Judeo-Christian in Charlotte

See the entry on Hanukkah for more details about this time period; the bottom line is that the Maccabean Crisis caused Jews to be divided among those who kept the Torah strictly vs. those who accepted a measure of Greek influence. Those who became strict observers believed any contact with Gentiles would cause YHWH to kick them out of the land of Israel again. The Pharisees rose as the leading party of these strict observers following the Maccabean Crisis, and were strongly opposed to any Gentile inclusion among the Jewish people.

Jesus often criticized the 'oral Torah'—traditions that the Pharisees had created as 'fences' around the written commandments of Moses' teaching for nullifying the actual written Word of God, heaping burdens on men's backs that they couldn't carry, and for being generally antithetic to God's intent in giving the Torah to Moses in the first place. This opposition to the mainly Pharisaic Jewish leadership set those who did not believe He was the Messiah at emnity with His followers, creating an automatic skepticism and hardening among the most devout religious Jews, though this was not universal: there were followers of Jesus who remained Pharisees even in the early Church.

Because of the Maccabean Crisis in particular, some believers in Jesus from the party of the Pharisees were worried about mixing with Gentiles, and insisted on their being circumcised AS PHARISEES in order for them to be considered 'saved'. The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) was intended to be a compromise that would have allowed Gentiles to be admitted to the synagogue, whereupon they would learn the rest of the Torah; however, this compromise did not work, and the 'Judaizers', as they became known, opposed the likes of the Apostle Paul wherever they went. Much of Paul's writings were dedicated to addressing this specific issue; having been a Pharisee himself, he saw Judaism from this perspective and referred to it in this way. So when Paul was countering Pharisaic arguments, it often seemed that Paul was advocating the abolishment of Jewish practice as a whole when he was really using midrashic reasoning (a type of Pharisaic debate) to oppose the Judaizers' ideas. Later readers misinterpreted Paul's letters to assume he was abolishing the Torah and Jewish practices, even though Paul himself declared in Scripture that he was not.

The destruction of the Second Jewish Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D. caused some of the Gentile Christians to believe that God had rejected the Jewish people nationally in favor of the Church. Justin Martyr, the writer of the Epistle of Barnabas, and later, Clement of Alexandria, reflect this sentiment.

After the destruction of the Temple, the Pharisees became the leaders of non-Messianic Judaism. (The Sadducees fell out of favor because they primarily served in the priesthood and had no function after the Temple was destroyed. The Essene communities simply disappeared after the Roman massacre.) The mostly Pharisaic leadership regrouped in a city called Jamnia (or Jabneh) on the west coast of Israel, and developed a school there which produced the modern rabbinic system. Whether or not a 'Council' of Jamnia actually occurred is a matter of debate; but here they decided how Judaism would survive in the wake of the Temple's absence. They rejected the Septuagint and began work on the Masoretic Text (completed ~400 A.D.); they reduced their Biblical canon to its present form, and they officially rejected from the synagogue those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

Ignatius was the first Christian writer to proclaim that 'they did not follow the Jewish religion'. Like the Apostle Paul, however—under whose lingering influence Ignatius most likely drew his pen, he was most likely referring to what Judaism had become under the leadership of the Pharisees rather than what God had ordained Judaism to be when the Torah was given to Moses.

A split erupted in the 2nd century between those Christians who continued to follow the Jewish observance of Passover and those who preferred to celebrate the Resurrection on the Sunday following Passover. 200 years later, Constantine the Great forcibly ended the dispute by disparaging the Jewish Passover and assigning the feast to the pagan method of calculation for Easter instead. What is ironic is that BOTH of these dates are actually Jewish moedim: Passover, always on the 14th of Nisan/Abib, was prophetically fulfilled in Jesus' death; the Firstfruits Wave Offering, which was prophetically fulfilled by Jesus' resurrection, was always observed on the Sunday after the Passover, and nearly always coincides with the date of Easter. The 200-year argument was completely pointless. See Constantine the Great below for more details.

This last revolt by the Jews against the Romans to reclaim the Holy Land ended in disaster and the complete decimation and diaspora of the Jewish people. Josephus tells us that Jewish believers in Jesus were fighting alongside their non-Jesus-following brothers in this revolt UNTIL Rabbi Akiva declared Shimon bar-Kochba (the leader of the revolt) to be the Messiah. When this declaration was made known, the followers of Jesus knew they could not support the cause of the rebellion any longer; so they abandoned the fight and fled to Pella (now in Jordan) for safety. Those Jews who continued to follow bar-Kochba and Rabbi Akiva suffered the wrath of the Roman army, and viewed 'the Nazarenes'—as they were then called—as traitors to the nation. Obviously, this entrenched the two groups further at emnity… (Christian historian Eusebius later contradicted Josephus by claiming that the Messianic believers went to Pella before the revolt because they were warned through prophecy of what would happen.)

While he was relatively passive in disdaining Jewish practice, Clement was the first prolific theologian to have converted to Christianity from Greco-Roman paganism; he considered the Greek philosophers to be a 'covenant for the Gentiles'. This provided a paradigm for Gentiles to completely remove Christ from Judaism; however flawed, there was now a foundational theology which Gentile Christians could turn that excluded Jewish heritage specifically.

A cunning politician, Constantine used Christianity as a means to gain support against his enemies, who had persecuted them. The fact that he himself did not become baptized as a Christian until his deathbed did not stop him from wielding influence over the bishops of the Church, who readily fell in line behind his wishes, making him the first de facto universal pope. He authored the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity. It is untrue that Constantine himself made changes to the Christian faith; however, it is the culture which he created, and which the bishops of the Church acquiesced to, which changed Christianity into a wholly anti-Jewish religion mixed with Roman pagan forms and practices. Spurred on by this culture, Romanized Christianity quickly transformed within just a few years of Constantine's reign. Judeo-Christianity was relegated to the far corners of the world, specifically in the old Persian Empire down into India, where it survived until the 7th century A.D., when the Muslims conquered the area and wiped out the majority of its influence.

Constantine ordered the entire Roman Empire except agricultural laborers to observe Sunday as their official day of rest and worship, to honor 'the venerable day of the Sun'.

Constantine sent a report to churches throughout the Empire proclaiming what had been decided at the Council of Nicaea, particularly regarding the calculation for what would be the 'Christian Passover' (according to the pagan festival of Easter, ending the Quartodecimian Controversy mentioned earlier). In his treatise providing justification for this decision, Constantine blasted Jews, accusing them of deicide and patricide for 'killing Jesus', and warned Christians throughout the Empire not to have anything in common with 'that detestable crowd' of the Jews.

Canon 29 of this Church Council made it 'anathema' to 'Judaize' by celebrating any of the moedim, particularly the seventh-day Sabbath.