SLD

The question has arisen as to whether the first Christian communities identified themselves as Jewish and whether Christianity viewed itself first as a Jewish sect. I believe that is not the case.

While it seems to me that the Jerusalem sect was Jewish, the other communities to whom Paul wrote were not likely to be Jewish, but I may be mistaken. Has anyone seen any serious analysis of this.

Other than the Jerusalem church, just who were the first Christians?

SLD

Vorkosigan

David Hindley, who posts on XTALK and JesusMysteries, has long argued that Paul's letters are heavily interpolated and reworked versions of non-Christian letters for Jewish evangelization of Gentiles. You can probably track down his stuff.

Vorkosigan

capnkirk

There is a lot to untangle here. The first Xtians were Paul's followers, not the 12 apostles. They were observant Jews waiting for the return of an exclusively human (non divine) classic Jewish messiah named Jesus or Nazareth (JN); they were NOT Xtians in any recognizable sense of the word.

Note: This is very important. The Hebrew word "messiah" held no overtones of divinity. The title (meaning annointed one) was applied to every king and every High Priest of the Davidic dynasty. This same usage also appears in 2 Baruch (a Talmudic writing) in reference to Simon bar Kokhba (the messianic leader of the failed Third Jewish War in the 130's CE) 200 years after JN. The Greek word "krestos" (Christ) was used by the Hebrew scholars who translated the OT into Greek (the Septuigint) in Alexandria (c 200 BCE) as the closest Greek word to "messiah", again with no deific overtones. The first hint of such deific implications arise from its use as an appelation to many of the Greek mystery cult gods that were being worshipped along the northeastern rim of the Mediterranean around the first century CE. Paul also applied this meaning (retroactively) JN. The seeming ease with which Xtian scholars use these terms (Jesus/messiah/christ) interchangeably has served to obscure the very profound differences that exist, and subsequently confuse our understanding of both the players and their parts. There is a theological chasm between the tenets of Pharisaic Judaism of 1st Century CE Judea and the tenets of Pauline Xtianity. If we want to understand how Judaism got conjoined to Xtianity, the one person standing at the epicenter is Paul.

Paul's "Christ", as revealed to him in his visions (Paul never met Jesus in the flesh.), much more closely resembled these mystery gods than anything Jewish. In fact, the concept of a man/god figure was repugnant to mainstream Judaism. That said, the Jewish Diaspora (scattering) had been in progress for 700 years already. Beginning with the Assyrian conquest of Israel and the subsequent exile of the surviving remnants of the "10 Lost Tribes", followed by the Babylonian Exile (ending 532 BCE) Jews, singly and in groups, had been scattered all across the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. When Alexander conquered the world in the third century BCE, the Greeks brought Platoninc mysticism (in various forms) with them, and soon various cults arose to worship a number of very similar "dying-and-resurrected, divine, savior figuures" Attis/Mithra, Osiris, Adonis, Ba'al-Taraz, et al. Jewish "enclaves" outside Judea generally became quite Hellenized because of this exposure and their isolation from Jerusalem.

Paul's Epistles were addressed to these very Hellenized Jewish enclaves in Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Rhodes, Galatia, Philippi, and Rome. Paul presented Christ as the fulfillment of OT prophesy, and in a very real way, gave these ex-pat Jews a rationalization to claim ownership of the well recognized savior cults. Cross-pollination between these Jewish communities and their Gentile neighbors soon brought many Gentiles into the fold.

Meanwhile back in Jerusalem, JN's disciples formed a synagogue, continued to practice Judaism, and wait for JN's return. Acts narrates (albeit form the viewpoint of a follower of Paul) the course of the increasingly bitter quarrel between these people who has actually known JN and Paul.