Lecture 6.f - The Law is Taboo

Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period Until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century Panarion 29,7

The parting of the ways is at the Law of Moses. It is their observance of the Law—and this alone—which, for Epiphanius, separates the Nazarenes from the main Church. ‘Only in this respect they differ from the … Christians.’ It is this one thing which so stands out that it is essentially the only thing remembered by subsequent Fathers against the sect, starting with the anacephalaiosis. It makes little difference that the first Jewish believers continued to keep the Law (Acts 15; 21:20–26); it is immaterial that the epistle to the Galatians was addressed to Christians from gentile background or that Paul perhaps never wrote against Jewish Christians keeping the Law. The significance of all of this has long since been lost to men like Epiphanius. The Law is taboo.

"Christianity won not through the unique greatness of Jesus, not through its own specific truth it won through eternal truths borrowed from Judaism, which it - and this is its only accomplishment - knew to free from their nationalistic and dogmatic bonds. Christianity's rise to world power was based on historical developments and not on theological merit. Such an inherently weak theological position led to religious intolerance, of Judaism in particular, because Christianity was compelled to demonstrate its superiority over against its Jewish roots.” - Krondorfer, Björn. 2000. “Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus.” The Journal of Religious History 24 (2): 233–35.

“On one hand, the implication of my argument is that Christianity hijacked not only the Old Testament but the New Testament as well by turning that thoroughly Jewish text away from its cultural origins among the Jewish communities of Palestine in the first century and making it an attack on the traditions of the Jews, traditions that, I maintain, it sought to uphold and not destroy, traditions that give the narrative its richest literary and hermeneutical context.”

Notes From: Daniel Boyarin. “The Jewish Gospels.” Apple Books.

Who or What Parted?

When did they Part?

Why did the Part?

The Path Ahead of Us.