196 A History of Judaism
themselves as Christians can be presumed from the polemic of other
Christians. Whether they also portrayed themselves as Jews, or were
just described polemically as Jews by their opponents because of their
attitudes to the Torah, is unknown.^56
In the fourth century both the great Christian theologian Jerome and
the heresiologist Epiphanius noted the existence of a gospel in Aramaic
in use among a group in Syria called Nazoraeans. These Nazoraeans
were said to be Christians of Jewish origin who continued to obey much
of the Torah but were ‘orthodox’ Christians in other respects. The rel-
ation between this group and the Ebionites is debated, but ‘Nazoraean’
probably referred to Nazareth as the place of Jesus’ residence and is
related to the term notsrim found, in reference to Christians, in rabbinic
texts. Later attempts to bring Jews to Christian beliefs, down to the
modern phenomenon of Jews for Jesus, have all begun not as move-
ments from within Judaism but as missions to the Jews from the gentile
Christian mainstream. Many of these Hebrew Christian groups – some,
like Beth Sar Shalom, dating back to the nineteenth century – preach
vehemently to non- Christian Jews that acceptance of Jesus as Messiah
is not a rejection of Judaism but, on the contrary, its fulfilment. In order
to encourage this mission, they themselves sometimes observe Jewish
religious rituals such as the Seder and regard themselves as fully
Jewish.
Quite different in origin are the Judaizing groups which have broken
away from mainstream Christianity over the centuries, such as the
Szombatos (‘Sabbatarians’) in seventeenth- century Transylvania, who
insisted that literal observance of the laws in the Old Testament should
be an integral part of the religion of all Christians, not just those born
as Jews. The Subbotniki, a sect which emerged in Russia at the end of
the eighteenth century, advocated observance of the Jewish Sabbath,
circumcision, avoidance of unclean animals, and strict monotheism.
Exiled to Siberia in 1826, the Subbotniki maintained a distinct identity
into the twentieth century, when some of them adopted non- Christian
Judaism and settled in Palestine as Jews.^57
The attitude of many Christians to Judaism over much of the past
two millennia has been more hostile, but the extreme views expressed
by Marcion (see above, in the discussion of Philo), who claimed that the
God of the Old Testament is an inferior creator of the material world to
be distinguished from the saviour God proclaimed in the New Testa-
ment, were roundly rejected by what became the mainstream Church.
Marcion’s theology would have required a total break between Judaism