The ideal of Christendom is a historical and political vision where society and government are unified under the Christian faith. According to this vision, power on Earth is divided between the church through the clergy and secular rulers. The church oversaw spiritual needs, and secular rulers enforced their views and protected the church, while both were understood as carrying out the commandments of the God of Israel.
Judaism & Leviticus
In the ancient world, religion was not an independent entity. In many cultures, the king simultaneously served as the high priest, but for most of the time, the duties were delegated to priests, distinguished by individual duties. All ancient temples, as the earthly home of the gods, were considered sacred spaces and had rules of purity. This was a state of being that distinguished between sacredness and mundane behavior.
The book of Leviticus is the third book of the Bible, which details the Law of Moses, received in a revelation from God at Mount Sinai. Known as 'the priests' manual,' it distinguished purity rules for the Temple in Jerusalem as sacred space. It presented the views of the Levites, the descendants of the tribe of Moses and Aaron after they escaped from Egypt. The Levites were the priests in charge of the Temple in Jerusalem, which included the Jewish sects of the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
The book of Leviticus has two types of purity: ritual and moral purity/impurity. The ethnic identification markers of Judaism included circumcision, their own dietary laws that differed from the native cults, and work stoppage on the Sabbath. Furthermore, the Jews had their own incest laws, which included uncles, step-siblings, and in-laws. Ritual purity only applied to Jews. Moral purity applied to both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews, pagans) in their behavior and lifestyle. Then as now, everyone criticized other cultures' lifestyles.
In Christian tradition, the laws of Leviticus were construed as a complete separation of Jews from Gentiles. This is patently false. The Temple complex had zones of "sacredness," from the inner courts for priests only, then men, then women, followed by the outer "court of the Gentiles." Gentiles were permitted and did offer sacrifices to the God of Israel.
Worship in the ancient world meant sacrifices. Paul, the Apostle, eliminated sacrifices in his communities, and we know very little about worship in these early communities. Bowing before images of the gods was already a standard practice in paganism. All we know is that Christians sang hymns to Christ, and Christian missionaries drove out demons and cured disabilities in the name of Christ.
The Gospels of Christianity
Through the stories of the gospels, the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were promoted as the correct interpretation of Judaism and the laws in Leviticus. Christian tradition claims that Jesus was opposed to the dominant religious views and social conventions of both Judaism and the Roman Empire. Particularly in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Sadducees and the Pharisees are the oppositional foil for the teachings of Jesus. In speech after speech by Jesus, his followers are urged "not to do things" the way others do. Oddly, in the gospels, Jesus has little to say about the Gentiles.
The four gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were written between 70 and 100 CE. We have no contemporary Christian writings from the ministry of Jesus (26-36 CE). Neither Jesus nor the disciples wrote anything. Writers created speeches in light of what was known about the individual as well as the historical context.
The Great Jewish Revolt of 66 CE against the Roman Empire resulted in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Mark's apology to Rome (an explanation) was an attempt to convince Rome that his Jews, the followers of Jesus, were not rebellious. Christians had to live in the Roman Empire. In the story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion, a punishment for treason, had to be explained. Mark said Pontius Pilate was forced to do this because of the Jews. In reality, however, no Roman magistrate would let the locals dictate any procedures in their rule.
Jews & Gentiles
Mark's gospel established the template that the Pharisees opposed everything that Jesus was preaching and doing, in a series of "conflict dialogues." In the synagogues, a Pharisee (or sometimes an elder or a scribe) would challenge Jesus, particularly for Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath. Jesus's response was to recite a teaching from the Jewish scriptures. He pointed out that if a person's sheep or animal falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, they will pull it out. He argued that a human being is much more valuable than an animal. Jesus summarizes this as the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, meaning the day was created as a blessing to help people, not to become a rigid burden. In the Jewish scriptures, ceasing work on the Sabbath did not define types of work, but the Pharisees had already promoted the concept of saving human life on the Sabbath by the 1st century CE.
In Mark 7:18-19, the Pharisees challenged Jesus by complaining that his disciples do not wash their hands before eating. Jesus explains to them that food entering a person's body does not defile them because it goes into the stomach and is expelled rather than entering the heart. According to Mark, by this Jesus declared all foods clean, dismissing the dietary laws of Leviticus. The point is that spiritual defilement comes from internal human wickedness (the heart) rather than external physical items like food.
A major story in the Acts of the Apostles is the story of Peter and Cornelius that narrates how the teaching of Jesus spread to the Gentiles (Acts 10). Cornelius was a centurion in the Roman legions who believed in the God of Israel. Peter and Cornelius had simultaneous visions that the two should meet. In Peter's vision, a sheet descended from Heaven containing all the clean and unclean animals and birds listed in Leviticus. Then a voice told him to eat. This passage is also interpreted as upending Jewish dietary laws.
Peter then baptized Cornelius' household, stating, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness[d] is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35). This was foundational for the acceptance of Gentiles in the movement. This fulfilled the predictions of the Prophets that when God established his kingdom on Earth, believing Gentiles would be included. Declaring all foods clean was another analogy that food and other ethnic differences would not separate the nations from Jews in the imminent Kingdom of God.
Paul the Apostle
The letters of Paul date from 52-64 CE, before the Roman destruction of the Temple. Paul was a Pharisee who, by his own admission, had persecuted the followers of Christ but never provided details. Paul then had a vision of Christ who told him that he was to be "the apostle to Gentiles," and Paul became convinced this was the will of God.
"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 the faith of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:15-16). Paul is often credited with introducing a new concept, faith, missing from both Judaism and the native cults. Of course, all ancient cultures believed in their concepts but articulated this differently. Roman religion was often described as a contract; sacrifice was offered for benefits to the person. In Christian tradition, Roman religion and Judaism were deemed legalistic, with an absence of spiritual enlightenment; Jews and pagans had rituals, Christians had faith. For Paul, "works of the Law" were only those physical and social elements that divided his communities, such as circumcision. As Paul preached, circumcision had no effect on the beliefs of a person.
In Romans 5, Paul created a concept of 'salvation' for believers. According to this concept, Adam, the first man, sinned through disobeying God and was punished with the loss of immortality. Christ brought life through his sacrifice of dying and subsequent resurrection after death. Through Christian faith, all believers would be resurrected and transformed to Heaven in the afterlife.
For centuries, Paul was considered the true founder of Christianity, eliminating all concepts of the laws of Moses and concepts of Judaism. In the past few decades, new analyses of Paul have corrected this. In his letters, he always upheld the sanctity of the Temple in Jerusalem. The consensus is that Paul remained a Jew, but with a new understanding of human relationships with God.
Jesus & Table Fellowship
In both Matthew and Luke, meals are the settings for Jesus' interpretation of aspects of Leviticus:
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners'.
(Matthew 9:10-17)
The identity of these tax collectors remains debatable as to their ethnicity. The gospels were only assigned authors in the second century CE. "Matthew" was understood as a Jewish tax collector who followed Jesus. And who were "the sinners?" In gospels, the "sinners" were not specifically identified.
In Luke's gospel, a Pharisee named Simon invited Jesus to eat at his house. (Luke 7:36–50): A local woman described as a "sinner" (often interpreted as a prostitute), enters, weeps on Jesus' feet, wipes them with her hair, kisses them, and pours expensive perfume on them. The Pharisee is shocked, but Jesus rebukes Simon as a Pharisee, with focusing on outward cleanliness and not focusing on the internal justice and love of God. But the important point here is that a prostitute was allowed into the house. As a Gentile and an idolater, there was no "contagion" conveyed by her presence.
Leviticus 20:20 states that both an adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. In John 8:1-11, the Pharisees bring a woman before the crowd to trap Jesus, asking if she should be stoned. Jesus replies, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her," causing her accusers to leave one by one. The woman is not named in this passage; it is only in the 6th century CE that she was claimed to be Mary Magdalene.
Parables
Parables were short, simple stories that used everyday life to explain deep spiritual or moral truths. Jesus did not invent parables; ancient cultures used this device to produce allegorical understandings of contemporary events. Matthew's parables focused on the imminent 'kingdom of God,' highlighting who gets in and who does not when God establishes his kingdom on Earth.
Perhaps one of the most famous parables of Luke is the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where a man had two sons. The older helped his father. The second son asked for his share of his inheritance and left home for a distant land, and there he squandered his wealth. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. He returned home and only asked to be treated as a servant, but his father gave him a great banquet. The older brother was angry, but the father told him they must celebrate because his brother was dead and came back to life. We have the allegory that the father is God and the younger son is one who demonstrates repentance.
The Sermon on the Mount
The premier passage that summarizes Jesus and the Laws of Moses is found in Matthew's "Sermon on the Mount." Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses; major teaching elements are presented on a mountain, replicating Sinai. Matthew's Jesus addresses elements of the scriptures, such as anger, adultery, retaliation, etc. Perhaps one of the most famous elements of the sermon is the lex talionis, the law of revenge. However, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was not a literal element in the Law of Moses. The Jewish scriptures contain ancient laws of compensation for perceived damage to one's property or reputation of a person, and the amount of the compensation was categorized to reflect the value of the damage. This saying is related to the historical context of the first century; lawsuits were endemic in the culture. Similarly, turning the other cheek does not mean that Christians were to stand there and take it; it was an admonition not to seek compensation in the courts and leave the compensation to God.
The sermon was not written down at the time, but apparently some of these ideas preceded the gospels. Paul's letters were written between the mid-50s and 62. As a Pharisee, Paul knew the precepts of compensation. In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he admonished the believers for taking lawsuits to the public courts instead of dealing with them in the community. He also chastised them for having lawsuits at all. For Paul, as well, God would be the final judge.
Christian tradition claims that the Sermon on the Mount replaced the Law of Moses in light of the new movement. But this is belied by Jesus himself in the passage: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17). The Law of Moses (reinterpreted) remains until the impending kingdom of God on Earth. Rather than altering the Law of Moses, Matthew intensified the laws; not just in their rituals and behavior, but in their thoughts.
Paul had a repeated claim that when God established the kingdom shortly, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ" (Galatians 3:28). In other words, traditional ethnic differences, social classes, and gender differences would be eliminated, all things that divided humanity.
Kingship on Earth
Ancient kings were always associated with divinity. In many cultures, the king was considered the descendant of a god who had intercourse with a human woman. In Judaism, kings were elevated through the stories of David and his son Solomon. Known as the Covenant with David, it was the promise that there would always be a descendant of David on the throne of Israel.
The Roman Republic had eliminated kings, replacing them with magistrates and the Roman Senate. The first Roman emperor, Augustus (reign 27 BCE to 14 CE), created the Imperial cult, beginning with the deification of the assassinated Julius Caesar, who could now be worshipped as a god. Subsequent emperors were deified after their deaths.
Constantine's Conversion to Christianity and the Edict of Milan made Christianity a legitimate religion, but bishops at the time were embroiled in schisms. During the last persecution under the Emperor Diocletian (reign 284-305), many bishops did, in fact, sacrifice to the gods to avoid execution. The communities were divided over whether they could be forgiven or were automatically condemned to hell. The bishops appealed to the now-Christian Constantine I (reign 306-337) to make a ruling. Constantine's major concern was unity, and so all earlier Christians who had sacrificed to the gods were to be forgiven. This is also when Constantine became the head of the Church.
Nicaea & Beyond
By 325, debates over the relationship between God and Jesus had produced riots. Constantine called for a meeting at the city of Nicaea, outside of the new capital of Constantinople that he was building. Constantine invited bishops from all over the empire, paying for housing them and their entourages. This is when the complicated doctrine of the Trinity was created: the unity of three aspects of the godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the interim before the return of Christ, the now Christian emperor stood in for Christ on Earth. Christian iconography portrayed Constantine and subsequent emperors and bishops with halos surrounding their heads.
While the delegations were there, Constantine created the Nicene Creed, what all Christians should believe and practice. Orthodoxy (correct beliefs and concepts) and heresy (haeresis, from a description of the schools of philosophy that taught different concepts) were now determined by adherence to the creed. Any deviation was interpreted as not wanting the Roman Empire to prosper, the equivalent of treason. Treason always carried a death penalty; heretics were now executed in the arenas, but denied the title and status of martyrs.
By the 4th century, there were dozens of different gospels that circulated. Many of these were Gnostic gospels; Gnosticism was a branch of Christianity that had different views on the nature of Christ. Allegedly, Constantine ordered 50 copies of what became the canonical gospels of the New Testament, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, which were further copied and distributed around the empire as the only legitimate gospels. This became the basis for the New Testament of Christian Bibles.
Theodosius I (reign 379-395 CE), was a great champion of orthodoxy. He issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which was the official end of all forms of paganism. Theodosius I outlawed all pagan cults and festivals. He banned the Olympic Games, dedicated to Zeus and the god Apollo. The Olympics were not reinstated until 1896 in Athens.
With the combination ofstate and church, subsequent Christian emperors utilized their armies to make everyone conform to the religion of Christianity. Violence was justified to bring all nations to the 'true faith.' Centuries of religious wars enhanced many rulers as saints. As such they were believed to be rewarded in heaven in the afterlife.
