Inventing Difference
“But I confess this to you, that in accordance with the Way, which they call a sect, I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law and is written in the Prophets;” Acts 24:14 NASB
Sect – Unless you read the Greek text you’d never know that the word Paul uses for “sect” is haíresis, the same word root which today means “heresy.” But, of course, it didn’t mean “heresy” in Paul’s time. It simply meant “different choice.” Paul was not claiming anything about the truth or falsity of his beliefs. He was simply saying that “the Way” was a different choice concerning how to follow YHVH. With this in mind it is now possible to understand why Paul acted as he did. He spent most of his missionary activity in synagogues, not as an outsider who was blaming orthodox Jews for the death of the Messiah but rather as a representative of one of the ways of following God. In fact, the idea of “orthodoxy” didn’t exist when Paul travelled the Jewish world. What existed were multiple ways of interpreting Scripture and multiple ways of being faithful to the God of Israel. How else can you explain the facts of Paul’s life?
What this means is extremely important. It means that during the apostolic period there wasn’t any “Jewish” versus “Christian” doctrine. Everyone had an opinion about how to apply Moses to life, and every opinion was recognized as potentially valid. Daniel Boyarin’s comment reveals what happened after the apostles.
“The epistemic shift marked by the emergence of rabbinic Judaism in the second century included the production of a category of Jewish ‘outsiders’ defined by doctrinal difference. Jewish sectarianism as a form of decentralized pluralism by default had been replaced by the binary opposition of Jewish orthodoxy and Jewish heretics. Those who are Jews and say or do the wrong things may, therefore, no longer be called ‘Israel’—at least in rabbinic intention. ‘Verus Israel,’ we could say, had been invented simultaneously, perhaps not coincidentally, by the Rabbis and the Gentle Christians. Sectarianism had not disappeared, but rather one group began to achieve hegemony and could now plausibly portray itself as Judaism tout court—or at any rate, wishfully project itself as such.”[1]
In other words, both the Rabbis and the Christian theologians of the second century invented their religions and then proceeded to rewrite history to support the religion they created. Both groups deliberately excluded those who a century before would have found a home in any of the assemblies. These men, on both sides of the fence, created heretics and used that invention to justify their own views. Today we have “Christian” and “Jewish” orthodoxy, but it never occurred to Paul or to any of his contemporaries including Yeshua that such a division was normative. Jewish and Gentile Messianics were just groups who made different choices about how to follow God. That’s all! But difference breeds contempt and two thousand years later we have a history of religious atrocities that should shame anyone. How pitiful!
Topical Index: sect, haíresis, choice, religion, orthodoxy, Acts 24:14
[1] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the Partition of Judeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 65.
