As a Jew, I can tell you that the word “baptism” conjures up terrible images for my people. WITH early years Catholicism forced Jews to be baptized as Christians. Sometimes under the threat of death. In other times, the consequence for those who were not baptized was eviction from their home and country. For example, the Spanish Inquisition at one time ruled that Jews who did not convert to Catholicism (and, of course, were not baptized) must leave Spain.
In other cases, Jews were kidnapped and forcibly baptized, as was the case with the son of a rabbi in 1762. This happened in Russia just two centuries ago. Russian empire took Jewish boys from the age of 12 to serve in the army. “Involuntary, almost always forced, baptisms probably outnumbered any similar cases in other countries throughout history.”
What-what was he doing?
Because of such openly gangster stories, Jews shudder at the mere word “baptism.” When they hear the news about a Jew who came to faith in Yeshua and was voluntarily baptized, they are simply disgusted. And this is understandable, this disgust is based on historical facts. But, you know, it wasn't always like this.
who can forbid them to be baptized with water...? (Acts of the Holy Apostles 10:47)
Who are “they” and who is saying this? These are the words of the Jewish apostle Shimon Peter, and he is talking about the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. There was a serious controversy about the baptism of Gentiles as believers in Yeshua. After all, this has never happened before. For the first nine years, the Gospel was preached exclusively to Jews.
Shimon Peter, after a vision and a word from the Lord (chapter 10 of Acts), slightly embarrassed, goes to the house of the Roman military man and shares the news about Yeshua with the people in this house. The Holy Spirit comes upon people in the midst of fellowship. The Jewish believers who witnessed this are stunned - the Gentiles are receiving the Holy Spirit!!!
Shimon Peter said: “Who can forbid those who, like us, have received the Holy Spirit to be baptized with water?” This became a major point of contention that was not resolved for the next ten years (Acts 15).
Reverse dispute
But since when did Gentile baptism become controversial? Can you imagine the accusations against... The First Baptist Church for baptizing non-Jews? It would be funny. However, if they baptize a large number of Jews, it will still make waves.
What most people—Jews and non-Jews alike—don’t know is that baptism (or immersion) is originally Jewish. Long before Queen Isabella forced the Jews of Spain to convert and be baptized, the Jews of Israel were familiar with the waters of immersion.
When John the Baptist, the Jewish prophet, came to preach repentance through baptism, we find no record of outrage: "What is this strange new tradition are you entering?. Water diving has already happened significant part Judaism. The Torah taught that priests were to be immersed in water as part of their sanctification (Exodus 29:2-5). Before any Jew could offer a sacrifice in the Temple in Jerusalem, he had to immerse himself in the mikveh, a water tank for ablution, thereby symbolizing the ritual of purification.
How to immerse three thousand people in water without a river?
Have you ever wondered how Shimon Peter and the apostles managed to immerse three thousand Jewish men in one day in Jerusalem? Jerusalem is not Tel Aviv or a city in Galilee where you can use the Mediterranean Sea or the Jordan River. Jerusalem is on a mountain. And there are no lakes, rivers or seas nearby. However, archaeologists have excavated about 50 mikvahs—water immersion tanks—that were used in Temple services. 50 tanks, each holding 60 people - three thousand people could take a water dive in a few hours. Without these Jewish mikvahs this would not have been possible.
Subscribe:
Today, the combination of Judaism with the act of immersion - what we see among the New Testament Jews - is like an attempt to combine oil and water. But in the first century this was not the case. The problem of those days was the question of what to do with the baptism not of Jews, but of Gentiles! And Shimon Peter immediately heard what other Jews thought about him, as soon as he did the “unthinkable” - he baptized and immersed the pagans in the Body of Yeshua.
1. The Apostles and brothers who were in Judea heard that the pagans had also received the word of God.
2. And when Peter came to Jerusalem, the circumcision rebuked him,
3. saying, “You went to the uncircumcised people and ate with them.”
(Acts of the Holy Apostles 11:1-3)
Strange, isn't it?
David Eidelman
Orthodox orthodox - would rather trust a Jewish orthodox than a baptized Jew. And vice versa. However, the phenomenon of Jewish Christians has its roots in the very beginning of Christianity, the founder of which, if you believe the statutory documents, did not oppose himself to Judaism at all, but promised not to violate the Mosaic Law, but to fulfill it.
Immediately after the end of the Jewish Passover and with the beginning Orthodox Easter I wanted to write about the phenomenon "Jewish Christians". I know what for large quantity people for whom Jewishness is, first of all, Judaism - a religion, such a phrase itself looks like an unacceptable oxymoron.
If they are Jews, then they are not Christians. If they accepted Christianity, then they were converted - they were discharged from the Jewish tribe. Maybe not forever, but as long as they adhere to Christianity, they do not belong to Judaism.
After all, Jewishness for such people is not blood. Or at least not just blood. This is an ethno-confessional essence, and maybe a sacred unity.
However, the phenomenon of Jewish Christians has its roots in the very beginning of Christianity, the founder of which, if you believe the statutory documents, did not oppose himself to Judaism at all, but promised not to violate the Mosaic Law, but to fulfill it.
Moreover, he saw himself as a shepherd who was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Pietro Perugino. "Christ and the Samaritan Woman"
Chapter 15 of the Gospel of Matthew
“And behold, a Canaanite woman, coming out of those places, shouted to Him: have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David, my daughter is cruelly raging.
But He did not answer her a word.
And His disciples came up and asked Him: let her go, because she is screaming after us. He answered and said: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
And she, coming up, bowed to Him and said: Lord! help me.
He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs...”
The first Christians were Jews
And the apostles. And the disciples of the apostles.
It was only then that the roads forked and went apart, first parallel, then further and further, moving away from each other.
Only after the First Council of Nicea, convened by Emperor Constantine in 325, at which the Christian “Creed” was developed, was the separation of Christianity from Judaism finally proclaimed.
But even after this there were “Jewish Christians” of different kinds. They were exposed, denounced, exposed.
Caravaggio, "Saint Jerome"
17 years after the Council of Nicaea, Jerome was born, who in 360 (already in mature age) will be baptized, and then become one of the most revered and influential Fathers of the Church.
In 386 he settled in Bethlehem (Beit Lehem) and began translating the Bible into Latin. This translation, called the Vulgate, received catholic church official status.
And so Jerome writes from Bethlehem to another (even more revered!) Church Father Augustine about Jewish Christians: “Today there is a sect among the Jews in all the synagogues of the East, which is called the sect of Menaion, and it was condemned by the Pharisees. The adherents of this sect are also known as Nazarenes; they believe in Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; and they say that he is the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again, just as we all believe. But while they want to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither one nor the other.”
"Saint Jerome" by Leonardo da Vinci.
"Let there be no hope for the apostate"
Please note: describing groups of people who accepted the Nicene Creed (Christ is the Son of God, born of a virgin, was crucified and suffered, and was resurrected), but thought that they could remain Jews too (prayed in synagogues, kept the Sabbath , adhered to kashrut), that is, they did not separate “Christians” and “Jews”, Jerome rejects not only their attempts to be both at the same time. He ruthlessly rejects both of their identifications. Starting with Jerome, these are mutually exclusive possibilities.
Jerome calls them "Mineans" or "Nazarenes." Menaia is from the word “min” - type, class, variety, gender. This is from a Jewish prayer that calls not to trust either “minim and notzrim.” It's funny that the position of the Jewish blessing against apostates is closer to Jerome than the position of the Jews who profess the Nicene Creed.
Not much has changed since then. An Orthodox Christian is more likely to trust a Jewish Orthodox Christian than a converted Jew who is trying to sit on two chairs. And vice versa. For an Orthodox Jew almost main problem V Christendom are Jews who “either take off your cross or put on your panties.”
"The worst anti-Semites"
In Jewish families, they sat on the crosses “shiva” as if they were dead. Jews often believed that converts were anti-Semitic Jews, the most vehement spreaders of anti-Semitic slander.
Sometimes this was justified. Trying to curry favor with new coreligionists, neophytes, emphasizing their authentic knowledge former Jews, told all sorts of nasty things about the tribe they had just left.
And those who viewed baptism as an accession - joining a people, joining a culture - also left a well-reasoned justification for such a step.
One of greatest philosophers In the 20th century, Karl Popper (the son of a convert) believed that Jews bear their share of the blame for anti-Semitism, since they stood apart from the majority.
Karl Raymund Popper
Popper wrote: “After much thought, my father decided that life in a Christian society obliges him to cause as little offense as possible to this society - that is, to assimilate.”
Converted Zionists
Even for many early Zionists, the first solution to the Jewish question was baptism: Jews must leave the cultural and social ghetto into which they drove themselves - this will bring them liberation.
Then many converts went into Zionism, having previously participated in revolutionary movement. One of the most famous examples- Pinchas (Peter) Rutenberg, who was first baptized, took Russian name, married a non-Jew, then became a revolutionary terrorist, and then turned to Zionism.
Peter (Pinkhas) Moiseevich Rutenberg
Many interpreters of Sholom Aleichem's book Tevye the Milkman believe that the return of Tevye's baptized daughter Havva at the end of the book symbolizes her departure to Palestine.
Herzl and mass baptism
Even Theodor Herzl suggested that possible solution The Jewish problem is a massive “voluntary and honorable conversion” to Christianity. In 1895, he wrote in his diary: “Two years ago I wanted to decide Jewish question, at least in Austria, with the help of the Catholic Church. I tried to get guarantees from the Austrian bishops and through them to get an audience with the Pope in order to tell him: help us in the fight against anti-Semitism, and I will create a strong movement among the Jews so that they freely and worthily accept Christianity. Free and worthy in the sense that the leaders of this movement, and above all myself, will remain Jews and, as Jews, will promote the adoption of the majority religion. In the light of day, at noon, the conversion to another faith will open with the ringing of bells with a solemn procession to St. Stephen's Cathedral (in Vienna). Not bashfully, as only a few did before, but with their heads held high. The fact that the leaders of this movement themselves, remaining within the framework of Judaism, lead the people only to the threshold of the church, while they themselves remain outside, will elevate this whole matter and give it deep sincerity...”
Theodor Herzl
Only the trial of Captain Dreyfus turned Herzl into a Zionist and made him the author of the “State of the Jews.” Herzl’s historical insight was that he saw in the Dreyfus affair a dress rehearsal for a future genocide, which would destroy for “innate properties,” regardless of religion.
Judeo-Christianity of the Soviet intelligentsia
But I am not interested in people who consciously converted to Christianity and ceased to be Jews (at least in their own sense of self). The question is about people who at the same time, like those ancient “Mineans,” consider themselves both Jews and Christians, who try to be both.