The seminal historical circumstance in the hostility between Christians and Jews was, I believe, the conflict over whether gentiles could be converted to Christianity without undergoing circumcision. Until that conflict, Christianity and Judaism were not seen as diametrically opposed to each other. Jesus and his followers did not seek to establish a new religion (Christianity) that defined itself in contrast to Judaism. Christianity’s separation from its parent, Judaism, occurred later. And one of the most divisive issues was whether circumcision was to be required of gentile converts.
To understand this we will have to analyze 022several documents in the New Testament: First, the Book of Acts—the second half of the document that is often referred to as Luke-Acts because, in the opinion of almost all scholars, Acts is simply a continuation, by the same hand, of the account in Luke. Indeed, we shall refer to the author of Acts as Luke. This book presents the history of early Christianity and of the beginnings of Jewish-Christian conflict. Then we shall examine other early Christian documents, especially the letters that the apostle Paul wrote to various incipient churches in the Diaspora around the middle of the first Christian century. It is important to remember that Paul’s letters were written much earlier than Luke-Acts, even though Luke recounts the life and death of Jesus. In the opinion of most scholars, Luke-Acts was not written until about 90 A.D., that is, about 35 years after the latest events the document describes.
In many ways, as we shall see, the account that Acts gives of deteriorating relations between Christians and Jews conflicts with evidence from Paul’s letters and elsewhere. The principal point on which Paul and Acts agree, at least with respect to the hostility between Christians and Jews, is the centrality of the dispute over whether gentiles could be accepted into the Church without being circumcised, that is, without undertaking the obligations of Judaism.
The Book of Acts recounts the development of Christianity from Jesus’ resurrection to Paul’s incarceration in Rome, which marked the end of his career. Along the way, Acts has quite a bit to say about deteriorating Jewish-Christian relations.
Acts opens with what one scholar has called the “Jerusalem springtime” of the Church.1 The apostles perform miracles, receive the Spirit and preach effectively (Acts 1–5). The Church’s membership grows by “myriads” (as Acts 21:20 later explains). Moreover, the Church practically lives in the Temple (Acts 1:46: “Every day they stayed steadfastly in the Temple, with one accord”), which seems therefore to be the womb of Christianity.
This springtime, however, is not without its violent storms, since the authorities attempt to suppress Christianity by jailing (Acts 4:3), beating (Acts 5:40) and threatening (Acts 4:18) the apostles—this although the church has the good will of “all the people” (Acts 2:47).
The “turning point,” to use the term that nearly every commentator on Acts 7 employs, comes with Stephen’s martyrdom, when Stephen is tried by a religious court for preaching against Moses (Acts 6:11) and then is stoned to death. In Acts, Jewry in general is involved in this event: Luke shows this by having Jews from throughout the Diaspora (Acts 6:9) first accuse Stephen, and then by having “the people,” with their leaders, carry out the arrest (Acts 6:12). Here Luke also uses an abundance of third-person plural pronouns, so that we read, in the English translation, that “they stirred up the people,” and “they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council” (Acts 6:12) and “they set up false witnesses” (Acts 6:13).2 A general persecution follows, and all Christians except the apostles flee Jerusalem (Acts 8:1).
The silver lining to this cloud of persecution, however, is the spread of Christianity. According to Acts, Christianity spreads out from Jerusalem in ever-widening, concentric circles. First Samaria becomes Christian, as well as Judea (Acts 8:1). Then a proselyte to Judaism, a high official from the Ethiopian government, is converted by Philip (Acts 8:26–39).3 Then the first gentile, a God-fearer, the centurion Cornelius, becomes a Christian in response to Peter’s preaching, at the instigation of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10).
After this, Acts concerns itself primarily with Paul’s career. In Acts, Paul has regular contact with Jews throughout Anatolia and the Greek mainland. There is conflict, however, of two kinds. The first involves conflict with Jews in synagogues. In Acts, Paul regularly goes first to a synagogue when he enters a new town, receives an initial welcome and is then rejected (Antioch, Acts 13:13–52; Thessalonica, Acts 17:1–9; Beroea, Acts 17:10–15; Corinth, Acts 18:1–17). While this pattern does not occur at every stop on his itinerary,4 it occurs frequently enough to leave a general impression.5
The second kind of conflict between Paul and Jews, as portrayed in Acts, occurs only at the first and last stops on his missionary itinerary—at Cyprus (Acts 13:8–11) and at Ephesus (Acts 19:11–20). At these stops, Paul encounters Jewish magicians.
In Cyprus, the Jewish magician seeks to prevent Paul from converting the proconsul Sergius Paulus. Paul temporarily blinds the magician. The astonished proconsul then believes. At Ephesus, Paul cures the sick and exorcises evil spirits by “handkerchiefs or aprons” that are carried from Paul’s 023body to that of the sufferers. Jews magicians then try to invoke the name of Jesus over those suffering from evil spirits. In one instance, when seven such magicians attempt a cure, the evil spirit replies, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” (Acts 19:15). The man in whom the evil spirit resides then leaps on the magicians, who flee naked and wounded.
Thus we see Jews opposing Paul with natural means and attempting to outclass him in the realm of the supernatural. Neither approach succeeds, and the gospel continues to advance.
However, Acts not only portrays consistent Jewish opposition to Christianity, it also describes breach between Jewish Christianity and gentile Christianity. This occurs over the question of whether gentile converts must be circumcised and the extent to which they must follow the Law of Moses. Some Judeans took the position that “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). Paul disagreed and debated with them (Acts 15:2). The matter was referred to the apostolic church in Jerusalem. At the Apostolic Council some Christian Pharisees argued that “It is necessary to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5).
The matter is settled to everyone’s satisfaction, except presumably that of the Jewish Christians who brought the matter up in the first place. The apostles rule that gentiles do not have to be circumcised in order to become Christians. They are required only to abstain from eating idol offerings, blood, and what had been strangled and to refrain from sexual immorality (Acts 15:29).
At the end of Acts, Paul is arrested, tried in or near Jerusalem and sent to Rome, where he has his last confrontation with Jews. He addresses a Jewish audience, which, as usual, gives him a mixed response. Some are “persuaded,”6 others do “not believe” (Acts 28:24). Paul denounces the Jews as having fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of rejection. Twice before (Acts 13:46, 18:6) he has also denounced Jews roundly for not accepting the gospel. Henceforth he and will preach to the gentiles, “They will listen” (Acts 28:28). Thus ends the Book of Acts.
This conclusion seems to declare a general enmity between Jews and Christians. If, however, we to look into Paul’s letters and, to a lesser extent, other texts for evidence that would confirm this picture of the development of Jewish-Christian relations during the first Christian generation, we find that the picture looks considerably different.
Paul’s letters certainly reflect Jewish persecution of Christians. Indeed, Paul knows of this from first-hand experience, for he himself was a persecutor (Galatians 1:13, 23) before he converted and became one of the persecuted.
Yet, while Paul’s letters reveal a Jewish persecution of Christians, he gives no specific indication 024that Peter, James or other leaders of the Jerusalem chruch suffered persecution.7 Acts 12:2 reports that Herod Agrippa killed James the brother of John with a sword, yet Paul never mentions this is any of his extant correspondence, perphaps because there was no occasion for him to mention it, or because he did not consider it persecution of the Church or because he did not know about it.8
More importantly, I believe it can be shown that, before Paul’s own conversion, the Christians he persecuted were those who allowed gentiles to become Christians without undergoing circumcision9 and that after his conversion he himself was persecuted by those who objected to the conversion of gentiles without circumcision
Paul’s letter to the Galatians contains a heated discussion of circumcision. In the course of it, Paul asks, “If I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution?” (Galatians 5:11). The implication seems to be that Paul—and other Jewish-Christian missionaries—were persecuted when they stopped “preaching” or requiring circumcision.
On several occasions Paul was subjected to the Jewish punishment of 40 lashes less one (2 Corinthians 11:24). This was the usual form of synagogue punishment. He probably received this punishment precisely because he encouraged gentiles to become Christians without being circumcised, that is, without becoming Jews. Yet, strangely enough, Acts makes no mention of Paul’s receiving any synagogue lashings.
In his concluding warning to the Galatians, Paul charges that “Whoever wishes to make a good appearance in the flesh, they require you to be circumcised, only in order that they not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ” (Galatians 6:12). Here again, the implication seems to be that 025Christian missionaries are requiring circumcision only to avoid Jewish persecution.
It is of course in Galatians that we learn of Paul’s own persecution of Christians in the days before his conversion (Galatians 1:13, 23). It seems reasonable to conclude that Paul persecuted Christians for the same reason he later suffered persecution: over the issue of requiring circumcision of gentile converts.
The Gospel of Matthew seems to agree with Paul’s letters as against Acts on the matter of synagogue lashings as a punishment for Christians. In Matthew 23:34, Jesus prophesies that some will be “flog[ged] in your synagogues and harr[ied] from city to city.”10 In Matthew 10:17, Jesus also predicts to his disciples that “they will deliver you to councils, and in their synagogues they will flog you.” These references to flogging in synagogues certainly lead us in the direction of agreement with Paul about the nature of Jewish persecution of Christianity, as against Acts.11
Accordingly, we may conclude that Jewish persecution of the church occurred in Jerusalem and elsewhere because Jewish-Christian missionaries were preaching a gentile Christianity that would remain separate from Judaism. Conversely, we have been unable to corroborate the claim in Acts that the leaders of the Jerusalem church were persecuted by Jewish officialdom during the Jerusalem springtime.
Moreover, although Matthew gives a prominent place to Peter in his Gospel, he does not even hint at Peter’s frequent difficulties with the Jerusalem authorities as described in Acts.
Stephen’s martyrdom marks the great “turning point” in Acts. It brings the Jerusalem springtime to an end, and it inaugurates a period of Jewish persecution of Christianity. It is only after Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts that the term “the Jews” is used so frequently in a pejorative sense.12 Yet the “turning point” is never attested outside Acts. Indeed, Stephen and his martyrdom are never referred to outside Acts, in other early Christian literature.
Paul gives no indication of any “turning point.” On the contrary, the persecution that Paul refers to must have been going on for some time. Even before he became a Christian, he was an avid persecutor. In Paul’s letters, there is no evidence for a shift or “turning point” in Jewish-Christian relations.
Two other discrepancies between Acts and Paul’s letters are especially well known.13 The first, already referred to, goes to the heart of Paul’s mission. In Acts, in each city that Paul visits, he regularly goes first to the synagogue. In his letters, however, Paul never mentions such a practice. On the contrary, he considers himself the apostle to the gentiles.
The second discrepancy involves the requirements for gentiles to become Christians. As we have seen, in Acts the Apostolic Council that met in Jerusalem, although rejecting the requirement of gentile circumcision, nevertheless required compliance with certain laws that, according to Jewish law, were imposed even on gentiles. These included avoidance of what had been sacrificed to idols, of blood and of what had been strangled, and abstinence from unchastity (Acts 15:28–29). In Paul’s letters we hear nothing of these requirements for gentile converts. On the contrary, the Apostolic Council, according to Galatians 2:9, gives Paul carte blanche to convert gentiles without any conditions whatever.
At least theoretically Paul is as likely to be inaccurate as Luke in Acts. Each had reasons for presenting evidence in a certain way.14 But there is a limit to Paul’s ability to distort: He is writing to his own churches; they would certainly know if he were distorting. This being so, we must conclude that it is Acts, not Paul’s letters, that is distorted.
Another difference between Acts and Paul’s letters is Acts’ tendency always to portray Jews as Paul’s opponents—even when Jews were not involved, according to Paul. One prominent instance involves Paul’s escape from Damascus. In his second letter to the Corinthians (11:32–33), Paul explains that “the ethnarch of Aretas the king” (a Nabatean king) was waiting to apprehend him outside Damascus, and so he “was let down in a basket through the wall.” Luke recounts the same event in Acts 9:23–25. There are enough verbal similarities to Paul’s account to indicate that Luke had in fact read Paul’s account—or at least had heard it read and remembered it. We find phrases and words like “through the wall” and “let down” in both accounts. But in Acts, it is Jews who are lurking outside the gates of Damascus, waiting to apprehend Paul, not King Aretas’s ethnarch. Paul himself makes no mention of Jews.
Acts thus distorts Jewish-Christian relations as they bear on Paul’s career. In short, in all these areas of difference, Acts gives an impression of general conflict between Judaism and Christianity that is not supported by Paul’s own accounts.
Finally, there is the question of Jewish persecution of Christianity in Thessalonica. In Acts we are told that Paul had considerable success in converting Thessalonian gentiles, as well as Jews (Acts 17:4). The Jews then attacked the Christians. In 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16, however, we get quite a different picture. The Thessalonian Christians are indeed persecuted, but by their fellow Thessalonians. Paul compares the persecution of the Thessalonian Christians “by [their] own kin” to 044that of “the churches… in Judea… by Jews.”15 Some scholars contend that this passage is a later insertion in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, but that would not diminish the point; it would strengthen it. For if the passage is not authentic Paul, it is by a later hand, closer to the time when Acts was written; nevertheless it attributes the persecution of the Thessalonian Christians to their “own kin.” In short, in the letter to the Thessalonians there is no Jewish persecution of Christianity in Thessalonica.
Luke’s description of the growth of the early Church includes two factors concerning Jews: (1) Judaism everywhere opposed the spread of the gospel; (2) Jewish Christians sought to have all Christians become Jews. In only one respect can that description of Jewish-Christian relations be confirmed: that is with regard to the conflict concerning the requirement of circumcision of gentile converts. On the nature of this conflict Paul and Acts are in complete agreement. Both Paul’s letter to the Galatians (1–2) and Acts 15 make it clear that this issue was threatening to split the church and that the Apostolic Council was convened for the purpose of reaching an understanding that would avoid that split. Acts thus accurately describes both the nature and the course of the conflict in Paul’s time between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians, but Luke otherwise distorts the character of Jewish-Christian relations, so that in Acts, as Alfred Loisy wrote long ago, “The Jews are the authors of all evil”16
Paul wrote his letters soon after the events that he describes—in the 50s. Luke of course wrote much later—about 30 years later, in about 90 A.D. It seems highly likely that Luke’s account in Acts has been colored by his knowledge of the bitter conflict over whether to require circumcision of gentile converts. Indeed, it is likely that this issue continued to be a matter of controversy even in his own time. We have evidence of that in the letters of Ignatius, who wrote in about 100 A.D. In Ignatius’s letters to the churches of Magnesia and Philadelphia in western Asia Minor, the same region where Luke probably lived and wrote, Ignatius refers to the problem of Judaizing in the Church. Although the Judaizing he refers to seems not to be circumcision, but rather other forms of Jewish practice, especially Sabbath observance, nevertheless the theological issue is the same, namely that gentile Christians should not follow Jewish practice.17 That is the same problem that troubles Luke in Acts. True, Christians are the recipients of salvation from the Jewish God, as foretold by the Jewish prophets; and Christianity even began as a Jewish movement. But, for Luke, it was always God’s intention to send his salvation to the gentiles. Therefore Christians—for Luke, primarily gentiles—should not live as Jews. That is the point of his account of the Apostolic Council in Acts. Luke would readily have agreed with Ignatius’s words in his letter to the Magnesians: “If now we yet live a la Judaism, we confess that we have not received grace” (Magnesians 8:1)!
Paul of course would also have agreed (Galatians 2:21), although he did not blame the Jews—or Jewish Christians—in the same way. Nevertheless both Paul and Luke in Acts agree on the centrality of the issue of circumcision of gentile converts. If this is true, we must conclude that this was one of the primary causes of Jewish-Christian hostility. It was not the only one; another major conflict doubtless stemmed from Jesus’ christological claim (see, for example, John 10:30–33, where Jews seek to stone Jesus because he makes himself equal with God).18 But this does not diminish the importance of the circumcision issue. Jews who had not become Christians considered it sacrilegious for Jewish Christians to promote a gentile Christianity that did not require circumcision. Many, perhaps most, Jewish Christians agreed. Uncircumcised gentile Christians, on the other hand, deeply resented the efforts of more traditional Jewish Christians to convert them to Judaism. Synagogue punishment of the guilty missionaries was the Jewish response to the situation. Heaping guilt on “the Jews,” as Acts tends to do, was the gentile Christian response.
The seminal historical circumstance in the hostility between Christians and Jews was, I believe, the conflict over whether gentiles could be converted to Christianity without undergoing circumcision. Until that conflict, Christianity and Judaism were not seen as diametrically opposed to each other. Jesus and his followers did not seek to establish a new religion (Christianity) that defined itself in contrast to Judaism. Christianity’s separation from its parent, Judaism, occurred later. And one of the most divisive issues was whether circumcision was to be required of gentile converts. To understand this we will have to analyze 022several documents in […]
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Gerhard Lohfink, Die Sammlung Israels. Eine Untersuchung zur lukanischen Ekklesiologie (Munich, Ger.: Kösel, 1975), p. 55.
2.
See my The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), p. 73; also Walter Radl, Paulus und Jesus im lukanischen Doppelwerk (Bern, Switz.: Herbert Lang; Frankfurt, Ger.: Peter Lang, 1975), pp. 236–237.
3.
The Ethiopian eunuch is a proselyte, as can be inferred primarily from Isaiah 56:4–6. See my The Jews in Luke-Acts, pp. 151–153, and the other literature referred to there.
4.
For the variations, see again my The Jews in Luke-Acts, pp. 75–76.
5.
Ernst Haenchen (“Judentum und Christentum in der Apostelgeschichte,” Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 54 [1963], p. 175) refers to the synagogue scenes of Paul’s ministry in Acts as being done in “placard style.”
6.
When Jews are “persuaded” in Acts, they are not necessarily converted; see esp. the conclusion of Paul’s first sermon in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia, Acts 13:43.
7.
See the additional arguments in this regard in E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 284–287.
8.
It is not clear that Paul knows more than one James. In Galatians 1:19 he mentions “James the Lord’s brother,” and otherwise he refers only to James. One would thus not know from Paul that there were two Jameses, as in Acts.
9.
I here follow the argument of E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), pp. 190–192.
10.
On the issue of Jewish persecution in Matthew, one should note especially Douglas R.A. Hare, The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1967). The translation of dioko as “harry” is Hare’s, a translation that I regard as particularly apt.
11.
Matthew otherwise refers in a number of places to the killing of Christians, but these references are generally too vague to allow us to draw any conclusions about the persecutors or the places of persecution. In the parable of the Royal Banquet, Matthew 22:3–6, however, we may well have a reference to the killing of, first, Israelite prophets and, second, Christian missionaries, since these are the likely identities of the groups of servants sent in the parable to the invited guests. Matthew therefore attests the same kind of persecution that Paul attests, with possible occasional killing added. John also once mentions the killing of Christians (John. 16:2), but the future orientation and the subjunctive mood of his statement make me much more skeptical than some about whether John actually knows of killings that have occurred.
12.
See the statistical evidence in my The Jews in Luke-Acts, pp. 71–72.
13.
The most significant secondary literature would seem to be John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1950); Philipp Vielhauer, “On the ‘Paulinism’ in Acts,” in Studies in Luke-Acts, ed. L.E. Keck and J.L. Martyn (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), pp. 33–50; and Gerd Ludemann, Paulus der Heidenapostel, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980–83), Vol. 1 has appeared in English as Gerd Luedemann, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, Studies in Chronology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).
14.
I discussed this aspect of Paul’s polemic some years ago in “Paul’s ‘Autobiographical’ Statements in Galatians 1–2, ” Journal of Biblical Literature (JBL) 85 (1966), pp. 335–343. There are, of course, also problems with trying to reconcile the chronology of Paul’s life given in Acts with Paul’s own statements, but that issue does not concern us here. Furthermore, Paul never mentions God-fearers or God-worshipers, those gentiles who, in Acts, attend synagogues but do not convert to Judaism, and who often are the gentiles who become Christians.
15.
A good argument can be made that 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 are a later addition to Paul’s letter; see Birger Pearson, “1 Thessalonians 2:13–16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation,” Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971), pp. 79–94. Some scholars have agreed with Pearson, but some have disagreed, and the issue remains unsettled.
16.
Alfred Loisy, Les Actes des Apotres (Paris: Nourry, 1920), p. 787.
17.
See William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), p. 202.
18.
See esp. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2nd ed. 1979); Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Ramsey; Toronto: Paulist, 1979). See also Brown, “Johannine Ecclesiology—The Community’s Origins,” Interpretation 31 (1977), pp. 379–393, and “Other Sheep Not of This Fold: The Johannine Perspective on Christian Diversity in the Late First Century,” JBL 97 (1978), pp. 5–22; Martyn, The Gospel of John in Christian History (New York, Ramsey; Toronto: Paulist, 1978); Wayne E. Meeks, The Prophet-King; Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology (Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 1967), and “Am I a Jew?’ Johannine Christianity and Judaism,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults. Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 1975), vol. 1, pp. 163–186; and Klaus Wengst, Bedrangte Gemeinde und verherrlichter Christus (Neukirchen-Vluyn, Ger.: Neukirchener Verlag, 2nd ed., 1983).
