Essays Upon Some Controverted QuestionsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
They therefore request that he should perform a certain public religious
act in the Temple, in order that
all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof they have
been informed concerning thee; but that thou thyself walkest orderly,
keeping the law (_ibid._ 24).[119]
How far Paul could do what he is here requested to do, and which the writer
of the Acts goes on to say he did, with a clear conscience, if he wrote the
Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, I may leave any candid reader of
these epistles to decide. The {437} point to which I wish to direct
attention is the declaration that the Jerusalem Church, led by the brother
of Jesus and by his personal disciples and friends, twenty years and more
after his death, consisted of strict and zealous Jews.
Tertullus, the orator, caring very little about the internal dissensions of
the followers of Jesus, speaks of Paul as a "ringleader of the sect of the
Nazarenes" (Acts xxiv. 5), which must have affected James much in the same
way as it would have moved the Archbishop of Canterbury, in George Fox's
day, to hear the latter called a "ringleader of the sect of Anglicans." In
fact, "Nazarene" was, as is well known, the distinctive appellation applied
to Jesus; his immediate followers were known as Nazarenes; while the
congregation of the disciples, and, later, of converts at Jerusalem--the
Jerusalem Church--was emphatically the "sect of the Nazarenes," no more in
itself to be regarded as anything outside Judaism than the sect of the
Sadducees or of the Essenes.[120] In fact, the tenets of both the Sadducees
and the Essenes diverged much more widely from the Pharisaic standard of
orthodoxy than Nazarenism did.
Let us consider the position of affairs now (A.D. 50-60) in relation to
that which obtained in Justin's time, a century later. It is plain that the
Nazarenes--presided over by James, "the brother of the Lord," and
comprising within their body all the twelve {438} apostles--belonged to
Justin's second category of "Jews who observe the Law, believe Jesus to be
the Christ, but who insist on the observance of the Law by Gentile
converts," up till the time at which the controversy reported by Paul
arose. They then, according to Paul, simply allowed him to form his
congregations of non-legal Gentile converts at Antioch and elsewhere; and
it would seem that it was to these converts, who would come under Justin's
fifth category, that the title of "Christian" was first applied. If any of
these Christians had acted upon the more than half-permission given by
Paul, and had eaten meats offered to idols, they would have belonged to
Justin's seventh category.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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