Acts Eleven
1 Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, 3 “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” 4 But Peter began and explained it to them in order: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. 6 Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. 7 And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ 10 This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. 11 And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. 12 And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; 14 he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ 15 As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 ]If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” 18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” 19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. 20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. 25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. 27 Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). 29 So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. 30 And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. (Acts 11, ESV Bible)
1 Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, 3 “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” (Acts 11:1-3, ESV Bible)
Apostolic Inquiry
It did not take long for word of Simon's theological leap and halachic faux pas to reach the rest of the Judean apostolic community. The inclusion of the Samaritans had been controversial enough. Simon's fraternization with Gentiles raised astonishment and disbelief.
No one objected to Gentiles joining the assembly of Yeshua so long as they first went through a proper conversion, but according to the rumor, that had not happened. People were even saying that Simon Peter had entered the home of a Roman soldier, eaten with him, and invited him to immerse in the name of Yeshua.
James the brother of the Master, John the son of Zebedee, and the other apostolic leaders demanded an explanation from Simon Peter. They charged him with violating their practices: "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them" (Acts II:3).
Simon offered the apostles a retelling of the vision of the sheet. He presented the six brothers from Joppa to corroborate the story. He said, "The Spirit told me to go with them without misgivings. These six brethren also went with me and we entered the man's house" (Acts II:12). He concluded the story by telling about how the LORD poured out His Spirit upon the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius' house just as He had poured out the Spirit on the apostles at Shavu'ot.
Simon cited the Master's words, "John immersed with water, but you will be immersed with the Holy Spirit." He concluded that since God gave the Gentile believers the same spiritual manifestation He had given the Jewish disciples, he had no right to reject the Gentiles. Moreover, if the Spirit of God rested upon the Gentile believers, he should not consider them common or unclean.
The apostolic leadership accepted Simon Peter's testimony and the corroboration offered by the six men from Joppa. They were forced to concede that Simon had acted properly in setting aside ceremonial concern over the uncleanness of Gentiles. More than that, they realized that God accepted Gentiles into the kingdom. They did not determine whether or not the new Gentile believers should be encouraged to remain as God-fearers or go on to full conversion. They determined only that they should receive Gentile brethren without objection as fellow disciples and heirs of the kingdom.
Uncertain of what else to make of the situation, they blessed God. Acts 11:18 seems to reflect the text of an apostolic blessing composed for Gentile conversion:
Blessed are you, O LORD, our God, King of the universe, who has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. (Acts 11:19, ESV Bible)
Those Who Were Scattered
In the year that our Master rose, pilgrims from all over the Diaspora came to Jerusalem for the Festival of Shavuot (Pentecost). Some encountered the apostles and accepted their message. They carried the message of the kingdom and the risen Messiah back to their homes. The good news began to take root in Jewish communities all over the Roman world and in Mesopotamia.
A year or two later, the persecution associated with the stoning of Stephen sent many of the Greek-speaking (Hellenist) disciples fleeing from Jerusalem and Judea. They took refuge in the Jewish communities of the Diaspora, establishing small outposts of Yeshua faith. The book of Acts describes them as "scattered."
The believing community of disciples was a representative core for the whole of Israel. Just as God scattered the Jewish people in an exile among the nations, the disciples also shared in that national experience. Though they settled in foreign cities and strange lands, they continued to look back to Jerusalem as their true home and capital city. They looked forward to the day when Messiah would come and gather them from the four winds and bring them back to the holy city. They cherished the prophecy in the Torah that says, "The LORD your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back" (Deuteronomy 30:3-4). The Didache preserves Apostolic-era prayers petitioning God to gather His scattered ekklesia:
Just as this piece of bread was scattered over the mountains and gathered together, so may Your assembly be gathered from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom ... Gather the betrothed from the four winds to Your kingdom that You have prepared for her. (Didache 9.4, I0.5)
Luke specifically mentions three locations along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard where Greek-speaking disciples of the Master took refuge: Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch.
Phoenicia is a coastal strip that lay just to the north of Galilee, corresponding to modern Lebanon. The Phoenician port cities of Acco, Tyre, and Sidon contained Jewish communities numbering in the thousands. Believers established themselves within the Jewish communities of Acco and Tyre.
Even further north, believers found refuge among the Jews of Cyprus. Cyprus is the large island in the northeastern Mediterranean, which is part of the belt of mountains marking out the southern coast of Anatolia. A strong Jewish population lived on Cyprus. Josephus records that the Cypriot Jews were flourishing along with the Jews of Alexandria in Egypt and those in Jerusalem. Agrippa's letter to Emperor Gaius also testifies to the significant Jewish community on Cyprus: "The Jewish colonies fill the continents, and even the prominent islands; such as Euboea [a big island north of Athens], Cyprus, and Crete."
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Anteyochya
More than three hundred miles north of Jerusalem on the coast of the Mediterranean, the city of Antioch sat on the banks of the Orontes River, eighteen miles upstream from its seaport on the Mediterranean. Rome used Antioch on the Orontes for the capital of the province of Syria. Josephus says, "Antioch is the metropolis of Syria, and the undisputed third city in the inhabited earth beneath the Roman empire, both in size and other marks of prosperity." Only Alexandria and Rome were larger. In the days of the apostles, it had a population of nearly half a million inhabitants, densely packed together. The Jewish community in Antioch ranked with that of Alexandria and Rome. Scholars estimate 22,000 Jews lived in Antioch:
The Jewish nation is widely scattered over all the habitable earth and among all its inhabitants. The nation is spread thickly throughout Syria because of its close proximity [to the land of Israel]. The greatest multitudes of Jews live in Antioch because of the size of the city. (Josephus, Jewish War 7:43/111.3)
Jews had been in the city since its founding and therefore enjoyed civil rights on the same par with the Macedonian and Greek inhabitants. Those civic privileges made the Gentile citizens of Antioch resent the Jews all the more. They had "a great hatred against the Jews" and a long history of rivalry with the Jewish population.
For their part, the Jews of Antioch were proud citizens of that city. They had between twenty and thirty synagogues. They could point out to their fellow citizens that King Herod the Great had paved all two and a half miles of the main street of Antioch with polished marble and lined it with colonnades.
The grandeur of Antioch found expression in numerous pagan temples. Zeus, Apollo, and Tyche were the prominent deities, and their idols adorned the city squares. Five miles from the city stood the sacred groves of Daphne, a holy shrine for the Greco-Roman religion. Numerous pagan temples in the city were overshadowed by the sanctuary of Apollo, where sexual immorality was practiced as religion. The citizens of Antioch participated dutifully in the Greco-Roman cults, but the Jews were legally exempt from the obligation.
Antioch boasted great wealth and monumental architecture. At the same time, most of Antioch's citizens lived in squalid, cramped conditions ravaged by disease and infection. Poverty, malnutrition, and poor sanitation accounted for an astonishingly high death rate. Crime ran rampant, and civil unrest easily ignited. Hatred, fear, violence, and ethnic bigotries characterized the population. The Jewish community in Antioch was like an oasis of sanity, and despite the anti-Semitic predisposition of the Gentile population, many Gentiles were drawn to the light of Torah that radiated from the Jews.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
To the Yehudim First
Although believers from Jerusalem had fled to Gentile cities in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Syria, they did not mix with the Gentiles or pass the good news of the kingdom and Messiah to them. The disciples of Yeshua still considered Gentiles to be outside the gospel's purview. Why would polytheistic, idolatrous Gentiles be interested in following the Messiah of the Jews?
Of course, a few Gentiles had become believers. For example, back in Caesarea, Cornelius the God-fearer and his entire household had confessed faith in Yeshua. Gentiles from the royal houses of Adiabene and Edessa may have also heeded the call. Other God-fearing Gentiles might have been swept up along with the enthusiasm about Yeshua in various synagogues.
When a Gentile did confess faith in Yeshua, the Jewish believers expected him or her to demonstrate that allegiance by undergoing a legal conversion to Judaism. It made a lot of sense. If you are going to serve the King of the Jews, shouldn't you be Jewish? Faith in Yeshua and devotion to Him presumed Judaism and a Jewish worldview.
It seemed quite natural to encourage (or require) Gentiles, who expressed an interest in discipleship to Yeshua, to continue on with full conversion. Most did so happily; it was often to their advantage to do so. Under the administration of Emperor Claudius, the Jewish people enjoyed freedom of religion and the protection of Roman law. Jews could not be compelled to worship idols or sacrifice to the emperor. God-fearing Gentiles did not have the same rights and freedoms. If a Gentile failed to participate in idolatrous rituals, his fellow citizens might label him as unpatriotic or even charge him with the crime of atheism. By undergoing conversion to become Jewish, a person could at least appeal to certain rights under Roman law and exempt himself from participation in idolatry.
In any case, the apostles did not overly concern themselves with the few scattered cases of Gentiles becoming disciples. From their perspective, the message of Yeshua was a Jewish message, and they delivered it exclusively to Jews. Cases like Cornelius the God-fearer were rare exceptions to the rule, orchestrated by God. The apostles did not go out seeking Gentile converts.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. (Acts 11:20-21, ESV Bible)
But Also to the Goyim
In the early forties, certain disciples from the large, Greek-speaking Jewish communities on Cyprus and in Cyrene arrived at Antioch. They began to propagate the message of the kingdom in the synagogues of Antioch. As they proclaimed the good news, they found God-fearing Gentiles on the periphery of Antioch's Jewish community receptive to the message.
Although most Gentiles in Antioch held the Jews and their religion in disdain, others found the simple message of Jewish monotheism attractive. They became God-fearers like Cornelius the centurion or proselytes like Nicolas the deacon, "a proselyte from Antioch." Josephus says that the Jews of Antioch "were continually making proselytes out of a great many of the Greeks, and thereby, so to speak, brought them to be members of their own body."
The anonymous disciples from Cyprus and Cyrene "began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Master Yeshua" (Acts II:20). The LORD blessed their efforts, and soon they saw many God-fearing Gentiles confessing the name of Yeshua. Luke says, "A large number who believed turned to the Master." The increasing number of Gentiles joining themselves to the community became a problem. Gentiles were confessing Yeshua faster than the Jewish community could absorb them through ritual conversion.
The apostles had already agreed that "God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life" (Acts II:18). They had not yet sorted through the implications of that decision or resolved the status of Gentile disciples.
When reports about the Gentile believers in Antioch reached Jerusalem, the apostles agreed to conduct an official inquiry. James and the leadership in Jerusalem commissioned Barnabas to represent them as their official apostle to Antioch. "For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith." Joseph Barnabas the Levite originally came from the Jewish community of Cyprus. He may have known the Cypriot Jews who had begun the work among the Gentiles of Antioch. He traveled over three hundred miles from Jerusalem to Antioch and began his inquiries in the local synagogues. He was pleased to discover that the reports were true.
Joseph Barnabas knew that God was at work among the God-fearing Gentiles of Antioch. He "witnessed the grace of God," and "he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Master" (Acts II:23). Beyond that, Barnabas was not sure what to do with the hundreds of confessing Gentiles. They did not fit easily into the Jewish community, and they stuck out conspicuously in the synagogues. At the same time, they could no longer function as Gentile citizens of Antioch.
He could not allow them to continue participating in idolatry and worshiping the emperor, but since they were not Jewish, they were required by Roman law to worship the gods and the emperors. The most obvious solution was to process them through legal conversion. The Torah seemed to indicate that Gentiles should undergo circumcision and become Jewish:
A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised; thus shall My covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant. (Genesis 17:13-14)
If a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. (Exodus 12:48)
As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the alien who sojourns with you, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as you are, so shall the alien be before the LORD. There is to be one law and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you. (Numbers 15:15-16)
From that cursory reading of the Torah, it seemed clear to Barnabas and the other Jewish believers that the new Gentile disciples would need to pass through a conversion process. They did not necessarily consider it a prerequisite of salvation as much as a natural consequence of discipleship to Yeshua.
Barnabas needed help. He thought of Saul of Tarsus.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Conversion Process
Conversion to Judaism takes time and effort. The preparation process is time-consuming and cumbersome, and it requires qualified authorities who can provide oversight.
When a Gentile decides to become Jewish, the Jewish community requires him to first learn Torah: "He is given instruction in some of the minor commandments and some of the major commandments" (b. Yevamot 47b). If that brief introduction to Torah does not dissuade him, they told him about how, as a Jew, he would become liable to punishments for transgressing commandments that applied specifically to Jews:
They told him, "Let it be known to you that before you become Jewish, if you eat the forbidden fats you are not liable to the punishment of being cut off. If you profane the Sabbath you are not liable to the punishment of stoning. But after becoming Jewish, if you eat the forbidden fat, you will be punished by being cut off; if you profane the Sabbath, you will be punished with stoning." And as he is educated about the punishment for transgressing the commandments, he is also told about the reward for fulfilling them. (b. Yevamot 47b)
If the Gentile completed a course of studies and agreed to take on full liability for Torah as it applied to a Jew, the Jewish community allowed him to complete his conversion. Judaism required a proselyte to go through three steps before receiving full, legal recognition as a Jew:
Circumcision
Immersion
Sacrifice
The popular success of the good news among the God-fearing Gentiles of Antioch created a backlog of conversion cases for Barnabas and the believing community to sort through. Religious authorities qualified to facilitate conversions were present in Antioch, but Barnabas did not want to turn the Gentile disciples over to authorities who were not Yeshua believers. The disciples in Antioch needed teachers who could both instruct the Gentiles in the kingdom and conduct conversions. They needed men with recognized, rabbinic credentials to oversee halachic conversions. Barnabas set out for Tarsus to retrieve Saul the Pharisee.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. (Acts 11:25-26, ESV Bible)
Sha’ul’s Silent Years
It had been a decade or so since Saul first encountered the Master on the road to Damascus. Since then he spent three years in Damascus/Nabataea and at least twice that in Tarsus. Pauline scholars speak of his years in Tarsus as Paul's silent years. In the epistle to the Galatians, he recalled, "I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (Galatians I:21). Barnabas had not seen Saul in nearly a decade. He went to Tarsus, his last known whereabouts, on faith.
During his silent years, Saul may have supported himself as a tent-maker. Most likely, he had not been silent in his silent years. He seems to have been active in the synagogues of Tarsus. He said, "I was still unknown by sight to the assemblies of Judea which were in Messiah; but only, they kept hearing, 'He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy" (Galatians 1:22-23).
Saul later recounted, "Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes" (2 Corinthians I1:24). Some of those floggings probably took place during his not-so-silent years in Syria and Cilicia. The fact that Saul willingly endured such floggings provides an important (and often overlooked) piece of information about the early Jewish believers. It proves that Saul and the early followers of Yeshua did not consider themselves outside of mainstream Judaism. Saul did not need to submit to those floggings. Rather than suffer a flogging, he could have simply disavowed Judaism and Jewish authority over him. Instead, he stayed within the synagogues and under their authority-even submitting to their punishments.
In addition to preaching the faith that he once tried to destroy, Saul spent his silent years in diligent prayer and study, trying to grasp the full significance of the commission he had heard in the vision: "Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles" (Acts 22:21). He sought confirmation in the prophets that this was indeed the word of the LORD-that the salvation of Messiah extended even to the Gentiles. He pondered over the rich messianic prophecies in the scroll of Isaiah, and he found evidence that Messiah's salvation was efficacious even for Gentiles (e.g., Isaiah 40:5, 42:6-7, 49:6, 52:15, 56:6-8, 60:3).
As Saul studied, prayed, and sought the LORD, a radical thought began to form in his head. He began to wonder if Gentiles needed to become Jewish to be disciples of Yeshua and heirs to the kingdom. He found numerous prophecies that spoke of the nations participating in the Messianic Era. He concluded that requiring a Gentile to become Jewish before accepting him into the fellowship of Yeshua contradicted those prophecies.
He attributed the idea to the vision he received from Yeshua, a revelation directly from heaven. He said, "The gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Yeshua the Messiah" (Galatians I:11-12). He explained, "By revelation there was made known to me the mystery ... that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in the Messiah Yeshua through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:3-6).
After he had come to these conclusions, a remarkable thing happened. Joseph Barnabas, the apostle he knew from Damascus and Jerusalem, appeared in Tarsus looking for him.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Sha’ul’s Gospel
Saul agreed to accompany Barnabas back to Antioch. He spent a year there, teaching the disciples. He taught considerable numbers, "solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Master Yeshua the Messiah" (Acts 20:21). "Even to the Gentiles," he declared "that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance" (Acts 26:20), but he did not conduct any conversions. Instead of ushering the God-fearing Gentiles along the path to becoming Jewish, he taught the Gentiles of Antioch to remain as Gentiles. Saul's version of the gospel proposed a risky, progressive idea about Gentile inclusion in the kingdom, in the synagogue, and even in the household of Abraham without circumcision and without becoming Jewish.
Saul claimed that the gospel message that he taught was not man's gospel. That is to say, it was not the normal gospel message offered by other Jewish believers. The message of the gospel that Saul proclaimed was not precisely the same message of the gospel that the rest of the apostolic community proclaimed. In his epistles, Saul specifically refers to his unique gospel message as "my gospel":
[Gentile believers demonstrate the Torah] written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through the Messiah Yeshua. (Romans 2:15-16, emphasis added)
[God] is able to establish you according to my gospel. (Romans 16:25, emphasis added)
According to my gospel, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal. (2 Timothy 2:8-9, emphasis added)
Saul's gospel differed from the good news proclaimed by the other apostles because Saul taught that salvation in Messiah (for a share in the World to Come) is efficacious for both Jews and Gentiles. He taught that Gentiles can inherit eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, the resurrection of the dead, and standing alongside the people of God (i.e., Israel) without becoming Jewish. The other apostles also included Gentiles, but they expected that once a Gentile received the good news about the King of the Jews, he would become Jewish. After all, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs (Matthew I5:26).
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Sha’ul’s Rule For All the Assemblies
The conventional plan for dealing with all the God-fearing Gentile believers in Antioch, naturally, would be to teach them about Judaism and lead them along the path to full conversion until they became proselytes and could blend into the Jewish community. Saul did not follow the conventional model. Instead, he taught the new believers to remain as Gentiles.
In his epistles, Saul expends a great deal of his energy arguing that Gentiles do not need to take on the commandments that identify a person as Jewish (such as circumcision) and that Gentiles do not need to be Jewish in order to be reckoned as part of the people of God. He made a clear line of distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers. In his worldview, Jewish believers are obligated to the covenant responsibilities incumbent upon them as Jews. Gentiles are also obligated to God's Law, but not to those particular aspects of it that define a person as Jewish (such as circumcision). Saul drew that line of division in all his writings. Messianic Jewish scholar David Rudolph refers to this as "Paul's rule for all the churches":
Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. (I Corinthians 7:17-18 ESV, emphasis added)
Paul told Jewish disciples of Yeshua not to "remove the marks of circumcision." Some Hellenist Diaspora Jews were eager to leave Jewish identity behind. The allure of assimilation into the majority culture was as powerful in the first century as it is today. Josephus tells the story of a first-century Jew from Antioch who denounced the Jewish community, declared himself no longer Jewish, and even sacrificed to the city's gods.
Jews of that sort often employed surgical means to remove the marks of circumcision (epispasm) so that they would not appear conspicuous in the gymnasiums and bathhouses. Saul forbade Jewish believers from undergoing the surgical reversal. David Rudolph suggests that Saul was not only speaking about the literal process of epispasm when he said, "Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision," but Jewish identity itself, including circumcision of sons, Torah observance, the Sabbath, the biblical calendar, Levitical functions, the dietary laws, tzitzit, tefillin, mezuzah, and the distinctive practices of Jewish life. In other words, according to his rule for all the assemblies of disciples, Saul did not allow Gentiles to become Jewish, and he warned Jewish believers not to assimilate into a Gentile identity or forsake Torah and Judaism.
Saul believed that the assembly of Messiah should reflect the Messianic Kingdom, a world composed of both Jews and Gentiles. He envisioned Jews and Gentiles worshiping together in the same assembly, fellow heirs and co-religionists. As regards salvation in the Messiah, he taught that "there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Galatians 3:28), but that did not mean that Jews and Greeks were the same. Saul taught that both should live out their respective callings. He envisioned Jews conducting themselves under the Torah's obligations for Jews and Gentiles conducting themselves under the Torah's obligations for God-fearing Gentiles.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Tribe of the Christians
In Antioch, the disciples of Yeshua began to be called Christianoi (Χριστιανοί). "Christian" was not a pejorative name; it implied allegiance to the Messiah. Luke does not indicate that the disciples in Antioch coined the term Christianoi themselves. The rest of the Jewish community probably put that label on them, but the disciples did not object to the designation. The name can be compared to the designation Herodians (Ἡρῳδιανοί, Herodianoi), a term the gospel writers applied to those descended from Herod the Great, those loyal to his dynasty, or those connected with his administration. The name "Christians" became the Greek appellation for the sect of Judaism that revered Yeshua as the Messiah (Christos, Χριστός). Christianoi functions as the Greek equivalent of the word "Messianics." In his Hebrew New Testament, Franz Delitzsch translated Christianoi as Meshichiyim (משיחיים).
Some interpreters explain that the disciples adopted the name to distinguish themselves from the Jews and Judaism. On the contrary, the name "Christians" did not imply a new religion any more than the other titles the believers used to identify themselves: the Disciples, the Way, the Poor Ones, the Saints, and the Sect of the Nazarenes. Sociologist, historian, and Pauline scholar Magnus Zetterholm observes, "That a messianic Jewish community would be given a name by other Jews that manifested this is quite natural and does not imply any break with Judaism—rather the opposite."
Originally, the name did not refer to the Christian religion. Christianity had not yet developed outside the Jewish community or in antithesis to Judaism. Rather, the name referred to association with Messiah:
If anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name. (I Peter 4:16)
The new name stuck and eventually eclipsed the other names attributed to the Yeshua movement. Writing near the end of the first century, Josephus testified to the growing popularity of the new name for the sect when he referred to the believers as the "Tribe of the Christians":
There was at that time a wise man called Jesus ... He was a worker of wonders and a teacher of men such as are eager to learn truth. He drew after him both many Jews and many Greeks. He was [called] the Christ. And when Pilate, at the behest of the leading men among us, condemned him to be crucified, those who loved him from the first did not abandon affection for him, [but they reported that] he appeared to them alive again on the third day ... and the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, are not extinct to this day. (Testimonium Flavianum)
Antioch had between twenty and thirty synagogues. In those days each synagogue had a name like "Synagogue of the Hebrews," "Synagogue of the Freedmen," or something to denote the particular sect and flavor of Judaism predominant in that assembly. A synagogue might be named in honor of a patron or founder, or its name might indicate the geographical or social origin of its members. The name "Christians" originally functioned within the Jewish community of Antioch to identify a particular sect of Jewish faith. If so, the synagogue of Jewish believers in Antioch was called the "Synagogue of the Christianoi," i.e., the "Synagogue of the Christians"—or, to put it in our English, the "Synagogue of the Messianics." Luke says, "For an entire year they met with the church (ekklesia, ἐκκλησία) and taught considerable numbers" (Acts 11:26). Although English versions of the New Testament prefer the word "church," the Greek word ekklesia literally means "assembly." It appears frequently in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament to describe the assembly of Israel.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Spies and False Brethren
The synagogue at which Saul and Barnabas worshiped in Antioch, perhaps a place called the "Synagogue of the Christians," served a congregation and community of both Jewish believers and God-fearing Gentile believers.
Barnabas sent word of the growth of the Messianic synagogue back to the apostles in Jerusalem. The apostles probably heard about the work of Saul and Barnabas from other sources as well. In those days, Jews traveled frequently between Antioch and Jerusalem. The apostles learned that many God-fearing Gentiles had become associated with the work of Barnabas and Saul. According to the rumors, Saul and Barnabas were not conducting conversions. James and the apostolic leadership may have had some questions and concerns.
In his epistle to the Galatians, Saul mentions "false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in the Messiah Yeshua, in order to bring us into bondage" (Galatians 2:4). The men were not spies, so to speak, but rather, investigators, sent to investigate (κατασκοπέω, kataskopeo) what they considered to be a problem for the Yeshua community. The so-called "false brothers" were most likely agents sent from James and the apostolic authority in the Jerusalem community.
Saul called them "false brothers" to cast aspersions on the sincerity of their motives. They came to Antioch, integrated into the community, and got to know the people and the message that Saul and Barnabas taught. All the while, they were investigating the situation to report back to the apostolic authorities in Jerusalem. Apparently, Saul, Barnabas, and the other Antioch believers were unaware that the brothers from Jerusalem had come to investigate the Gentile phenomenon in Antioch-or, as Saul puts it, the "liberty that we have in the Messiah Yeshua."
What was this liberty of which Saul spoke? It started with circumcision and the concept that Gentile believers did not need to take on the mitzvah of circumcision. They did not need to become proselytes. Saul did not expect the Gentile disciples to convert or take on other Jewish observances.
The so-called false brothers, investigating in Antioch, were disturbed to see the "liberty in the Messiah Yeshua" that Saul proclaimed for the Gentile disciples. The free association between the circumcised and the uncircumcised troubled them. They asked Saul for an explanation, expressed their disapproval, and then they returned to those who had sent them.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
27 Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. (Acts 11:27, ESV Bible)
Lukas and the Prophets
Other visitors from the assembly in Jerusalem came as well. About a year after Saul's arrival, a group of prophets came down from Jerusalem to visit the disciples in Antioch. God appointed certain individuals among the apostolic community with a special endowment of the prophetic Spirit. "He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets" (Ephesians 4:11). The Master had predicted that God "will send to them prophets and apostles" (Luke 11:49). The Didache speaks of itinerant apostles and prophets who traveled from community to community. It provides instructions about receiving and giving hospitality to such prophets, and it warns about how to recognize a false apostle or prophet (Didache 11).
Sometime in the early forties, a small band of itinerant prophets—all of them Jewish believers in Yeshua—came to visit the Messianic community in Antioch. The believers in Antioch received them enthusiastically. The prophet called Agabus stood up in the midst of the synagogue and uttered a prophecy. The name Agabus transliterates the unusual Hebrew name Chagav (חָגָב), which means "Locust."
Agabus declared that "there would certainly be a famine all over the world." Luke parenthetically notes, "This took place in the reign of Claudius."
According to some manuscripts, Luke, the author of the book of Acts, was already part of the Messianic community at Antioch when the prophets from Jerusalem arrived (cf. Acts 13:1). A textual variant on Acts 11:28 contains one of his first-person plural forms, suggesting that Luke was present:
Now at this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and there was much rejoicing; and when we were gathered. together, one of them named Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that ... (Acts I1:27-28, Codex Bezae textual variant in italics)
According to Colossians 4:14, Luke had medical training: "Luke, the beloved physician." Luke became one of Saul's most loyal companions and, ultimately, the chronicler of his work. Eusebius also mentions that Luke was a physician:
Luke, by birth an Antiochene and by profession a physician, was for long periods of time a companion of Paul and was closely associated with the other apostles as well. So he left us examples of the art of healing souls which he learnt from them in two divinely inspired books. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.6)
The famine predicted by Agabus took place in a series of localized shortages across the Roman world. It had begun in Italy with the mismanagement of supplies under the wicked Gaius Caligula. On the day he died (January 24, 41 CE), the city of Rome had food supplies sufficient to last only a week. The shortages continued into Claudius' first years. In the fall of the same year that Claudius took office, the seventh year Sabbatical began for agriculture in the land of Israel, contributing to local shortages in Judea. By the middle of the decade, the Nile flooded heavily. Crop failures in Egypt affected supplies to the whole Roman world. The price of grain doubled. Floods in Greece also damaged crops.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
29 So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. (Acts 11:29, ESV Bible)
Famine Relief
The disciples living communally in Jerusalem stood to suffer greatly by such a famine. In keeping with our Master's teachings about giving one's wealth to the poor, the early Jewish believers in Jerusalem gave their belongings to the needy and the needs of the community. They referred to themselves as the "Evyonim (אֶבְיוֹנִים)," that is, "the Poor Ones." The early church fathers knew of the name and referred to them as Ebionites. Sharing all things in common depleted reserve assets, and the impoverished community did not have the means to lay up provisions for themselves. Agabus and the prophets from Jerusalem saw that a famine could devastate the Jerusalem community of Evyonim.
Following the Torah's example of Joseph's preparations for the seven-year famine, Agabus and the prophets from Jerusalem requested a collection from the Antioch community. Among Jews, such collections were common.
The Talmud preserves several anecdotes regarding similar collections for charity made in the Jewish communities of the Diaspora. Luke says, "In the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea." The Antioch disciples collected funds for their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem and sent them back to the holy city in the hands of Saul and Barnabas. The collection prepared the Jerusalem disciples for the years of scarcity ahead, just as the careful preparations of the patriarch Joseph had provided for the family of Jacob in the seven years of famine.
Saul later referred to the prophecy of Agabus as the "revelation" that inspired his first trip back to Jerusalem in more than a decade. He explained to the Galatians, "It was because of a revelation that I went up [to Jerusalem]" (Galatians 2:2). The "revelation" to which he referred was Agabus' prophecy about a coming famine.
As Agabus had predicted, famine descended on Judea. It peaked in the year 44 CE and lasted three years. The Talmud refers to it as the "years of scarcity." Josephus reports that food was scarce, extremely expensive, and many people died for want. When Queen Helena of Adiabene visited Jerusalem and witnessed the famine, she sent word back to her son Izates. King Izates "sent great sums of money to the principal men in Jerusalem."
He and his mother, Queen Helena, spent their considerable wealth to provide famine relief for the citizens of Jerusalem and Judea. They used a large portion of their own state treasury to buy grain in Alexandria and dried fruits in Cyprus. They hired a fleet to ship the food to Judea. Izates nearly emptied out the coffers of accumulated wealth that he had inherited from his fathers. The Talmud tells the story:
His father's household brought a delegation before him and said to him, "Your father saved money and added to the treasures of his fathers, and you are wasting it." He replied, "... My fathers stored their wealth in a place which is vulnerable to tampering, but I have stored my wealth in a place invulnerable to tampering ... My fathers stored something which produces no fruits, but I have stored something which does produce fruits ... My fathers gathered treasures of money, but I have gathered treasures of souls ... My fathers gathered for others and I have gathered for myself... My fathers gathered for this world, but I have gathered for the world to come." (b.Bava Batra ra)
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.