An important milestone into development of Christian self-consciousness or Christian self-identity will be the emergence of the word "Christianity." This word appears for the first time in the writings of a church thinker of the early 2nd century of our era named Ignatius, who lived in Western Asia Minor, modern day Western Turkey. Ignatius in his letters is warning his flock to stay away from all sorts of theological perils out there, including Judaism and including all sorts of mistaken Christian theologies. And, in his writings, Ignatius uses the word Christianity, and he uses it ... in contrast with the word Judaism. We have here for the first time a polarity, a contrast. There is something called Judaism and there is something called Christianity, and true Christians will make sure that what they believe and what they do, is in fact Christianity and it's not Judaism. That is explicit and unambiguous for the very first time in the writings of Ignatius around the year 110 or 120 B.C.... - Shaye I.D. Cohen: Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University
Well, the first thing I think I would say about the situation of Judea at the time of Jesus, is that it really is a burgeoning economy. It's a new world because of the arrival of Rome, and because of the accomplishments of Herod's rule. But at the same time, these very accomplishments produce some tensions. We could probably think of it best if we think of it as almost two intersecting axes. The first is a series of religious tensions, many of them focusing on the Temple. The Temple is both the center of continuity, it's the center of devotion, and yet it can be the center of religious controversy and apocalyptic expectation or sectarian identity. Such as that we see at ... at Qumran, and among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The First Revolt
On the other side, there is the political and socioeconomic tension that we see reflected in the rise of social banditry. Let's remember that Josephus actually mentions over a dozen of these rebel bandit kinds of figures, like Judas the Galilean and The Egyptian. All the way from the time from Herod, himself and going down to the time of the first revolt. And at least, according to Josephus, there's a kind of increasing sense of political unrest that comes with them.
Now, this political tension though, is also fueled by religious ideas and expectations. And here again, Jerusalem and the Temple seem at times to be a kind of focal point of their ideas.
The situation in Jerusalem was... becoming increasingly tense through the mid sixties. This is the period of the build-up toward the first revolt against Rome. The outbreak of the war would occur in 66 but Josephus tells us that for a number of years prior to that from at least about 60 up until the outbreak that there was growing tension over the last few governors of the countryside. He tells us that they were pretty abusive and corrupted administrators ... robbing the people ... in order to line their own pockets. Josephus also tells us that there's another source of growing tension in the country at this time because there's an increasing number of bandit and rebel types coming out of the woodwork in the country, and so between growing banditry, the rise of the Zealot movement, a[n] insurgency movement, and then the corruption of the administration, the situation in Jerusalem is becoming very, very tense indeed. By the year 66 it would break out in a full scale Jewish revolt against Rome.
The story goes that when there was a riot in the city of Caesarea the Roman governor required reparations to be paid. The Jewish inhabitants of Caesarea had apparently gotten angry over the relationships with their gentile neighbors and had gone on a rampage. The governor wanted them to pay for the damages. When they refused he went to Jerusalem and demanded the money to come out of the temple treasury and that was the spark that ignited the first revolt. Unfortunately he didn't count on the level of popular sentiment that had been growing. He thought he could bluff his way in with only a few troops and he was run out of town very quickly. When he called for reinforcements and tried to march on Jerusalem again he was ambushed on the way and apparently the Jewish insurgents thought this was a sign that God was in fact ready to deliver them from Roman rule, that this was the coming of the kingdom, and so quickly a small outbreak burst into an open revolt and consumed the entire country.
...The war, that lasted from 66 to 70, *(?) ...falls fairly neatly into two distinct phases. [I]n the first phase of the war, most of the military action was limited to the Northern Territories, to the Galilee itself. Now this is where we encounter Josephus for the first time because even as a young person he was given command of the Galilean armies and was in command of them when the Roman General Vespasian, who would soon become the next emperor, led the troops to occupy the Galilee and quell the revolt. Vespasian basically decided to divide the country into parts. Mop up the North and then move on the South later. Jerusalem was his ultimate target but he wanted really to isolate it before he ever tried to take Jerusalem.
(*dates not clearly accepted by all)
By the year 68, though something else would happen in Roman politics. The Emperor Nero was assassinated, and what ensued was a year of civil war back in Rome as three different individuals claim to be the emperor of Rome. That disruption in the political continuity at Rome meant that the war was put on hold also, and as a result of that it gave another breather to the rebel forces. They again seemed to think that this was a sign of divine deliverance, that God had in fact finally killed the emperor who was trying to oppress them. So the war actually heated up after the death of Nero a bit. Vespasian eventually was recalled to Rome and was made the emperor. His son Titus who would succeed him a few years later as emperor of Rome was left in charge of the armies. It was Titus then who would proceed to undertake the siege of Jerusalem and finally end the war in the year 70.
For two years then Jerusalem was under siege. Starvation, disease, murder were the order of the day. In the final analysis, by the month of August in the year 70 the fate of Jerusalem was a foregone conclusion. The Roman armies were masked. They were ready to break through. Everyone knew it. It was just a matter of when but they were going to fight to the death, and many of them did die. So on that fateful morning when they broke through, Josephus describes the events of them breaking through the walls. The Roman soldiers running through the streets. Going into every house. Killing everyone they find.
It's a pretty awful slaughter and we have lots of evidence of it now between the artifacts that one finds of the first revolt that are scattered throughout this layer of the archaeological record. Arrowheads, spears, other kinds of indications of pretty serious hand-to-hand combat in all parts of the city. The lower city of Jerusalem remains to this day largely uninhabited but in Jesus' day in up to the time of the first revolt that was the most populous part of the city. But in the first revolt in those final hours of the battle it was burned to the ground.
The Second Revolt
The relationship between Judaism and Christianity after the turn of the second century would become more and more hostile as time went on partly because of other political forces that continued to develop. The political expectations of apocalypse did not simply die out after the first revolt; some people, both within Christian tradition and within Jewish tradition, still expected a cataclysmic event to bring a new kingdom on earth soon. As a result within sixty years after the first revolt there would arise a new rebellion. We typically call this the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome or the Bar Kochba revolt. And it's named after a famous rebel leader who really becomes the central figure of this new political period. He's called Bar Kochba. His name, though, actually is not a real name, it's a kind of messianic title. Bar Kochba means "son of the star." It's a title taken from the Book of Numbers as a reference to Davidic tradition. It's a kingship title. The star is the star of Judah, one of the symbols of the political expectation of apocalyptic tradition. His real name seems to have been Shimon Bar Kosova, and he probably was of a royal family of the Jewish tradition. But he takes to himself this messianic identity and claims that in the year 132 it is time for a new kingdom to be reestablished in Israel. Apparently he did take Jerusalem for some time. ...It's possible, although we're not absolutely sure, that he thought he could rebuild the temple too. But events would not let that happen.
The one thing that does happen in the second revolt, though, is [that] the self-consciously apocalyptic and messianic identity of Bar Kochba forces the issue for the Christian tradition. It appears that some people in the second revolt tried to press other Jews, including Christians, into the revolt, saying, "Come join us to fight against the Romans. You believe God is going to restore the kingdom to Israel, don't you? Join us." But the Christians by this time are starting to say, "No, he can't be the messiah -- we already have one." And at that point we really see the full-fledged separation of Jewish tradition and Christian tradition becoming clear. - L. Michael White
... Christianity, in its earliest beginnings, is part of Judaism... it is a sect, among a number of varieties of Judaism in the Roman Empire. But it is also clear that at a certain point, they develop a consciousness which takes them outside of the social orb of Judaism. They're no longer part of the local Jewish community, they're a separate community, meeting in little household groups, all over the city. And, it's apparent, at least from the time of the Emperor Nero, that outsiders also view them as distinct. So that when Nero is looking for scapegoats upon whom to put blame for the fire in Rome in 64, he zeroes in on the Christians.
So, obviously they are recognized as a distinctive group. How did this happen? What is involved in their separation? The one thing I think we have to recognize is that it doesn't happen all at once. It does not happen in the same way in different places, nor does it happen at the same time. For example, as late as the 4th and 5th century, we have evidence of Christians still existing within Jewish communities, and we have evidence of members of Christian communities participating in Jewish festivals. The preacher of Antioch and later of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, complains in a series of eight sermons to his congregation, that "you must stop going to the Synagogue, you must not think that the Synagogue is a holier place than our churches are." This clearly indicates that the break between Judaism and Christianity, even as late as the 4th century ... still is not absolute, is not permanent. Yet, on the other hand, we can see even in Paul's letters, which are the earliest literature we have from the early Christians, that the social separation in the communities he founded has already taken place. They're not meeting with the Jews. They're meeting in various households. So it's a varied change. It doesn't happen all at once and it doesn't happen in the same way, everywhere.
By the same token, you can see different attitudes towards the Jewish community in various writings of the early Christians. So that for example, in the Gospel of John, the Fourth Gospel, you have some of the most vehement statements against the Jews. [This is] very strange because all of the characters in the Fourth Gospel are Jewish. It seems to be an intra-Jewish dialogue going on, but it's obviously a very vehement dialogue, a very polemical dialogue, and clearly represents... [that] somewhere there has been a very painful separation of one group of Jews who followed the Messiah, Jesus, from other Jews, and there is great hostility as a result and tremendous feelings of persecution, which are enshrined in this piece of literature.
Paul, on the other hand is firmly convinced that the present separation between Jews and gentiles cannot be permanent in God's plan, that the promises which God has made to ancient Israel will be kept. He cannot have abandoned his people, Israel, even though, for the moment, most Jews have not accepted Paul's message, nor the message of other Christian Apostles. Paul still believes that there will come a time when God will do something else unaccepted and novel -- as novel as the notion of a crucified Messiah -- and thus, he says, all will be saved. So the attitudes within the Christian movement towards their parent religion, as we would call it, Judaism vary across a wide spectrum.
The word "church" is a tricky one. There is a Greek word, ecclesia, which we translate in all modern translations as "the church," and this is a total anachronism, because nobody in the Greek world would have had any concept which was remotely similar to what we regard as a church. This is a political term; an ecclesia is just a meeting, and preeminently the meeting of the free citizens of a city which is constitutionally organized, so that its citizens can vote on important things. And so when Paul writes to the meeting, the ecclesia of God, of the Thessalonians, this is a very strange kind of notion because ordinarily the town meeting of the Thessalonians is a political thing which couldn't be more different from a group of a dozen or so people who have converted to this community meeting in somebody's house. How does that get to be a church, in our sense of the word? How do these little household meetings come to be thought of as a universal church or the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church? This is something which happens over a long period of time and is deeply part of that process by which this new movement works out its relationship to the larger culture, as it institutionalizes itself, to use a modern sociological bit of jargon, as every movement has to if it's going to survive.
But hidden within this development is a piece of self-identity, is a notion of who one is, which comes straight out of the history of Israel. The notion that God has made a treaty, a contract, a covenant, with a group of people, and they will be his people. So this fundamental part of the consciousness of Israel, as being the people of God put among the peoples of the world in order to bring God's intention for humanity to fruition, this is shared by, I think, all of the important groups of early Christianity. Diverse as it was, they all have the sense that, in some way, we have to embody this ancient sense of who Israel was. We either take the place of Israel or we fulfill the notion of Israel or we're a part of the Israel that wants to be a people of God. And, it is this self-concept, I think, which cannot be forgotten, as [part of the process that produces the Church]. -Wayne A. Meeks: Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University
When we see the Christians beginning to spread out beyond the original homeland environment, they're following a pathway that had already been well trod before them by other Jews. By the middle of the first century, there are probably more Jews living outside of the homeland, than actually live back in Judah proper. This is what we call the Diaspora, that is, the dispersion of Jewish population throughout the Empire, and we know that there are major Jewish communities in most of the large cities of the Empire, all the way from the Persian Gulf on the east to Spain on the west. It's an extensive diffusion of the Jewish population throughout the Roman. - L. Michael White: Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin
One of the awful aftermaths of the first war with Rome was that Jews and Christians - or the followers of Jesus or the Jesus movement, as you might call it - took different directions. Not all of them, of course. I believe that many followers of Jesus stayed in the land. Some went to Trans Jordan. Some went off to the Diaspora lands and made their new way, and the gentile church evolved. But for the Jewish followers of Jesus and their Jewish compatriots, many of them reestablished themselves in the Galilee, and other parts of the east. And I believe they lived side by side for several hundred years in that area with one another, and it's a story that can be told only very invisibly through archaeological inferences and through some literary sources....
You have the beginnings of a gentile church outside of Israel. But I'm not sure that the tensions that most people associate between Jews and Christians really occur before the fourth century, when Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire, under Constantine. I think all of these tensions are exaggerated. This was an internal family war between cousins and brothers and sisters and people like that. But the tensions, I think, have been grossly exaggerated, and you only need to turn to some of the great multi-religious and multi-ethnic cities of the east to see that Jews and Christians managed to get on for longer periods than most people assume....
Most of the gospel and traditions of early Christianity were written down after the first war, and they reflect a period of theological disagreement. And the new narrative history that evolved, in the form of the New Testament, tells a story of a broken relationship, and that's part of the sad story that evolves between Jews and Christians, because it is a story that has such awful repercussions in later times. But it is not necessarily reflective of all of the local situation in the first three centuries. - Eric Meyers: Professor of Religion and Archaeology Duke University
This passage from the Gospel of John, the last gospel, exemplifies what some scholars have identified as evidence of a growing hostility towards Judaism that emerges as Christianity separates itself from its parent religion. When some of his Jewish followers question whether Jesus is claiming to be greater than Abraham, he says that they are children of the devil.
John 8:31-59
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. “I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. “I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what Abraham did, “but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. “You are doing what your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. “But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. “Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. “Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ “But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.