WHEN DID CHRISTIANS CEASE TO BE JEWS?
A historical investigation
The Central Question
Did Christians stop being Jews at the first Pentecost after Jesus’ crucifixion? At the Council of Jerusalem? After the destruction of the Temple? Or was the separation a gradual process that unfolded differently for Christians, Jews and Romans? This project explores that question through the historical evidence of the first century.
Historical Timeline
Date Event
c. 30 CE Jesus’ Crucifixion
c 30 CE Pentecost (Acts 2)
48-49 CE Council of Jerusalem
49 CE Claudius expels Jews from Rome
57 CE Paul at the Temple (Acts 21)
64 CE Great Fire of Rome
66 CE Jewish Revolt
70 CE Destruction of the Temple
Table of Contents
I. Chronology Notes
A. The Basics
- Why the New Testament is Not in Chronological Order
- Reading Acts as the Historical Framework
- Chronological Anchors
- Dating the New Testament
- Why Dating Matters
- Working with Ancient Dates
B. Dating Individual Books within the New Testament
- Dating 1 Thessalonians
- Dating the Book of Hebrews
- Dating 1 Peter
C. General Notes
- Paul’s Letters within Acts
- How Historians Build a Timeline
- Why I Care About Chronology
II. The Articles
Part I: The Earliest Christians Remained Jews
Part II: The Council of Jerusalem
Part III: Roman Officials Before Nero
Part IV: Nero and the Roman Perception of Christianity
Part V: The Jewish Perspective
Part VI: Conclusion
Why does chronology matter when studying the New Testament?
Chronology matters because it provides historical context. By placing events into a sequence, we begin to understand how the people, the culture, the events surrounding the narrative play into the story itself. Jesus’ followers were surrounded by a particular environment. That environment is difficult to understand without the awareness that, for the most part, the New Testament books are not arranged in chronological order. Yes, the Gospels are arranged in a rough chronological sequence of Jesus’ life, but not in the order that they were written. Paul’s letters are arranged primarily by length, not by time sequence. This is why it is nearly impossible to understand the context of events by reading Paul’s letters in the arranged order of the New Testament. Consider that if someone reads Paul in canonical order, they jump backward and forward in time:
Romans (c 57 CE)
Corinthians (53-56 CE)
Galatians (48/49 or 54-55 CE, depending on the dating)
Ephesians (if Pauline, around 60-62 CE)
Philippians (60-62 CE)
Colossians (60-62 CE)
Thessalonians (50-51 CE)
This means that with each book one must recreate the context, a situation difficult for anyone living in the same general time and culture as the events being described, but almost impossible for anyone living nearly 2,000 years later.
This is also why the Book of Acts holds such an important place in terms of understanding the sequence of events. Once one rearranges the Epistles according to the date of the events described and pairs this with the history told in the Book of Acts, the context of Paul’s letters makes much more sense.
What are “chronological anchors”?
Historians determine the dates of first-century events and New Testament books by “anchoring” the events being described to known historical events documented through outside evidence. For example, Acts 18 discusses Priscilla and Aquilla’s expulsion from Rome under the reign of Claudius and the Roman historian Suetonius also discusses these expulsions (Claudius 25.4), allowing historians to date the event to approximately 49 CE. This known date then serves as an anchor around which to use Paul’s references to time to work either backwards or forwards to fix a general time frame of the location and events in Paul’s ministry.
Examples of Chronological Anchors
Date Event
41-54 CE Reign of Claudius
(Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (Claudius); Tacitus, Annals)
51-52 CE Gallio serves as proconsul of Achaia (Gallio Inscription)
(Delphi (Gallio) Inscription; Acts 18:12-17 (traditionally attributed to Luke the Evangelist))
62 CE Death of James the Just
(Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.197–203)
64 CE Great Fire of Rome
(Tacitus, Annals 15.38–44)
70 CE Destruction of the Second Temple
(Josephus, The Jewish War (Books 6–7); Tacitus, Histories)
What kind of project is this?
This project began with a single question. Initially, I thought only to answer that question in a short article of less than 1,500 words. The research that I did to write that article helped me to understand the dating of the events chronicled in the Book of Acts and the many questions that surround what is known about when these early Christian documents were first written. For instance, the Book of Hebrews is estimated to have been written between 60 and 95 CE. That wide window could either suggest the continuing endurance of Christians’ Jewish identity nearly to the end of the first century CE, or it could show a timeline more in keeping with what the history in the Book of Acts already indicates, that is that Christians were already leaving behind their Jewish roots in the early sixties. Questions like the dating of Hebrews quickly revealed that the larger issue cannot be answered without careful attention to chronology.
My experience of writing that first article also indicated to me that I knew very little about the subject, and yet I also was beginning to have a framework for how to proceed. I would use what I learned from each article to narrow my focus. This led me to envision a series of articles focused on one event, document or historical moment from various perspectives—Roman, Jewish or Christian—to shed light on the larger question. Rather than presenting a single sustained argument, I would continue to use the question of “When?” to organize my study around the question of when early Christian identity shifted away from being a Jewish sect within a larger Jewish tradition to being a distinct religious entity with Jewish roots.
What makes this project different from apologetics?
The purpose of apologetics is to defend a position, but the purpose of my project is to find an answer to the question of “When Christians ceased being Jews?” In contrast to the apologists, I have a goal that is focused on establishing a chronology rather than defending a position. This means that my research is based on determining data points through the historical evidence. For example, after writing my second article, I learned that the first Jewish Christians decided in approximately 49 CE that Gentile convert believers did not need to be circumcised (Acts 15; Galatians 2). Information like this serves as a valuable marker on my progression chart since it represents the beginning of a Christian/Jewish schism that, on the one hand, grew the movement of Messianic believers but, on the other hand, separated the Jesus movement from traditional Judaism. As I continue to study specific historical events, I hope that the story of early Christianity’s gradual divergence from Judaism will become clearer. My goal is that the timeline of the development of the early Christian church as a separate entity from Judaism will also crystalize. This blog then serves to track the discoveries that I make as I research and to use the established timeline as fixed points through which I can better understand the story of the early Christians.
About the author
My name is Anne-Christine Hoff. I am an associate professor of English at Jarvis Christian University, with nearly thirty years of teaching English. My interests include literature, legal history, rhetoric, historical interpretation, careful reading of texts, and historical methodology.
Thirty years of teaching English has made me focused on teaching students that the central point must be an arguable thesis, but perhaps after all these years, I have overstated the importance of having an arguable thesis. Maybe the more important goal of teaching English should be to direct students to determine “What is the question, and is it interesting?”
Literature tells a story while rhetoric seeks to persuade. The two things are historically thought to be at odds with one another, but I have found that the argument can only be made once the story is understood, and the story can only be understood when all sides of the argument are considered. In the case of the question of “When Christians ceased to be Jews?” the question itself is meant to be the focal point of a project designed not to lock in an exact date and time but rather to unravel the mystery of how a Jewish sect within a Roman context proselytized throughout the eastern Mediterranean world and in the process created its own literature as a means to figure out what it should do, how it should practice its faith, and, more importantly, who it should be now that, according to its teachers, its followers needed to be “made new” in Jesus (John 3: 3-8; 2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 6:4).
Literary analysis can be overwhelming, especially when the text being studied is hundreds of pages long. A targeted question for analysis assists the writer in organizing her thoughts. This has been my purpose in focusing my project on the one question of “When did Christians cease to be Jews?” The comedian Mike Birbiglia, in responding to criticism of the subject matter of his comedy, stated that “Jokes have to be about something,” and what he meant by that was that invariably someone will criticize the chosen topic or will take offense to the punchline or the comedian’s way of thinking. I am sure that the same is true of a topic like mine. But rather than asking “Why that question?” “Why not this one instead?” wouldn’t it be better to ask, “Does the question help us discover something new?” My goal then is not to answer the question definitively but instead to use the question of “When Christians ceased to be Jews” to explore the life and gradual evolution of those early Christians who were so consumed with passion that they committed themselves to continue speaking despite persistent opposition from both Roman and Jewish authorities.
The Early Christians: Christians, Jews or Both? 