Books by Former Christians

[Blue Bird]

Why is that?

That's a great question. A scholar acquaintance of mine has actually wanted to write a whole book about how the early Christians created the Old Testament, claiming it as their own, fixing its meaning, and thereby distorting it into Christian scriptures. It's a big topic, but I will try to be a little more succinct!

What began as Jewish pesher exegesis of the prophets and psalms to show that elements of the life of Jesus were foretold in the scriptures quickly became a way of colorizing the story of Jesus with many allusions to the Jewish scriptures. As the churches became more and more dominated by gentiles, they were progressively cut off from the long process of the creation and handing on of the Jewish scriptures in which many different views were proposed and combined in a centuries long discussion and debate that for Jews continued into a wealth of rabbinic discussions and exegesis which are memorialized in the Mishnah and Talmud. But Christians had become fixated on only understanding their Old Testament as primarily pointing toward their Christ. Consequently they were largely ignorant of the original and living traditions of deeper meaning that can be found in the Jewish scriptures.

Another early aspect of this process was the need for a new religion in the Roman empire to argue that it was part of an older religious tradition. Christians, like Jews, shunned the worship of gentile idols and sought to defend this anti-social 'atheist' behavior by claiming the Jewish scriptures as their own scriptures. Jewish avoidance of idol worship was largely tolerated in Roman society because it was part of a much older tradition, which was valued in Roman society.

On the other hand, the anti-Jewish sentiment enshrined in the Christian scriptures came about in part because of Jewish persecution of this new sect, which made the scandalous claim that an executed criminal was actually the Messiah. The authors of the gospels claimed that the Judean authorities were systematically opposed to Jesus while he was still alive, even from the beginnings of his public life in Galilee. There may have been some truth to that, but even if there is, it is definitely exaggerated. What may have started out as an inter-Jewish polemic between various sects and authorities within Judaism, grew into a more universal condemnation of the entire Jewish people and their religion. 

This was, in part, encouraged by the desire of the early Christians to separate themselves from the Jews in the eyes of Roman society and Roman authorities. This coincided with Flavian propaganda that legitimated and confirmed their authority by exaggerating the threat of the Jewish rebellion which they had defeated in 70 CE. The author of the gospel of Mark probably already believed that the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem was a sign of the coming end times and was also vindication of Jesus against the Jewish temple authorities that he believed handed him over to be crucified. With the Jews being blamed for Jesus' death, Pilate, and thereby the Romans in general, were increasingly portrayed as innocent of Jesus' death. In some traditions, Pilate even became a Christian saint. This served to also portray the new Christian religion as itself posing no threat to the Roman empire, despite the fact that Jesus had been crucified for making a royal claim that was directly contrary to the authority of the Roman Senate (and their Roman established Jewish sunedrion). This served the evangelistic purposes of the Christians as they sought converts within Roman society.

That's a really revealing summery of Jewish-Christian history, thank you!

So the main reason seems to be the increasing number of gentile Christians... The persecution by Jews and the persecution by non-Christian gentiles lead to different Christian behaviours. I have to think about what you said. My first impression is that Christians conformed to gentiles (for instance easter with eggs, christmas with the tree etc.) while the persecution by Jews was answered by resentments against Jews. Again, I need some time to let your interesting short-book (good job!) sink in.