The First Great SchismYeshua and the First ChurchRabbi Stanley Chester
“The First Great Schism”
Yeshua and the First Church Course Class #1
In Seminary we're told, the First Great Schism is the division between the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. That was NOT the first great schism. The first great schism was the schism between the Jewish believers and the Rabbinic Jews in the first century. This schism is of great importance because it is then that we stopped worshipping side by side with the rest of our Jewish brothers and sisters.
Before this great schism we worshipped as one people group. We were all Jews, although we, Messianics knew who the Messiah was. It’s funny when you go back 20+ years ago in the Messianic Movement, back before we understood that this schism had taken place in Israel in the first century.There were Jewish Believers in Yeshua who Weren’t attending Church,worshipping with Non- Believing Orthodox Jews and feeling right at home. Why didn’t they have a problem with this?
Well should the first Messianics have worshipped with religious Jews who didn’t believe Yeshua was the Messiah in the first century? Why not? Every one of the disciples did it. But didn’t the disciples start their own Synagogue for the sect of the Nazarenes? Yep, they did, but they also still went to the Temple and they worshipped there right along side of their fellow non- believing Jews:
Acts 3:1 (ESV) Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. [3:00 PM]
Which prayer is done at the 9th hour? The Amidah! Then after they healed a lame man they took him in along with them so he could do the Amidah as well. The healed man was so excited that he was going to get to do the “Standing Prayer” that he went in jumping and leaping into the Temple. “I get to do the Standing Prayer; I get to do the Standing Prayer.”.
So yes they worshipped together.
James the brother of Yeshua was leading the Sect of the Nazarenes at that time. Peter was the chief minister or head of missions for lack of a better word. Why wasn’t Peter the head of the sect? Didn’t Yeshua say Peter was the rock on which the Church would be built? It says Peter was the foundation of the Church and yet we know that James was the leader of the Community.
Even when I was a teenager I thought this made no sense.Well, there’s a reason. Peter couldn’t be the head of the sect because he was not related to Yeshua. Yeshua was the crown prince of Israel. After He was gone it fell to a family member, James.You have to understand that the birth of the so-called first Church wasn’t only a religious movement, it was a dynasty.
What about after James? The head position still went to family. After James was killed it went to Simon. This was probably the same Simon named as Yeshua's brother in the Gospels. Some believe it was the Simon named as his cousin, but it was more likely His brother. Many of Yeshua’s relatives were still alive when Eusebius writes in book 3 chapter 11 of his Church History
“After the martyrdom of James and the conquest of Jerusalem which immediately followed, it is said that those of the apostles and disciples of the Lord that were still living came together from all directions with those that were related to the Lord according to the flesh (for the majority of them also were still alive).”
Why do I quote from a Church Father who I’ve discredited in the past? I discredited his theology and his place as a so-called Church Father. I didn’t discredit his writing concerning history. His history is usually accurate.
Sometimes it’s difficult for Christians to think of Yeshua having family since He was the Son of G-d. But he did have family; He had brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts. [John (Yochanon the Immerser) we are told in Luke 1:36, was His cousin.]
We know He had more than one sister, because we read:
Matthew 13:55-56 (ESV) Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”
So, it was under Yeshua’s family’s leadership that the first Messianics fled to Pella. Pella in Arabic is Tabaquat Fahil. Where is that?
As you may know, they fled to Pella because of Rabbi Akiva.
In 132 AD we rose up once again against Rome. We had a charismatic leader and war strategist named Simon Ben Kosiba who we felt could take us to victory. Rabbi Akiva got on the bandwagon and suddenly pronounced Ben Kosiba to be the Messiah of Israel. This, of course, made the Nazarenes extremely uncomfortable as they already knew who the Messiah was. Akiva then gave Ben Kosiba the title “Bar Kochba” which means “Son of a Star!” One may say, “Well so what?”
So what? That was a title reserved for the Messiah from the Torah:
Numbers 24:17 (KJV) I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.
Whenever the Bible is talking about stars figuratively it’s talking about people; not angels or demons falling from heaven.
Akiva didn’t stop there. He decreed that anyone who wanted to fight against the Romans with Bar Kochba would have to declare Bar Kochba the Messiah. That was just toomuch. Messianics obviously could not do this, and so Bar Kochba began to persecute them.
Many Meshiachim (Messianics) already had fled to Pella around 70 CE Yeshua had said they would have to flee at some point:
Luke 21:20-24 (ESV) “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
We however know this to be a prophecy about the end days:
Luke 21:27 (ESV) And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
So obviously those weren’t the end days, but they didn’t know that at the time. They thought they were the last generation. They also thought the time of the Gentiles wouldn’t last long.
You must understand that the “time of the Gentiles” was considered a bad thing. In most churches today they think it’s a good thing. They teach that the Jews had 3.5 years to accept Jesus and they rejected him and this ushered in the time of the Gentiles, which goes until the coming of Christ. So the Jews got 3.5 years and the Gentiles have gotten over 2,000 years and this all seems fair in the minds of the Churches. How thoughtful of them.
This theology comes from a very simple misunderstanding of what the time of the Gentiles really was. The time of the Gentiles was something feared by the Jews because it meant a time of persecution. The time of the Gentiles is synonymous with Jewish persecution. All throughout Jewish literature of the first century “The time of the Gentiles” is a time when Jews were beaten, tortured and killed. When I use the term “time of the Gentiles” I mean it in the exact same way; it is a bad thing, a time of murder.
So again, the first Messianics thought they were living in the end times, so some of them fled Jerusalem in 70 AD. Those who stayed, now years later were watching the rise of this false Messiah, bar Kochba, and they were thinking “maybe it’s time to join our brethren in Pella.”
Although most of the rest of them left, a few still stayed behind.
Why would any stay? It was because Jerusalem is the Holy City. It’s not an easy place to leave, even after you’ve been beaten and kicked and pummeled while living there. And that’s what happened to those who stayed. Bar Kochba stepped up the persecution of those Nazarenes (Meshiachim) who stayed.
Bar Kochba was no stranger to violence. There’s a lot of fable about his violent streak, but those fables were born out of some truth.
Had all the Messianics stayed in Jerusalem and fought with Bar Kochba, we would’ve won this war against the Romans. They almost won without us. They issued such damage to the Romans that the 22d legion disbanded soon after. The 9th legion is also thought to have disbanded because of their significant losses against Bar Kochba.
The struggle lasted for three years before the revolt was crushed in the summer of 135 CE. After losing Jerusalem, Bar Kokhba and the remnants of his army withdrew to the fortress of Betar, which also came under siege, fell, and subsequently they allwere all killed.
Hadrian, who ended the battle, used to come back from every war and he’d say “'If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the army are in health.'“ The Romanshad taken such heavy losses that after the battle with Bar Kochba, he came back and said nothing. This is all related by Cassius Dio, the Greek historian who lived in 120 AD.
The rest of the inhabitants of Judea were either killed or sold into slavery. They had fought bravely. Jewish children in the city of Betar said ‘If the enemy comes upon us, we will go out against them with our quills and poke out their eyes.’
Bar Kochba was killed. The Rabbis who followed him,including Rabbi Akiva alldied horrible deaths at the hands of the Romans. Some were flayed; some even burned alive.
It’s amazing that Rabbi Akiva, just one man, played such a pivotal role in history. Because of him so many Jews died and history was altered. Because of him, the Nazarenes became ostracized from their people.
As the Jews who were still left in Judea were being taken into slavery, they resented the Nazarenes because they knew had they stayed, they would’ve won. They then began to make the Nazarenes look unpatriotic even though it was never the desire of the Nazarenes to leave Judea. They were forced to leave. Regardless, they were made to look like traitors.
It was at that time that many synagogues in the rest of the world, the synagogues in the Diaspora, inserted the curse against the Nazarenes in the Amidah. They added this 19th benediction in order to flush out any remaining Nazarenes from the synagogues.
Dr. Flusser, who has passed away but who is someone I often quote, denies that the Birkat HaMinim, this curse against the Nazarenes, was truly against the first Believers in Yeshua. Dr. Flusser writes in his book “Judaism of the Second Temple Period” that this benediction is in reference to the Sadducees. Though I have a deep respect for Dr. Flusser, he’s mistaken. Let me explain:
The oldest text we have that mentions the Birkat is in the Talmud and it’s talked about by Rabbi Gamaliel the second, the grandson of Paul’s Rabbi. This is the generation of the Bar Kochba War, 70 years after the fall of the Temple and the fall of the Sadducees. It doesn’t make any sense for the Birkat to be written about the Sadducees when the Sadducees were no longer a threat. After the destruction of the Temple, 60 years earlier, the Sadducees were but a memory.
The Messianic's, on the other hand, were a huge threat.They could have swallowed the small group of Rabbinical Jews who had survived the Bar Kochba war.
But there’s more. In theTalmud we find the oldest mention we have of the Birkat,however the oldest complete text we have is from the The Cairo Genizah. The Genizah is where we bury old books about G-d and old Torahs. We don’t destroy them, we bury them. Often they’ll be in the bottom of Synagogues or in cemeteries and so forth. One of the largest Genizahs was discovered in Cairo in 1752 where there were over 200,000 fragments found going clear back to 800 AD. Before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, this was the discovery of the millennium.
In this Genizah was found the oldest copy of the Birkat, and here’s what it said. This is translated by Yaakov Teppler straight out of his book “Birkat HaMinim:”
“For the apostates (for the informers [malshinim]) let there be no hope (unless they return to your covenant) and the minim (and all the arrogant [Ms. M]); and let the Notsrim and the minim [Ms. O] perish in an instant (thus M and S; be consumed in an instant; (O) and all the enemies of your people (S); and all our enemies: (M); and all our enemies and those who hate us (O) be speedily cut down and the kingdom of arrogance be speedily uprooted and crushed and speedily humbled in our days. Blessed are You the Lord who crushes the wicked (enemies: O) and humbles the arrogant.”
It’s really very sad that this is how our fellow Jews felt about us. You have to understand that the Messianics knew they had the truth. Those who were opposed to them were some very well established sects of Judaism who thought they had the truth, like the Sadducees. Most of the Pharisees were on the side of the Notzereem(Notsrim/Meshiachim/Messianics), but there were some Pharisees who disagreed, and they thought had the truth.So what do they call us? They call us arrogant! Not much has changed; we’re still called arrogant to this day.
So the first Jewish Believers in Yeshua fled to Pella. Now, am I the only one saying this? No! Many are aware of this, but they just don’t talk about it at church.
Eusebius (325): "But the people of the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella. " (History of the Church 3:5:3)
Epiphanius (375): "The Nazoraean sect exists in Beroea near Coele Syria, in the Decapolis near the region of Pella, and in Bashan in the place called Cocaba, which in Hebrew is called Chochabe. (Panarion 29:7:7-8)
Geneva Bible Notes: (18) That is, being strengthened with divine power: and taught by oracle, she fled swiftly from the assault of the devil, and from the common destruction of Jerusalem and went into a solitary city beyond Jordan called Pella as Eusebius tells in the first chapter of the third book of his Ecclesiastical History: where God had commanded her by revelation.
Dr. Thomas Newton 1704-1782: When therefore the Roman army shall advance to besiege Jerusalem, then let them who are in Judea consult their own safety, and flee into the mountains. His counsel was wisely remembered, and put in practice, by the Christians afterwards. Josephus informs us, that when Cestius Gallus came with his army against Jerusalem, " many fled from the city, as if it would be taken presently :" and after his retreat, "many of the noble Jews departed out of the city, as out of a sinking ship :" and a few years afterwards, when Vespasian was drawing, his forces towards Jerusalem, a great multitude fled from Jericho into the mountainous country, for their security. It is probable that there were some Christians among these, but we learn more certainly from ecclesiastical historians, that at this is juncture all who believed in Christ left Jerusalem, and removed to Pella, and other places beyond the river Jordan: so that they all marvelously escaped the general shipwreck of their country, and we do not read any where that so much as one of them perished in the destruction of Jerusalem. Of such signal service was this caution of our Saviour to the believers. (The Prophecy of Matthew 24, Dissertation XIX)
Quick note on Dr. Thomas Newton. Here’s what he wrote about us, the Jewish people: