What do You Mean…. Hebrew Roots?

What do You Mean…. Hebrew Roots?
By
James Scott Trimm


There is a lot of talk these days about getting back to the “Hebrew Roots of Christianity”.  I want to emphasize that this is impossible, one cannot restore the Hebrew Roots of Christianity, because it hasn’t got any!


The Original Followers of Yeshua: Nazarene Judaism

Yes, the original Jewish followers of Yeshua of Nazareth were a sect of Judaism known as the Sect of the Nazarenes.

Who were these “Nazarenes”?  The fourth century “Church Father” Jerome wrote of them “The Nazarenes, who accept Messiah in such a way that they do not cease to observe the old law.” (Jerome; On. Is. 8:14).

Another fourth century “Church Father”, Epiphanius, writes a more detailed description of the sect of the Nazarenes:

But these sectarians... did not call themselves Christians--but "Nazarenes," ... However they are simply complete Jews. They use not only the New Testament but the Old Testament as well, as the Jews do... They have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion-- except for their belief in Messiah, if you please! For they acknowledge both the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all things, and declare that God is one, and that his son is Yeshua the Messiah. They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew. For among them the entire Law, the Prophets, and the... Writings... are read in Hebrew, as they surely are by the Jews. They are different from the Jews, and different from Christians, only in the following. They disagree with Jews because they have come to faith in Messiah; but since they are still fettered by the Law--circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest-- they are not in accord with Christians.... they are nothing but Jews.... They have the Goodnews according to Matthew in its entirety in Hebrew. For it is clear that they still preserve this, in the Hebrew alphabet, as it was originally written.
(Epiphanius; Panarion 29)

From this description we learn that the Nazarenes did not consider themselves “Christians” but were in fact Torah Observant Jews, accepting the Torah “in the Jewish fashion” and differing from other Jews only in accepting Yeshua as the Messiah.  We also learn that they had and used at least the book of Matthew in its original Hebrew.  Also we learn that the Nazarenes were considered apostates by gentile Christianity, as this description appears in a book by Epiphanius which was a catalog of groups regarded as apostates by the Church.

Jerome again mentions the Nazarenes in a letter he wrote in correspondence with Augustine.  In this letter Jerome says to Augustine:

The matter in debate, therefore, or I should rather say your opinion regarding it, is summed up in this: that since the preaching of the gospel of Christ, the believing Jews do well in observing the precepts of the law, i.e. in offering sacrifices as Paul did, in circumcising their children, as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and keeping the Jewish Sabbath, as all the Jews have been accustomed to do. If this be true, we fall into the heresy of Cerinthus and Ebion, who, though believing in Christ, were anathematized by the fathers for this one error, that they mixed up the ceremonies of the law with the gospel of Christ, and professed their faith in that which was new, without letting go what was old. Why do I speak of the Ebionites, who make pretensions to the name of Christian? In our own day there exists a sect among the Jews throughout all the synagogues of the East, which is called the sect of the Minæans, and is even now condemned by the Pharisees. The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes; they believe in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; and they say that He who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again, is the same as the one in whom we believe. But while they desire to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other. I therefore beseech you, who think that you are called upon to heal my slight wound, which is no more, so to speak, than a prick or scratch from a needle, to devote your skill in the healing art to this grievous wound, which has been opened by a spear driven home with the impetus of a javelin. For there is surely no proportion between the culpability of him who exhibits the various opinions held by the fathers in a commentary on Scripture, and the guilt of him who reintroduces within the Church a most pestilential heresy. If, however, there is for us no alternative but to receive the Jews into the Church, along with the usages prescribed by their law; if, in short, it shall be declared lawful for them to continue in the Churches of Christ what they have been accustomed to practice in the synagogues of Satan, I will tell you my opinion of the matter: they will not become Christians, but they will make us Jews.
(Jerome; Letter 75)

Before examining this letter in detail, a few definitions are needed.  The Ebionites and Cerenthians were also early apostate Jewish sects related to the Nazarenes.  The Ebionites differed from the Nazarenes in rejecting Paul, rejecting the virgin birth, rejecting the Deity of Messiah (as well as some other matters, for more on this see:  http://www.wnae.org/notebionites.htm ).  The Cerenthians had also split off from the Nazarenes following after Gnostic doctrines.  Jerome classes Nazarenes, Ebionites and Cerenthians” as “believing Jews”.

The term "Minæans" is apparently Latinized from Hebrew MINIM (singular is MIN) a word which in modern Hebrew means "apostates" but was originally an acronym for a Hebrew phrase meaning "Believers in Yeshua the Nazarene".

Jerome acknowledges that “since the preaching of the gospel of Christ, the believing Jews do well in observing the precepts of the law.”  In other words, Jerome does not claim that these Jewish believers fell from grace and turned back to the law, he readily admits that the Jewish believers had always been “observing the precepts of the law” ever “since the Gospel of Christ” had begun.  In fact Jerome admits that the Nazarenes were emulating Paul “offering sacrifices as Paul did, in circumcising their children, as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and keeping the Jewish Sabbath,”.  Jerome knows and admits that The Nazarenes were Torah observant from the time the “Gospel” was first proclaimed, and that their roots in doing so go back to Paul who also did so.  This is no surprise because according to Acts 24 Paul was a “ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes”.

 Jerome expresses that anyone who tried to introduce Nazarenes into the Christian Church, in his own words: “reintroduces within the Church a most pestilential heresy”.  This is very interesting wording.  Why “reintroduces” instead of “introduces”?  Jerome had earlier admitted that he Jewish believers had been Torah observant going back to Paul (and his Torah observance) and before.  It was Gentile Christianity which had departed from Paul and from the Torah Observance of the Nazarenes, and such a belief could only be “reintroduced” not “introduced” to the Gentile Christian Church.  To Jerome, the Nazarene heresy of Torah Observance was a heresy dating back to the beginning, which the Gentile Christian Church had purged itself of, and which he did not believe should be “reintroduced”!

 
The Origin of Christianity

The term “Christianity” never appears in the Ketuvim Netzarim (The so-called “New Testament”), as it was first coined in the late first century by Ignatious of Antioch.  The original followers of Yeshua were a sect of Judaism known as Nazarenes.

Notice that these original Jewish followers of Yeshua were a sect of Judaism which “did not call themselves Christians”. No Nazarene in the Ketuvum Netzarim (the so-called “New Testament”) ever refers to themselves as a "Christian". In fact Paul never calls himself a Christian, but frequently identifies himself as Jewish (Acts 21:39; 22:3) and even as a "Pharisee" (Acts 23:6).

The word "Christian(s)" appears only three times in the so-called "New Testament" and always in a context of being used by non-believers to describe believers. In the Aramaic of Acts and 1Kefa (The only books to use the word "Christian(s)") the word always appears as a transliterated Greek word and not as the Aramaic word for "Christian" implying that Helenists who spoke Greek were the ones calling them "Christians".

The Greek word Christes is closely related to the Greek word Chrestes which was the name of a false god and was a word indicating a pagan priest or prophet and was often a title for pagan gods. Although CHRISTI is used by Homer as applied to the rubbing with oil of the body after bathing (Il. 23, 186; also in Od., 4, 252) the word Christes meant a white-washer, but Chrestes was a common title for pagan gods.

The persecutors probably were poking fun at believers in Messiah because if one adapts Greek CHRISTI (anoint) in the same was as the Hebrew word Mashiach is derived from the three letter root M-SH-CH (anoint), then the result is a word meaning "white washer" (i.e. one who covers things up and makes them look white/pure when they are not so on the inside). The Greek speakers probably got a good laugh out of this.


The Root of Christianity is Ignatious

Many people have been misled into believing that Conatantine was responsible for the corruption and Gentilization of Christianity. While Constantine certainly added to the apostasy of early Christianity, he was not the first. It was in fact Ignatius of Antioch who rebelled against the Jerusalem Council, usurped their authority, seceded from Judaism, declared the Torah to have been abolished, replaced the Seventh Day Sabbath with Sunday worship and founded a new, non-Jewish religion which he named "Christianity".

Paul said to the Ephesians on his last visit to them:

Watch, therefore, over your nefeshot
and over the flock which the Ruach HaKodesh
has appointed you overseers [bishops]
that you feed the assembly of Messiah,
which he purchased by his blood.
I know that after I am gone
fierce wolves will enter in among you
without mercy upon the flock.
And also from among you there will rise up men speaking
perverse things, so that they might turn away the talmidim
to follow after them.
(Acts 20:28-30)

Paul seems to indicate that after his death leaders would begin to rise up from the overseers [Bishops] in his stead that would draw people to follow themselves and draw them away from Torah. In fact Paul died in 66 C.E. and the first overseer (Bishop) of Antioch to take office after his death was Ignatius in 98 C.E.. Ignatius fulfilled Paul's words precisely. After taking the office of Bishop over Antioch Ignatius sent out a series of epistles to other assemblies. His letters to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallianns,
Romans, Philadelphians and Smyrnaeans as well as a personal letter to Polycarp overseer of Smyrnaea have survived to us.

The Ancient Nazarene Historian and commentator Hegesippus (c. 180 CE) writes of the time immediately following the death of Shim'on, who succeeded Ya'akov HaTzadik as Nasi of the Nazarene Sanhedrin and who died in 98 CE:

Up to that period (98 CE) the Assembly had remained like a virgin
pure and uncorrupted: for, if there were any persons who were
disposed to tamper with the wholesome rule of the proclaiming of
salvation, they still lurked in some dark place of concealment or
other. But, when the sacred band of Emissaries had in various ways
closed their lives, and that generation of men to whom it had been
vouchsafed to listen to the inspired Wisdom with their own ears had
passed away, then did the confederacy of godless error take its rise
through the treachery of false teachers, who, seeing that none of
the emissaries any longer survived, at length
attempted with bare and uplifted head to oppose the proclaiming of
the truth by proclaiming "knowledge falsely so called."
(Hegesippus the Nazarene; c. 185 CE; quoted by Eusebius in Eccl. Hist. 3:32)

Hegisippus indicates the apostasy began the very same year that Ignatious became bishop of Antioch!

Up until the time of Ignatius, matters of dispute that arose at Antioch were ultimately referred to the Jerusalem Council (as in Acts 14:26-15:2). Ignatius usurped the authority of the Jerusalem council, declaring himself as the local bishop as the ultimate authority over the assembly of which he was bishop, and likewise declaring the same as true of all other bishops and their local assemblies. Ignatius writes:

…being subject to your bishop…
…run together according to the will of God.
Jesus… is sent by the will of the Father;
As the bishops… are by the will of Jesus Christ.
(Eph. 1:9, 11)

…your bishop…I think you happy who are so joined to him,
as the church is to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is to the Father…
Let us take heed therefore, that we not set ourselves
against the bishop, that we may be subject to God….
We ought to look upon the bishop, even as we would
upon the Lord himself.
(Eph. 2:1-4)

…obey your bishop…
(Mag. 1:7)

Your bishop presiding in the place of God…
…be you united to your bishop…
(Mag. 2:5, 7)

…he… that does anything without the bishop…
is not pure in his conscience…
(Tral. 2:5)

…Do nothing without the bishop.
(Phil. 2:14)

See that you all follow your bishop,
As Jesus Christ, the Father…
(Smy. 3:1)

By exalting the power of the office of bishop (overseer) and demanding the absolute authority of the bishop over the assembly, Ignatius was actually making a power grab by thus taking absolute authority over the assembly at Antioch and encouraging other Gentile overseers to follow suite.

Moreover Ignatius drew men away from Torah and declared the Torah to have been abolished, not only at Antioch but at other Gentile assemblies to which he wrote:

Be not deceived with strange doctrines;
nor with old fables which are unprofitable.
For if we still continue to live according to the Jewish Law,
we do confess ourselves not to have received grace…
(Mag. 3:1)

But if any one shall preach the Jewish law unto you,
hearken not unto him…
(Phil. 2:6)

It is also Ignatius who first replaces the Seventh Day Sabbath with Sunday worship, writing:

"...no longer observing sabbaths, but keeping the Lord's day
in which also our life is sprung up by him, and through
his death..."
(Magnesians 3:3)

Having seceded from the authority of Jerusalem, declared the Torah abolished and replacing the Sabbath with Sunday, Ignatius had created a new religion. Ignatius coins a new term, never before used, for this new religion which he calls "Christianity" and which he makes clear is new and district religion from Judaism. He writes:

let us learn to live according to the rules of Christianity,
for whosoever is called by any other name
besides this, he is not of God….

It is absurd to name Jesus Christ, and to Judaize.
For the Christian religion did not embrace the Jewish.
But the Jewish the Christian…
(Mag. 3:8, 11)


Hebrew Roots of Christianity?

As it was well stated in the late 20th Century by the keynote speaker at our Netzarim ’99 Conference:

“To put Judaism back into Christianity is to put a square peg in a round hole. When we present Nazarene Judaism to Christians, we are not educating them about the roots of their faith, we are showing them the truths of the Scriptures they claim. Christianity is not a form of Judaism, it doesn’t even spring from the same well.

What is the well from which Christianity sprung? It was the well of Roman and Alexandrine anti-Semitism (used in the modern sense of the word), it was the well of gnosticism and the dualism endemic to Greek philosophy, it was the well of Babylonian and Roman religious practice and culture….

…Christianity has much more in common with the [other] religions and philosophies of the ancient world that it does with Judaism. ... Beyond the externals of a messianic idea and some basic ethics, Judaism and Christianity have little in common. Their theology, philosophy, world-view, ways of thinking and religious practices are on opposite ends of the spectrum. They cannot be combined in a way that is truly meaningful and consistent.”
(Nazarene Judaism: A New Vision; Rav Mikhael)


The Roots of the Olive Tree

When we speak of Hebrew Roots in Nazarene Judaism we do not refer to the Hebrew Roots of Christianity, as this would wrongly imply that the goal is to repair Christianity.  The goal is not to repair Babylon, but to call people out of Babylon:

6 Flee out of the midst of Bavel and save every man his life. Be not cut off in her
iniquity, for it is the time of YHWH’s vengeance; He will render unto her a recompense.
7 Bavel has been a golden cup in YHWH’s hand, that made all the earth drunken. The
nations have drunk of her wine, therefore the nations are mad.
8 Bavel is suddenly fallen and destroyed. Wail for her; take balm for her pain, if so be
she may be healed.
9 We would have healed Bavel, but she is not healed. Forsake her, and let us go every
one into his own country, for her judgment reaches unto heaven, and is lifted up even to
the skies.
(Jer. 51:6-9 HRV)

When we speak of Hebrew Roots (and I know at least one Nazarene leader who objects to the term “Hebrew Roots” completely because of its frequent connection with the “Hebrew Roots of Christianity” teaching) in Nazarene Judaism, we do not refer to the Hebrew Roots of Christianity (because it has none) but of the Hebrew Roots of the olive tree as referenced in the Olive Tree Parable of Romans 11.

In this parable the two olive trees represent the two houses of Israel. The word “tree” in Hebrew is ETZ which also means “stick”.  To the Hebrew mind there is a direct parallel between the two sticks prophecy in Ezekiel 37 and the two olive tree prophecy in Romans 11.  The wild olive tree clearly represents the House of Israel and the cultivated olive tree clearly represents Judah.  In the parable branches of the House of Israel are broken off, grafted into the House of Judah, and instructed to be fed by the Jewish Roots of the Jewish Olive Tree. 

When we speak about “Hebrew Roots” we do not speak of the non-existent Hebrew Roots of Christianity, but of the Hebrew Roots of faith in Yeshua as the Messiah.