Jewish Schisms - Christianity

Christianity

Main article: Split of early Christianity and Judaism See also: New Covenant, Paul of Tarsus and Judaism, and Christianity and Judaism

The first Christians (whom historians refer to as Jewish Christians) were the original Jewish followers of Jesus, a Galilean healer, preacher, and, according to Christianity, prophet. After his crucifixion for sedition by the Romans, his followers broke over whether they should continue to observe Jewish law, such as at the Council of Jerusalem. Those who argued that the law was abrogated (either partially or fully, either by Jesus or Paul or by the Roman destruction of the Temple) broke to form Christianity.

The eventual redefinition of Moses' Law by Jesus' disciples and their belief in his deity, along with the development of the New Testament, ensured that Christianity and Judaism would become different and often conflicting religions. The New Testament depicts the Saducees and Pharisees as Jesus' opponents (see Woes of the Pharisees), whereas the Jewish perspective has the Pharisees as the justified predecessors of the rabbis who upheld the Torah including the Oral law, which Christians refer to as the Mosaic Law or Pentateuch or "Old Covenant" in contrast to the "New Covenant".

Read more about this topic:  Jewish Schisms

Famous quotes containing the word christianity:

    “What’s the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there’s cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.”
    —Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    “Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.”
    —Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    “He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”
    —Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)