Easter

[Bengalzona]

(03-28-2016, 10:59 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Yup. It seems rather silly to me. They went with something that makes it reliant on something similar to what the Jewish calendar is based on, but because they want to make sure it is understood Christians are not Jews, they made it independent of the Jewish calendar, even though we know the events took place during Passover.

Politics from the early church.

Linking the annual holiday to the Passover (which the events in the Bible are clearly linked) would demonstrate and emphasize the link between Judaism and Christianity. This was something the early church spend literally hundreds of years (325AD to modern times) trying to downplay.

The simple fact is that Jesus and all of the disciples were Jews. They called themselves Jews. They associated with Jewish laws and customs. Until the time of Paul, nearly every believer in Jesus' divine origins would have called themselves a Jew. Jews who did not believe in the divinity of Christ at the time looked upon the followers of Christ as a sect, similar to the way Christians today look at Mormons or Shakers. Because the followers of Christ were generally rejected among mainline Judaism at the time (Judaism was already broken into three main sects: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. They weren't real welcoming to newer, smaller sects.), the followers of Christ began calling themselves "the believers" first.

The word "Christian" didn't appear until decades after Jesus' death (Acts 11:26), possibly coined by Paul or Barnabas. And it was around the time of the name change that the church began emphasizing evangelizing to the gentiles at Antioch. The two events, the name change and evangelizing to gentiles, are most certainly related. Including non-Jews into the fold without requiring them to be circumcised caused a major argument between Paul and Peter (Peter was the de facto head of the church at that time). I suspect that, as a practical matter of growing a new religion, some church leaders saw that growth would be limited if they stuck solely to converting other Jews. Paul, a Jew also, was the one responsible for re-branding the product. Paul would clearly have done well on Madison Avenue if he were alive today.

After the church "took over" the Roman Empire, there was a greater emphasis on separating from its Jewish traditions and history. People around this time didn't like Jews. They were seen as vagabonds (at a time when very few people moved more than a mile or two from where they were born) and were mistrusted. They settled on the outskirts of towns, lived in insulated communities and plied trades that others did not want (money lending, inter-city commerce and trade, etc.). These were not jobs which were appreciated or respected in Dark Age Europe.

The truth is, the Jews had no other choices. The majority were forced into exile and spread throughout the world. Everywhere they arrived, they were the 'new arrivals' and were treated as such by being forced to take jobs no one else wanted (our society is no different today, eh). But the unique thing about the Jewish people is that they accepted and excelled at these jobs. They became experts at banking, jewelry making, commerce and trade, the law, etc., occupations which modern society is built upon. And the more they succeeded, the more the societies around them depended upon them, but also hated them at the same time. Interestingly enough, that resentment says more about them than it did (does) about the Jews.

The Christian church felt obliged to take advantage of this resentment through occasional inquisitions, pogroms, etc. But despite this, the church could never condone the outright holocaust of Jews. This was due to a small passage in the Book of Revelations which says that during the apocalypse, a number of Jews would see Christ and convert. The church literally felt that they needed to keep a certain number of Jews alive and as practicing Jews in order for this prophecy to be fulfilled (interestingly enough, there is a similar passage in the Koran involving Muslims and Christians). Holocaust of the Jews would have to wait for another regime with no religous ties: the Nazis.

Today, there is more of an effort among Christians to learn about the Jewish roots of their religion. Which makes sense, seeing as you cannot even begin to understand the New Testament until you have a working understanding of the Old Testament and you cannot understand the Old Testament until you have a working understanding of early Judaism. This lack of understanding has caused more misinterpretation of Christian scripture and doctrine than anything else.