Das Judenchristentum und die Anfänge der Kirche

Pere Danielou speaks about the relationship between the first Christian community and the Jewish society of this community. The studies of this subject were reanimated by the discovery of the Dead Sea-scrolIs and the gnostic scripts in Nag' Hammadi which throw light on a heterodox Christianity strongly influenced by Jewish institutions. Therefore the sub- ject of this lecture is the specific type of Christianity fashioned by J ewish culture. The members of the Christian Community were obliged to observe Jewish customs with a strictness depending upon the intensity of the conflict between Israel and the Roman Empire up to the crisis in the year 70. This would seem to confirm the theory that St. Paul had to fight against a mighty Judaic Christianity his whole life long and that his victory was only a late victory. There were different currents within the Judaic Christianity as Judaism at the time of the beginning of Christianity was highly complex and many- sided, currents starting hom a central orthodox Judaism and ranging to more and more developing side currents. One of these currents appears to be very dosely related to the society we learn about in the Qumran- scripts and leads us nearer to the question as to the origin of a certain type of asceticism found to be distinctly marked in early Christianity.