Today there is clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, but it wasn't always so. The family resemblance is quite strong! Rather than think of Judaism and Christianity as having a mother-daughter relationship, its helpful to think of them as sisters, both born from the womb of Second Temple Judaism. As any siblings who fight, it can get quite nasty at times, and they can squabble over seemingly trivial things.

This is the first of three episodes discussing the "parting of the ways", the scholarly term for the process of the gradual distinction between what we now call Judaism and what we now call Christianity. This complicated process took place over a long period time; we can see its beginnings in the tensions of the New Testament, but its end point is probably a lot later than you would have imagined!

In today's episode, we're going to go "there". We're going to step back in to the Graeco-Roman world and learn about some unquestioned medical truths of their day, held by Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle, which pertain in particular to hair and why Paul is so concerned about veils. Once you know about it, you'll see it everywhere in ancient literature, and things will start to make more sense. But also, once we all learn it, can we all just agree to forget it?! Asking for a friend.

Thankfully we don't need to accept first century Graeco-Roman medicine in order to be an Orthodox Christian, but we really should use this opportunity to be challenged - are we living our lives in a way that looks like we've been transformed by participating already in God's future kingdom? The way we dress, the clothes we choose to buy, the clothes we choose to store, it's so much more than modesty. For us, as for Paul, this must point to the primordial, cosmological battle that we're involved with at all times.

In light of a listener question, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss a passage in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where Paul speaks about women covering their heads while praying, "on account of the angels".

We can consider this a case study into how Paul, a Pharisee who believes Jesus is the Messiah, engages with a pastoral topic in a community. We must bear in mind that this was a particular issue for a particular people in a particular place, that place being Corinth, a metropolis noted for its wild pagan culture. As a Pharisee, Paul is a follower of Torah who wants to see it applied contextually, in the current time and place, not because of religious conservatism, but because he is keen to see a real living and meaningful practice in people's everyday lives. Paul brings all of his Jewish tradition to bear, a deeply rich tradition that is complex, multi-faceted, storied and mythological. 

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey cover the hierarchy of relationship, what it means for a woman to have "exousia" or authority and agency over her own personhood, the book of Enoch (a text which cannot be ignored), and the narrative accounts of Genesis that explain why Paul was concerned with angels and women in the act of worship.

If you think this episode got wild, just wait until the next episode! It will offer further cultural context in which what was covered becomes all the more pertinent, and even further removed from our contemporary mindset. It'll be a fun one!

Some imagine that the the first people in Jerusalem who accepted Jesus as the Messiah radically broke away from the Jews, forming a new religion. We might even picture the apostle James, brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem, wearing Byzantine Orthodox robes and serving at a Christian temple across from the synagogue. Of course, this was hardly the case. So what did the first century ecclesia in Jerusalem look like?

The early Jesus followers were primarily Jews, continuing on in their Jewish faith and practice. They would not have thought of themselves as fundamentally departing in any way from what they believed before. They still believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and they would have still participated in temple worship.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss what these believers would have added to or complemented their synagogue and temple practice with, the relationship between gentile believers and Jews, and how the destruction of the temple and then the fall of Jerusalem drastically changed the culture of the ecclesia.

What does the coming of the Messiah of Israel mean for the nations, and does it mean something different for Israel? 

With a careful reading of the first three chapters of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, especially as we consider the pronouns used, we see a distinctness in terms of Jew and gentile, as we also witness them coming together. Emphasizing their distinctness does not deny their unity; on the contrary, their differentiated unity, and unified diversity, is cause for rejoicing!

Both are unique, and both are called to participate in the worship of the one true God, the Most High, enacting the Kingdom in their own particular ways. Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri explore why the call for the nations to worship in their own tongues, within their own cultural norms, is such a beautiful thing, and also discuss what changes for the Israelites with the coming of their Messiah.

We take a closer look at chapter 11 in the letter to the Romans, where Paul is talking about the relationship between Israelites and gentiles, and in particular how the gentile believers should relate to the Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. By inference, it should give us something to say about how we as Orthodox Christians should be relating to Rabbinic Jews today. If we are to believe Paul, we are in the same eschatological moment, and the same framework should apply.

In this episode, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri will be looking at different translations of the Bible, and the history behind those translations, when certain words were added and new meanings layered in. Our English translations are thoroughly infected by the Old Perspective that we discussed last time, and when we return to the Greek, in light of the Paul within Judaism Perspective, the complexion of the themes and metaphors are completely changed and make a whole lot more sense!

What did Paul really think of the Torah? 

In this episode, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss the Old Perspective on Paul, New Perspective, Fresh Perspective and Radical Perspective (also called "Paul within Judaism").

Paul insists that gentiles should no longer have to abide by the covenant markers in order to worship the God of Israel, but does it follow that he believed the Torah was now abolished? No, it was rather fulfilled in Jesus, and in the Messianic Age, the time has come for the nations to worship the one God as the nations.

The nations will be recognizable as nations because they don't give up their own cultural boundary markers in their worship of the one God, but have baptized them instead. What a beautiful image!

Did Paul really convert on the road to Damascus? As a Torah-observant Jew, conversion would have meant turning away from the one true God of Israel, so Paul certainly would not have considered it as such. 

Clearly, there was a change of heart, but how can we properly understand this in light of what we have learned through this season so far? We discuss how, from Paul's point of view, his understanding of who God is, the covenant that He has made with His people, and the purpose of the covenant to bring in all the nations, is being fulfilled - not changed.

The people of the first century lived in a god-infested world. In fact, we still do, though in our society we experience it more as a god-vacuum, as our theological imagination is devoid of divinity and the spiritual realm.

At the time of Jesus, it was understood and accepted, even by Jews, that every nation was associated with multiple gods. Jews were not monotheist in that they believed there was only one god, rather they were set apart because they believed that their god was the one True God, the Most-High God, to whom all other gods were subject. It's more accurate to call the Jews monolaters, a people who would only offer worship (latreia) to their one true God.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey explore what it would have been like for the average everyday Jew to navigate this world of multiple gods, participating in society along with the nations, and also why it would have been difficult for early gentile Christians to adopt monolatry.

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri field a question from one of our listeners in regards to the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. We reflect on the four roughly divided sects of the Judaisms of the first century (Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and Essenes) and also how some Jews probably intersected more than one of the categories, or never properly belonged to any of them. Mapping geography on top of this adds a new dimension, and is affected by the primary focus of these groups. 

We also learn about a canonized saint within the Orthodox tradition who is also a key figure in Jewish tradition, who held a senior position in the Sanhedrin, and is considered in the Mishnah to be one of the greatest Jewish teachers.