believed that the observance of the law and acceptance of the oral tradition
was the medium of salvation, he could not have accepted Jesus as the Messiah
since Jewish tradition said nothing about believing in or expecting a crucified
Messiah. Paul’s resolution was simple: once Christ was crucified, belief in and
observance of law ceased to be the medium of salvation. As is frequently the
case with converts, he believed first, and then he revalued Pharisaic Judaism
to suit his postconversion theology.
Once converted, Paul became the most outspoken missionary for
Christianity. Each of his epistles addressed a problem in one of the churches
he had founded. To the Corinthians, he stressed the necessity to be ethical in
addition to having faith. In his epistle to the Galatians, he rejected the claims
of other missionaries who insisted that Christians were obligated to observe
Jewish law. He disagreed with other Christians regarding the status of Jewish
law. James, for example, had defended the Pharisaic notion of the dietary
restrictions, teaching that Jews and Gentiles should not eat together. Paul
claimed that all Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile, should eat together
for the sake of Christian unity; as he said in Romans 14:20: “Do not for the
sake of food destroy God’s work.”
Circumcision turned out to be the crucial issue for Paul. This ritual was
the central element in male conversion to Judaism, and a major impediment
to the converting of pagans to Christianity. Paul argued that circumcision was
no longer necessary to convert to Christianity. He replaced “circumcision of
the flesh” with “circumcision of the heart.” This ultimately was the first step
in the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity, although the
split took several decades. By 96 C.E., it was clear that these were separate
faiths, attested to by the fact that the Romans exempted Christians from the
fiscus judaicus, thus imposing separate tax regulations on Jews and Christians.
For the next two centuries, Judaism would have preferable status under
Roman rule. Judaism had been defined by Roman law since the time of Julius
Caesar as a religio licita(legal religion). By contrast, Christianity was regarded
as an upstart religion, and seen as a threat to the stability and hierarchy of the
empire. Until 250 C.E., Christians were periodically persecuted, mainly for
disturbing the peace and challenging the notion of family. Thereafter, a series
of anti-Christian Roman laws appeared. For Christians, their secondary status
alongside the preferred status of Jews bred resentment of Jews; the superior
status of Judaism contradicted the foundational Christian notion that the
Jews had been rejected by God for rejecting Christ. Already in the Gospel of
John such resentment began to be expressed. Prior to the fourth century,
although the number of Christians and the influence of Christianity contin-
ued to grow rapidly, as long as the Roman upper class and reigning dynasty
were pagan, Christian power was limited.
By the fourth century, though, the influence of Christian bishops and con-
fessors extended into the upper classes of Roman society, notably the emperor
46 The challenge of Hellenism