DEFECTION FROM CHRISTIANITY
For our first Christian example, we may appropriately start with an unusual
group: the Jewish Christians who got caught up in the Bar Kochba rebel-
lion. Justin mentions that some of them were put to death for refusing to
recognize the claims of Bar Kochba (1 Apol.31.6; Dia1.16; cf. Eusebius, Hist.
eccl.4.6.2), but we may have a fuller, if cryptic, account in The Apocalypse of
Peter(2:8–13):
(8) They will promise that, “I am the Christ who has come into the
world.” And when they see the wickedness of his deed, they will follow
after them. (9) And they will deny him whom they call the Glory of
our Fathers, whom they crucified, the first [?], and Christ. And when
they have rejected him, he will kill with the sword and many will become
martyrs...(11) This is the house of Israel only. They will be martyrs by
his hand...(12) For Enoch and Elijah will be sent that they might teach
them that this is the deceiver who must come into the world and do signs
and wonders and deceive. (13) And on account of [?] those who die by
his hand will be martyrs and will be reckoned with the good and right-
eous martyrs who have pleased God in their life.
The most recent commentary on this passage (Bucholz 1988, 283–89,
408–12; see also Bauckham 1998), which dates the work to ca. 132–135CE,
detects the following allusions to the reaction of Jewish Christians to Bar
Kochba: some Christians, presumably Jewish (v. 11), joined the cause of the
false messiah (v. 8), which amounted to a denial of Christ (v. 9); when
they realized that he was not the messiah, they abandoned him, and he, in
turn, persecuted and killed them (vv. 10–11); messengers are promised
who will confirm that he is the deceiver and that these are the end times
(v. 12); the one-time defectors, now martyrs, will be counted among the
righteous (v. 13). This is an attractive interpretation and fits well with the
concern elsewhere in The Apocalypse of Peterwith signs of the end and false
messiahs (1:2–5), those who die in their sins without having observed the
laws of God (1:2), the fate of Israel (2:1–13), and the certainty of resurrec-
tion (4:1–13).
If this view is correct, these Jewish Christians are, in the eyes of the
author of The Apocalypse of Peter,guilty of a double defection: first, by sup-
porting the Bar Kochba movement, they defected from the Christian com-
munity; second, by subsequently denying that Bar Kochba was the messiah,
they defected from the Jewish community or, at least, from that part of it
which supported Bar Kochba. In both instances, the position of the defec-
tors seems to have been taken voluntarily, and they may not have accepted
Rivalry and Defection 61