@orthodoxheretic answered: So, If Jews don’t have any unforgivable sins that they needed a savior for, where did the early Christian Church get that from? I’ve been reading several books such as The Misunderstood Jew and I’m a little turned around.
I have to start this by saying that I am not familiar with the book you are reading. I do know, however, that Christians tend to present their interpretations of scripture as if they are obvious and consensus. Jews often have very different understandings of the scriptures we share.
People thought very differently during the time of Jesus. Hebrew scriptures weren’t canonized in Jesus’ lifetime and the “school” of religious leaders that held power during Jesus’ lifetime (Saducees) didn’t hold onto power for much longer after Jesus’ death (they lost power after the razing of the temple).
As we might be able to tell, it seems like Jesus’ followers weren’t quite expecting Jesus to die on the cross. They had high hopes for their leader that didn’t involve him dying young. After Jesus’ death, something happened. I don’t pretend to know what that something was, but Jesus’ followers seemed to find a different understanding of Jesus after his death that they tried to reflect back onto their understanding of his life and ministry. Part of that was trying to understand why Jesus died. If Jesus wasn’t the new David, come to lead people out of political oppression, who was he?
The new Moses? Our gospel authors make a ton of Mosaic parallels. They seem to suggest he was a great prophet. Moses didn’t make it to the Promised Land.
The new Adam? Paul seems to conceive of Jesus as someone who is a new beginning, a call toward a new kind of communistic, caring-for-everyone way of life. Early Christian communities often existed like communes. Paul was more about gentile inclusion and rejecting some Jewish practice for non-Jews than many of his counterparts were. Paul’s ideas were not the only ideas– it seems he was at odds with James and Peter, early church leaders. However, Paul wrote stuff down and his writing survived, making him a dominant interpreter of Jesus’ story, even though he never met Jesus.
I think it’s important to note that early Christians did not have the same kind of monotony of belief that many religious institutions suggest existed/exists. As word about Jesus spread, people took what they learned about him in pretty different directions. We can see traces of communities struggling with and against particular ways of living and believing in the epistles, as folks correspond with Paul and seek his aid in solving problems.
It can be difficult to discern what happened so many centuries ago with the limited information that exists today. If I were to interpret history, though, here’s what I would suggest:
At the time when folks “decided” what Christians should believe (Council of Nicea) and homogenizing Christian thought, they were also deciding what should be considered “legitimate” scripture. Most of the apocrypha that we have today is far more more removed from the ministry of Jesus than what became canon (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). So in that respect, they may have done a pretty good job. However, proto-orthodox movements before the Council of Nicea also weeded out what they deemed "heresy." My point is that Christianity was pretty diverse in the first few centuries.
I think it’s also important to note that by this time, most Christians were well ostracized from Jewish communities and were less “Jewish” by this point– they weren’t as familiar with the themes and interpretations that had been passed on in Jewish communities and were less able to see the kinds of literary devices used by gospel authors (who were living in the first century and were more Jewish).
I think that salvation theology comes from the Prologue of John and Paul. There is good reason to believe that John’s prologue was a hymn or something of that nature. I wrote an essay about some of what I think is going on in John’s prologue. I’ll link at the end.
I think some of it comes from taking metaphor used by Paul and John too literally. Jesus as “new Adam.” Jesus there “at the beginning.” Because of these folks’ distance from Jewish ways of thinking, they were interpreting John and Paul without being able to see the kinds of Jewish themes and symbols that were present and instead assumed more literal understandings because they no longer understood the texts’ contexts. Atonement theology comes out of some metaphors that involve understanding Passover and scapegoating.
The idea that “Jesus died for our sins” is a particular viewpoint that was advanced by the chance intersection of belief and power. As Constantine put his support behind a particular understanding of Jesus held by the community that would become the Roman Catholic Church, “creed” and “doctrine” began to form. I think that theologies that buttressed Church power tended to be the ones advanced. Augustine developed the idea of original sin. If I need salvation because I’m born crap, and salvation is through the church, I need to go to church, right? Original sin means we all need church intervention, not just our mean neighbors. Original sin is an ugly idea, really, but one that profited the RCC. I don't mean that Augustine wasn't a great thinker for his day, in many ways. I just don't know that we should put such authority in his interpretations of scripture.
Of course, a narrow selection of voices had authority after the centralization of the Roman Catholic Church, which shaped almost all of what Christianity was in the West until the Protestant Reformation. Those voices wanted to protect their own power and ways of living.
I am not sure if any of this is helpful. These kinds of historical developments are complicated and involve understanding a lot of what was going on in the early church, which can be hard to do 2000 years later.
John Shelby Spong has a couple of books you might be interested in:
and
I took a class from Spong and wrote a paper about the prologue, which I will post soon. I’ll also look for other relevant things and try to get them posted soon.
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