A man on the verge: between Judaism and Christianity

Abstract

The religious borderland is a phenomenon that is present both today and in antiquity. The author takes up the topic related to the problem of the religious identity of the first generation of Christians, who expanded their Judaism to include the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of Israel announced by the prophets. It was not a conversion because Christianity still belonged to the Jewish world and was one of its forms, a grouping that saw itself as a renewal movement for a perfect Israel. Judeo-Christians used the religious and cultural language and grammar that existed during the Second Temple period. For this reason, they created a kind of continuity of ideas, behavior and beliefs characteristic of the Jewish world, which became an inseparable element of Christianity; e.g., the attitude towards the Scriptures, monotheism, respect for the prophets, some elements of liturgy, or the attitude to feasts. Consequently, this led to tensions between the Jewish community who rejected Jesus’ messianic claims and those who recognized him as Christ. In this way, the first generation of Christians from Judaism found themselves on the religious and cultural borderland. Difficulties in relations between people who were ethnically close to each other, but increasingly mentally and religiously distant, would make themselves felt in the next generations. On the one hand, rejection by the Judaic brethren, on the other hand misunderstanding by the new brethren of the Nations. In practice, this has led to the elimination of the memory of the Judaic roots of Christianity by many of Jesus’ followers in subsequent generations.