FinnHawk

I just have a few questions that could start a discussion...

Does anyone know what proportion of early Christians were Jews and what proportion were Gentiles? The reason I'm asking is because I've always wondered that if Jesus really was a divine messiah from Heaven wouldn't his miracles have been SO convincing that almost everyone who witnessed them would have believed in him, and since almost all witnesses were Jewish, wouldn't a large number of these Jewish witnesses, plus many of their relatives, friends and most of their descendants have become Christians? Consequently, wouldn't there have been a large number of Christians among the Jews in and around the holy land?

This is the main reason that I don't believe that Jesus was divine, if he even existed at all.

Another question - when exactly did the Jews leave the holy land and how did so many of them end up in Europe? What's the history of their dispersal from the holy land?

.

aa5874

Philo, who lived during the supposed days of Jesus wrote nothing about Christianity at all. Josephus followed with the same silence. It seems very likely that Jesus was fabricated very late in the 1st century or beyond, so there would have been no Jewish Christians, that is folllowers of the bodily resurrected Jesus, the son of the God of Moses, during the reign of Tiberius, Claudius, Nero or Vespasian, the predicted Messiah according to Josephus, Suetonius and Tacitus.

Sarai

I'm not well-versed enough on early Christianity to answer your question definitely, but I would venture to guess that most were Gentiles. The messiah depicted in the New Testament did not meet the criteria of the messiah as expected by the various Jewish groups of the first century; the New Testament messiah seems to have more in common with Greco-Roman wonder-workers than a Jewish messiah figure. For a little further info on the Jewish messianic expectations here's a pretty good article I found.--

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/vi...search=messiah

Hope this helps...

Sarai

Amaleq13

The short answer is "No". We're not even sure what the proportions were in some of the cities in which Paul allegedly preached.

Paul's audience, however, appears to have primarily consisted of "God-fearers" (ie gentiles interested in Judaism but not necessarily willing to become full converts).

I would think most of the Jewish converts you describe would have been lost when they nailed Jesus to a cross and he died. After all, the disciples didn't start claiming he was raised from the dead for over a month afterwards.

Toto

Easy answer - no, nobody has a clue. There is no census from that time. The best guess (from sociologist Rodney Stark) is that early Christians were recruited from the Diaspora Jewish population of the Roman Empire. But the earliest Christians who left records (outside the gospels) seem to have been gentiles, like Justin Martyr, who were converted by philosophical arguments or reading Jewish scripture.

Jews left the holy land very early for the usual reasons - economic opportunity. This was accelerated by the Jewish War in 70 CE and the Bar Kochba Rebellion around 130, when most of the Jews were expelled from Palestine. Still, Jews were estimated to be about 10 percent of the population of the Roman Empire, and 25% of the eastern empire, and, unlike later Jews, accepted converts. You can find a lot of standard materials on the web.

There is some speculation that most Ashkenazi Jews (from western Europe) were descended from the Khazars, a medieval kingdom that decided to convert to Judaism as an alternative being absorbed by Christian or Islamic empires. But that is a bit beyond the scope of this forum.

aa5874

There may have been "Christians" long before the fabrication of Jesus of Nazareth, the word "Christian" is derived from the word "Christ" meaning " anointed with the oil of of God".

And there were "Christians" in the 1st century who did not have any ties at all to the Jesus of the NT. Justin Martyr in First Apology claimed that there were "Christian" followers of Simon the Holy God during the days of Claudius.

And even Theophilus of Antioch, writing in 2nd century, called himself a "Christian" not through Jesus of Nazareth, but because he was "anointed with the oil of God". And further, Theophilus never mentioned Jesus of Nazareth one single time in his exposition to Autolycus.

Theophilus to Autolycus 1.12 Christianity is likely to have preceeded the bodily resurrected Jesus of Nazareth who appears to have been fabricated very late in the 1st century or beyond.

squiz

I am curious as to your sources here. 10% of the entire population, or only of those in the cities? 10% seems high to me.
Maybe irrelevant, but a fascinating idea. This theory was popularised by Arthur Koestler and was somehow taken on by various anti-semites (although it doesn't seem necessarily anti-semitic to me). Nevertheless, it does not seem to be supported by the latest genetic evidence afaik.

FinnHawk

But, my point is that if Jesus really was divine, it shouldn't have mattered that he didn't meet the Jewish messiah criteria, because if he was the "son of God", he should have had such incredible powers that I'm sure he could have convinced just about anyone without a shadow of a doubt, even hardcore Jews. So obviously, even if he existed, his "miracles" weren't *that* convincing. That is why I just can't believe that he was divine. If he existed, he was no more than a rabbi/teacher/cult leader of some kind.