Let’s look at the relationship between Jews and the gentiles all around them – keeping in mind that Jesus and all the apostles, including Paul, were also Jewish. These two communities, and the efforts by the early Christians to get along with both worlds, will become important later.
The authors of the New Testament had mixed feelings about the Jews, and it is difficult to drill down to the truth regarding the role of the Jews in first-century events. For example, when we are told that the Jews were trying to have Jesus convicted, is this fact, anti-Semitic fiction, or a confused mix involving Jewish priests impelling other Jews to seek Jesus’ punishment?
What seems to be clear is that Paul, whose name is (sometimes erroneously) on many books of the New Testament and who influenced the writings of Luke as well, didn’t get along with the Jews, surprising for a former Pharisee. He was a devoted citizen of the Roman empire and chose to blame the Jews, not the Romans, for Jesus’ death. This is despite the fact that crucifixion is absolutely a Roman form of punishment, possibly doled out because Jesus frightened the Romans and their thug-like governor with a “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem, attended by huge crowds, during Passover when big dangerous crowds were rolling into the city. Throughout Acts, Paul’s friend Luke accuses the Jews of stirring up crowds against Paul, plotting to have him arrested or killed, following him around, interfering with his ministry. Paul even had a friend circumcised because he was afraid the Jews would attack him otherwise.
Not all Jews were hostile to Paul. Paul insisted that he be put on trial in Rome rather than in a Jewish tribunal, but the Jewish king, far from being hostile, said “this man could have been set free if he hadn’t appealed to the emperor”. And when Paul arrived at Rome, the Jews there, far from seeking his blood, had apparently never heard of him. After hearing his story, some of the Jews there sympathized with him. It was his friends the Romans who beheaded him.
But it is virtually certain that a key reason for the hatred of the Jews toward Paul, was because he preached that it was no longer necessary to obey Jewish Law anymore. He told the Jewish community and the Christians as well: stop obeying the Torah. And of course a key part of the Torah is obeying the priests and giving them lots of offerings. He and the other disciples also told the Jews that if they didn’t have Jesus, they didn’t have God, either. No wonder the Jewish priests whipped up the Jews to try and kill him.
In
fact, the main story of the birth of Christianity, the Acts of the Apostles, is
dominated by a single plot line: Paul’s endless clashes with Jewish leaders
over doctrine, observance and ministry. The first great chapter in Christianity
is the story of the founders of the faith casting off ancient Biblical law and
squabbling with the defenders of that law. When Paul spoke before the Jews and
the occupying Romans in Jerusalem, he specifically referred to his past life as
a vigorous enforcer of Jewish law, and to his subsequent conversion and
abandonment of that life, which he implied was sinful.
And
that law which Paul rejected, includes the original ban on homosexuality: Paul,
who as much as anyone else was founder of the Christian church, told Christians
for all time that that body of laws was no longer valid, so the bans on things
like homosexuality were no longer in force, as we discussed in the previous
section. Paul still disapproved of gays, but was not concerned about any
violation of the law.
Incidentally, the relationship between the Romans and the Jews was also complicated. During the trial of Jesus, the local Jews allegedly played the empire card against him, claiming Jesus had violated Roman law, but Pilate didn’t buy it and neither did the centurion who crucified him. The tension between the Jews and their Roman occupiers eventually erupted into civil unrest which went very badly for the Jews.
The author of Revelation apparently had an anti-Roman bent. Anti-Roman sentiments had of course surfaced earlier in the story of the Bible: in the book of Luke Jesus implied, right on his way to Golgotha, that Roman-ruled Jerusalem would soon see chaos and destruction. In Revelation the hints become more broad: Rome was characterized as the whore of Babylon, a reference to the great city that tormented the Jews before Rome did the same – Rome, the city that ruled over the kings of the earth, destined to be conquered by the risen Messiah. Revelation describes the deliverance of the faithful, by Jesus, from the clutches of Satan, but the subtext also refers to deliverance from the Romans. Deliverance which, like many biblical prophecies, never materialized.
Some odd things happened when Paul ventured out among the gentiles to preach. When he healed someone in Lystra, the locals deemed him and his companion to be Zeus and Hermes, whereupon the angry local Jews almost got Paul lynched. Paul had to flee Ephesus because of smiths who were angry that the Christian faith was cutting into their trade in making pagan idols. When he was shipwrecked on Malta and bitten by a snake, a sailor insisted he must be a murderer facing divine justice, but when Paul stubbornly didn’t die, they proclaimed him a god. In Ephesus again, Paul and Priscilla found a whole group of people who professed to be Christians but only knew the story of the Jews and Christians up to the point where John the Baptist came onto the scene – nothing after that. Paul and Priscilla had to sit them down and explain that there was another guy who came along after John who was kind of important to the whole Christian scheme of things. But Paul never wavered in his resolve that the way forward for Christianity was to abandon Jewish law so that gentiles across the empire could be converted.
According to Acts, the Holy Spirit told the disciples not to preach in Asia, which to them meant Turkey. In retrospect it’s not hard to see why: according to legend, no less than seven of the twelve apostles were killed in the region stretching from Turkey over into the adjacent areas such as Armenia, and an eighth apostle went as far as India before being killed there. So two thirds of the Big Twelve got killed, not because they preached to the Romans, Greeks and Jews, but because they headed toward the east.
Incidentally, the relationship between the Romans and the Jews was also complicated. During the trial of Jesus, the local Jews allegedly played the empire card against him, claiming Jesus had violated Roman law, but Pilate didn’t buy it and neither did the centurion who crucified him. The tension between the Jews and their Roman occupiers eventually erupted into civil unrest which went very badly for the Jews.
The author of Revelation apparently had an anti-Roman bent. Anti-Roman sentiments had of course surfaced earlier in the story of the Bible: in the book of Luke Jesus implied, right on his way to Golgotha, that Roman-ruled Jerusalem would soon see chaos and destruction. In Revelation the hints become more broad: Rome was characterized as the whore of Babylon, a reference to the great city that tormented the Jews before Rome did the same – Rome, the city that ruled over the kings of the earth, destined to be conquered by the risen Messiah. Revelation describes the deliverance of the faithful, by Jesus, from the clutches of Satan, but the subtext also refers to deliverance from the Romans. Deliverance which, like many biblical prophecies, never materialized.
Some odd things happened when Paul ventured out among the gentiles to preach. When he healed someone in Lystra, the locals deemed him and his companion to be Zeus and Hermes, whereupon the angry local Jews almost got Paul lynched. Paul had to flee Ephesus because of smiths who were angry that the Christian faith was cutting into their trade in making pagan idols. When he was shipwrecked on Malta and bitten by a snake, a sailor insisted he must be a murderer facing divine justice, but when Paul stubbornly didn’t die, they proclaimed him a god. In Ephesus again, Paul and Priscilla found a whole group of people who professed to be Christians but only knew the story of the Jews and Christians up to the point where John the Baptist came onto the scene – nothing after that. Paul and Priscilla had to sit them down and explain that there was another guy who came along after John who was kind of important to the whole Christian scheme of things. But Paul never wavered in his resolve that the way forward for Christianity was to abandon Jewish law so that gentiles across the empire could be converted.
According to Acts, the Holy Spirit told the disciples not to preach in Asia, which to them meant Turkey. In retrospect it’s not hard to see why: according to legend, no less than seven of the twelve apostles were killed in the region stretching from Turkey over into the adjacent areas such as Armenia, and an eighth apostle went as far as India before being killed there. So two thirds of the Big Twelve got killed, not because they preached to the Romans, Greeks and Jews, but because they headed toward the east.
