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The new religion of Christianity faced considerable competition in its formative years. Tom Lee today concludes his examination of the impact of the destruction of the Temple and argues how "Christianity alone developed a system uniting philosophy and theology, sacrament and morality, a church and a private sense of God"

The impact of the destruction of the Temple(cont'd)
Part 6.3
by Tom Lee

The effect of the Destruction on Judaism…

On the razed site of the Jews' Holy City the Roman soldiery established its camp and the Roman Eagles were set up in the Holy Place of Israel. Judaism was left to find for itself a new bond of unity in the study of the Law and the worship of the synagogue; the Talmud, not the Temple, would from henceforth symbolize the spirit of Israel's race.

When the appalling news of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple reached Rabbi Jochanan, he rent his garments but consoled his disciples and followers with the thought that all was not lost. While the Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes and Nazoreans seemed to have vanished from the scene, the Pharisees had survived and they still had the Torah that was to become the rallying force of the Jewish people. The task before them was not to weep over the past but to construct a new future out of the shambles of the present. A sovereign body, an academic Sanhedrin, was set up, entrusted with the combined functions of education, legislation, judicature and government. The confusing problems arising from the destruction of the Temple and the priesthood were solved by recasting the divine services and liturgy for use in the synagogues, substituting prayers and scripture for animal sacrifices.

The new Sanhedrin quickly established itself as the central religious authority for the Jews in Israel and beyond, even in distant Persia and Medea; and with Paul's old teacher, the Pharisee Rabban Gamaliel, as its President, was recognized as the nation's accredited administration by the Roman authorities; the fact that Gamaliel was a descendant of David, through Hillel, presumably being kept secret from the occupying power.

The effect of the Destruction on the Jewish Christians…

The surviving Jewish Christians, excluded by their fellow countrymen, continued to observe Sabbaths, circumcision and the Jewish feasts. But as this distressed many Gentile Christians, the Nazoreans became lonely, unsupported groups. The Heirs were dispossessed. The Gentile Christians were freed from subservience to Jerusalem and Judaism, and the larger communities began to jockey for control of beliefs and administration. Orthodoxy was ill-defined and popular local traditions developed with little or no oversight or coordination, and jealousies and rivalries ran deep. Just as Jesus only progressively began to believe in his spiritual identity and destiny, so did the early church only gradually arrive at a consensus of belief.

The Christians who were converted by St. Paul lived mostly in the larger cities of Rome's eastern empire, and we cannot know how closely they resembled Christians elsewhere; but they are the only ones about whom we have adequate evidence. Their descendants methodically destroyed the records of Jewish Christianity. The community that produced the Gospel of Mark was, in the words of Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, "already changing — leaders beginning to have special designations, special titles, wore special garments, had power over people."

Reading the letters of St. Paul and the other Catholic epistles, you come to realize that the worst enemies of the early Christians were Christians themselves in their different interpretations of the mystery of Christ. Scripture scholar Raymond Brown pointed out that most of the "heresies" in the early church were conservative heresies — people rejecting the unbelievable and opposing the increasing expansion and exaltation of Jesus' role in the church and the cosmos.

Both Gnosticism and Judeo-Christianity could not accept the concept of the unique God of Israel becoming a human. Gnosticism could accept the avatar of a lesser god, while the Judaists exalted a prophet.

The cities of the empire were honeycombed with pagan clubs, guilds and associations that busied themselves with rituals, communal meals and so forth. But these traditional cults had no theology. Polytheistic paganism was open to syncretism and multiple loyalties among their adherents. In the end they could not compete with a religion that required its believers to shun all other religions. The closer we look at the pagan cults, the less they look like Christian groups. Membership of the Christian ekklesia or "assembly" affected a person's whole life, offered them salvation, and linked them in a community of belief with the Christians of other cities. Nor do the schools of rhetoric and philosophy afford an adequate parallel, and for similar reasons.

Traditional paganism and the cult of the emperor offered civic ritual and the expression of communal solidarity, but no moral or theological system, and imposed no burden of conscience. The philosophical sects offered a guide for life, but virtually no access to the numinous or the sacramental. Mithraism and the cult of Isis offered initiation rites and a bit of mysticism, but no coherent worldview. In the words of George Every in his book The Mass (Gill & Macmillan 1978):

"The Orphics and other votaries of mystery religions were idealists. They looked for a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice. They wanted more than assurance of a full meal, of good crops next year and a safe passage through it for themselves and their wives and children. They wanted new life, here and beyond the grave, an inspiration from divine wisdom. They saw their sacrifice in terms of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the young Dionysus, of receiving inspiration from his charismatic wine.

"The Christians could meet this demand, and more. They gave communion in the sacrifice of a victim who was himself the second Adam, the archetypal, original and representative man, and in him the Word of God from heaven, the Eternal Son of an Almighty all-Father. The presence of a god in the sacrificed flesh was an old idea that had become difficult to believe as ideas of the divine grew more remote from our fleshly condition. It now came back again in a form that was concrete and tangible, connected with the living memory of a man who could be presented not only as the Son of God but on the human level as an impressive sage whose sayings were memorable, whose risen presence in the Holy Spirit was a source of inspiration, not only ecstatic, but moral and intellectual.

"On all these counts the Christian mystery met the same demands as the other mysteries, but there was a price to pay. Those who were initiated into the orthodox Christianity of the Great Church were obliged to resign, not only from other mysteries, but from any office or occupation that involved them in any form of active participation in any cult, including those of the gods of their family and trade, and of the empire and genius of Rome. The Christian mystery was therefore universally recognized as a subversive religion. It was not like the other mysteries, an optional extra, a private cult to be practiced in addition to civil, imperial and family religion, but a new way of life for the inhabited universe. If it were not extirpated, other religions would fade away ... No doubt there were some who thought that the repudiation of all other religions but their own was one way of escaping the obligations of society and of the family."

Christianity alone developed a system uniting philosophy and theology, sacrament and morality, a church and a private sense of God.

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Tom Lee is an Australian, now semi-retired in Phoenix, Arizona, who has had an illustrious international career as an actor, writer, and broadcast commentator. He does not claim to be a professional theologian, nor an historian, but he undertook this study because, like many of the people who are attracted to what we're doing here at Catholica Australia, he was simply inquisitive about the history of Christianity and trying to better understand what he had been brought up to believe. In a sense, his book is a one-man journey seeking to better understand who Jesus was and what his own faith was about.

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©2009 Tom Lee (Star Concepts LLC) 15633 N. 17* Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85023-3409

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