However unfamiliar it may be to many readers, Jesus’ two-pronged approach to Hellenization is what the Gospel of Matthew presents. Modern Christians are not Torah-observant and haven’t been for centuries. But the evidence is overwhelming. Jesus was an orthodox Jew who taught and practiced Torah. Why later Christians moved away from this position is something that will be considered in due course. Moreover, the Kingdom Jesus promised didn’t arrive as expected. That, too, created problems for later Christians as they struggled to match reality with expectations.
Aside from Matthew’s sketch of Jesus, there is further corroborating evidence for the pro-Torah stance of Jesus. It’s to be found in the beliefs of his immediate followers who also combined the challenge of Torah with the promise of the Kingdom. The Jesus Movement was a Torah-observant group, ensconced within Judaism as one more form of this religion alongside such other Jewish factions as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots. These people were Jews, operating well within the Jewish orbit and accepted by other Jews as Jews. That did change over time, but, at the outset, this was how they were regarded.
Following Jesus’ death, the leader of the Jesus Movement was Jesus’ brother, James. This group expected that Jesus would return quickly to establish the Kingdom of God as an alternative to Roman rule. That absolutely had to happen, for Jesus’ death before the arrival of the Kingdom represented a huge setback. Jesus’ desperate cry upon the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mathew 27:46) could easily be construed as his recognition, close to death, that the Kingdom was not going to materialize as he had promised.
But his earliest followers entertained that great end-time hope. They thought that Jesus would return to finish what he had announced. Soon. Then and only then would he truly be the Messiah. Jesus would become the Davidic king with Israel freed from the shackles of Roman authority. Moreover, it would become a beacon for all humanity and God would be worshipped in holiness by all. That’s what Zechariah had said would happen on that day when God will establish his sovereign rule: “And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day, the Lord will be one and his name one” (Zechariah 14:9). In the meantime, James functioned as the prince regent, waiting for the king to return and the Roman Empire to fade away.
James was the undisputed leader of the Jesus Movement, from the early 30s through to his murder some thirty years later in 62. Others present with him in Jerusalem included Jesus’ immediate family—Mary, his mother; his brothers; Mary Magdalene; and the disciples. These loyal individuals, headed by James, were a royal court in waiting. They were the heart of the movement and its undisputed leaders. They knew the historical Jesus, were aware of what he taught and practiced, and were with him when he died. Recognizing what he stood for, they constituted the solid nucleus of the movement. These were leaders with credibility. Some contended they witnessed his resurrection. And so the members of the Jesus Movement waited. They stoked the Kingdom message, followed Jewish law rigorously, and kept alive the hope that the world would soon be transformed dramatically.
According to the Book of Acts, James was an orthodox Jew who looked upon Jesus as a teacher and Messiah claimant. The political nature of the Jesus Movement he led was reflected in a very important question the risen Jesus was asked by the disciples in Jerusalem: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). The question drips with political overtones. It was tantamount to asking, Is this the time when you will act as the Messiah, to establish the independence of Israel, assume the throne of David, and help God bring about the promised Kingdom? In other words, when would Rome be overthrown? The risen Jesus deflected the question, saying that only God knew the agenda.
The members of the Jesus Movement followed the Torah as interpreted by Jesus. They observed the Sabbath, kosher laws, the great festivals of Judaism; they practiced circumcision and kept all the other commandments required of faithful Jews everywhere. They certainly did not think of Jesus as having walked away from Torah. Nor did they think of Jesus as having established a new movement or church. They went to the Temple frequently, participating in its rituals. There was no question in their minds that the Jewish priesthood and the Temple were legitimate. Legends grew up about the devotion of James, so much so that he eventually became known as James the Righteous, an epithet given only to those who followed Torah strictly.
Christian tradition places the Jesus Movement on the western ridge of Jerusalem. Today we can visit “the upper room” at a location above what is alleged to be the tomb of King David. How far back this tradition of the location of the upper room goes is not known, but the remains of an ancient synagogue have been discovered on this site at its lowest levels, below the upper room and the tomb of David. Whether these early followers of Jesus were actually situated here on the western ridge or elsewhere in Jerusalem—or whether that upper room was the upper room of the Last Supper—it would have been only a short walk to Temple Mount, where they could have participated in the prayers and sacrifices.
Along the way, they would have bumped into Sadducean priests coming and going, fulfilling their functions, Roman soldiers keeping peace, Pharisees and their yeshivas, or schools, and perhaps an Essene or two who had strayed from their quarter of the city. Tourists would have flocked through on their way to the broad pavement stones that took them up into the Temple precincts. These stones still stand there on the south side of Temple Mount, and we can walk where Jesus and James once strode up to the Temple. On the Sabbath, they would have heard the trumpeter standing on the high southwest corner of Temple Mount call out the times for keeping the day of rest. They would have honored that call, refraining from work prohibited on the Sabbath. The great festivals of Succoth, Shavuot, and Passover would come and go, and these devout Jews were part of the annual cycle of Jewish prayer and worship. Rooted within the diverse family of first-century Judaism, the Jesus Movement was not a separate religion. It jostled with the other ways of being Jewish for recognition and membership.
Picture the early followers of Jesus, not in our terms as Christians today, but as Orthodox Jews carrying out their Jewish beliefs and practices under the inspiration of their rabbi, Jesus. We need to visualize them as having long hair and wearing the prayer shawl—the tallit—as they prayed. They stopped working at sundown on Friday evening. They welcomed and observed the Sabbath, sharing in its festive meal, likely all together, singing, rejoicing, and resting from labor.
James, in fact, was a Nazirite or “super Jew,” like his cousin John the Baptist. As we said, a Nazirite was a Torah-observant Jew who had taken a special vow of dedication to God. Their rabbi was Jesus, and it was his interpretation of Torah that commanded their allegiance. But they hoped for more: surely he would fulfill the role of the Messiah, returning to usher in this great end-time when he would become king of Israel and they, the royal family. Their vision of what Jesus taught and practiced dovetails with Matthew’s image of Jesus as proclaiming both Torah observance and the Kingdom message.
As James, so Jesus. The best indicator of what Jesus of the 20s actually taught is likely to be James, his brother. James knew the man and what he stood for. He knew Jesus taught and practiced Torah, as they did. In addition to what the Gospel of Matthew depicts in passages like the Sermon on the Mount, the example of James is the best clue we have today concerning the beliefs and practices of the Jesus of history.
James was murdered in 62, and Josephus provides us with some of the details. An interim high priest (a Sadducee) had him killed. Josephus also notes that the Pharisees lamented the slaughter of this righteous leader and had tried to come to his rescue, but not in time. The early church historian Eusebius tells us that the surviving blood relatives of Jesus, his apostles, and other followers gathered together sometime after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 to determine who would succeed James as leader of the movement. Simeon, Jesus’ cousin, was unanimously selected. He was the son of Cleophas, the brother of Joseph, Jesus’ father.1
These were very difficult times for Jews in Israel. The Temple had been destroyed and Jerusalem lay in ruins. Its priesthood—the Sadducees—had been virtually wiped out. The Essenes had been decimated at Qumran in 68 by Roman troops heading up to Jerusalem. The Zealots would meet their fate a few years later, in 73 or 74, high atop the fortress of Masada. Members of the Jesus Movement also must have experienced tremendous upheaval. The Romans hunted down all those of royal blood—all those who could claim lineage from the family of David. This quest was carried out during the reign of Emperor Domitian (81—96) who issued orders that the descendants of David be slain. The emperors understood very clearly the political threat. Another ancient church historian quoted by Eusebius, Hegesippus, noted that at this time there were grandchildren of Judas, one of Jesus’ brothers, still alive. Domitian interrogated them, but, upon learning that they were poor farmers and that the Kingdom in question would only come at the end of the world, he dismissed them as simpletons. Clearly they posed no threat to the peace and stability of the Roman Empire. Hegesippus went on to note that they were still alive by the time of the emperor Trajan (98—117). During Trajan’s reign, however, Simeon, Jesus’ cousin and the second bishop of Jerusalem, was tortured and finally crucified. He was alleged to have been 120 years old at the time.2
This ended control of the Jesus Movement by blood relatives of Jesus. Eusebius named thirteen subsequent bishops of Jerusalem, noting that they were all Jews: Justus, Zacceus, Tobias, Benjamin, John, Matthew, Philip, Seneca, Justus, Levi, Ephres, Joseph, and Judas.3
During this time, Judaism was itself evolving, even though Christians today tend to think of Judaism as the religion of the Old Testament, forgetting that it, too, has been transformed. Its history has not been static. It sometimes comes as a remarkable surprise to Christians that the Judaism of today, while having continuity with biblical religion, has also changed dramatically. After A.D. 70, this was a dire necessity. The Romans had destroyed the Temple, the focal point of Jewish life for hundreds of years. Jerusalem lay in ruins. Social life in Israel was disrupted. The priesthood represented by the Sadducees had been decimated. Other than the Jesus Movement, only the Pharisees survived.
70 represents a key turning point. It was the catalyst for change—for everyone. The Pharisaic sages, the rabbis, took Judaism in one direction. They did what had to be done, that is, reconstruct Judaism along lines that did not involve the Temple. Hence we get the development of modern Judaism, built along communal participation in the synagogue and in the family rituals that keep alive the ancient practices prescribed by the Torah. Judaism moved on with its development while various forms of early Christianity forged their own separate identities. Henceforth Judaism would be led by rabbis and their remarkable debates and decisions would, in time, enter into literature through the Mishnah and the Talmud.4
At the same time, the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem pulled in another direction, trying to maintain close ties with mainstream Judaism but, in time, evolving its own distinctive infrastructure. Certainly at the outset they would have considered themselves Jewish, but that probably changed over time as the two religions diverged. Paul’s Christ Movement veered in yet a third direction. Its innovative message and few demands appealed to people around the Mediterranean, and it experienced tremendous growth. While Paul was ethnically Jewish, in light of his critique of Judaism, it is highly unlikely that he considered himself Jewish by the time he was writing his letters in the 50s and early 60s.
Somewhat later, in the second through fourth centuries, Jesus’ followers who sought to retain Torah observance were referred to by their opponents as the Ebionites (the Poor) or as the Nazarenes.5 They were likely successors to the original Jesus Movement led by James and the other disciples of Jesus.
It is a remarkable irony of history that their beliefs are not well known today, and they differ markedly from the tradition of contemporary Christianity, which derives from Paul. In the fourth century, Eusebius even referred to these original followers of Jesus as heretics (Ecclasiastical History, Book 3, Chapter 27)—well, heretics as far as the religion of Paul was concerned. The Ebionites followed the Torah, as required of all Jews. In obeying Torah, they undoubtedly felt they were observing the religion taught and practiced by Jesus. They were distinguished from other forms of Judaism by their attachment to the teachings and example of their rabbi, Jesus. But whatever that meant, it did not mean the abandonment of the ancient covenant expressed through the Torah.
Believing Jesus to be the promised Messiah, they waited for him to come to restore Israel to prominence and bring about the long-awaited end-time. We do not know how they handled the problem of “the delay,” how their leaders responded to questions from their followers of why the promised Kingdom had not yet materialized on earth.
They held that Jesus, like all who are holy and righteous, was resurrected. Unlike Paul’s Christ Movement did, they seem not to have attached any significance to his death and resurrection. He was not a savior. It was not as if people could now participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection and so be saved. Identifying with Jesus’ resurrection was not their view of salvation.
Presumably they held to traditional Jewish views of resurrection and redemption. This concept projected that at the end-time, when the Kingdom would come upon earth, the righteous dead would be resurrected. They would then join the righteous people who were alive when that great event happens. In the meantime, the dead were dead, awaiting God’s judgment at the end of history. Jesus’ resurrection, however, was proof that resurrection does occur and that the end-time must soon be approaching.
Jesus was fully human, they thought, born in the usual way, having Mary as his mother and Joseph as his father. Their preferred gospel text was the Gospel of Matthew, written in Aramaic but without the virgin birth story, unlike our version of this gospel, which, like Luke, includes a virgin birth narrative. In fact, they did not accept the virgin birth story at all since this mythology does not find its roots in Jewish thinking. So, unlike later Christians, they did not see Jesus as a divine being. Nor did they think that Jesus “preexisted” his human form in any fashion. That is, he was not God incarnate. He was not “a Christ” or a “Son of God” in any sense other than in the way we might be said to be children of God when we address him as “Our Father” in prayer. He was, like you and me, human in all respects, feeling our pain, joy, sorrow, and gladness. He became God’s chosen Messiah because God judged him more righteous than any other person.
The emphasis on the full humanity of Jesus, to the exclusion of any aspect of divinity, set apart the Ebionites from other forms of Christianity in the second through fourth centuries. There were other pictures of Jesus emerging in other communities. Some viewed Jesus as solely divine, only appearing to be human. Other groups, however, holding that Jesus was both divine and human, tried valiantly to reconcile two aspects of Jesus in one nature. These proponents searched for philosophical terminology that would enable them to say how Jesus combined in one person two aspects, divinity and humanity. For the Ebionite community, however, Jesus had only one nature: fully human. That simplified matters, for it avoided all the intricate Trinitarian formulas that were being bandied about in the third and fourth centuries, and all the cantankerous disputes associated with pinning down the correct way of speaking of the person of Jesus.
The Ebionites possessed gospels other than their version of the Gospel of Matthew. We now unfortunately only have brief portions of their Gospel of the Nazareans, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and the Gospel According to the Hebrews.6 They did not accept the writings of Paul, nor did they recognize the Gospel of Luke or the Book of Acts. All these writings, in their judgment, represented false teachings. We do not know what else they may have accepted as authoritative. Certainly they used the Septuagint, since they honored and followed the Old Testament. But what other documents they may have included in a growing canon of Ebionite writings we simply don’t know.
Later Ebionite writings that have survived include the Homilies of Clement and the Letter of Peter to James and its Reception.7 These last two works make it clear that the Ebionites were strongly opposed to the teachings of Paul and his followers. In their view, Paul was simply a false teacher. The Letter of Peter to James and its Reception by James, for instance, maintained that the true authentic teachings and practices of Jesus would only be conveyed through those who were circumcised, that is, through the true successors of Jesus. The real truth had been hidden away from Paul and his followers, who denied the validity of Torah observance. According to Ebionite sources, Peter even referred to Paul as “the man who is my enemy” (Letter of Peter to James 2:3). While we are accustomed to viewing Paul as a trusted teacher, that was not how he was regarded by many during the first three centuries after Jesus’ death.
The Jesus Movement functioned well within the parameters of the Judaisms of the times. In outward practices, the members of the Jesus Movement did not differ from other Jewish groups of the time such as Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, or Zealots. Like most other Jewish groups, they had an anti-Roman, anti-Hellenistic stance. This political conviction would land them in trouble time and time again with the puppets of Roman authorities, the Sadducees and the high priests who were willing to make compromises with Hellenization. Jesus Movement members revered their rabbi as an inspired teacher who was resurrected and who would return, they hoped, to fulfill messianic expectations. This was not just a pious religious belief: it was fundamentally political. They expected Jesus to return to act as a catalyst in overthrowing Roman authority with its Pax Romana, thus ending Hellenization once and for all. He would help establish an independent Jewish state under himself as the Davidic king, ushering in an era of universal peace. This would reflect the sovereign rule of God, which Jesus had announced was imminent.
Belief in a Messiah was certainly not out of bounds for a Jewish sect. The Essenes—the Dead Sea Scroll community—openly looked for two Messiahs, one political and one religious, and other groups were receptive to the view that one day, a messianic leader would come to bring about a changed world. Nor was an anti-Roman stance unusual. The Essenes, Zealots, and Pharisees all expressed this view. Only the Jesus Movement, however, had a king and a royal court-in-waiting. This political orientation had considerable popular appeal. It envisaged the day when the dreaded Romans would be gone, with their alien customs, temples, philosophies, and practices. The land would revert back to the true observers of Judaism. But the big payoff was this: the righteous who had kept the law against tremendous odds in a multicultural world would be rewarded. Finally there would be tangible proof that Torah observance made a difference.
So far as other groups of Jews were concerned, the conviction by the Jesus Movement sect that Jesus was the Messiah who would return to accomplish these political objectives was just one of their idiosyncrasies. Only the Sadducees with their pro-Roman stance would have been threatened—but no more so by the Jesus Movement than by the Pharisaic, Essene, or Zealot factions. They, too, were anti-Roman.
Along with the Gospel of Matthew, the beliefs and practices of the Jesus Movement and its successor, the Ebionites, demonstrate the uniqueness of Jesus’ powerful challenge and promise—Torah and the Kingdom message—linked together inseparably. That’s what he preached and that is how his closest followers understood him, including family members. In a way that no other individual of his time managed to achieve, he dredged up end-time expectations and made them appear real, giving people hope and providing an alternative to the Pax Romana. He was an exceptional teacher, a gifted human being, a possible Messiah, and an inspiring leader who attracted a substantial following.
That was how he was profiled by his friends, family, and followers. But that is not the image of Jesus that would pass down into history. Things quickly changed.