jewish Learning

Tannaitic Judaism was already the dominant form of Judaism, for the Pharisees had emerged from the revolt against Rome as the main influence within the Jewish community. After the destruction, the tannaim immediately recognized the need to standardize and unify Judaism.

At the same time, they expanded an old prayer to include an imprecation against the minim, Jews with incorrect beliefs. In this period, this could only have meant the early Jewish Christians, who observed the laws of Judaism but accepted the messiahship of Jesus. Although the rabbis continued to regard the early Christians as Jews, they reformulated this prayer in order to expel them from the synagogue, as testified to by the Gospel of John and the church fathers.​

This seems reasonably plausible given what evidence exists.
Do we have any sound data on when the imprecations against the minims were appended to the prayers, or how widespreadly it was used?
If I recall from my older research, after the fall of Jerusalem, Parthia, and later Sassanid Babylon became the largest center of Judaism. How much the Sassanid-Roman conflict creted the schism between Christians and the Jews is yet to fully documented, I believe.

"The Babylonian Jews wanted to fight in common cause with their Judean brethren against Vespasian; but it was not until the Romans waged war under Trajan against Parthia that they acted. To a large extent, the revolt of the Babylonian Jews meant that the Romans did not become masters of Babylonia. Philo speaks of the large number of Jews resident in that country, a population which was no doubt considerably swelled by new immigrants after the destruction of Jerusalem. Accustomed in Jerusalem from early times to look to the East for help, and aware, as the Roman procurator Petronius was, that the Jews of Babylon could render effectual assistance, Babylonia became with the fall of Jerusalem the very bulwark of Judaism. The collapse of the Bar Kochba revolt no doubt added to the number of Jewish refugees in Babylon.

Possibly it was recognition of services thus rendered by the Jews of Babylonia, and by the House of David in particular, that induced the Parthian kings to elevate the princes of the Exile, who until then had been little more than mere tax collectors, to the dignity of real princes, called Resh Galuta. Thus, then, the numerous Jewishsubjects were provided with a central authority which assured an undisturbed development of their own internal affairs."

History of the Jews in Iran - Wikipedia

 

[Kenny]

Talmudist and professor of Jewish studies Daniel Boyarin opines that Judaism and Christianity "were part of one complex religious family, twins in a womb," for at least three centuries. Alan Segal, a scholar of ancient religions, ventured to go further: "one can speak of a 'twin birth' of two new Judaisms, both markedly different from the religious systems that preceded them. Not only were Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity religious twins, but, like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, they fought in the womb, setting the stage for life after the womb."

I would agree with this position. It also reminds me of the "prodigal son" with the son serving the dad being the Jews and the prodigal son being the Gentiles.

When the 12 tribes began, they were all supposed to be priests and taking the Gospel to the world but because of a series of errors and sins, ended up being just the Levites being priests to the other 11 tribes and the world was basically without a moral compass. (In a specific sense not in the general sense).

So when the prodigal son (Gentiles) were being accepted, it began the wedge between Christ followers and Judaism.

Certainly not in Jesus's lifetime, nor for decades after, since the early apostles continued to worship in the temple and undergo Nazarite vows (Acts 2:46), while St. James the Just, Jesus's brother, led the overtly Torah-observant Jerusalem church (which had precedence over all others in the first century). By the time the gospels were written in the 60s - 80s CE, Sanders notes that a full split had not yet taken place: "When the gospels were written, however, Christology (theological explanations of the person and work of Jesus) was at an early stage, and the separation of Christianity from Judaism not yet complete."

I would also agree with this statement. The understanding of Christ and His purpose was in a process of discovering the revelations within the Torah and what it actually meant. The more the revelation was understood, the greater the divide between those who followed the Law of Moses and those who followed the faith of Abraham, though all were sons of Abraham.

Some scholars have pointed to the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE as the deciding factor, including D.G. Dunn:


The period between the two Jewish revolts (66–70 and 132–135) was decisive for the parting of the ways.

After the first revolt it could be said that all was still to play for. But after the second revolt the separation of the main bodies of Christianity and Judaism was clear-cut and final, whatever interaction there continued to be at the margins. (2006, 312)

In the aftermath of the destruction [of the Second Temple in CE 70], the tannaim attempted to draw Judaism together around a common tradition. They regarded Christianity as heretical, and branded the early Christians as minim, Jews holding incorrect beliefs. Although they regarded the Christians as Jews, since they were Jews according to halakhah, the tannaim took a strong stand.

In my view, this was the beginning of the great divide. Christians understood that Jerusalem's demise was a prophecy waiting to be fulfilled and saw the proverbial writing on the wall and left Jerusalem. Those who followed the law, IMV, saw it as a betrayal. So now, not only was there a spiritual divide but began an soul divide.

I think the good news is that there is a drawing back of the two hearts together between the Jews and the Evangelical Christian.

 

[wellwisher]

Correct me if I am wrong; a Jew is determined by a DNA connection to the mother; blood connection to the mother or the female element. This tradition has a connection to Eve, law and Satan; tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Jews obtained the law of God to become distinct.

Jesus message was not about blood line or DNA from the mother or Eve. His philosophy is about human hearts and minds, which is more about the brain than the DNA. Jesus is often referred to as the new Adam. It is not about law, anymore but about faith; return to paradise. Paradise is about natural instinct or an inner voice; Holy Spirit.

In terms of science, this symbolism suggests an update in the operating system of the human brain, at the time of Jesus, where the brain could impact the DNA. The DNA or bloodline connection was broken. This opened the door to all humans; Gentiles.

The easiest way for the brain to tweak the DNA is through nervous tissue impacting the water that surrounds the eggs within a female. Nervous input can alter the configurational potentials, leading to equilibrium changes.

Sodium and Potassium ions, which are common to neuron firing, have opposite impacts on water. Sodium is kosmotropic meaning it makes order in water, while Potassium is chaotropic and create disorder or chaos in water. Each impacts how protein will behave, differently. If the brain was sending out a certain firing sequence, this will impact protein behavior by changing the hydrogen bonding in the local water.

Cell naturally accumulates potassium ions. Proteins tend to pack tight and this loosens then up for activity. The chaos in the water loosens the water that cages the protein. The neurons move Sodium ions on their surface in response to firing. This adds an affect that can tighten otherwise looser proteins. It make the water try to cage even more. As genetic material is separated and/or extruded, equilibrium tweaks can occur in terms of that which remains.

I often wonder how a child can become a prodigy on the violin, seeing this instrument is not that old, so there is no time for a DNA change to occur by any known natural means. However, the brain of the parent has knowledge of this and similar things. A brain connection becomes sort of a genetic 3-D printer output that stacks what is already there; equilibrium, in ways that make certain new things more assessable. The DNA does not change sequence but it changes packing orientations.

 

[Fool]

This is an all too common misunderstanding of Christianity. Not saying it's yours either. Jesus's actual teaching is that God is within us. In other words, Christianity is a sort of panentheistic Judaism. He got crucified because his words sounded like heresy. Jesus, the person is not The Son of God, rather he was put on this Earth to be the Way, Truth, and Life. The Way that all of us understand that God is with us, that all are sons and daughters of God. The Truth that we don't need priests and secret rooms (see also, the Temple curtain getting torn) we can have a direct relationship with God. And the Life everlasting.

Jesus as a person isn't part of the Trinity. Jesus as spokesman for humanity, having died on the cross is Son of God. He's more than a person but a concept. Emmanuel. God With Us.

the outward, exoteric washing of a thing was a symbolic gesture of an esoteric thing.


1st wash the inside of the cup and the outside will be clean too

 

[Tumah]

Some of your points I can respond to:

Do we have any sound data on when the imprecations against the minims were appended to the prayers, or how widespreadly it was used?

There is debate on when the additional request was added to the prayers. There are two Rabbi Gamliel's, Rabbi Gamliel the Elder and Rabbi Gamliel of Yavne a grandfather and grandson. The former lived immediately before the destruction of the Temple and the latter a few years before the Bar Kokhba revolt. The Talmud says that it was written by a certain Shmuel the Small at behest of Rabbi Gamliel. There are contradictory passages in the Talmud about when that Shmuel lived. To me it seems that the passages can more easily be explained if he lived during the time of Rabbi Gamliel the Elder. However, there are other passages of other Rabbis having confrontations with early Christians during the time of Rabb Gamliel of Yavneh -including him as well. So it seems like at that point they were more of a problem and a more likely time to have instituted that prayer.

If I recall from my older research, after the fall of Jerusalem, Parthia, and later Sassanid Babylon became the largest center of Judaism.

Babylon already had significant communities of Jews who remained from the Babylonian Exile and never returned with Ezra. But up until ~ 200 CE, Israel remained the major center of Judaism. It was only after two students of Rabbi Judah the Prince (a grandson of Rabbi Gamliel of Yavneh) moved to Babylon and opened study halls that Babylon became a religious center of Judaism that eventually eclipsed Israel over the next 300 years.

How much the Sassanid-Roman conflict creted the schism between Christians and the Jews is yet to fully documented, I believe.

I don't see how the Babylonian Jews could be said to have heightened the schism between Christians and Jews. The Rabbis there were either students of the Rabbis from Israel or their students' students. They held basically the same theological positions. I don't see why their interest in involvement against the Romans could be understood to have anything to do with the Christians.

Possibly it was recognition of services thus rendered by the Jews of Babylonia, and by the House of David in particular, that induced the Parthian kings to elevate the princes of the Exile, who until then had been little more than mere tax collectors, to the dignity of real princes, called Resh Galuta. Thus, then, the numerous Jewish subjects were provided with a central authority which assured an undisturbed development of their own internal affairs."

This paragraph contradicts itself. The Parthians did not create the office of the Resh Galuta providing the Jews of Babylon with a central authority. They granted governmental authority to the Exilarch around him the Jews of Babylon had gathered. But although they had a certain degree of autonomy, it seems like on the whole, students traveled to Israel to become Rabbis and then returned to Babylon with their religious authority (at least until the 3rd century CE).

Rab at Sura and Mar Samuel at Nehardea established the intellectual independence of Babylonian Jewry. Young men taking up the study of the Law there were no longer obliged to go to Palestine, since they had the foremost teachers at home. Babylon now came to be regarded, in a sense, as a second Holy Land.
Samuel of Nehardea - Wikipedia​

 

[sooda]

Your instincts here are right. Schisms always occur because of something bad that leads to ingrained enmity, and this particular schism was probably the most indelible of all.

I concur with the scholars who see the beginning of the end, or end of the beginning, of Jewish Christianity in the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE, although it's true to say that it wasn't absolutely final until about a century or so later.

The Bar Kokhba letters reveal that harsh measures were applied against people who refused to participate in the war.

Thus, in one interesting letter, Bar Kokhba threatens to put a certain Yeshua ben Galgoula in fetters for refusing to follow orders. The letter reads:

• “From Shimeon ben Kosiba [Bar Kochba] to Yeshua ben Galgoula and to the men of the fort, peace. I take heaven to witness against me that unless you mobilise [destroy?] the Galileans who are with you every man I will put in fetters on your feet as I did to benAphlul” (trans. from Yadin 1971, 137–38).

We know that the Jewish Christians couldn't participate in the war effort, since it would effectively be denial of Jesus's messiahship. So, they effectively had to choose between their people or Jesus.

And neither side forgave the choice, so it seems, or the hurts endured.

In his First Apology, the second century church father Justin Martyr (100 - 165), who lived at the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, asserts that Bar Kokhba commanded that Christian Jews should suffer persecution unless they would deny Jesus Christ and utter blasphemy (1 Apol. 31.6):

• “For in the Jewish war which now occurred, Bar Kokhba, the leader of the revolt of the Jews, ordered that Christians alone should be led to terrible punishments unless they would deny Jesus, the Christ, and blaspheme.

In this passage Justin Martyr describes the Bar Kokhba Revolt as an event that occurred recently in his own day and was still raw, both for Judean Jews (who were massacres and dispersed by the Romans in what some scholars regard as the first genocide) and by the Christian Jews, whom Bar Kokhba appears to have savagely persecuted.

Goodblatt claims a strong priestly support for Bar Kokhba. It was in the interest of the priests to see the Temple rebuilt. And since only the priests were known to have previously persecuted followers of Jesus, Goodblatt maintains that they played an integral role in fermenting persecution against them during the Bar Kokhba Revolt (1983, 11).

On the Judean Jewish side:

[12] Taylor, J. E. The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea. Oxford University Press.

"Up until this date the Bar Kokhba documents indicate that towns, villages and ports where Jews lived were busy with industry and activity. Afterwards there is an eerie silence, and the archaeological record testifies to little Jewish presence until the Byzantine era, in En Gedi.

This picture coheres with what we have already determined in Part I of this study, that the crucial date for what can only be described as genocide, and the devastation of Jews and Judaism within central Judea, was 135 CE and not, as usually assumed, 70 CE, despite the siege of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction"​

That the Jewish believers in Jesus apparently took the Roman side, albeit because they didn't want to deny Jesus and we're horribly persecuted by Bar Kokhba, in light of the horrors and depopulation and enforced slavery and dispersal that the Romans meted out to their fellow Jews...this was not forgiven, to use your words.

Obviously, the Christians didn't take kindly to the rabbinic sages banning them from the synagogues as minim or heretical Jews in the late first century (the hostile references to the "Judaens" in the Gospel of John were written in this context, not as anti-Semitic barbs but rather as still intra-Jewish sectarianism).

But this wasn't enough.

The Second Great Revolt, and the Christian inability to back it because it's leader thought himself to be the Messiah, seems to have really turned the screw and accelerated the schism in two separate faiths. After this, the rabbic sages deemed the Christians to be clearly non-Jews, while Christians likewise viewed Jews as "old Israel" with the birth of supersecessionist theology that cast the church as "new Israel".

I think the first to accept Jesus were Hellenized Jews who were considered apostate by other Jews..

Look at change of status for the Jews at the time. I think its less about religion than power.

excerpt:

In 66 C.E., at the same time that Vespasian was sent to quell the insurrection in Jerusalem, unrest had also broken out in the Roman provinces of Britain and Gaul over heavy taxation[25]. This pointed to underlying economic troubles being a factor in the unrest in Judea as well.

The use of religious zeal as a motivating element to keep fighting became apparent when Vespasian tried to quell the rebellion through various methods of representation and offers of immunity. However, when the Jews would not yield after a protracted siege, Vespasian was finally able to open the temple to the soldiers[26].

Cassius Dio writes that ‘then the Jews defended themselves much more vigorously than before, as if they had discovered a piece of rare good fortune in being able to fight near the temple and fall in its defence[27]. When the temple was finally overcome ‘they met their death willingly, some throwing themselves on the swords of the Romans, some slaying one another, others taking their won lived, and still others leaping into the flame’[28]. Cassius asserts that they seemed to die of happiness because ‘they had perished along with the temple’[

The Jewish Revolts Against the Romans

 

[Brickjectivity]

There is always the article from 1950, Julius Greenstone, which discusses the rabbinic stories about the schism...
Simon Peter was a Jew article

Thanks have I grabbed those, and I have OCR'd them without the footnotes.