Christian Mission to Gentiles

The first Christians were ALL Jewish.

The Jesus movement was a Jewish messianic sect.

Jesus did not preach to Gentiles:

• See Gerasene Demoniac
• See Centurion's Servant

There was no organized plan for "converting" Gentiles. It came only as the result of a gradual process.

The question at the beginning was not whether Gentiles should "convert" but whether they were the recipient of the gift of justification. Jesus had preached only to "the lost sheep of the House of Israel" and say the justification of Gentiles as an exception.

• See Canaanite Woman

First, some Hellenistic Jews joined the Church. They had already established contact with Gentiles, as Gentiles were welcomed as "God-fearers" in Hellenistic-Jewish communities.

Some Gentiles asked to be baptized (i.e. justified). Some opposed the practice but at the end the majority accepted it (see Council of Jerusalem).

The problem was then the relation between Jews and Gentiles in the Christian community. (see Incident at Antioch)

The distinction between Jews and Gentiles stood in Hellenistic-Jewish Communities. The Jews are the "priests" of humankind.

James and the Church of Jerusalem followed the same model.

For Paul "the apostle of Gentiles", there is complete equality between Jewish and Christian believers within the Church.

Thanks to Paul, Christianity understood the gift of Justification as a universal gift given equally to the lost sheep of the House of Israel and the lost sheep among the nations.

Christians became a missionary religion, open to all nations.

The problem, however, arose with the question: Should people be justified in order to be saved. Once justification became a necessary prerequisite for salvation, it became more difficult to Christians to accept the idea of salvation outside the boundaries of their religious community. An "inclusive" community open to everybody became an "exclusive" community in terms of salvation. Everybody is accepted but everybody who does not join the community is doomed to perdition.

Competing Models of Inclusion of Gentiles: God-fearers and Proselytes

Paul the “apostle to the Gentiles” was not the first Second Temple Jew to preach to Gentiles and to promote the inclusion of Gentiles in the religion of Israel. Long before Paul, Hellenistic Jews had already developed models of inclusion of Gentiles into their communities as “God-fearers.” Many non-Jews found Judaism attractive as a monotheistic religion and because of its moral teachings. “The mass have long since shown a keen desire to adopt our religious observances; and there is not one city, Greek or barbarian, nor a single nation, to which our custom of abstaining from work on the seventh day has not spread … as God permeates the universe, so the law has found its way among all humankind” (Josephus, Ap II 282f). They were not proselytes but sympathizers, whose moral goal was to live according to the natural law. Josephus says in generic terms that Template:“ Moses “gives them a gracious welcome, holding that it is not family ties alone which constitute relationship but agreement in the principle of conduct” (Ap II 210).

For Philo righteous Gentiles can be more formally united to the Jews. Judaism is the religion of the cosmos. “We ought to look upon the universal world as the highest and truest temple of God” (Spec Leg I 66). The Jews are by birth the priests of humankind. “A priest has the same relation to a city that the nation of the Jews has to the entire inhabited world” (Spec Leg II 163. For this reason the Jewish high Priest wears a robe which is “a copy and representation of the world.” It is a reminder for him not only to live according to the natural law but that his service is “on behalf of the whole human race” (Spec Leg I 97). “For God intends that the high priest should in the first place have a visible representation of the universe about him, in order that from the continual sight of it he may be reminded to make his own life worthy of the nature of the universe, and secondly, in order that the whole world may co-operate with him in the performance of his sacred rites” (Spec Leg I 96). As the sons of Levi are by birth the priests in Israel, so Jews are by birth the priests of humankind. United in the common quest for justice, Gentile God-fearers have a recognized role as the laypeople in the universal religion. Not everybody agreed. The episode of King Izates of Adiabene shows that there was a heated debate within Second Temple Judaism about the right way to “include” Gentiles. “A certain Jewish merchant, whose name was Ananias … persuaded [the King] to embrace [the Jewish religion].” Izates was instructed to be a “God-fearer”; Ananias told him “that he might worship God without being circumcised, even though he did resolve to follow the Jewish law entirely; which worship of God was of superior nature to circumcision” (Ant XX 41). But then “a certain other Jew came out of Galilee, whose name was Eleazar, and who was esteemed very skillful in the learning of his country” (Ant XX 43). Having found the king “reading the law of Moses,” he rebuked him for not being circumcised. The king is invited to read and put into practice what is written in the law: “O King, you are unjustly breaking the principal of those laws, and are injurious to God himself, for you should not only read them, but chiefly practice what they enjoin you” (Ant XX 44). The king circumcised.

The different teachings of Ananias and Eleazar about conversion are expressed with a language that echoes the controversy between the Letter of Aristeas and the prologue of Sirach about what is more important, whether hearing or reading, the significance or the letter. “The good life consists in observing the law, and this aim is achieved by hearing much more than by reading,” says the Letter of Aristeas (Let Aris 127). The Greek translation of the Torah has the same dignity as the Hebrew text since it delivers the same meaning. The Prologue of Sirach instead insisted on the superiority of the reading:

You are invited therefore to read it with goodwill and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where, despite our diligent labor in translating, we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly. For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language. Not only this book, but even the law itself, the prophecies, and the rest of the books differ not a little when read in the original. (Sir Prologue 15-26)

The Jesus Movement and Gentiles

It was not Paul the “apostle to the Gentiles” who began the debate within the early Jesus movement on the inclusion of Gentiles. At first Template:, the members of the new messianic group did not seem very interested in reaching out to Gentiles. The problem of forgiveness was not presented as if it were an exclusive or even primary problem of Gentiles. The sinners whom John the Baptist and Jesus called to repentance were Jews, not Gentiles. The gift of eschatological forgiveness was intended as a special gift reserved exclusively or primarily for the sinners among the children of Israel: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 10:5-6). The “inclusion” of a few Gentiles was seen as a possible exception to the rule without denying that the gift was offered to the “children”, as in the story of the meeting of Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman: “[Jesus] said to her: Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. But she answered: Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” (Mk 7:28; Mt 15:21-28). Matthew in particular finds the faith of the woman truly admirable (“Woman, great is your faith!,” Mt 15:28), but not before repeating that this remained only an exception (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel,” Mt 15:24). Such an explicit exclusion of the Gentiles from the special gift of forgiveness did not preclude the presence of “righteous among the nations” in the world to come, since the last judgment will take place “according to each one’s deeds”; but certainly it sounded odd in an environment, like that of Luke, where a large number (if not the majority) of the baptized were now Gentiles, and in fact Luke would entirely omit the narrative. Beside the Syrophoenician woman, only one other close encounter of Jesus with a Gentile is recorded in the Synoptic tradition. The meeting with “a centurion” at Capernaum in Matthew (8:5-13) and Luke (7:1-10) however seems to be more a mere wishful thought, since the parallel text in John (4:46-53) speaks of “a royal official” who in the days of Jesus under Herod Antipas would have been Jewish. Matthew and Luke inherited a version of the story that had already updated the narrative to reflect the new experience of the church and offer Jesus the opportunity to praise the faith of Gentiles and foretell their salvation in the kingdom of God: “truly I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith (= Lk 7:9). I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 8-10-11). However, things changed rapidly. In the mid-first century, the Jesus tradition already needed stories to support their experience of the now pervasive presence of Gentile members, and yet the Acts still offers a narrative that shows how the early community was completely unprepared. “The goal of the earliest mission, after all, had been to bring the good news to Israel. And the positive pagan response to the movement’s apocalyptic message had most likely caught the early apostles off-guard: no plan for such a contingency was in place.” That Jesus himself left no instruction on the integration of the Gentiles is the only thing that appears clear. Luke also in Acts shows the early followers of Jesus engaged in delivering their message of forgiveness only to Jews. “God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31-32). According to Acts, the first followers of Jesus neither planned any campaigns toward Gentiles, nor did they initiate the baptism of Gentiles. It came at their request. The first baptism of a Gentile was the work of Philip the Evangelist, a Hellenistic Jew and a companion of Stephen, not one of the first disciples of Jesus or one of the Twelve. Philip Template:Had joined the movement only after the death of Jesus and even in this case he did not approach the eunuch, presented as a “God-fearer” well acquainted with the scriptures of Israel, with the intention of baptizing him. The meeting was not planned and it was the eunuch who abruptly confronted Philip with the direct question: “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:37). The story of the centurion Cornelius follows the same pattern. For the apostles who “were presumably not accustomed to the mixed demography of synagogues in the Diaspora,” it must have been very hard indeed to embrace the new perspective. Peter accepted Cornelius’ invitation with reluctance. It took a vision from heaven, repeated three times, to appease his many doubts: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (Acts 10:15; 11:9). The decision to baptize Cornelius and his family did not come from a positive and premeditated commitment, but again, in the form of a rhetorical question. “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:47). The news of the event, we are told, was met with great criticism at Jerusalem by circumcised members (Acts 11:1-3). The surprise was not that Gentiles also would be present in the world to come; this idea was not foreign to the apocalyptic tradition and to the Jewish tradition at large. What the first followers of Jesus found surprising was that the same gift of eschatological forgiveness was offered to both Jews and Gentiles: “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:18). The author of Acts puts into Peter’s mouth a speech that Paul also could have uttered: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him … everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:34-35, 43).