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).[50]
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 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 that of the
Essenes[51]. 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 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.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account