EzraLB wrote:However, in the end Justin Martyr falsely concludes that Jews can be saved through Christian conversion, but in the process, unwittingly shows that early on two-seedline theology was readily apparent in the Scriptures. As such, this dialogue, with its hybrid seedline message, is an important historical illustration of how the church, in fact, was forced to recognize the racial underpinnings of the Gospels.
If I might add to this... I'd like to make two points that I think might be relevant here. Bear with me because it might take a few paragraphs to construct my thought here. You never know how long something's going to take!! Lol!!
I think it's important to also see that what we're really dealing with from the time of the Edomite conversion to Hillel Halacha (the Pharisees religion of "Judaism") up through the time of the early churchfathers is a gradual changeover. And this is just my opinion, but I don't think a lot of people even in many corners of CI really view the Judeo-Roman war that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions as a significant event. There is all of this language that Jesus uses in the New Testament gospels that many unlearned people (churchians) are inclined to see as warnings leading to some sort of altar call after a sermon... for instance:
"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Luke 13:1-5 - Well the churchmen all back through the centuries did not see verses like this for what it meant. In the denomination in which I was raised, a verse like this was a "soundbyte" - and it was designed to make you feel like if you didn't "go forward" for the altar call and receive baptism by immersion, you were basically done for if you died on the way home that night. It's psychological warfare unintended... the blind leading the blind. Well, if you take a good long look at the gospels, and if you understand what all these promises in the Old Testament were that Yahweh would preserve a remnant of Old Covenant Israel (meaning, still IN covenant, still UNDER the law, still married to Him)... well, that begins to paint a picture. Christ's ministry - in a personal sense - was not to the OTHER fold. It was to the remnant of Israel in Judea. So, that's where all of the confusion (in my opinion) begins, when a Bible student sees a verse like this, and he doesn't understand the Israel story, and all he knows is that his preacher and mom and dad have told him his whole life that God loves everyone no matter who they are (or, what they are I should say), and Jesus is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world... and if you read all these verses without qualifying your definitives, as opposed to the superimposed semantic meanings that words such as
men,
world, &
all carry today... the roots of the problem become apparent.
Jesus was attempting to warn the remnant in true Israel (in Judea) to be ready... something was going to happen that required their attention if they were to be "saved" --- and I really appreciate that the CNT uses the word 'preserved' as opposed to 'saved' because again, the modern church has a very bad semantic attached to the word "saved." John the Baptist said to the impostors, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" That wrath - at that time - came in the form of Titus the General.
There was a division in Judea - and it wasn't
exclusively[i] a racial division - although the racial element was there, and really was the cause of the second division, to which I believe most of Christ's warnings about "being saved" are directed. The division that Christ had to draw was simple: [i]"Listen up remnant: Who are you going to believe? The Son of God in the flesh, or Edomite high priests and Pharisees and the rest of these kike gangs. One leads to life, one leads to destruction. You choose it boys and girls." Well, Paul makes it pretty clear that some Israelites did in fact reject Christ outright, and were considered enemies of the Gospel. Therefore, they would have rejected all of His blatant warnings in various passages throughout the gospel volumes (Olivet discourse even says, THOSE IN JUDEA, AND ESPECIALLY JERUSALEM... GET OUT OF TOWN, AND DON'T COME BACK!!).
I don't want to paint this with a broad brush, but most of the gospel warnings about salvation were specific to that time, and that place - although the principle remains with us even to this day. I mean, we all operate in CI to try to warn our brethren, hey jack, stock some food, get some sustenance put away, try to get out of the system to one extent or another, quit injecting and eating poison, try to keep your kids out of the schools, quit going to magicians for health and finances, etc, etc, etc. Our message to our kindred today is in many ways remarkably similar to that of Jesus' to his brethren in Judea --- get your act together, or you're all gonna die!! It
is a salvation message... it's just not the salvation of the church world today. They don't give two flying flips about what happens to people here and now (well... unless by people we include niggers, spics, arabs, etc... then they'll adopt you), but anyway...
A lot of Jesus' specific warnings would not have had an immediate application to Christian Israelites who had come out of paganism during the time of apostolic Christianity's expansion throughout the empire, and like I said, I think that's where a good chunk of the misunderstanding resides in the thinking processes of theologians all back through history.
Paul makes mention in Romans 9:27 of the remnant of Israel being saved while the number of the children of Israel in total was innumerable. In this passage, he's quoting Isaiah 10:22... a lot of people have read this passage from Paul in say the New International Version (among others), and in the NIV, the passage is rendered:
Though your people be like the sand by the sea, Israel, only a remnant will return. Destruction has been decreed, overwhelming and righteous.I've met people in CI who believe that only a remnant of Israelites will experience the here and after based on this passage alone, and if they were to understand it as a historical event that pertained to a very small portion of Israel, it wouldn't burden them with the "personal salvation" fallacy.
Paul quotes from the LXX in Romans 9, and I'm going to give the exact translation from the LXX here:
"And if the people of Israel should become as the sand of the sea, the remnant of them shall be preserved." What is really being said is, Israel as a race will be huge, but Yahweh is not going to forget to preserve the remnant (who were under rule by Edomite enemies at that time). The people of Judea were in a VERY precarious situation in that era, and it was like the prototype for the bolshevik revolution. Chaos, conspiracy, corruption you name it... it was all there.
That passage in Isaiah sounds a lot different than what other English translations do in that verse, and it's tremendously important to see the relevance here. With a bad translation of that verse in Isaiah, and then a bad translation of Paul's quotation of it in Romans... the average person will end up hearing:
Even though Israel might have 300 million people among them, only a small fragment of them will receive eternal life in the here and after. There are even Christian Israel Identity preachers who teach that!!!
How does that all tie in to Justin Martyr? Well, we realize that in the time of Justin Martyr... there was no such word as "jew" --- so if Justin Martyr, just like the New Testament, is translated having used the word "jew" - we know that he is speaking of a person from the province of Judea. After the destruction of Jerusalem as foretold by Christ and the apostles... is it feasible to assume that there were
still pure blooded Judahite/Benjaminite/Levite etc. Israelites [i]still[i] straggling behind playing temple (even though it was destroyed), playing "law", playing religion, etc.
Kind of imagine this today. Assume that the United States of America had a systemic failure and collapsed and all of our stupid evangelical and post-evangelical institutions that do nothing but preach universalism and the gospel of the jew world order they all go out of business too (especially when they have to first apologize for the whole rapture thing)... Let's say our country was to come apart at the seams, and those of us who had done some prepping survived it, and we all began to reassemble in communities and rebuild a society closer to Godly customs and moral righteousness...
Well, don't you think it's entirely plausible that some stooge holdovers from judeochurchianity who might still think niggers are awesome -maybe in the collapse they didn't see the cannibalism, or the thuggery, etc- and might possibly survive it too and not really have a clue AT ALL as to what happened (God's judgment on our nation)? There is actually a verse in the Old Testament, and I cannot recall it offhand, or exactly how it is worded, but it says that those who are defiant toward God cannot see his judgment or something to that effect. I wish I could recall it. Well, it would be my intention in such a situation to try to take stooges like this aside and make them see and understand what really happened in retrospect. I love my people even when they are idiots.
I'm just hypothesizing... but could it be that Justin Martyr simply meant that true Israelites, who may have been recent holdovers from the collapse of the province, identifying themselves as jews still (religiously), could be converted from the traditions of the elders over to Christ?
Today, no such people would exist under the name jew - we all know that, except for Adamites who may have been adopted by jews. But, could there come a time - say given a situation like I used above - where the USA collapses and we abandon the title Christian because of its horrid connotation today - and there's another case of a semantic having been imposed upon us - and say we go with Yahwehites, or Yashuites. Well in that case, we would view "Christians" as apostates, and let's just look at it today... "Christians" today come in all colors, preferences, etc... But we recognize the designation as self-applied and fatuous. Christians today already ARE the apostates - and in fact, I think the rest of society would actually be up for a change, but too many Christians are sitting on their folded hands completely content with the decay of their society.
Today's white churchgoer "christians" are the disbelieving Israelite Judeans of the first century. I see no difference. In fact, I gave a message at a camp a few years ago about this very thing. So, I'm not for certain, but I could envision this as a possible reason why Justin Martyr would say that Judeans could be converted.