Okay, now I *do* have a Jewish-related question.

[conuly]

I vaguely know who the Jews for Jesus and Messianic Jews are. I'm curious, though - the few times I've heard them mentioned, it's been with some hostility. Why?

Comments

[conuly]

Well, in the early days of Christianity there were Christian Jews.

Nice icon, btw.

[conuly]

Or perhaps the were jewish christians, whatever.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

In the early days of Xtianity, it was a minor offshoot of a religion that had had many minor offshoots already. There also hadn't been two millennia of terms such as "Christ killer" thrown about. I'd think that such history would have to influence many people's attitudes, and that's not even counting in the strong evangelical nature of the Jews for Jesus group, which is reportedly quite unpleasant.

[readerravenclaw.livejournal.com]

The earlest "christians" were all Jews.

[conuly]

Well, yes, but I'm talking about a specific early Christian movement.

[readerravenclaw.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I see that now; I was emphasizing the wrong part of your sentence in my head. :)

The thing is that originally, the Christians really did sort of act like Jews - kept most of the same laws, and so forth - which is NOT the case now. Also, in the beginning, all non-Jews who wanted to become Christian actually had to convert (sort of) to Judaism.

But even that isn't really the point. The point is that a small group of Jews claimed to be representing the "true" Jewish belief, and that segmenet broke off and underwent transformations to such a point that it was no longer recognizable as Jewish, and grew until it vastly outnumbered the original, core Jews. You can imagine that those core Jews aren't pleased when what was once that tiny minority of Jews returns - now transformed into billions of non-Jews - and claims to represent "real" Judaism.