Paul assured him that he for his part had never taught anyone to cease honest labor and divide his possessions among the poor. Barnabas also said that each person should do as the spirit moved him. After the holy ones in Jerusalem had begun to be persecuted and murdered, many people had fled to foreign lands, to Antioch too, setting up in business and practicing trades, and successfully, some more so and some less so.
Barnabas and Paul went on speaking until finally the freedmen were annoyed.
“Now that’s enough about your god,” they said. “We wish you no harm, but what is it you want of our master, pushing your way into his house late at night and disturbing him? He has enough troubles of his own.”
They related that their activities had stirred up bad blood amongst the Jews in Antioch, so that even the Pharisees and Sadducees had combined against them and the Christians. The Jews were conducting a lively campaign of conversion for the temple in Jerusalem and had collected rich gifts from the pious. But the Christian Jewish sect was tempting the newly converted over to its side by promising them forgiveness of their sins and maintaining that they need no longer follow the Jewish laws. For this reason the Jews were now bringing an action against the Christians in the city court. Barnabas and Paul intended to leave Antioch before this, but they feared that the council would have them followed and brought back before the court.
My father was pleased to be able to calm their fears.
“By various means,” he said, “I have managed to ensure that the city council does not interfere with Jewish internal matters of belief. The Jews themselves should settle disputes among their sects. Legally, we regard the Christian sect as one of the many Jewish ones, despite the fact that it demands neither circumcision nor complete obedience to the law of Moses. So the police in the city are duty bound to protect the Christians if other Jews attempt violence against them. In the same way, it is our duty to protect the other Jews if the Christians make trouble for them.”
Barnabas was deeply troubled.
“Both of us are Jews,” he said, “but circumcision is a seal on true Judaism. So the Jews of Antioch have claimed that although uncir-cum-cised Christians are not legally Jews, they can be tried for violation and abuse of the Jewish faith.”
27
But my father was a stubborn man when he had something firmly in his head, and he said, “As far as I know, the only difference between Christian and Jew is that the Christians, both circumcised and uncir-cum-cised, believe that the Jewish Messiah, or Christ, has already taken human form in Jesus of Nazareth, that he has risen from the dead, and that sooner or later he will return to found the kingdom of a thousand years. The Jews do not believe this, but are still waiting for their Messiah. But from a legal point of view, there is no difference, whether they believe that the Messiah has come or that he will come. The main thing is that they believe in a Messiah. The city of Antioch is neither willing nor even competent to decide whether the Messiah has come or not. So the Jews and the Christians must settle the matter in peace among themselves, without persecuting each other.”
“So it has been and so it would still be,” said Paul passionately, “if the circumcised Christians weren’t so cowardly, like Cephas for instance, who first ate together with the uncircumcised but then withdrew from them because he was more afraid of the holy men in Jerusalem than of God. I told him straight out what I thought about his cowardice, but the damage was done and now the circumcised eat more and more frequently by themselves and the uncircumcised do the same. So the latter can no longer be called Jews, even legally. No, amongst us there are neither Jews nor Greeks, neither freedmen nor slaves, but we are all of us Christians.”
My father remarked that it would be unwise to put forward this argument to the court, since by it the Christians would lose an irreplaceable advantage and protection. It would be more rational for them to admit that they were Jews and benefit from all the political advantages of Judaism, even if they did show little respect for circumcision and the Jewish laws.
But he did not succeed in convincing these two Jews. They had their own unshakable belief that a Jew was a Jew and all others heathens, but a heathen could become Christian and in the same way a Jew could also become a Christian and then there was no difference between them, but they were one with Christ. Nevertheless, a Jew as a Christian continued to be a Jew, but a baptized heathen could become a Jew only by circum-cision, and this was neither necessary nor even desirable any longer, for the whole world must know that a Christian did not need to be a Jew.
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