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Vincent Martin
A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH New York. Paulist Press. 1995. Paperback: 208 pages ISBN-10: 0809135698 reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 01/26/2012 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * * review: Who can profit most from Vincent Martin's 1995 A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH? Who least? Scholars who have spent their lives studying the whys and hows of Christianity's separating from its mother Judaism will probably spend three or four easy hours with a text that skims through (from a pedant's perspective) libraries of controversy. They will note that Martin interprets. He spins. Scholars will take as normal the author's view as just one more among many. Laymen, by contrast, just getting started on how Judaism spun off Christianity will find A HOUSE DIVIDED a slow but very rewarding read. Especially so, if they have alrady read two or three books which sweep through the centuries giving "the big picture" without a lot of details. They will have read a bit about Second Temple Judaism, the controversy as to whether Jesus was a loyal Jew or an apostate, the decisive turning to the Gentiles by Saul/Paul, the influence of the Septuagint translation of Hebrew Scriptures, about synagogues of the diaspora and more broad brush materials. Broad brush preliminary reading is excellent preparation for A HOUSE DIVIDED. The author will not be rushed. He spends time with the life and personality of Jesus: did he attract the first disciples because of his friendliness rather than his teaching? Martin also looks with delicate care at various strata of Jews in Palestine at the time of the Crucifixion. How many people were really set against Jesus and why? Decade by decade we move with the Apostles outward toward Antioch and more interaction with Hellenized Jews and God Fearers of the Diaspora. We see Saul/Paul as almost the Leon Trotsky of early Christianity or a Henry Ford: "History is bunk" for Paul. Of the whole Old Testament it is the story of Abraham that matters to Paul. Paul was not "taught" his Christianity and he is not empathetic with people, who like the earliest disciples, were slow, slow learners. Movement toward a Christian break with real-life post Temple Destruction (70 CE) rabbinic Judaism accelerates in the diaspora as more and more pagans move directly to baptism without submitting to the Jewish law on circumcision, diet and more. But the decisive break comes with the second century popularity of the writings of John, probably the Beloved Disciple. For the first time with great clarity Jesus the carpenter's son is presented as the pre-existing Word of God. God stooped to become matter, human. To emerging rabbinical Judaism this conception was an abomination: to insult God when Jews were deepening their sense of God as utterly other than his creation, transcendent. Those are some of the main lines of A HOUSE DIVIDED. It is not the first book a novice will want to read as he/she digs into the history behind 2000 years of Jewish-Christian interaction, misunderstandings and conflict. But it may well be book number five or six. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/439190903.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 01/26/2012 title: Gamaliel II and John the Evangelist Assured that Christianity and Judaism Diverged Decisively rating of: A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH * * * * Review: Vincent Martin makes non-scholarly but not entirely uninformed readers positively pant to find out: where was the tipping point?
Where was the point of no return? When, that is, did it become absolutely impossible for ancient Jews and their very young offspring, Jewish Christians, to consider one another still part of the same religious/national/ethnic family? Our subject today is the 1995 book A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH Its author Vincent Martin is a Harvard PhD in Sociology, also a monk of St. Andrew's Abbey in Valvermo, California. By 1995 he had been active for three decades in dialog between Jews and Christians. I had read several broad brush books on the subject of when traditional Jews stopped accepting Jewish Christians as Jews. A HOUSE DIVIDED, by contrast, is much more detailed as to chronology, as to scribes as morphing into rabbis, the Jewishness of Jesus, as to the Church of the Cirumcision in Jerusalem under James the Brother of the Lord and his successors, the importance of Antioch as a first seminal meeting place of God Fearers, traditional Jews, Greek pagans, Greek converts to Judaism and to Christianity and as to the author's conclusion as to when and why the still very small small angle between Synagogue and Church became rooted and the widening going in separate directions became irreversible. The symbolic time of the tipping point? The late 90s CE. The actors? The places? -- Gamaliel II, grandson of Gamaliel I who had counseled "wait and see" toleration of the first Christian Jews. Gamaliel II was the leader of the Jewish Academy at Yavneh on the coastal plain south of Jaffa. -- John the Evangelist of Ephesus's Community of the Beloved Disciple. The catalysts? -- (1) The Yavneh Academy's added to the
liturgical Eighteen Blessings a curse
against the MINIM (heretics), widely considered today to have
"the Nazarenes," (Jewish Christians) as its core (but not exclusive)
target. The Academy then communicated its decision very widely to the
scattered synagogues of the Diaspora. Jews who accepted this view could
no longer experience "any remaining feeling of spiritual kinship" with
Nazarenes. "Henceforth it was to be 'we' versus 'they'" (Ch XI, 155).
Official rabbinic Judiaism said a definitive "no" to Christianity.
-- (2) John's (Fourth) Gospel is hypothetically explained by Vincent Martin as a conscious response by John to the Yavneh Academy's expulsion of Christians from Jewish synagogues. John rather ferociously condemns (without naming it) the Yavneh school for its rejection of Jesus the Messiah, God's true renewer of the true Israel. John of Ephesus says a definitive "no" to contemporary Judaism. As John's gospel became increasingly canonical through the second century, official Christianity said "no" to official Judaism. Other notable features of A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH: --"A Glossary of Hebrew Terms" (pp. 4-6);
-- "Notes" (pp. 182 - 184); -- "Selected Bibliography (pp. 185 - 187); and -- "Index (188 - 194). A notably full and very helpful Index. The author's "A Final Word" begins: "Jews
and Christians have much to forgive each other. Such forgiveness is
beyond the scope of social sicence, because to understand is not yet to
forgive."
Earlier author Martin had spoken of engrained stereotypes down the centuries: of Jews "indifferent" to or at best
"baffled by" pushy Christians -- a lot at one and the same time so
weird and yet also so in some ways so Jewish;
of Christians aghast that Jews had not seen the obvious: that the carpenter's son was God Incarnate. Martin also reminds us of the unique privilege bestowed on the Jews by the Roman Senate in the days of the Maccabees: they were a religio licita, with a defined legal status. As Rome slowly grew to accept that Christians were not a form of Judaism, Christianity became illegal and for 300 years Christians were religious underdogs in the empire: at the bottom of the political totem pole. (See below on this author's shaky use of this argument.) There is at least one potentially serious negative in A HOUSE DIVIDED. That it, author Vincent Martin does not make it clear when he is overstating his personal interpretation as if received truth or scholarly consensus. This happens several dozen times. Two examples: -- (1) the notion that Judaism under Rome
was for a long time a religio licita and
that Christianity, perhaps around 80 CE under Emperor Domitian became a
religio
illicita, thus legalizing persecutions of the Christians. Martin
treats religio
licita by name in three passages, pp. 139, 150-151 and 170. At
its first mention, just before using the Latin phrase, Martin writes:
"Thanks to a well-known privilege granted by the Roman Senate to the Jews at the time of the Maccabees, the two groups (Jews and Christians) were abstaining from any kind of participation in the official cults of the city or the Empire" (p. 138). The trouble is that the very notion of a "permitted religion" is mentioned only once -- by church father Tertullian -- and is attested nowhere else. To me this suggests unacceptably incautious scholarship. -- (2) The Yavneh Academy's alleged "cursing" of Christians and instigating tossing them out of synagogues everywhere. Presented by Martin as firm consensus, this interpretation is hotly debated by scholars. Otherwise and with the above caveat, this is a book that you should seriously consider opening and reading. Rating: 4.4 stars, rounded down to 4.0. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Vincent_Martin_A_HOUSE_DIVIDED _THE_PARTING_OF_THE_WAYS_BETWEEN_SYNAGOGUE_AND _CHURCH-74-1796709.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 01/28/2012 title of review: When and Why did the Break between Christianity and Judaism become Unbridgeable? rating: * * * * review: Vincent Martin's 1995 A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH weighs many factors behind why and when early Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism went their separate ways. He concludes that Christians' either abandoning the Law of Moses entirely or picking and choosing what to obey had a lot to do with the "why." "When" the break became irreversible was after the Jewish Academy of Yavneh "cursed" heretics and expelled Jewish Christians from the synagogue. Yavneh then communicated its decision to leading synagogues of the Diaspora and they too said "no" to Christians who wanted to worship with Jews in Jewish synagogues. On the Christian side the 90s gospel of John from Ephesus's "community of the beloved disciple," ironically the most Jewish of the four gospels, rejected rabbinical Jewry of the 90s CE as the true Israel. "No" to Jews. Before coming to those conclusions as to when and why, Vincent Martin leads non-scholarly readers chronologically through the early and public life of Jesus, the carpenter's son, his thorough Jewish upbringing and his faithful to death loyalty to his ancestral faith. We see the ordinary Jews of Roman Palestine waiting eagerly but disappointedly for Jesus to prove he was Messiah. Jesus's great failure during his lifetime, according to Martin, was not winning tolerance much less approval by the religious leaders of Israel. Paul, writing and traveling before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70, seemed to make adherence to the Law (Torah) unimportant in his mission to evangelize non-Jews. Apostle Peter in Antioch became more open to Gentile Christians. Meanwhile James the brother of the Lord presided over the Christian "mother church" of the circumcised in Jerusalem. Pockets of Torah-observing Christians endured until the Muslim conquests. It was only these Nazarene Christians who had any chance of approval by the Yavneh academy. Most Greek and Roman converts to Christianity were, by contrast with Nazarenes, no more than pagans (goyim) to orthodox Jews. Vincent Martin, Benedictine monk and Harvard PhD in sociology, presents his personal interpretations clearly and forcefully, so forcefully that an incautious reader might forget that many of Martin's views are not yet settled scholarly consensus but are seriously debated to this day. Nonetheless, this is a book well worth reading. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Eugene J. Fisher - INTERWOVEN DESTINIES: JEWS AND CHRISTIANS THROUGH THE AGES -- George M. Smiga - THE GOSPEL OF JOHN SET FREE http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-house-divided -vincent-martin/1000542105?ean=9780809135691&itm =4&usri=vincent+martin+-+a+house+divided =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 01/28/2012 title of review: Opening a Dialog With Dr O.J. Thienhaus about A HOUSE DIVIDED rating: * * * * review: As I write, Saturday January 28, 2012, there is only one other review at amazon.com of Vincent Martin's 1995 A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH. That review dated November 9, 2004 is by Professor O.J. Thienhaus, MD, also student of classics and Jewish midrash, residing in Las Vegas, Nevada. I urge you to read Dr Thienhaus's stimulating review before tackling mine. (But I include his review verbatim below.) Like Thienhaus, this reviewer has problems -- but different problems -- with the way Vincent Martin reaches some of his sweeping conclusions. Thienhaus's review invites comment and I thought that it might be useful to readers if I took Thienhaus's as point of departure for my own review. I hope that both he and I work effectively to improve Jewish - Christian understanding. In the first part of my (Killough's) review I will intersperse my comments after quoting Thienhaus. REVIEW PART ONE
Some excerpts from the 2004 review (with my interspersed comments): THIENHAUS: "Martin takes on the rich task of analyzing the differences between Judaism and Christianity at the very root -- the time Jesus was still alive and shortly after his death. He raises some good points and strives to be fair to the Judaism of the time, e.g. making the important point that messianism was not a broad concern among the religious establishment of the time. However, anyone reading this book will quickly realize that the author is Christian." KILLOUGH: That Vincent Martin is Christian is not hidden. The biographic blurb on the black cover describes him as "a monk and Subprior of St. Andrew's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Valyermo, California." Martin is also said to be a Harvard PhD in Sociology. More importantly for this book and its readers, Martin "has been an active participant in Jewish-Christian dialogue for the past thirty years" (i.e. since +/- 1965). Be it noted, as well, that A HOUSE DIVIDED is one of many books contributed by both Jewish and Christian scholars within Paulist Press's framework series of Stimulus Books -- all on various aspects of Jewish-Christian interactions. If any Christian can empathize with and "know" how Jews think, Vincent Martin seems qualified. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= THIENHAUS: "Old stereotypes abound. The description of the Pharisees is copied straight out of the NT -- Josephus does not even rate a reference." KILLOUGH: Josephus is referenced. See Index for pp. 7, 34, 112. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= THIENHAUS: "The fact that Judaism provides centrally and amply for atonement and divine forgiveness is apparently unknown to the author. He seems to imply that Jesus was a popular preacher or teacher in his day even though no contemporary historian even mentions him (wouldn't at least the ascension have caught Philo's attention?). In short, to a Jewish reader it feels as though Martin sets up a bit of a foil -- an artificial and biassed background -- against which he develops his observations. I'd recommend a knowledgeable Jewish co-author be engaged to help with the next edition." KILLOUGH: -- (a) I found no evidence in A HOUSE DIVIDED that the author is either ignorant of or would dispute the existence of forms of atonement and divine forgiveness in Judaism. -- (b) Thienhaus's point is well taken that no contemporary (contemporary, i.e., with Jesus) historian, including Philo, writes of Jesus or his ascension (into heaven). Flavius Josephus (37 - c. 100 CE), if memory serves, does write of John the Baptist and James the brother of the Lord. Who doesn't wish for more contemporary writings about Jesus and the earliest church? Remember, to keep things in perspective, how much that we know of some crucial years of Roman history comes from one single ninth century MS of Tacitus. REVIEW
PART TWO
My personal take of A HOUSE DIVIDED: -- (1) Reviewer Thienhaus seizes on a very, very few points of Vincent Martin's book that he does not like. But there is much, much more in A HOUSE DIVIDED that potential readers should at least know is there before deciding to read it or not. Basically, A HOUSE DIVIDED asks two questions: (1) When did the break between baptized Jews and unbaptized Jews become unbridgeable? (2) Why did that break happen? Author Martin presents his own personal sweeping, debatable and still debated answers as if there were full scholarly consensus behind them. Basically, Martin believes that by, say, 150 CE or later, the initially small angle of divergence had grown very, very wide between the rabbinical Judaism of the Academy at Yavneh and its followers on the one hand and Christians in the mould of Saint Paul and the fourth evangelist John on the other. Yavneh did not want circumcised, Torah-believing but baptized Jews admitted any longer to synagogues anywhere. And John's gospel (written in the 90s CE) had definitively concluded that only Jesus's interpretation of Torah and Judaism was from God. Therefore Yavneh was wrong. -- (2) Compared with other studies familiar to me by Jewish and Christian scholars in the Stimulus Book series, Vincent Martin is much more detailed. Chronologically, almost decade by decade, he takes us from the life and teachings, death and resurrection of the carpenter's son through reactions of official Jewish leaders, the man in the street, of those of Jesus's followers who stayed loyal to him -- and those who did not, and on and on. The importance of Paul as the first Christian writer and declared apostle to the Gentiles is underscored. Peter's encounters in Antioch with wider circles of Hellenized Jews and proto-Christians get fair attention. How leading rabbis reacted to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE is well treated. Was it fidelity or non-fidelity to the torah as written or to its oral tradition that caused the break with the Nazarenes and especially the Christian mother church at Jerusalem led by James the brother of the Lord? All this and much more make A HOUSE DIVIDED a book worth your considering opening and reading. But bear in mind: this is a non-scholarly book by a scholar. In my opinion, at times he oversells his conclusions and personal opinions as if all other scholars agree with him. Nonetheless, take a chance. Read this informative book -- in the spirit of ever growing Jewish-Christian understanding. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/House-Divided-Parting -Synagogue-Stimulus/dp/0809135698/ref=cm_ cr_pr_product_top =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 01/31/2012 Review Title: Jewish Christianity: When did it first seem Impossible? Product Rating: * * * * PROS: Brilliant, imaginative chronological survey of Christianity's beginning, maturation, twilight and disappearance as a Jewish phenomenon. CONS: Deliberately popularized scholarship by a scholar. Some personal conclusions overstated as if scholarly consensus. BOTTOM LINE: One scholar's plausible interpretations of the birth of the Christian religion from the womb of Judaism. Crises: Paul evangelized non-Jews, the Temple destroyed, Scribes became Rabbis, and John's Gospel. aohcapablanca's Full Review: I have blown hot and cold on rating Vincent Martin's 1995 A HOUSE DIVIDED: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN SYNAGOGUE AND CHURCH. During a first reading I was struck by how many new (to me) details or slants were presented regarding, for instance, the rabbinical academy at Yavneh, the differing experiences with pagans of Peter in Antioch, James the brother of the Lord in Jerusalem and Paul during his travels and also the tenacious survival of small, scattered Jewish Christian communities until as late as the Muslim conquests. During the next phase I grew disenchanted because the author overstated the scholarly consensus behind his personal hypotheses and conclusions, regarding, e.g., the existence of a unique Roman senatorial decree of toleration of the Jewish religion from the days of the Maccabees. My current evaluation is 4.4 stars, rounding down to 4.0. The good and the true far outweigh, in my opinion, the incautious factual claims sometimes made. Readers should, however, be on guard against any sweeping conclusions lacking clearly identified scholarly consensus, but if those conclusions help understand Jewish-Christian misunderstandings and mutual dislike then and now, at least see if they help you in today's world -- always subject to further refinement by scholars. Vincent Martin, Harvard PhD in sociology, California Benedictine monk, into building Jewish-Christian understanding steadily since 1965, offers a leisurely, detailed vista of the early centuries with some of the following elements: (1) Jesus the Galilean was raised and died
a pious Jew, obedient to written Torah. He was self-taught, a healer,
speaking as one with authority and he built a small circle of
followers. He tried but failed to persuade the official religious
leaders of Israel, High Priests and mainly Sadducees to accept his
vision of the true Israel. It was Jesus's loyal "living Jewishly" and
the same by his first disciples that kept the earliest Church Jewish --
both in its own eyes and tolerably so to many Jewish leaders,
especially Scribes and Pharisees.
(2) What were Christians to do about Greek pagans already close to Judaism but not yet circumcised? Early Christians leaders went off in three different directions: -- (a) James the Brother of the Lord led a Jerusalem Christian mother church faithful to written Torah and mandatory circumcision for males; -- (b) Removed to Antioch, Peter encountered and reacted sympathetically to more liberal forms of Judaism and possibly even to a very, very small number of pagans accepted locally as Jews without their being in full compliance with Torah; -- (c) After heated disagreements with Peter and James, Paul was authorized to evangelize all Greek pagans -- with or without their previous attraction or drawing admiringly close to Judaism. Paul decided that one did not first have to become Jewish before being baptized. A reluctant council in Jerusalem accepted this but laid down dietary restrictions. Vincent Martin ranges over attitudes to Jesus and his early followers by High Priests, Sadducees, Scribes, Pharisees, synagogue leaders, ordinary Jewish men and women, pagans influenced by Jewish ethics and religion, Romans, pagans and others. But, wide range surveyed notwithstanding, Martin focuses primarily on the Nazarenes, the baptized Jews of Jerusalem and elsewhere as the one group that would uniquely either retain the respect or at least tolerance of the new Jewish orthodoxy associated with the Yavneh Academy: the latter being inward-looking, returning to Hebrew for reading Scripture in synagogues on the Sabbath, increasingly indifferent to non-Jewish Christianity. Vincent Martin gives enormous weight to the Gospel of John and its growing acceptance among the non-Jewish churches as causing Yavneh Jews to expel Nazarene Jews from the synagogues around 150 CE and later. Ironically, John's Gospel, written amid the community of the Beloved Disciple in Ephesus in Asia Minor, was intensely Jewish. But it found in the Prophet Jesus the one authoritative interpreter of Torah, dietary restrictions and indeed all other aspects of the religion of Moses and Ezra. That plus growing claims that Jesus was the very Word of God caused expulsion of Torah-following Christians from the synagogues. Yavneh, after the destruction of the Temple, the fastest growing and increasingly monopolistic form of Judaism, stressed the otherness, transcendence of the One God. That God had made an eternal covenant with a people, not with individuals. By contrast, the Christians blasphemously made the transcendent God assume flesh, an heretical notion of the first magnitude. There is much more to A HOUSE DIVIDED than the churches of the Nazarene, of circumcised, torah-believing Christians. But the focus on the Nazarenes-Yavneh quarrel is indisputable. -OOO- p.s. thank you, PESTYSIDE Patsy, category lead for books for enabling me to review A HOUSE DIVIDED for epinions.com http://www.epinions.com/review/Vincent_Martin_A_House_Divided _The_Parting_of_the_Ways_Between_Synagogue_and_Church_epi/ content_578240220804 =--=-=-=-==-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-= (6) openlibrary.com 01/24/2012 NOTE: I have
below only my 1/24/12 ADDITIONS to what was already on the site:
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION A GLOSSARY OF HEBREW TERMS I. OUR COMMON HERITAGE II. MUTUAL DISAPPPOINTMENT III. THE STORY OF A NO IV. THE STORY OF A YES V. THE STORY OF A NO - PART 2 VI. JEWS AND GENTILES VII. SAUL/PAUL OF TARSUS VIII.THE ANGUISH OF THE JEWS IX. SEQUEL TO THE CATASTROPHE X. THE BIRTH OF GENTILE CHRISTIANITY XI. MISTRUST AND ANIMOSITY XII.SEPARATION BY MUTUAL CONSENT A FINAL WORD NOTES...........................................................182 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................185 INDEX.............................................................188 ID Numbers ISBN 10 0809135698 The Physical Object Dimensions (inches) Height 8.5 Width 5.5 Depth 0.6 How much does the book weigh? 12 ounces Short note about what you changed: "I added TABLE OF CONTENTS (XII sections; did not add chapter subdivisions. I added under Physical Object Dimensions and book's weight." TPK 01/24/2012 =-=-=-=-=-=- http://openlibrary.org/books/OL1271758M/A_house_divided http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/martin_divided.html |