The Deadlocked Debate about the Role of the Jewish Christians at the Birth of Islam

The thesis concerning the Jewish-Christian origins of Islam has been continuously defended and developed by a good number of authors, even if the proponents of this line of thought have never constituted a school nor followed a unitary or homogeneous discourse. At the other end of the spectrum, many scholars strongly reject the ‘Jewish-Christian connection’ insofar as it introduces a speculative and unnecessary category in the study on the origins of Islam. The matter has aroused irreconcilable stances, studies that remain alien to each other, or simply seem to ignore the status quaestionis. From the traditional perspective, the debate seems to have reached a deadlock, however, and to explain a possible legal, cultural, and religious ‘Judaeo-Christian’ continuum that could be shared by the early Islamic audience, it might be useful to look around the spectrum of mixed beliefs and practices between the Jewish and Christian orthodoxy that can be found at a time very close to the arrival of Islam.

Parting Ways or Rival Siblings? A Review and Analysis of Metaphors for the Separation of Jews and Christians in Antiquity

Since the early 1990s, ‘the parting of the ways’ has become academic shorthand, especially in anglophone scholarship, for the separation of Jews and Christians in antiquity. Often it is associated with a onetime, global break that occurred by the end of the second century, particularly over one or more theological issues. This model has been challenged as being too tidy. Other images have been offered, most notably that of ‘rival siblings’, but the ‘parting’ model remains supreme. Consensus has shifted in other ways, however. The ‘parting’, or better, ‘partings’, is now understood to be a localized, protracted, and multifaceted process that likely began in the second century and continued into or past the fourth century. It is also suggested here that the current debate covers five distinguishable topics: (1) mutual religious recognition, (2) the continued existence of ‘Jewish Christians’, (3) religious interaction, (4) social concourse, and (5) outsider classification.

Apostle Paul's Fundraising Economic Theory of Savings and Social Change

This article critically explores the idea of savings from the New Testament perspective, particularly, using the Pauline fundraising strategy. It argues that the direction given by Apostle Paul regarding the fundraising of the Gentile Christians constitute an informal economic theory of savings. Content analysis was used in reviewing relevant literature for the study. It was established that the directions Paul gave to the Gentile Christians regarding the fund raising constitute informal savings principles. Additionally, Pauline fundraising strategies was eschatological and relational in nature. The paper concludes that Paul’s fundraising was centered on three concepts namely, generosity, gratitude and mission. In this regard, Paul’s fundraising economic theory had the sole aim of bringing social change in the lives of the Jewish Christians.

Moving Through the Polis, Asserting Christian Jewishness

This chapter explores how Acts of the Apostles and the Salutaris Foundation inscription each uses ethnic reasoning together with civic and imperial space to produce unified identities. Focusing on Paul's visits to Jewish civic associations in Acts 15:30–18:23, it shows how the repeated representation of civic space constructs a Jewish identity that includes proselyte non-Jews and at the same time makes an internal distinction between two Jewish identities: Christians and other Jews. Thus, the difference between Christians and non-Christians is one internal to Jewish identity. The chapter then compares this to how the Salutaris Foundation regulates movement through the Ephesian cityscape in ways that both reimagine Ephesian identity and distinguish between “true” and other Ephesians. While Acts seeks to incorporate non-Jewish Christians into the Jewish community, the Salutaris Foundation seeks to marginalize those Ephesians who do not conform to the benefactor's desired construal of Ephesian identity. Finally, the chapter studies how the literary representation in Acts of Paul's journeys throughout the Roman Empire also constructed a unified Christian identity that could be contrasted with the purported disunity of other Jewish civic associations.

Über Judentum und Hellenismus hinaus: Die paulinische Theologie als neues Wissenssystem

The new Paul within Judaism Perspective claims that Paul remained a Jew and loyal to the Torah throughout his entire life. His letters were addressed exclusively to Gentile Christians. However, all the Pauline letters do not give the impression that their contents only applied to certain groups within the different congregations. Without a doubt, Paul remained closely tied to Judaism throughout his life, but numerous texts document a break with the past and a departure towards something new. In addition, the Paul within Judaism Perspective ignores the theological standpoint and the organizational efforts required by the emerging group of Christians to establish themselves as a religious community. Any group who decides to set up its own meeting places, give itself a new name, develop new rituals and laws, organize its own communal meals, determine a new holy day and celebrate its own worship services based on a new and unique group image cannot be seen as part of another religious group. Ultimately, a new, impressive theological world comes to light, expressed in its own original style and with an extraordinary literary production. Neither the Jews, nor the strict Jewish Christians, nor the Romans of the time perceived the apostle Paul as someone who continued to consider himself and his congregations to be within the framework of Judaism.

Pentecostal Canon of the Bible?

Classical Pentecostalism is traditionally regarded as a restorationist movement that justified its origins and explained its new practices as a continuation of the early church, as a work of the Spirit. For that reason, the gifts of the Spirit (charismata) were purportedly restored to the twentieth-century Pentecostal movement. Early Pentecostalism also claimed that they followed the early church in its hermeneutical prerogatives of reading the Bible through the lens of their charismatic practices. The article poses the question whether Pentecostalism in its restorationist urge should not reconsider its canon, since it differs from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used by the early church, to include the books found in the Septuagint, the translation used by early non-Jewish Christians. It suggests that Pentecostals reconsider their biblical canon in the light of their restorationist urge rather than groundlessly following the Protestant canon as their predecessors did by using the Apocrypha as deuterocanonical, implying that it is accepted for personal and ecclesial edification but not for judging the genuineness of gifts that come from the Spirit and those that do not (1 Cor. 12.10) and establishing the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines.

Religious Traditions in Politics: Catholicism

Traveling from Galilea and Judea 2,000 years ago to the far reaches of the Roman Empire, Jewish Christians gradually transformed their small gatherings of believers into a major European Catholic State-Church, which eventually became today’s Global Catholic Church-State. Popes throughout the centuries have adapted strategies to deal with internal religious challenges, including the Great Schism of 1054, which separated the Eastern and Western Christian Churches, and the European Reformation of 1517, which created separate vibrant Protestant Churches. The popes have also dealt with external threats from Islam, nationalism, and communism that sought to control or eliminate the pope’s autonomy to lead the Church. With a universal church of over 1.3 billion members in the developed and developing world, Pope Francis continues to adapt Church policies while tackling its greatest challenge to its legitimacy, the sexual abuse scandals.

The Gospel of Peter as a Jewish Christian Document

The second half of the Akhmîm fragment of the Gospel of Peter distinguishes the recalcitrant Jewish leaders, who suppress the truth of Jesus’ resurrection, from the Jewish people, who regret their murder of Jesus the moment he dies – a distinction best explained by the thesis that the document was produced by and for Jewish Christians living in second-century Syria. Other Christian documents related to the Gospel of Peter and written or influenced by second- and third-century Jewish Christians, especially the Didascalia Apostolorum, show a similar combination of philo- and anti-Judaism. The Gospel's reference to the disciples fasting during the interim between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection may refer to the practice, attested in the Didascalia and elsewhere, of liturgical fasting for the Jews. Apocalypse of Peter 2, which was probably an original part of the Gospel, holds out hope for Israel's restoration. As the Akhmîm scribe excised this hopeful chapter from the Apocalypse, so he probably excised the hopeful ending of the Gospel, in which the risen Jesus commissioned the disciples to continue the work of separating the people from their recalcitrant leaders and thereby converting them to faith in the one they had crucified.