 Save 10% with my code Bobby10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, today we're going to check out blogging theology with the video The Surprising Beliefs of the First Christians. You guys recommended this channel, but guys, let me tell you, I am already familiar with Paul Williams' work over here. Absolutely phenomenal, absolutely entertaining and educational channel. I highly urge you to check it out if you haven't already. This year's an older video, I haven't seen it yet, so with no further ado, let's have a look. One of the surprising things that await any students of the New Testament when they study the text academically, whether at university or at home reading academic texts, is just how unorthodox and heretical the earliest Christian beliefs were compared to the later beliefs of the church. And I just want to share with you what some of these beliefs actually were, because they are the orthodox position on this is that yes, in the beginning there were many heresies that popped up everywhere. And this is what the church fathers fought against. So this is why the church fathers had to clear up the field, so to speak, and canonize the Gospels, etc. You name it, until we had the orthodox standard of Christianity. Quite surprising when I first read about them. And I'm going to use as my guide Jimmy Dunn's book Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, an inquiry into the character of earliest Christianity. And Jimmy Dunn, as I've said before, is a leading New Testament scholar, professor at the University of Durham. And he says in his book, page 255, under the chapter just how orthodox was earliest Palestinian Christianity, he says, not so orthodox at all, the following. The first Christians were Jews. Luke's account of the range of nationalities present at Pentecost, this is the great falling of the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2, where they all receive the Holy Spirit. People from all the nations of the earth, apparently, are congregated there. But they were all Jews and proselytites. In other words, they weren't Gentiles. These were people committed to Judaism. And even though they believed that Jesus was... They couldn't have been Gentiles because they came from the same land in which Jesus preached. The Messiah and risen from the dead, that did not alter their standing or outlook as Jews. And Dunn continues, they apparently continue to observe the law without question. This is the Jewish law, the 613 commandments given to Moses, not interpreting their traditions of Jesus's words and actions in a manner hostile to the law. Nothing in what they understood about Jesus teaching told them to reject the law. Hence, the Pharisees seem to have seen... This is what I talked about multiple times here on my channel. I personally was shocked that the Christians abandoned the law. But later on I started looking into Paul and this is how they came to think that they should abandon the law. But of course, you couldn't possibly believe that pre-Paul, the Christians abandoned the law. And in them little or nothing of the threat which Jesus had posed acts 533 onwards. And not a few became members of the Jesus sect while still remaining Pharisees, acts 155, 2120. Hence too the shock of the Cornelius episode to the Jerusalem believers. It had not occurred to them that faith in Jesus the Christ might make the purity law irrelevant. So they had no understanding from Jesus that he had abolished the law? No, of course not. Because if you think that there were a bunch of Jews, some of them believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the other ones didn't believe that he was the Messiah. But nevertheless the group that accepted him as the Messiah surely believed in him as the Jewish prophesied Messiah. Therefore the Jewish Messiah wouldn't break the laws. That doesn't make any sense. Or may what was unclean clean in regards to food at all. He continues. They evidently continue to be firmly attached to the temple, the Jerusalem temple, attending daily at the hour hours of prayer acts 246 and 31. Regularly coming together there for mutual support and in order to teach and evangelize. The the hour of prayers, the hour of sacrifice is not like going to church in the church of England or Episcopalian church for prayers. This is the temple was built for sacrifice and that's why it existed. Another characteristic was their distinctive belief in the imminent Perusia of Jesus. That's the return of Jesus, the Son of Man. This seems to this belief however seems to have stayed within the framework of Jewish eschatological hope. This is probably the chief reason why they remain so firmly lucid in Jerusalem and centred on the temple. For the temple was the obvious focal point of the imminent consummation as Malachi 3.1 clearly indicated. This would also explain why there was such a lack of concern for the Gentiles or for mission outside of Jerusalem amongst the earliest Jerusalem community. They didn't go into all of the nations to evangelize as later Christian tradition believed they did. They stayed in Jerusalem, they stayed amongst the Jews as Jews. They were still only. This is very surprising to me because what I believed is that they started speaking in tongues in different languages and they started evangelizing starting in Greece as far as I know. Thinking in terms of Israel, Acts 1.6, 22 and following and 2.39 all that are far off which refers to the Jews of the diaspora. In short he says it is evident that the earliest community in no sense felt themselves to be a new religion distinct from Judaism. This is a really important point. Yes I absolutely agree because as I said already those people were Jews just like the other Jews. The only difference is that they believe that the Messiah has come and the others didn't. Nevertheless prior to Jesus they both held the exact same belief that a Messiah will come. So for one group the prophecy got fulfilled for the other one it didn't. Today after 2000 years of Christian tradition we think of Christianity and Judaism as a completely separate and independent religions but actually the earliest nowadays they surely are. Community after Jesus ascended into heaven were Jews practicing Jews. I would say that the main difference is of course that nowadays the Christians are the Gentiles or as the Talmud would claim the Goyim and therefore there is a huge differentiation and within the Jewish faith there was no sense of a boundary line drawn between themselves and their fellow Jews. They saw themselves simply as fulfilled Judaism. The beginning of esoterological Israel and the Jewish authorities evidently did not see them as anything very different from themselves. They held one or two eccentric beliefs so did other Jewish sects but otherwise they were holy Jewish. Indeed we may put the point even more strongly. Since Judaism has always been concerned more with orthopraxy than with orthodoxy, right practice rather than right belief, the earliest Christians were not simply Jews but in fact continued to be quite orthodox Jews. These were no liberals Jews. They were no apostate Jews. These were very traditional committed Jews. Notice then that this is the group with whom Christianity proper all began. Only their belief in Jesus as Messiah and risen and their belief that the last days were upon them marked them out as different from the majority of their fellow Jews. None of the other great Christian distinctiveness that come to expression in and through Paul are present. Of course not because as I said already Paul persecuted those people. Paul went after them. He killed them. He crucified them. That group that Paul went after is surely different than the Christians that we know after Paul or Paul himself that becomes a Christian. So none of the great theological beliefs developed by Paul much later on you know the idea that Jesus the Messiah died with people's sins is absent. The idea the law has been abolished is absent. The idea that the temple is no longer central is absent and so the idea that Gentiles don't follow the law if they become part of Judaism is absent. Rather altogether it is a form of Christianity which we today would scarcely recognize Jewish Christianity indeed or perhaps more precisely a form of Jewish messianism a messianic renewal movement within pre-seventies Judaism. So this is before the temple was destroyed in AD 70 of course and then Dunn says if we now shift our glance from the beginning of Christianity forward 150 years or so into the second century and beyond it at once becomes evident and this is very interesting that the situation has significantly altered to put it mildly. Jewish Christianity so far from being the only form of Christianity is now being classified as unorthodox and heretical. There seem to have been several groups of Jewish Christians whose beliefs put them beyond the pale of the emerging great church. One at least preserved an ancient title for early Christians Nazareans Acts 24-5. I heard about that. The Quran of course says something very interesting about these people. What were they called in the Quran? The name probably embodied a claim to preserve the true tradition against the Antinomian Christian communities elsewhere. Antinomian meaning those who were against the law who rejected the law. Now the best known sect whose name became a kind of stereotype in the great church polemic against Jewish Christians was the Ebonites. The Ebonites that's a name to remember if you want to really grasp the original faith of the early church rather than Paul's Christianity the Ebonites. And Dunn outlines three significant characteristics of this now heretical Jewish Christian faith. The first one not surprisingly is their faithful adherents to the Jewish law. Just in martyr the second century Gentile convert to Paul's Christianity very famous early father knew of Jews who believed in Christ and who kept the law without insisting that all Christians should. But he also knew others who not only kept the law themselves but who also compelled Gentile believers to keep it too. So that's very interesting. And then the next section here and I'm skimming a lot of the detail here just to give you a concise flavor rather than an exhaustive survey is what Dunn calls the exaltation of James and the denigration of Paul. The exaltation of James the brother the actual brother of Jesus and the denigration of Paul that's obviously the apostle Paul. It is clearest in the Clementine literature. Now the Clementine literature was a body of Jewish Christian writings in the second century. It is clearest in the Clementine literature where James appears as the head of the Jerusalem Jerusalem church from the first ordained bishop in it by the Lord. As for Peter he and the other apostles are shown as subordinate to James and must give account of their work to him. Which is very interesting. So James is the very very head of the church. Some claim that this would make him the pope and this is why orthodoxy then is not the right way but Catholicism would be. This is a Christian internal issue. Exaltation of James is accompanied as I said by denigration of Paul. So you know really putting him down. Arenas, origin, Eusebius and Epiphanias number rejection of Paul as one of the characteristics of the Ebonite faith and of the other Jewish Christian sects as well. In the Clementines this Jewish writings again Paul is vehemently attacked. Peter calls him the man who is my enemy and dismisses his claim to have seen the risen Christ. Wow. I mean rightfully so who is he? Yet again he is a man that persecuted Christians and then on the road to Damascus out of a sudden he sees Jesus and reforms Christianity. In Jewish Christianity in general Paul was the arch enemy responsible for the rest of Christianity's rejection of the law and himself an apostate from the law. This is seriously interesting. Paul was seen as an absolute danger, heretic, apostate from the original Jewish Christian faith of the earliest church. He was not seen as some kind of hero. He was an enemy. The enemy. And I talk to my fellow Christians about this but they will either deny it or they will tell me that no it's not correct. He wasn't a heretic. Paul became the role model for Christianity by the standards of the church fathers of the day. There's absolutely no breaking the law or anything which of course not correct. Because of course he taught people to abandon key aspects of the Jewish faith. Yeah and perhaps now the most significant belief of the Ebonites was called adoptionism. One of the most frequently attested features of Ebonite Christology is the is found in clearest expression in one of the early fathers description of it as a chap called Epiphanius and he describes there the Ebonite view as this. Christ they call the prophet of truth and Christ the son of God on account of his progress in virtue and the exaltation which descended upon him from above. They want him to be only a prophet and man and son of God and Christ and mere man. As we said before who attained by a virtuous life the right to be called son of God. So for the Ebonites the original Christian belief in the earliest community all the way through to the second century these people inherited and continued that tradition. Jesus was a prophet a man who by virtue of his excellence could be called son of God but certainly was not divine and done continues. If these are indeed the three principle features of heretical Jewish Christianity then a striking point emerges. This is the features of second century Ebonite views heretical Jewish Christianity would appear to be not so very different from the faith of the first Jewish believers. Wow and then he continue here a bit about the it gives a bit more information here about the adoptionist Christology the idea that in a sense Jesus was adopted by God on an honorary kind of designation as son of God but not literally begotten of God through all the ages and divine or anything like that. No because we can see many people being called son of God within the Bible itself. It is an exalted title for somebody that truly follows God. The adoptionist Christology the Ebonites too seems to have a firm anchor point in the earliest Christian attempts to express faith in Jesus the Christ. If you look at Acts 2 36 Acts 13 33 for example and also note Acts 2 22 Jesus of Nazareth a man attested to you by God so he was a man credited or tested by God and also 1038 Jesus was able to do to do good and heal for God was with him doesn't say he was God but God was with him. Very interesting and then just to conclude this before I weary your patience totally final paragraph and this is Jimmy Dunne's summary of this and this the author Jimmy Dunne is a Christian he believes in maternity he's an ordained minister of the church but he's an honest historian which is why he is so really makes me wonder I don't understand how you can believe in the Trinity after hearing all of this and scholars for his integrity and his research and he says this in short apart from the different attitudes to the temple cult the measure of agreement between the earliest Jewish believers and the Ebonites is quite striking the heretical Jewish Christianity of the second and third centuries apparently has no closer parallel than the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem indeed on the basis of this evidence the heretical Jewish Christianity of the later centuries could quite properly claim to be more truly the heir of earliest Christianity than any other expression of Christianity wow so just read that again the this is the before you read it again as I just said if you read this and in this case if you write this how can you believe in the Trinity I really don't get it the Ebonites the heretical Jewish Christianity of the second and third centuries has no closer parallel than the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem heretical Jewish Christianity of the later centuries could quite properly claim to be more truly the heir of earliest Christianity than any other expression of Christianity than the Paul than the Catholic Church than the Gnostics then whoever whatever whatever and what do they believe all right and this is it for today's video it cuts off here I wish it would have continued but this is it absolutely beautifully done very informative I personally learned a thing or two in this video as I said throughout the video I pretty much agree with everything that Paul said here and as I said in previous videos when I was in my teenage years I want to understand my faith better and this is when I really started looking into the Bible understanding certain practices certain laws certain prohibitions and this when I stopped eating pork as a teenager I quit pork nowadays I'm a 35 year old man haven't touched pork since because I didn't believe that the Christianity that was presented to me was the right one my parents weren't overly religious we celebrate Christmas eastern and we visited the church maybe twice nevertheless we were identified and we still are identified as Christian orthodox but somehow internally I had this negging feeling that I couldn't believe anybody no matter if it was a priest or a scholar or whatnot somehow I felt deceived it's very very strange now looking back that I already had such thoughts as a teenager but I surely did and that's why I did my own research and I looked into Leviticus and I saw that there were certain laws that we simply do not keep at all and it didn't make sense to me that the New Testament and the Old Testament were so different or that the New Testament came to abolish the law even as a teenager that didn't make any sense to me whatsoever and this is why of course I will have to agree with this perception of early Christianity all right guys but this is it for today's video if you liked it leave the thumbs up if you haven't subscribed already guys please do so and if you want to support this channel via patreon for example all the links are in the description box below thank you so much for your ongoing support and as always may god bless you all much love and peace