[Patrickov]

Perhaps the American Christian Zionists could start being proper Christians and put some real pressure on Israel to stop persecuting their brothers and sisters in Christ.

One problem: Judaism rejects Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and is the very reason that the Passion happened and Christianity became a thing.

EDIT: Christianty is to Judaism as like Mormonism is to Christianity.

[noemon]

Christianty is to Judaism as like Mormonism is to Christianity.

Modern-day Judaism is called Rabbinic Judaism and it was standardized in the 6th century AD.

Rabbinic Judaism comes from Pharisaic Judaism.

The Pharisees(a small conservative Jewish sect) fought against the Sadducees(the established Jewish Priests) because they considered them to be too "Greek", the zealots criticized & fought against the established Jewish Priests for going to the theater and the gym and for attending democratic assemblies in the agora.

The Pharisees fought against the Christians next who took up that mantle for precisely the same reasons, because the Pharisees accused the Christians of being a "Greek sect".

The Pharisees (/ˈfærəsiːz/; Hebrew: פְּרוּשִׁים‎ Pərūšīm) were a social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism.

Conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees took place in the context of much broader and longstanding social and religious conflicts among Jews, made worse by the Greek & Roman conquests.[2] Another conflict was cultural, between those who favored Hellenization (the Sadducees) and those who resisted it (the Pharisees). A third was juridico-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Second Temple with its rites and services, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic Laws. A fourth point of conflict, specifically religious, involved different interpretations of the Torah and how to apply it to current Jewish life, with Sadducees recognizing only the Written Torah (with Greek philosophy) and rejecting doctrines such as the Oral Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, and the resurrection of the dead.

Josephus (37 – c. 100 CE), believed by many historians to be a Pharisee, estimated the total Pharisee population before the fall of the Second Temple to be around 6,000.[3] Josephus claimed that Pharisees received the full support and goodwill of the common people,[citation needed] apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees, who were the upper class. Pharisees claimed Mosaic authority for their interpretation[4] of Jewish Laws, while Sadducees represented the authority of the priestly privileges and prerogatives established since the days of Solomon, when Zadok, their ancestor, officiated as High Priest.

Pharisees have also been made notable by numerous references to them in the New Testament. While the writers record hostilities between the Pharisees and Jesus, there are also several references in the New Testament to Pharisees who believed in Him, including Nicodemus, who said it is known Jesus is a teacher sent from God,[5] Joseph of Arimathea, who was his disciple,[6] and an unknown number of "those of the party of the Pharisees who believed",[7] among them the Apostle Paul — a student of Gamaliel,[8] who warned the Sanhedrin that opposing the disciples of Jesus could prove to be tantamount to opposing God[9] — even after becoming an apostle of Jesus Christ.[10][11]

During this time of socio-religious turmoil in Judae, you also had the Essenes and the Christians.

The Christians won the argument for the "Greek" party of Jews and the Pharisees won the argument for the "anti-Greek" party of Jews.

[colliric]

The animosity between the Pharisees VS "the Greeks" actually began as the Maccabees VS the Hellenic Jews

The Greek Jews were never truly forgiven by the other Jews for what happened.

[Doug64]

@noemon, I wouldn’t call the Christians the “Greek” party, Paul has some nasty things to say about the Greek lifestyle and his visit to Athens didn’t go very well.

During Jesus’s time there were four different branches of Judaism—the Zealots, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes.

The Zealots were Messianics, expecting the Messiah to rise at any time and lead them in military victory over their enemies (the Romans); many of them were also terrorists, carrying out assassinations targeting those they thought were collaborating to closely with the Romans.

The Sadducees were centered around the Temple and its rituals, and were ironically enough the ones that went the furthest in adopting Hellenism (Greek culture). And yes, the Maccabean revolt was as much against their influence as against their Seleucid overlords, though if King Antiochus IV hadn’t attempted to impose Hellenism (and the paganism that went with it) on the rural Jews by force there probably wouldn’t have been a revolt.

The Pharisees were centered around the synagogues, focusing on obedience to the Law of Moses and all the additional laws they built up around it. They took the middle path, recognizing Roman authority while holding to Jewish cultural ways.

Like the Zealots the Essenes were Messianics, but unlike the Zealots they weren’t violent about it—they withdrew from the pollution of the larger Jewish and Roman society to await the Messiah’s coming, expecting all the fighting to occur when he arrived.

For where the Christians fit into all this, they were a variety of Messianics, with the twist that the Messiah had come and gone and would come again. Unlike the Zealots they weren’t violent about it, and unlike the Essenes they didn’t withdraw from society.

Of the four groups, the Essenes, Zealots, and Sadducees were all wiped out by the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-74 AD, leaving the Pharisees and Christians as the only Jewish sects still standing.

So to answer the question of the thread title, yes, Christianity and Judaism are contemporary, sibling branches from the Judaism of Jesus’s time.

[noemon]

The Christians were the ones to declare that: "There is no difference between a Greek & a Jew", the most pro-Greek words uttered by Judean literature at the time and the ones to fully adopt Greek lifestyle & education, including the prescribed ban on circumcision.

In the eyes of the Jews of the time and ever since, the Christians were/are the most pro-Greek party, eventually becoming synonymous as the Greek Orthodox are still the custodians of the original Bible & the holy sites of Jesus.

[colliric]

Slight correction:

There was in fact five branches of Judaism that existed at the time:
Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots(including the Sicarii), Essenes and the Galilean Jews who practiced Galilean-style Judaism.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... ATDbUA3UFx

Jesus came from the last group, as that was the dominant version of Judaism where he was raised in Nazareth. They're often otherwise forgotten in discussing Second Temple Period Judaism, because of their remoteness from Jerusalem compared to the other groups(even the Essenes). They were the northernmost denomination, and were essentially cut off from the southern Jews due to the hostile Samaritans controlling a large part of the region.

They had anti-temple views(believed the Messiah was going to destroy it), prized a personal relationship with God, believed "ABBA"(Hebrew word for Father) was the holiest name of God, were extremely charismatic and like the Essenes also believed in the Enochian theology of Judaism (Satan's army of angels and his fall from heaven) as recorded in the book of Enoch.

Despite their otherwise similar views with the Essenes, they were not monastic, were unique in their belief that ABBA was God's holiest name and still in the majority believed in the Pilgrimage festivals and were devoted to making the long trip to Jerusalem.

Galilean Judaism, formed the basis of Christianity which in its early years was called Nazarene Judaism.

[Odiseizam]

@noemon sorry for my unintelligible interruption... Admin Edit: Off-Topic

anyway in context of Your suggestion "There is no difference between a Greek & a Jew", probably You are referring to the Saint Apostle Paul point to romans but where He is referring to spiritual not earthly comparison [1] so at best that be wrong counter argument ...

... maybe closest similarity could be found through the Christian Church Chanting that in the very first centuries was derived from the jewish traditional singing, tho not sure about the rest sacral art, but defacto on theological level it was word for total difference if we know that pharisees and sadducees twisted the Oral Law in large extent even before Christ what eventually was condemned by Christ himself and what was among the prime reasons for early envy aside their unbelief that He is Messiah ...

... in context one good comparison could be drawn from the next 1987 docu by Ted Pike "The Other Israel" go after the 20th min [1][1] and any later political siding probably was due to local affiliation or necessity, far from likemindness ///

[Doug64]

@noemon, while @Odiseizam is correct about the problem with your reference to Paul, you are right that the Jews of the Roman diaspora were very Greek in sympathies even while holding to the Law of Moses—there was Philo of Alexandria, a fine example of a Jewish philosopher seeking to harmonize Jewish doctrine and Greek philosophy, and the Septuagint for the Jews that couldn’t speak Hebrew. So you could call the Jews of the Roman diaspora a fifth group, though you wouldn’t have found many of them in Judaea and they can most likely be considered a variety of the Pharisees since they were (naturally enough) centered around the synagogues. Most of them eventually converted to Christianity, along with the God-fearers.

@colliric, you can’t really consider the Galilean Jews a separate branch—that difference is more like between rural and urban rather than, say, Lutheran and Calvinist. They were, so far as I know, mostly aligned with the Pharisees and Zealots.

[noemon]

@noemon, while @Odiseizam is correct about the problem with your reference to Paul, you are right that the Jews of the Roman diaspora were very Greek in sympathies even while holding to the Law of Moses—there was Philo of Alexandria, a fine example of a Jewish philosopher seeking to harmonize Jewish doctrine and Greek philosophy, and the Septuagint for the Jews that couldn’t speak Hebrew. So you could call the Jews of the Roman diaspora a fifth group, though you wouldn’t have found many of them in Judaea and they can most likely be considered a variety of the Pharisees since they were (naturally enough) centered around the synagogues. Most of them eventually converted to Christianity, along with the God-fearers.

There is not much of a difference between Jews in Judea or Jews in Egypt and Greece. The entire realm had been either Greek or Roman under Greek governors for around 400 years before Jesus, that is more time than the entire existence of the USA and almost all Jews in Judea bore Greek names, spoke Greek and used Greek titles. The same Greek spoken by Jews in Egypt was also spoken by Jews in Judea. Hellenism was as spread in Judea as it was in Egypt, Syria & Anatolia.

Jewish extremists had a chip on their shoulder against Hellenism(and its liberalism & individualism), not as a result of Antiochus's short-lived measures which were also a symptom of this fighting, but in a deeper level, in the same way Muslim extremists today have a chip on their shoulder against Hollywood, democracy and western civilization.

This started out as a civil war between pro-Greek Jews and anti-Greek Jews 200 years before Jesus, while both factions were supported by a Greek Emperor, the pro-Greek establishment Jews were supported by the Emperor of Syria & Persia and the anti-Greek rebel Jews were supported by the Greek Pharaoh of Egypt. This issue remained an ongoing thing well after Jesus. It came to a head a few times until Rome decided to put a permanent end to it by razing the Temple, renaming Judea and banning all Jews from the area.

The pro-Greek Jews were usually the establishment party during this infighting except during the shortlived Hasmonean kingdom, the pro-Greek Jews were represented by the Sadducees and then by the Christians who openly sought to make Jewish extremists stop hating on Hellenism by telling them explicitly that Greeks and Jews are both the same, unlike the Pharisees who did not want their people going to the theater, gym and agora and adopting such Hellenic habits by calling these things "darkness of the devil" and such.