The first believers in Jesus were Jewish!

The first believers in Jesus Christ were Jewish. They were called “Maaminim” and comprised a spiritual movement within the scope of Judaism - The Maaminim had their own synagogues - and preached the ‘Besorah’ (Good News) of salvation.

Dr. H.H. Goldberg states, “Besides the Perushim (Pharisees), Tzedukim (Sadducees) and Essenes, the ‘Maaminim’ - were an integral part of the Temple community and ‘Ha-aam Hayehudi’ (the Jewish people)”. For the first eight years after the resurrection of Jesus, the ‘Maaminim’ ministered exclusively to Jews.

The deacon, Phillip, the deacon broke tradition by preaching in Samaria, among that city’s Jewish-extracted, mixed-race population. Cornelius’ household were the first Romans to accept the gospel - two years later - when ‘Shimon bar Yonah’ (St. Peter) preached to them.

Rabbi ‘Shaul of Tarsus’, a fanatical Pharisee, crusading to exterminate the ‘Maaminim’, met Jesus of Nazareth - in a bright light - on the Damascus Road and was converted.

ST. PAUL MOST EFFECTIVE

Among the evangelists, he was the most effective in converting the heathen. Gentile believers became known as Christians and their houses of worship, churches (hebrew  fem. of synagogue).

At the Jerusalem Council-A.D. 50, the ‘Maaminim’ accepted gentile believers into fellowship - without embracing Jewish customs and disciples - except refraining from idolatry.

The ‘Maaminim’ grew so large that in A.D. 90, Gamaliel II called the ‘Yavneh Council’ of rabbis to stem the growth of the new Jewish movement. It was decreed that a disparaging verse against the ‘Maaminim’ be included in the ‘Amidah’ (central prayer in synagogue service).

Shimon bar Kochba’s “messiahship” was later repudiated by Jewish leaders, but the breach with the ‘Maaminim’ remained. Whatever happened to the Jewish believers? Why did the ‘Maaminim’ - who continued until the fifth century - disappear?

Jewish preachers had converted many pagans to Christ. But after the first century, gentile Christians - who had become dominant - began to persecute their Jewish brethren!      

Now they demanded that the Jews change their customs - as the basis for salvation. (Romans 11)

Regarding the ‘Maaminim’, Irenaeus wrote: “They circumcise their sons, observe their holidays and customs of the Law and lead a life as Jews and love Jerusalem as if it were the House of God”.

The A.D. 325 Nicean Council, with 318 bishops present - no Jews - changed the Resurrection Day from the 14th day of Nisan to a perpetual Sunday. Hence the gap between Passover (Pesach) and Easter. Note the anti-Semitism: “We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews...our worship follows a...more convenient course...we desire dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews...How, then, could we follow these Jews, who are almost certainly blinded”.

-Eusebius, Vita. Const. Further humiliations were decreed against the Jews at the Laodicean Synod (A.D. 343-381): “It is not lawful to receive unleavened bread from the Jews, nor to be partakers of their impiety” (Cannon XXXVIII).

A.D. 538 - JEWS MAY NOT APPEAR IN COMPANY OF CHRISTIANS

The Third Synod of Orleans (A.D. 538) ordered: “From the Thursday before Easter for four days, Jews may not appear in the company of Christians” (Cannon XXX).

QUINISEXT COUNCIL A.D. 692 - No priestly order or layman may eat unleavened bread of Jews

The Quinisext Council (A.D. 692) stated: “Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman, let him be cut off” (Cannon II).      

Justin (died ca. A.D. 165), invented the doctrine that Christians are the true Israel and that the Church must reject its Jewish past, His ‘Dialogue with Tryphon’ was riddled with falseness against the Jews.

Tertullian (A.D. 150-225) stated that the Jews were the Cains, the murderers, and “were rejected as the Chosen People of God”. - ‘Adversus Judaeos’.

Origen (A.D. 184-253) declared the Jews dangerous enemies of Christians, and stirred up the pagans against them.

Jerome (A.D. 342-420) wrote that the Law was God’s deliberate trick to destroy the Jews.

And Bishop Epiphanius (died ca. A.D. 403), declared Jewish believers - heretics - because they observed Jewish holy days. St. Chrysostom (A.D. 345-407) called the synagogue “a brothel, home of vice, refuge of the devil, citadel of Satan”. He stated “God hates the Jews and has always done so”.

In A.D. 1236, Pope Gregory commanded all church officials in France, England, Spain and Portugal to confiscate Jewish books on the first Saturday of Lent. Subsequent to the decree of A.D. 1242, thousands of volumes - filling 24 wagons - were publicly burned in Paris.

In A.D. 1259, a synod of the archdiocese in Mainz ordered Jews to wear yellow badges. In A.D. 1434, Jewish men in Augsburg had to sew yellow buttons to their clothes. Across Europe, Jews were forced to wear a long undergarment, an overcoat with a yellow patch, bells and tall pointed yellow hats with a large button on them.      

Martin Luther - the great reformer - was no better than the popes, in his treatment of the Jews!

In A.D. 1543, Martin Luther wrote in ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’: “What shall we do with this rejected, damned Jewish people? I will give my true counsel. First that their synagogues and schools should be set on fire..  Second, that also their houses be demolished and destroyed.  Third that their prayer books and Talmuds be confiscated...  Fourth, that, under penalty of death, their rabbis be forbidden to teach...that their freedom to travel be restricted...and all their money and valuable in gold and silver be taken”.          

The Council of the Evangelical Church met in Stuttgart, Germany - October, 1945. Lutheran clergymen went on record as saying: “We are bound to our (German) people not only in a community of suffering but also in a solidarity of guilt. With heavy pain we say: Through us, unending misfortune was brought to many”.

And the German Bishops’ Conference - June 11, 1961 - ordered that a special prayer for forgiveness concerning the murdered Jews, should be offered in all Catholic churches in Germany for “the immeasurable guilt which cannot be blotted out by human penance”.

Pope John XXIII prayed the following prayer of repentance, shortly before his death June 3, 1961: “We now recognize that many, many centuries of blindness have covered our eyes so that we no longer see the beauty of Your Chosen People and in their face no longer recognize the features of our first-born brother.   

It is most unfortunate, that after all the sufferings the Jews have experienced - much of it at the hands of the Roman Church - that it took the Vatican so long to finally recognize Israel as a nation.

No doubt the very recent “turn around” resulted in the Pope’s proposed journey to Jerusalem!

With the rebirth of the Jewish State however, there is also a re-emergence of the ‘Maaminim’, in Israel.

And since hundreds of thousands of Jews have returned to Israel during this past decade (some of them born again, spirit-filled Christians from South America & Eastern Europe) the Evangelical Christian Church is growing rapidly in Israel. Praise God!    

Dr. H.H. Goldberg, spirit-filled rabbi of a Los Angeles Maaminim congregation says, “A true Jew is committed to God, to the land of Israel and to the Jewish people. And many Jews today believe in Jesus as their Mashiach”.