Some celebrate the anniversary because they value Sunday as a day of rest. Others commemorate the day to warn against the restriction of freedom of faith and conscience and discrimination against those who think differently. However, the Sunday law of March 7, 321 had a completely different, very tragic significance.
Jacques Doukhan is Jewish and, as a Seventh-day Adventist, also a Christian. That is why he has intensively examined his identity. Are these identities compatible? To answer these questions, he examines the relationship between Judaism and Christianity since the beginning in his book Israel and the Church and comes to some fascinating conclusions. The Sunday law plays a not insignificant role in this:
The first Christians were Jews
One thing is clear: the first Christians were Jews. Because: Jesus is a Jew. His ancestry, his name, his titles, his Messiahship, his appearance, his language, his upbringing, his religion, his diet and his baptism, his prayers, miracles, teaching methods and the significance of his death as the Passover lamb, his burial, even his ascension: everything was Jewish through and through. At no point did he break with his identity.
His disciples were also Jews. Their form of discipleship alone was Jewish, as was their number, their sending out, their background and their training. At no point did they convert from Judaism to Christianity, but saw the Messiah as the one who gave full meaning to their Jewish identity. They professed Jewish values and teachings and remained practicing Jews until the end of their lives.
The holy scriptures are Jewish
Peter simply added Paul’s letters to the rest of the Bible (2 Peter 3:16). So did the first Christians regard their writings as Jewish? In any case, the ancient biblical writings are quoted extensively. The structure of the New Testament is based on them. It was written by Jews for Jews and, on closer inspection, its content is also profoundly Jewish, as it sinks the message of the Hebrew Bible even deeper into people’s hearts. Even the “new” commandments were ancient, but now came with a new freshness.
Up to this point, many Christians will now agree. The Holocaust has caused many to rethink. Before the Holocaust, people saw things very differently. However, only a few are aware of the following insights:
A great many Jews were Christians
When Jesus preached, the Jewish masses followed him. He was so popular that the Jewish ruling elite became afraid. In order not to lose their power, they planned his death. Contrary to Jewish law, they interrogated him at night – out of fear of the people. However, there were also many Jews from the diaspora in Jerusalem at Passover who did not know Jesus very well. They took advantage of this fact to make it easier for the Romans to obtain a death sentence against him. They could not have so easily elicited the words “Crucify him!” from the Jews living in Israel, and certainly not from the countless people he had healed.
Jesus’ popularity did not wane after his crucifixion. The book of Acts speaks of an increase of at least 20,000 Jews who accepted the Messiah (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 9:31; 14:1; 21:2), including many priests and Pharisees (6:7; 15:5). Judging by the reports, even most of the Jews in the diaspora communities accepted the Messiah, sometimes even all of their members. Half of the Ethiopians, for example, were Jews, and almost all of them accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Messianic Jews everywhere went to the official synagogues on the Sabbath instead of founding their own places of worship. For Paul preached the principle: “to the Jews first” (Romans 1:16; 2:9, 10).
Most Jews remained Christians even after the destruction of the temple
Qumran was overthrown by the Romans in 68 AD, the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and Masada fell in 73 AD, thus destroying the centers of the Essenes, Sadducees and Zealots. They lost their significance and disappeared from history. The only Jewish movements that survived were the Christians and the Pharisees.
The Christians only separated from the Jews in the fourth century
It was the rejection of the Sabbath, sealed by the Constantinian Sunday law in 321, and the finalized devaluation of the Torah by the Christians that led to separate worship services, the rise of Christianity as the state church and the persecution of non-Christian Jews. Religious anti-Semitism was born. Christians distanced themselves from Judaism and accused non-Christian Jews of murdering God.
Over the centuries, the increasingly precarious situation of the Jews led them to invest more and more of their wealth in silver and gold, as this was easier to move and hide. They also began to work as bankers, one of the few professions left to them in the Middle Ages. Ghettoization began. Jews were seen as dangerous vermin. The rest is history! It was felt that the murder of God had to be avenged.
Replacement theology
Anti-Semitism was also based on a theology: God had rejected Israel and Christianity had taken its place. Paul had vehemently contradicted this (Romans 11:1ff).
The first report of a synagogue being burned dates back to 355 AD in northern Italy. A church was built in its place. This soon happened everywhere. The Crusaders carried out terrible massacres among the Jews and in some places wiped them out completely. The Holy Land and Jerusalem were conquered under the sign of the cross. For a while, the Muslims offered the Jews refuge from their persecutors. But the Holocaust was the final straw.
Spiritual Israel supplanted carnal Israel, grace supplanted law, feelings supplanted law and ethics, the sweet God of love Jesus in the manger supplanted the jealous, lightning-throwing YHWH. The practice of faith gave way to dogma, the Old Testament to the New, the Sabbath to Sunday, the invisible God to the visible crucifix. It was no longer a matter of sensory perception and experiences in God’s magnificent creation, but of spiritual, rational spiritual exercises.
A deep rift
Christians and Jews were ultimately separated by a deep rift. Their theology, culture and mentality grew further and further apart as they confronted each other. The Christians provided the greatest cause for this, as Jews were asked to either give up their identity and become Christians or suffer discrimination, persecution and death.
After the Holocaust, Jews and Christians realized that missionizing Jews on a large scale would be tantamount to a spiritual holocaust. It would endanger the existence of Jewish culture and identity in equal measure. So Christians became reluctant and Jews became resistant to the few remaining missionary attempts.
New bridges
However, after Auschwitz, even Christian Jews can no longer forget their Jewish identity and profess it. They help Christians to discover their Jewish roots. A Messianic Jewish movement has emerged, which is said to be the fastest growing of all Jewish movements. It is viewed with suspicion by many Jews as Christianity in disguise, as a deceptive maneuver with Jewish labels behind which Christian missionary organizations stand. Nevertheless, there are more and more Messianic Jews who actually celebrate the Sabbath and festivals, eat kosher, reject the sign of the cross and images of Jesus, sing Hebrew Bible songs to Jewish melodies and harmonies instead of Christian chorales, recite Jewish prayers and blessings and immigrate to Israel.
From hatred to appreciation
This section of Jacques Doukhan’s book particularly got under my skin:
“New Testament scholar Brad Young related the following incident: at an internationally recognized university, a world-renowned New Testament scholar told his students, ‘To be a good Christian, you must first kill the Jew who lives inside you.’ In response to this statement, a female student came forward and asked: ‘Do you mean Jesus?” (page 92)
Without the Jews, Christians would lack the testimony of their roots. The Jews have kept the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew language and the Sabbath alive. Their festivals show something of their joie de vivre and their sense of beauty. With their holistic faith, they question the cerebral approach of our Greek thinking, which often turns us into theorists.
The fact that most Jews today reject the Messiah is largely due to our Christian past, but also to our testimony today, which remains untrustworthy because we have moved so far away from the Jewish identity of Jesus, whom we are supposed to follow. Contact with Jews has the potential to make us aware of this weakness.
I hope this summary of Jacques Doukhan’s book Israel and the Church has aroused the reader’s interest in this topic. The book has 99 pages, was published in 2002 by Hendrickson Publishers and was republished in 2018 by Wipf and Stock Publishers in Eugene, Oregon. It is well worth a read for anyone who speaks English.
Source: hoffnung-weltweit.info
Recommended:
