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Christian Judaizing in Syria: Barnabas, the Didache, and PseudoClementine Literature ‫ﱜ‬ Evidence indicates that the problem of judaizing in Syria was not restricted to the earliest members of the Christian community. In the fall of 386 and 387 ce, John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch , preached sermons in which he produced some of the most vehement anti-Jewish rhetoric in Christian history (Wilken 1983). Some of his very own Christian congregants attended synagogue services and observed certain Jewish rituals including circumcision, dietary laws and rites of purification . In response, Chrysostom declared the synagogue to be “not only a whorehouse and a theatre; it is also a den of thieves and a haunt of wild animals… not the cave of a wild animal merely, but of an unclean wild animal ”; he stated further that: “[t]he Jews have no conception of [spiritual] things at all, but living for the lower nature, all agog for the here and now, no better disposed than pigs or goats, they live by the rule of debauchery and inordinate gluttony. Only one thing they understand: to gorge themselves and to get drunk” (Against the Jews i.3, 4; pg 48, 847, 848). Is there evidence that judaizing also occurred during the period between Paul’s letter to the Galatians and John Chrysostom’s sermons? This chapter investigates three early Christian documents from the Syrian region that range in date from the late first century to the middle of the second century ce: the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Pseudo-Clementine literature. Each of these indicates that some Gentile Christians continued to be infatuated with Judaism and its rituals, but the authors or editors of these texts responded in different ways to this. Those of Barnabas and the Didache warn believers in Christ against those who maintained Jewish customs. These warnings represent an effort on behalf of ecclesiastical leadership to create a distinct Christian identity, differentiated from Judaism and its practices. While some of the material expresses a strong anti-Jewish sentiment and appears to be directed toward Jews, the debate within them was fundamentally intra muros and reveals more about internal Christian conditions and the fluidity of boundaries between Jews and Christians than about Jewish behaviour. A contrary response is chapter 4 43 Notes to chapter 4 start on page 161 found in the literature of the Pseudo-Clementines, which expressed explicit encouragement of Torah observance among Gentile Christians and hostility toward Paul’s “law-less” gospel. The Christians promoting this position may be Jewish Christian or, perhaps, the judaizers themselves. The Epistle of Barnabas The date, provenance, and authorship of the Epistle of Barnabas are matters of continued scholarly debate. The approach to its date usually revolves around the interpretation of evidence pointing to contemporary events within the epistle itself. The process of interpretation, usually fraught with uncertainty due to the arbitrary nature of the task, is further complicated in this case by the strong probability that the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, whom we will refer to as Barnabas and whose identity is discussed later, incorporated different sources into his epistle. It is possible , however, to state with confidence that Barnabas was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 ce, since the epistle refers to this event (Barn. 16.4); this is the first Christian document, as J.A.T. Robinson observes, to refer explicitly to the destruction of the city of Jerusalem in the past tense (1976: 313). And its terminus ad quem must be c. 130 ce, since an author such as Barnabas, who was so interested in disparaging the Jews, would surely have exploited the failed Bar Kochba revolt under Hadrian, had it already occurred (Lightfoot 1890: 505; Paget 1994: 9). The following passage (Barn. 4.4–5) is considered crucial to the investigation of the date of the epistle: (4) And the Prophet also says thus: “Ten kingdoms shall reign upon the earth and there shall rise up after them a little king, who shall subdue three of the kings under one” (tre^ij u > f >¢n t^wn basile /wn). (5) Daniel says likewise concerning the same: “And I beheld the fourth Beast, wicked and powerful and fiercer than all the beasts of the sea, and that ten horns sprang from it, and out of them a little excrescent horn (mikro \n ke /raj parafua /dion), and that it subdued under one three of the great horns.” While only the second quotation is...

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