The “Middle” Man

For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelled in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well. 2 Timothy 1:5 NASB

First dwelled – Was Timothy a Christian?  Was his grandmother or his mother?  If Paul wasn’t a Christian (and there is plenty of evidence, including first-person testimony that he wasn’t) then it doesn’t seem possible that Timothy or his relatives were either.  But that doesn’t stop Christian commentators from remarks like this: “Timothy’s mother was devout in her beliefs, raising Timothy to know the Torah and Jewish customs. However, it may also be true that both Lois and Eunice had become Christians in Lystra during Paul’s ministry there. If so, their influence in Timothy’s salvation would have been even greater.”[1]  Of course, this requires that Paul be treated as if he converted from Judaism to Christianity, and this commentator hints at exactly that idea when he writes “Paul noted that his own faith was a continuation of that of his Jewish ancestors.”  “Was a continuation” is not quite the same as “equal to.”  Christians have long argued that their religion is built on Jewish beliefs.  They could hardly say otherwise having adopted the Hebrew Bible as their own.  But no Christian claims that their religion is the same as Judaism.  To do so would mean there is no need for the Christian faith.  And that raises a very interesting and important question.  If Paul wasn’t a Christian, then when did Christianity begin?  When were people recognized as Christian rather than followers of Judaism?  When did the so-called sect that Paul refers to, completely within the scope of Jewish practice, become something other than Jewish orthodoxy?

Daniel Boyarin’s study is a scholar’s approach to these questions—and the answers are very unsettling.  With incredible rigor and exhaustive analysis, Boyarin shows that sometime between the fourth and fifth centuries, men in authority on both the Christian and Jewish sides of the fence redefined critical terms in common use in order to establish religious boundaries and invent two separate orthodoxies.  Let me say that again.  Christianity and Judaism were not the products of natural “continuation” from the time of Yeshua or Paul.  In fact, for at least 300 years the groups that made up various communities surrounding the teachings of Yeshua and Paul were intermixtures of Jews, Messianic Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles who adopted Jewish practices.  The separation of these communities into “orthodox” religions occurred when various authorities set about reshaping the boundaries of belief by inventing the idea of heresy as false belief, and subsequently redefining what it meant to believe what was true rather than fall victim to what was false.

How was this accomplished?  Well, as I said before, whoever controls the language controls the culture.  Both the Church fathers and the 3^rd-4^th century rabbis redefined these crucial terms in order to bring conformity to their respective religious groups.  They both sought to control debate, either by excluding it in favor of doctrinal compliance (Christian) or excluding it by allowing every possible alternative under the claim that there cannot be any final truth for human beings (Jewish).  The purpose of both approaches was to squelch serious objections.  In the process, Christianity defined heresy as anything other than doctrinal purity while Judaism defined heresy as anything claiming to be the final word.  Boyarin comments:

“There is a new moment in fifth-century Christian heresiological discourse.  Where in previous times the general move was to name Christian heretics ‘Jews’ (a motif that continues alongside the ‘new’ one), only at this time (notably in Epiphanius and Jerome) is distinguishing Judaizing heretics from orthodox Jews central to the Christian discursive project.”[2]

Both authorities required the invention of some “other” as the foil for their claims.  Consequently, they created the legends and stories necessary to provide “historical” facts about these approaches.  “Orthodox Judaism and orthodox Christianity, surprisingly, are lined up on one side of a semantic opposition, with the heretics, who do not respect properly the difference between being Jew or being Christian and think to combine them, positioned on the other side.”[3]

“ . . . the discursive project of imperial Christian self-definition requires an absolute separation from Judaism.  In order to help produce that, Epiphanius (a.k.a. the church) needs to make space for an orthodox Judaism that is completely other than Christianity. . . a Jewish orthodoxy is produced by Christian legend, in order to help guarantee a Christian orthodoxy, over and against hybrids.  The hybrids, however, also produce the no-man’s land, the mestizo territory, that guarantees the purity of the orthodox formations.”[4]

“In Latin, as has been well documented, in its earliest appearances superstitio was not in binary opposition to religio. Indeed, too much religio could be superstitio.  It was not the index of worship of the right gods, but of the right or wrong worship of the gods. . . This meaning shifts under Christianity.  When Christians displaced the referent of superstitio to paganism . . . they were not only changing its object, but introducing a significant turnabout in the semantics of the term.  It no longer referred primarily to the practices of the worshipper, but solely to the object of belief and worship. . . not improper or illicit worship of the right gods, but any worship of the wrong gods.  Necessarily, with the shift in the meaning of its fellows traveler in the semantic field, superstitio, religio must have shifted in meaning as well.  In later Christian Latin, religio is not defined as the practices that are useful and appropriate for maintaining Roman solidarity and social order, but as the belief in that which is true, that is, as sanctioned by an authoritatively and ultimately legally produced ecumenical orthodoxy.”[5]

“This helps explain why the Epiphanian narrative of conversion is so crucial in establishing a new sense of religio, for the possibility of conversion itself converts Christianity into an institution, rather than only a set of practices, and institution that we might name ‘the Church.’  Now it becomes possible for Christianity to be a true religio, whereas Judaism and paganism are false religiones, another name for which is superstitiones in its new sense.  This will be clearer if we remember that in earlier antiquity the term religiones in the plural never names institutions (must less exclusive ones).  After the invention of sexuality in the nineteenth century, everyone has a sexuality: after the invention of religion, in the fourth, the same thing happens.”[6]

If Boyarin’s analysis hasn’t shaken the very foundations of our mythology about Christian and Jewish religion, probably nothing ever will.  But if it has shaken those foundations, then any claim of either side that somehow God is in the mix seems but ignorant and dangerous.

Topical Index: Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, heresy, religion, 2 Timothy 1:5

[1] https://www.bibleref.com/2-Timothy/1/2-Timothy-1-5.html#:~:text=ESV%20I%20am%20reminded%20of,dwells%20in%20you%20as%20well.

[2] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the Partition of Judeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 207.

[3] Ibid., p. 210

[4] Ibid., p. 214.

[5] Ibid., pp. 214-216.

[6] Ibid., p. 216.