Peter as Jewish Apostle

[Jeanne1184]

Paul, though born and raised a Jew by his own testimony (unless you go with your “verses snuck in by the adversary” theory), very strongly rejected any notion that Gentile converts be required to become (or act like) Jews in order to become Christians. While his work was mostly with those Gentiles, he did seem to conclude that even Jewish Christians were no longer bound by the old Law and practices.

 

[pablope]

If the Catholic Church follows the line of Peter and he was the “Jewish” apostle who continued to follow Jewish religious elements, why doesn’t the Catholic Church have more Jewish elements in it?

The only one that comes to mind is if the candelabra is associated with the menorah. Are there others?

The idea of saintly intercession came from the Jews:

calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/relics-saints-and-the-assumption-of-mary/

Brown challenged my view that the place of saints and relics in the church was a mere holdover from paganism, and that the practice was somehow peripheral to true Christianity. Instead, Brown painted a picture of ancient Christianity and paganism in which relics were indispensable to the former, and repulsive to the latter. Far from a holdover from paganism, the place of relics in the Church appeared as something intensely Jewish, Hebraic, and Old Testament. Pagans, like Julian-the-Apostate, found the practice revolting and legislated against it. (Paganism, with its notions of ritual purity, had strictly delimited the realm of divine worship and neatly separated it from the realm of corpses and the dead.)

 

[TimothyH]

Thanks. This is along the line I was wondering about. Messianic Jews in the programs I watch are puzzling and unsettling to me and I’m trying to tease things apart to understand.

I don’t think, at this moment, that following this further would be helpful. For some reason, I thought the NT was ‘stand alone’ rather than mixed. I don’t know why I thought that, I just evidently did/do.

Messianic Jews… Their worship and theology is a bit schizophrenic. I’m not trying to be insulting but I have been to Messianic Jewish synagogue and they really can’t decide what they want to be.

The first half of the worship was rock band praise and worship just like Evangelical Christians. The second half of the worship was Jewish - they opened the tabernacle, the cantor read from the scrolls and they sang songs in Hebrew just like at any synagogue. The only difference was that one person ate crackers and drank grape juice. The third half of the worship was like a Baptist hacker-preacher if you know what that is. A hacker-preacher starts slowly, builds, and by the end of the sermon he is sweating and screaming that the world is about to end and everyone is going to Hell. Then they all went downstairs and had bagels.

Nice people but the worship was like ReformedJudeo-Baptist-nondenominational-rock-praise with the Lord’s Supper. I couldn’t figure it out.

-Tim-

 

[steve53]

To be considered a Jew, a person had to follow the laws of the Torah, and the males had to become circumcised.

Josephus described the different priestly classes. They had differing views on salvation, heaven, hell, etc because those issues were never addressed by Moses in the Torah. He left it an open-ended question!

When the Jerusalem Christian leadership strictly adhered to the precept that all Christians should be Jews first, they basically were saying that all male converts had to undergo circumcision.

That drastically cut down on the number of potential converts for obvious reasons!

Paul, who was half-Greek, saw this as a de facto way to keep the gentiles out of the movement, though throughout history Jewish conversion always required circumcision.

Peter also freely associated with Gentiles, though he (apparently) was a full-blooded Jew. We know little about his activities as he likely could not write. Paul, trained as a Second Temple priest, wrote extensively and many of those writings survive, so his perspective on Christianity dominates.

Flavius Josephus was also a trained Second Temple priest. Read him to learn what it entailed to be Jewish in the early first century A.D.

source Hagan “Year of the Passover”, “Fires of Rome”

 

[Jeanne1184]

The idea of saintly intercession came from the Jews:

calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/relics-saints-and-the-assumption-of-mary/

Brown challenged my view that the place of saints and relics in the church was a mere holdover from paganism, and that the practice was somehow peripheral to true Christianity. Instead, Brown painted a picture of ancient Christianity and paganism in which relics were indispensable to the former, and repulsive to the latter. Far from a holdover from paganism, the place of relics in the Church appeared as something intensely Jewish, Hebraic, and Old Testament. Pagans, like Julian-the-Apostate, found the practice revolting and legislated against it. (Paganism, with its notions of ritual purity, had strictly delimited the realm of divine worship and neatly separated it from the realm of corpses and the dead.)

I don’t think the use of relics and associated practices is something to be condemned but rather to be understood. Neither do I think it is helpful for it to be elevated to extreme levels as the article of the above link. Relic use and intercessory prayer seem to be an interim answer to spiritual malaise or existential loneliness/void of separation from God.

H2 had the “Ancient Alien” episode on again tonight about…ancient relics. They were talking about relics of ‘alien gods’ but I’m thinking some of the same reasoning would apply today.

• Link to something margical or of divine power.
• Piece of the god’s power to carry with you; a relic makes one feel closer to the god they no longer see.
• Relics with the intention to forge/force a connection with the gods.

In the case of Christianity,we may need something concrete to remind us of God’s presence while awaiting Spiritual Baptism / Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (Thread on what it’s like to be ‘reborn’.)

If there was a Spiritual Revival/Mass Awakening, I wonder if the tendency toward relics and ‘intercessory prayer’ would just fall away from us. On ‘Dare to Love’ tonight, they were talking about the many Muslims that are having dreams which are drawing them to Christ. They said it is usually in areas where Christianity hasn’t penetrated or is so isolated that to seek information about Christianity will get you killed. I thought it was interesting, from a Biblical perspective.

 

[Jeanne1184]

To be considered a Jew, a person had to follow the laws of the Torah, and the males had to become circumcised.

Josephus described the different priestly classes. They had differing views on salvation, heaven, hell, etc because those issues were never addressed by Moses in the Torah. He left it an open-ended question!

When the Jerusalem Christian leadership strictly adhered to the precept that all Christians should be Jews first, they basically were saying that all male converts had to undergo circumcision.

That drastically cut down on the number of potential converts for obvious reasons!

Paul, who was half-Greek, saw this as a de facto way to keep the gentiles out of the movement, though throughout history Jewish conversion always required circumcision.

Peter also freely associated with Gentiles, though he (apparently) was a full-blooded Jew. We know little about his activities as he likely could not write. Paul, trained as a Second Temple priest, wrote extensively and many of those writings survive, so his perspective on Christianity dominates.

Flavius Josephus was also a trained Second Temple priest. Read him to learn what it entailed to be Jewish in the early first century A.D.

source Hagan “Year of the Passover”, “Fires of Rome”

Here’s the Plan: First circumcision; then we’ll teach you the essentials of Judaism (that should only take twenty years or so) and then we’ll teach you the path to Christianity - where you will learn that you didn’t need circumcision nor Judaism to enter Salvation by the Holy Spirit while living.

Those guys definitely had a different agenda than Paul, eh? I wonder what it was.

It wasn’t because they didn’t want Gentiiles in their clique (I’ve heard that Jews have never sought converts but preferred to increase their membership from by birth).

 

[pablope]

I don’t think the use of relics and associated practices is something to be condemned but rather to be understood.

That is right…and it is very Jewish and early Christian…even today. As article states…it was very paganistic not to believe in relics and intercession of the saints.

Neither do I think it is helpful for it to be elevated to extreme levels as the article of the above link.

 

[jonathan_hili]

If the Catholic Church follows the line of Peter and he was the “Jewish” apostle who continued to follow Jewish religious elements, why doesn’t the Catholic Church have more Jewish elements in it?

The only one that comes to mind is if the candelabra is associated with the menorah. Are there others?

Hi Jeanne,

I think Catholicism does have a great deal of Jewish influence. I’ll just rattle off as many elements as I can think of at the moment:

• baptism as the New Covenant parallel to circumcision;
• the ordained male priesthood;
• the concept of sacrifice and atonement;
• the use of Jewish prayers in the liturgy;
• the understanding of Peter (and indeed all the bishops) as stewards of the covenant people and the kingdom;
• the new Sabbath day; and
• most obviously, the use of Jewish Scriptures in the Old Testament!

 

[Jeanne1184]

It wasn’t because they didn’t want Gentiiles in their clique (I’ve heard that Jews have never sought converts but preferred to increase their membership from by birth).

Sorry…this bit belonged with another train of thought that went too far off topic and was discarded.

 

[patrick457]

If the Catholic Church follows the line of Peter and he was the “Jewish” apostle who continued to follow Jewish religious elements, why doesn’t the Catholic Church have more Jewish elements in it?

The only one that comes to mind is if the candelabra is associated with the menorah. Are there others?

Simple. Because originally there wasn’t just the “line of Peter.” And also the fact that Jewish Christians in Palestine basically dwindled due to various factors to the point that they did not have much of an influence over Christendom in the same way Rome or Alexandria or Antioch did.

Oh, and as for the candles at church: they aren’t directly related to the menorah. The candles on the altar, at least for the Roman Rite, derives from a custom where seven candles were borne in procession by acolytes at the beginning of the Mass. During the duration of the liturgy, the seven acolytes stood in front of the altar carrying the tapers. The seven candles represented the Bishop of Rome’s temporal power in that city and the unity of the Roman Church, plus a connection was also made between it and the seven lampstands burning before God’s throne in Revelation 4:5 (now that was most likely derived from menorah imagery). Eventually, the acolytes were done away with and the candles were simply placed on the altar itself. By the Middle Ages, seven-branched candelabra became popular in the wake of the Crusades in some parts of Europe - now that was a conscious imitation of the menorah.