herefore not justified in
speaking of Jewish Christianity, where a Christian community, even one
of Gentile birth, calls itself the true Israel, the people of the twelve
tribes, the posterity of Abraham; for this transfer is based on the
original claim of Christianity and can only be forbidden by a view that
is alien to it. Just as little may we designate Jewish Christian the
mighty and realistic hopes of the future which were gradually repressed
in the second and third centuries. They may be described as Jewish, or
as Christian; but the designation Jewish Christian must be rejected; for
it gives a wrong impression as to the historic right of these hopes in
Christianity. The eschatological ideas of Papias were not Jewish
Christian, but Christian; while, on the other hand, the eschatological
speculations of Origen were not Gentile Christian, but essentially
Greek. Those Christians who saw in Jesus the man chosen by God and
endowed with the Spirit, thought about the Redeemer not in a Jewish
Christian, but in a Christian manner. Those of Asia Minor who held
strictly to the 14th of Nisan as the term of the Easter festival, were
not influenced by Jewish Christian, but by Christian or Old Testament,
considerations. The author of the "Teaching of the Apostles," who has
transferred the rights of the Old Testament priests with respect to the
first fruits, to the Christian prophets, shews himself by such
transference not as a Jewish Christian, but as a Christian. There is no
boundary here; for Christianity took possession of the whole of Judaism
as religion, and it is therefore a most arbitrary view of history which
looks upon the Christian appropriation of the Old Testament religion,
after any point, as no longer Christian, but only Jewish Christian.
Wherever the universalism of Christianity is not violated in favour of
the Jewish nation, we have to recognise every appropriation of the Old
Testament as Christian. Hence this proceeding could be spontaneously
undertaken in Christianity, as was in fact done.

2. But the Jewish religion is a national religion, and Christianity
burst the bonds of nationality, though not for all who recognised Jesus
as Messiah. This gives the point at which the introduction of the term
"Jewish Christianity" is appropriate.[404] It should be applied
exclusively to those Christians who really maintained in their whole
extent, or in some measure, even if it were to a minimum degree, the
national and poli