The meaning of the verb Judaize,[10] from which the noun Judaizer is derived, can only be derived from its various historical uses. Its biblical meaning must also be inferred and is not clearly defined beyond its obvious relationship to the word "Jew." The Anchor Bible Dictionary, for example, says: "The clear implication is that gentiles are being compelled to live according to Jewish customs."[11]
The inclusion of Gentiles into early Christianity posed a problem for the Jewish identity of some of the early Christians:[19][20][21] the new Gentile converts were not required to be circumcised nor to observe the Mosaic Law.[19] Circumcision in particular was regarded as a token of the membership of the Abrahamic covenant, and the most traditionalist faction of Jewish Christians (i.e., converted Pharisees) insisted that Gentile converts had to be circumcised as well.[22][19][20][21][23] Paul insisted that faith in Christ (see also Faith or Faithfulness) was sufficient for salvation, therefore the Mosaic Law wasn't binding for the Gentiles.[24][25][26][27]
James the Just, whose judgment was adopted in the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:19–29, c. 78 AD: "we should write to them [Gentiles] to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood..." (NRSV)
That Gentile Christians should obey the Law of Moses was the assumption of some Jewish Christians in the Early Church, as represented by the group of Pharisees who had converted to Christianity in Acts 15:5. Paul opposed this position, concluding that Gentiles did not need to obey to the entire Law of Moses in order to become Christians.[2][3][23][24][25][26][27] The conflict between Paul and his Judaizing opponents over this issue came to a head with the Council of Jerusalem.[2][3][23][24][25] According to the account given in Acts15, it was determined by the Great Commission that Gentile converts to Christianity did not have to go through circumcision to be saved; but in addressing the second question as to whether or not they should obey the Torah, James the Just, brother of Jesus encouraged the Gentiles to "abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication" (Acts 15:19–29).
Paul also addressed this question in his Epistle to the Galatians, in which he condemned those who insisted that circumcision had to be followed for justification as "false believers" (Galatians 2:4):
But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us – we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you. And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) – those leaders contributed nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do. [...] We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.
Also Paul warned the early Galatian church that gentile Christians who submit to circumcision will be alienated from Christ: "Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace." (Galatians 5:2–4).
The Catholic Encyclopedia notes: "Paul, on the other hand, not only did not object to the observance of the Mosaic Law, as long as it did not interfere with the liberty of the Gentiles, but he conformed to its prescriptions when occasion required (1 Corinthians 9:20). Thus he shortly after circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:1–3), and he was in the very act of observing the Mosaic ritual when he was arrested at Jerusalem (Acts 21:26 sqq.)."[28]
Paul, who called himself "Apostle to the Gentiles",[29][30] criticised the practice of circumcision, perhaps as an entrance into the New Covenant of Jesus. In the case of Timothy, whose mother was a Jewish Christian but whose father was a Greek, Paul personally circumcised him "because of the Jews" that were in town.[31][32] Some believe that he appeared to praise its value in Romans 3:1–2, yet later in Romans 2 we see his point. In 1 Corinthians 9:20–23 he also disputes the value of circumcision. Paul made his case to the Christians at Rome[33] that circumcision no longer meant the physical, but a spiritual practice.[24][25][26][27] He also wrote: "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts."[34]
Later Paul more explicitly denounced the practice,[2][3] rejecting and condemning those Judaizers who promoted circumcision to Gentile Christians.[20][24][25][26][27] He accused them of turning from the Spirit to the flesh:[24][25][26][27] "Are you so foolish, that, whereas you began in the Spirit, you would now be made perfect by the flesh?"[35] Paul warned that the advocates of circumcision as a condition of salvation were "false brothers".[36][2][20] He accused the advocates of circumcision of wanting to make a good showing in the flesh,[37] and of glorying or boasting of the flesh.[38][20][24][25][26][27] Paul instead stressed a message of salvation through faith in Christ opposed to the submission under the Mosaic Law that constituted a New Covenant with God,[21][24][25][26][27] which essentially provides a justification for Gentiles from the harsh edicts of the Law, a New Covenant that didn't require circumcision[21][24][25][26][27] (see also Justification by faith, Pauline passages supporting antinomianism, Abrogation of Old Covenant laws).
His attitude towards circumcision varies between his outright hostility to what he calls "mutilation" in Philippians 3:2–3 to praise in Romans 3:1–2. However, such apparent discrepancies have led to a degree of skepticism about the reliability of Acts.[39]Baur, Schwanbeck, De Wette, Davidson, Mayerhoff, Schleiermacher, Bleek, Krenkel, and others have opposed the authenticity of the Acts; an objection is drawn from the discrepancy between Acts 9:19–28 and Gal. 1:17–19. Some believe that Paul wrote the entire Epistle to the Galatians attacking circumcision, saying in chapter five: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing."[40]
The division between the Jews who followed the Mosaic Law and were circumcised and the Gentiles who were uncircumcised was highlighted in his Epistle to the Galatians:
On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
...when the Syrians thought they had ruined the Jews, they had the Judaizers in suspicion also (Whiston Translation).[41][42]
It occurs once in the Apostolic Fathers collection, in Ignatius's letter to the Magnesians 10:3 written around the year 100:
It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God. (Roberts-Donaldson Translation).[43]
There are several direct interpolations by a later forger regarding anti-Judaizing in Ignatius's epistles that are considered authentic,[clarification needed] it can be assumed the redactor was either trying to build upon Ignatius' positions or responsible for what is perceived as Ignatius' anti-Judaizing altogether.[citation needed]
Judaizing teachers are strongly condemned in the Epistle of Barnabas. (Although it did not become part of the Christian Biblical canon, it was widely circulated among Christians in the first two centuries and is part of the Apostolic Fathers.) Whereas Paul acknowledged that the Law of Moses and its observance were good when used correctly ("the law is good, if one uses it lawfully", 1 Tim 1:8), the Epistle of Barnabas condemns most Jewish practices, claiming that Jews had grossly misunderstood and misapplied the Law of Moses.
Justin Martyr (about 140) distinguishes two kinds of Jewish Christians: those who observe the Law of Moses, but do not require its observance of others — with these he would hold communion – and those who believe the Mosaic law to be obligatory on all, whom he considers heretics (Dialogue with Trypho 47).
Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord's Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ. (Percival Translation).[44]
According to Eusebius' History of the Church 4.5.3-4: the first 15 Bishops of Jerusalem were "of the circumcision", although this in all likelihood is simply stating that they were Jewish Christians (as opposed to Gentile Christians), and that they observed biblical circumcision and thus likely the rest of Torah as well.[45]
The eight homilies Adversus Judaeos ("against the Jews") of John Chrysostom (347 – 407) deal with the relationship between Christians, Jews and Judaizers.
The Latin verb iudaizare is used once in the Vulgate where the Greek verb ioudaizein occurs at Galatians 2:14. Augustine in his Commentary on Galatians, describes Paul's opposition in Galatia as those qui gentes cogebant iudaizare – "who thought to make the Gentiles live in accordance with Jewish customs."[46]
Christian groups following Jewish practices never completely vanished, although they had been designated as heretical by the 5th century.
Skhariya or Zacharias the Jew from Caffa led a sect of Judaizers in Russia. In 1480, Grand Prince Ivan III invited some of Zacharias's prominent adherents to visit Moscow. The Judaizers enjoyed the support of high-ranking officials, of statesmen, of merchants, of Yelena Stefanovna (wife of Ivan the Young, heir to the throne) and of Ivan's favorite deacon and diplomat Fyodor Kuritsyn. The latter even decided to establish his own club in the mid-1480s. However, in the end Ivan III renounced his ideas of secularization and allied with the Orthodox Christian clergy. The struggle against the adherents was led by hegumen Joseph Volotsky and his followers (иосифляне, iosiflyane or Josephinians) and by Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod. After uncovering adherents in Novgorod around 1487, Gennady wrote a series of letters to other churchmen over several years calling on them to convene sobors ("church councils") with the intention "not to debate them, but to burn them". Such councils took place in 1488, 1490, 1494 and 1504. The councils outlawed religious and non-religious books and initiated their burning, sentenced a number of people to death, sent adherents into exile, and excommunicated them. In 1491, Zacharias the Jew was executed in Novgorod by the order of Ivan III.
This behavior was particularly persecuted from 1300 to 1800 during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, using as a basis the many references in the Pauline epistles regarding the "Law as a curse" and the futility of relying solely upon the Law for attaining salvation, known as legalism.[citation needed] Thus, in spite of Paul's agreement at the Council of Jerusalem, Gentile Christianity came to understand that any Torah Laws (with the exception of the Ten Commandments) were anathema, not only to Gentile Christians but also to Christians of Jewish extraction. Under the Spanish Inquisition, the penalty to a converted Jew for "Judaizing" was usually death by burning.[citation needed]
The Spanish word Judaizante was applied both to Jewish conversos who practiced some traditions from Judaism secretly and sometimes to Jews who had not converted,[49] in Spain and the New World at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.[50]
Sometimes, accusations of being a Judaizer led to the persecution of Catholics of Converso descent who were completely innocent of preaching or doing anything heretical by the Catholic Church. For example, while serving as professor of Biblical scholarship at the University of Salamanca, the Augustinianfriar and Renaissance humanismLuis de León both wrote and translated many immortal works of Christian poetry into the Spanish language. But, despite being a devout and believing Christian, Fray Luis was descended from a family of Spanish Jewish Conversos and this, as well as his vocal advocacy for teaching the Hebrew language in Catholic universities and seminaries, caused false accusations from the Dominicans of the heresies of being both a Marrano and a Judaiser. Fray Luis was accordingly imprisoned for four years by the Spanish Inquisition before he was ruled to be innocent of any wrongdoing and released without charge. While the conditions of his imprisonment were never harsh and he was allowed complete access to books, according to legend, Fray Luis started his first post-Inquisition University of Salamanca lecture with the words, "As I was saying the other day..."[51]
The term "Judaizers" was used by the Spanish Inquisition and the inquisitions established in Mexico City, Lima, and Cartagena de Indias for Conversos (also termed Marranos) accused of continuing to observe the Jewish religion, as Crypto-Jews.[52][53][54] Entry of Portuguese New Christians into Spain and the Spanish realms occurred during the Union of Crowns of Spain and Portugal, 1580–1640, when both kingdoms and their overseas empires were held by the same monarch. The Bnei Anusim are modern day Hispanic Judaizers.[citation needed]
^Dunn, James D. G. (Autumn 1993). Reinhartz, Adele (ed.). "Echoes of Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul's Letter to the Galatians". Journal of Biblical Literature. 112 (3). Society of Biblical Literature: 462. doi:10.2307/3267745. ISSN0021-9231. JSTOR3267745. Galatians 2:14: "how is it that you compel the Gentiles to judaize?" "To judaize" was a quite familiar expression, in the sense "to live like a Jew", "to adopt a distinctively Jewish way of life"-with reference to Gentiles taking up Jewish customs like observance of the sabbath. The polemical note sounds in the verb "compel". [...] The element of compulsion would enter because there were Gentiles who were making claims, or for whom claims were being made, to enter into what generations of Jews had always regarded as their exclusive privileges (in terms of the argument of Galatians, into the direct line of inheritance from Abraham). To safeguard the character of these privileges it was evidently seen as necessary to ensure that such claimants conformed fully to the traditional notes of the covenant people. This Paul regarded as compulsion.
^Michele Murray Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE, Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 2004, p. 33: "From Paul's perspective, by withdrawing from Gentile table fellowship, Peter was sending a message to the Gentile believers of Antioch. The message to Antiochene Gentile Christians was that they were to judaize."
^Kohler, Kaufmann; Hirsch, Emil G.; Jacobs, Joseph; Friedenwald, Aaron; Broydé, Isaac. "Circumcision: In Apocryphal and Rabbinical Literature". Jewish Encyclopedia. Kopelman Foundation. Retrieved 3 January 2020. Contact with Grecian life, especially at the games of the arena [which involved nudity], made this distinction obnoxious to the Hellenists, or antinationalists; and the consequence was their attempt to appear like the Greeks by epispasm ("making themselves foreskins"; I Macc. i. 15; Josephus, "Ant." xii. 5, § 1; Assumptio Mosis, viii.; I Cor. vii. 18; Tosef., Shab. xv. 9; Yeb. 72a, b; Yer. Peah i. 16b; Yeb. viii. 9a). All the more did the law-observing Jews defy the edict of Antiochus Epiphanes prohibiting circumcision (I Macc. i. 48, 60; ii. 46); and the Jewish women showed their loyalty to the Law, even at the risk of their lives, by themselves circumcising their sons.
^Neusner, Jacob (1993). Approaches to Ancient Judaism, New Series: Religious and Theological Studies. Scholars Press. p. 149. Circumcised barbarians, along with any others who revealed the glans penis, were the butt of ribald humor. For Greek art portrays the foreskin, often drawn in meticulous detail, as an emblem of male beauty; and children with congenitally short foreskins were sometimes subjected to a treatment, known as epispasm, that was aimed at elongation.
^McGarvey on Acts 16: "Yet we see him in the case before us, circumcising Timothy with his own hand, and this 'on account of certain Jews who were in those quarters.'"
^McGrath, Alister E. Christianity: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing (2006). ISBN1-4051-0899-1, page 174.
^Eric Plumer Augustine's Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes p124 footnote "5 Literally, 'who were compelling Gentiles to Judaize (Latin: iudaizare)'—in other words, '... to live in accordance with Jewish customs'. In the Latin Bible the term occurs only at Gal. 2: 14, where it virtually transliterates the Greek ioudaizein"
^S.V. Bulgakov "Handbook of heresies, sects and schisms", under Караимиты
^
under Louis H. Gray's entry "Judaizing" section 8 "Recrudescent forms" subsection C "Karaimites" on page 612 in Volume 7 of "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics" HardPress. 2013. Gray, Louis Herbert (1914). "Judaizing". In Hastings, James (ed.). Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics. Vol. 7. T and T Clark, Edinburgh. p. 612.
^Seymour B. Liebman The inquisitors and the Jews in the New World 1975 "The term Judaizante was applied to Jewish apostates to Catholicism who practiced Judaism secretly. In some instances the term was synonymous with Jew."
^Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536-1543 "The first activity of the Mexican Inquisition against Jews and Judaizantes came in 1523 with the ordinance against heretics and Jews."
^ Edith Grossman (2006), The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance, W.W. Norton, New York. Page 101.
^Ricardo Escobar Quevedo. Inquisición y judaizantes en América española (siglos XVI-XVII).Bogota: Editorial Universidad del Rosario, 2008.
^Márquez Villanueva. Sobre el concepto de judaizante. Tel Aviv : University Publishing Projects, 2000.
^Universidad de Alicante. Sobre las construcciones narrativas del “judío judaizante” ante la Inquisición. Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Filología Española, Lingüística General y Teoría de la Literatura; Rovira Soler, José Carlos. Universidad de Alicante 2014
"The Coptic Christians in Egypt and the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians — two of the oldest surviving forms of Christianity — retain many of the features of early Christianity, including male circumcision. Circumcision is not prescribed in other forms of Christianity... Some Christian churches in South Africa oppose the practice, viewing it as a pagan ritual, while others, including the Nomiya church in Kenya, require circumcision for membership and participants in focus group discussions in Zambia and Malawi mentioned similar beliefs that Christians should practice circumcision since Jesus was circumcised and the Bible teaches the practice."
"The decision that Christians need not practice circumcision is recorded in Acts 15; there was never, however, a prohibition of circumcision, and it is practiced by Coptic Christians." "circumcision"Archived 2007-08-08 at the Wayback Machine, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001-05.
Universidad de Alicante. Sobre las construcciones narrativas del "judío judaizante" ante la Inquisición. Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Filología Española, Lingüística General y Teoría de la Literatura; Rovira Soler, José Carlos. Universidad de Alicante 2014
External links
Look up Judaization in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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