What Have They Done With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History by Ben Witherington

Author:Ben Witherington [Witherington, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061120022
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 2006-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

JAMES THE LEADER OF THE FIRST CHURCH

Precisely because all the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews, including of course the members of Jesus’s own family, it needs to be kept squarely in view that these people did not view themselves as founding a new religion. When we talk about James as the leader or head of the earliest church, we are not talking about James intentionally setting up a separate religious entity. As the Old Testament quote in Acts 15:15–18 suggests, James views the matter as a case of Old Testament promises to Jews being fulfilled, and of Gentiles joining a Jewish messianic movement centered on Jesus, not Jews joining some new religion. In other words, James and the earliest Jewish Christians need to be viewed as promoting a sectarian form of early Judaism, not unlike the Qumran sect did.201 Craig A. Evans puts the matter helpfully as we try to locate James and his church in the context of early Judaism:

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