Today, Christianity and Judaism are two very distinct, almost diametrically opposed religions on certain doctrines. But Yeshua, a Jewish man who grew up in the heart of Israel, did not once intimate that He would establish a new religion. He did say, at the ‘northern gate’ of Israel, that the “Gates of Hades” would not prevail against His Congregation, and they will not. But His Congregation was established in Jerusalem, by twelve Jews who initiated into Yeshua’s Jewish congregation 3,000 more Jews. They did so on a major Jewish Feast Day called Shavuot, which has been re-labeled as “pentecost”. [Acts 2]
Yeshua Himself kept the Sabbath in a very Jewish way. He attended the Synagogue [Luke 4:16] every week, and Luke made it a point that it was His ‘custom’ to do so. [Mark 1:21, 3:1-2, Luke 13:10, Matt 12:9, John 6:59] . Yeshua also never called Himself “God”, not once, and neither did the Apostles. They, to a man, all referred to Him as “The Son of God”. And Yeshua never separated Himself from His own people, having a royal heritage all the way back to Abraham, through King David, the one to whom was promised the “seed” of Messiah.
So, the Apostles proclaimed that Yeshua was the Son of God and the promised Messiah, and that through Him the Gentiles were being brought into the covenants of Abraham and Israel, into the ‘commonwealth’ of Israel [Eph 2]. There is nothing in the NT scriptures that indicates in any way that Gentiles replaced Israel. Quite the opposite, there were warnings, harsh warnings, not even to think that way, at the risk of being “cut off”, the same language used for a condemned person.
In spite of those Biblical facts, things began to change within just a few generations. Most people in the Messianic or Hebrew Roots/Two House streams attribute that shift to Constantine. Constantine was, however, the one who simply ‘locked in’ the new ‘course and speed’. The change in direction started much earlier.
The earliest rudder shift was done by one man who became very prominent, but it was agreed upon by several others in early “Gentile” Messianic circles. And since then, the faith began to drift off course.
Yeshua kept the Sabbath. Yeshua also kept all the feasts of Israel. In John 6-8, we see Passover and Sukkot, two feasts exactly six months apart. In John 10, we even see Khanukah, which is not a commanded feast, but an observed custom in ancient Israel as well as in Judaism today. We see a Jewish wedding in John 2, and immediately a Passover, and then in John 13-17 six chapters are dedicated to a Passover meal. Yeshua clearly lived a very Judaic life!
And His Apostles did not alter their course at all, in spite of popular belief. They continued in the Temple after the Congregation got its start there [Acts 2-3]. They lived as Jews, among the Jews, and they were called by other Jews a ‘sect’ within the Jewish community. There is nothing in scripture or history that shows that the Jewish apostles, including Paul, ever changed their days of observance, including and especially the Sabbath.
Further, there is nothing in history that shows that they re-interpreted the Scriptures through the lens of Greek philosophy: they did not redefine God as a trinity using those terms, and they never used ‘logic’ or philosophy to decide that Gentiles did or ever would replace Israel. All of these are later teachings, teachings most believers today adhere to, which some defend vehemently. But, the “Messianic Movement” of the 1st century, which only later came to be called ‘Christianity’, was a movement in the midst of ancient Judaism. This is a simple Biblical and historical fact.
The beginning of turning away from the Judaic nature of the faith was subtle, and some view it as innocent, and even ‘Spirit led’. But, the problem is, anything that violates Scripture cannot be classified as ‘Spirit led’. [Rom 7:14] The initial course change was due to anti-Judaic ‘pressure’, which would later lead to anti-Semitism.
In 70 A.D., the Temple of Israel was destroyed, shattering the center of all Jewish religious life. Paul wrote the book of Hebrews to address this impending event with the Jewish believers in Yeshua there. Messianic Jews fled Jerusalem before Rome closed in, at Yeshua’s warning, being comfortable their Temple above was more important thanks to Paul’s prescient letter. The Jewish community was in disarray in Jerusalem during and after the seige.
But cobbling Jerusalem’s society back together after the destruction involved Messianic Jews returning to Jerusalem with all Jews, only to be forced out of the Synagogues later. The Bar Kokhba Rebellion [138 AD] was a turning point, because Messianic Jews, already having a Messiah in Yeshua the Nazarene, would not call Simon Bar Kokhba the Messiah. So, the Rabbis wrote Messianic Jews out by the addition of the 19th of the 18 Benedictions [already in practice, where the 19th is number 12 now in a Jewish Siddur], where the Rabbis cursed Messianic believers, separating the Messianic Sect from the rest of ancient Judaism.
This rebellion was pivotal. Rome put down the rebellion, and the result was that it became unpopular and even dangerous to be Jewish anywhere in the empire. So, gentiles who believed in Yeshua and practiced Judaism with Jews under the light of Messiah, in the Jewish Synagogues, feared to continue to ‘appear Jewish’, and began to separate from their Jewish leaders and brothers.
In all the cities where Messianic Judaism spread before 70 A.D., there was already heavy influence over their thinking by Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates. Paul appears to have addressed the issue, but modern readers don’t seem to perceive it.
“Beware, lest any man mislead you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the teaching of men, after the principles of the world, and not after Messiah”. [Col 2:8] Understand, “Messiah” is a very Jewish way of thinking!
“For the declaration of the execution stake [of Messiah], to those who have gone astray, is foolishness; but to us who are made alive it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom [philosophy] of the wise, and I will do away with the understanding of the prudent.” Where is the wise? Where is the Sophist [scribe/orator]? Where is the learned of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Because all the wisdom which God had given was not sufficient for the world to know God, it pleased God to save those who trust by the folly of proclamation. For the Jews demand signs, and the Gentiles seek after wisdom; but we proclaim Messiah executed, which is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles; but for those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Messiah is the power of God and the wisdom of God; because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” [1 Cor 1:18-25]
In 1 Corinthians 2:1–5 we read: “I.. did not come with excellence of speech, nor did I declare to you the mystery of God in wisdom.… so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men.”
Paul intentionally avoids rhetorical/philosophical persuasion techniques common in Greek culture (Sophists, orators), emphasizing Spirit and power instead.
In 1 Timothy 6:20, Paul writes: “Avoid worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis).”
This is often connected to early forms of proto-Gnostic speculation, which drew heavily on philosophical categories (dualism, hidden knowledge, etc.).
In 2 Timothy 4:3–4: “They will accumulate teachers… and will turn away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
These “myths” (Greek: mythoi) include speculative traditions—both Jewish and Hellenistic—that drift from apostolic teaching.
When Paul was preaching in Greek areas, he encountered their ‘thinkers’. In Acts 17:18–34 Paul encounters both Epicureanism and Stoicism, two streams of Greek philosophy that still hold sway over some. He engages them (even quotes Greek poets), but rejects their framework, calling them to repentance, telling them to accept the resurrection of Yeshua as fact. He engaged them, but rebuked their manner of thinking and did not compromise.
In Romans 1, Paul criticizes mankind, writing to Rome, which was heavily influenced by Greece, saying, “Professing to be wise, they became fools…” He is describing a philosophical descent: claiming wisdom while exchanging truth for images and abstractions.
This is a harsh critique of pagan philosophical theology.
Across all these passages, the apostles consistently warn against human tradition replacing divine revelation, speculative systems (philosophical or mystical), rhetorical persuasion over truth, “Wisdom” detached from God’s covenant purposes.
They do not reject reason entirely, forbid engagement with philosophy, condemn Greek culture wholesale, but they insist that everything must be measured “according to Messiah”.
All of these passages tell us that error was already touching the congregations, and that error was largely because of Greek philosophical ideas. All the letters cited were written to predominantly gentile Messianic groups, and they were apparently struggling to distinguish between the truth of their Jewish Messiah and teachers versus their Greek forebears’ ideas about thinking and framing faith. They appear to have been beginning to mix the two interpretive methodologies.
We know they did so just a bit later, as history tells us. In the early second century, there are voices that record the shift, not ‘here and there’, or isolated, but in a pattern. Ignatius of Antioch tells us in 110 AD that certain groups were “no longer observing Sabbaths, but living according to the ‘Lord’s Day’.” [meaning that at first, Gentiles observed God’s Sabbath] John had written that he was ‘in the Spirit on the Day of יהוה ’, which is Yom Kippur, but Ignatius and his companions seem to be the ones to reinterpret that to mean ‘Sun Day’. Ignatius’ animosity comes through, however, when he writes, “It is absurd to profess Christ and to Judaize.” Ignatius seems to be the first to draw the line in the sand. Where before, when the Apostles were all alive, and for a while thereafter, the Gentiles enjoyed worshipping in the Synagogues with the Jews, but now he is encouraging them to leave it behind. Most don’t, but the tension begins here.
Other extrabiblical texts a generation later show that some who rejected truth but embraced a ‘form’ of Christianity did not only distance themselves from Jewish practice, but reinterpret it entirely. The Epistle of Barnabas, from 130 AD [not written by the Biblical Barnabas] states that the Sabbath was never a literal day of observance, in spite of nearly 3000 years of Jewish precedent. Further, it states that the Abrahamic covenant was misunderstood by the Jews. This is a very audacious, arrogant stance, and people today still adhere to this line of thinking. It is saying that Jews were incapable of understanding the Word, but this later, gentile generation now understands it, and it is not literal, but philosophical.
Justin Martyr would be next in line to grab the wheel and turn the course of the ship, and his grip may have actually had the actual turning power, since his name has gone down in history as evidence of true faithfulness. By his day, the notion that Ignatius introduced and the Epistle of Barnabas refined, the idea of anti-Judaic faith in Yeshua was more structured.
Justin described the Sabbath as temporary ‘because of sins’, and the Torah as ‘no longer binding’. Note, that is from the perspective of his day, ‘henceforth’, as believers up to that point were keeping the Torah [not modern Judaism, but 1st Century, Messianic observance]. Justin goes further, however, and starts the idea that still runs amok today: “we are the ‘true’ Israel”. This idea later gets dubbed ‘supersessionism’, where the ‘church’ replaces Israel. In doing so, he states that believers gather ‘regularly’ on the day called “Sun Day”.
But, the most significant thing Justin Martyr did, which often gets overlooked, is to introduce the philosophical idea of “logos”. He paints ‘christianity’ as the ‘true philosophy’, tying the faith of Messianic Israel to Greek philosophy, using the word from the Greek version of John’s gospel: logos. This reduces Messiah to a ‘rational principle’ rather than the Will of God expressed and lived out. He shows his fondness for Greek philosophy by writing that Socrates and others had partial access to the truth through their ‘logos’. Yeshua tells us, however, that God’s Word is truth [John 17], to which those Greek philosophers had no access nor affection.
Justin was right to express that the Torah points to Messiah [Rom 10:4], and that Messiah fulfilled prophecies, but because of his particular understanding of these things, he decides that Israel is rejected by God, and that the Gentile assembly replaced the Congregation of Israel. He said the covenant had shifted off of the Jews and over to Christians, asserting that the Sabbath was temporary, circumcision and the dietary laws were temporary, and that all of these were given as a punishment on the Jews. This is very polemical language that would later be used to justify anti-Semitism. Martyr was not analyzing scripture, but using Socratic reasoning to change the meaning of the texts. He asserted that Jews were spiritually blind. He put a blanket of collective responsibility on all Jews for rejecting Messiah, and implied Jews alone were responsible for his death.
The issue is, God said that His Sabbath was eternal, as was circumcision and the dietary laws. God often said His whole Word is eternal. But Justin decided God was not right. But the truth is, the Sabbath was part of creation [Gen 2], and not a later invention as a result of disobedience. In fact, it was given back to Israel very early on [after having been enslaved for 400 years], before the sin that caused them to wander. [Exodus 16] Circumcision was given to Abraham, before even one Jew was born. The dietary clean and unclean meats were understood by Noah, before Abraham was born. Last, Jews are not blind altogether, but only partially blinded, according to Paul, himself a quintessential Jew [Rom 11:25, Acts 21:39, 22:3].
When you consider all the earliest voices of dissent against the Judaic nature of the faith, there is a consistent movement away from the practices of the Apostles. Paul taught the Torah, what the NT calls “scripture”. He taught the Jewish customs to Gentiles, who met him in Jewish synagogues. [ 1 Cor 11:1-2, 2 Thess 2:15, 3:6] But by the early first century, the Sabbath is beginning to fade out of Gentile life, and ‘sun day’ starts to take hold. People are discouraged from keeping Jewish feasts, including the Sabbath. Israel is no longer considered the ‘root’ of the faith, but a tree dug up and replaced. And Greek philosophical language starts to become the interpretive tool of gentile bible readers, as it is today. The Faith of Messiah as practiced in the second century is being redefined as apart from Israel.
This shift is often explained in purely theological terms. But beneath the theology lies something more practical—and more powerful: a growing insistence that the movement must not be identified with Judaism. This is not yet the racial antisemitism of later centuries. But it is a theological posture that devalues Jewish practice, reframes Jewish identity as obsolete, and positions the ‘church’ as its replacement. And once that posture is accepted, the rest follows naturally. Because if the Sabbath marks you as Israel, it must be reconsidered. If Torah language ties you to Israel, it must be re-translated or replaced. If covenant identity includes Jews, it must be redefined. Distance becomes reinterpretation. Reinterpretation becomes replacement.
With these earliest writers in the Greek world of faith in Yeshua, a coherent process developed, and all the world today is its victim. As time progresses, the faith drifts further away from all things Jewish, not because of a new command from God, but because of ‘reason’… ‘logos’. Hebrew interpretive categories like covenant, sonship, and obedience are replaced with Greek philosophical concepts like ‘logos’ and ‘substance’. Instead of Gentiles ‘participating’ in Judaism, they are replacing it.
Even today, renowned scholars insist that doctrines ‘develop’ over time. If they had ‘developed’ inside the Judaic framework, there would be no problem. But that is not what happened. The Judaic framework of Biblical life was replaced, changing interpretive categories that end up being used to redefine who God is, who Yeshua is, and who Israel and Gentiles are, none of which match the Biblical record. God is the Creator and Father of Israel. Yeshua is His Son. Jews are His chosen people, and Gentiles have been lovingly adopted into that family.
We learn from scriptures that the first Gentile believers were participants with Israel in the Covenants and Promises [Eph 2]. When the relationship between Jewish believers and Gentile believers changed, and Jews were far outnumbered in areas outside of Israel, meanings changed, practices changed, and identity changed. Once there was a separation in when and how the two groups worshipped, movement toward a whole new religion began. The reinterpretation of the Sabbath was accepted, Hebrew language and interpretation were replaced with Greek logic and philosophy, covenant identity was redefined, and describing God Himself changed.
It was after two hundred years of operating in this dichotomy of ideas that Constantine entered the scene. He sided with the Gentiles who showed up to the Council of Nicaea, who were all anti-Judaic in their interpretation of scripture, and in practice. There were obviously still Jews and Gentiles who worshipped on the Sabbath in 325 AD, otherwise Constantine would not have had to say ‘let us no longer worship as that odious people, the Jews’; and nearly 100 years later, the Sabbath would not have had to have been made illegal in the Roman Catholic world in order to stop the practice, enforcing the law not to “Judaize” with the death penalty. Constantine and his minions merely made Ignatius and Martyr’s ideas more sophisticated, and put the official seal of Rome on their version of faith, creating a new religion. The ship of faith is now way off course, as Constantine locked in a new ‘ordered course’ based on the false information he was fed.
The separation between Jewish and Gentile expressions of faith in Yeshua did not happen all at once, nor was it the result of a single decision or individual. It was a gradual process shaped by historical trauma, social pressure, and theological development in a Greco-Roman world.
Early voices like Ignatius and Justin did not create a new trajectory from nothing—they articulated and accelerated a shift already underway: a movement away from Jewish practice and toward a redefined identity no longer rooted in Israel’s covenant life.
By the time of Constantine, this trajectory had become dominant and was then enforced at the imperial level. What began as divergence became separation; what began as reinterpretation became replacement.
Like a ship adjusting its heading by a single degree, the change seemed small at first. But over generations, the distance from the original course became vast.
On a ship, if the course is off by one degree, that is not so big a problem over a small slice of time. But, if time is ignored, and the ordered course is never corrected, then the ship is way off its destination. And if the course is again modified to veer further away from the original course, then the ship is almost utterly lost. What Justin Martyr did was not quite the deviation of Constantine, but it made another change, a more drastic change, more palatable. And for people who are born into that particular state of faith, the ship is so far away from the original such that no recollection of the original exists, unless someone finally decides to look at the ship’s log. That log is His Word. “Come out of her, my people” that is said in the book of Revelation becomes a course correction in the last days.
“Helm, shift your rudder!”