Judaizers is a term used by orthodox Christianity, particularly after the third century, to describe Jewish-Christian groups like the Ebionites and Nazarenes who believed that followers of Jesus needed to keep Jewish law, in particular the laws of the Torah. These groups taught that gentile followers of Jesus needed to become Jewish proselytes and observe the various requirements of Judaism, most importantly circumcision, or at least that the Jewish followers of Jesus needed to do so.

The issue was an early source of controversy between the Jerusalem church of James, and Paul, apostle to the gentiles, and came to a head during the Council of Jerusalem. According to the account given in Acts 15, it was determined that gentile followers of Jesus did not have to observe all the requirements of Judaism; rather, they were required to "abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication."

Paul also addressed this question in his Epistle to Galatians in which he condemned those who insisted that Jewish law had to be followed as "false brothers" (Galatians 2:4), and stated "I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all." (Galatians 5:2) Epistle to Titus 1:11, often attributed to Paul, is, according to some Biblical scholars, also a condemnation of these practices.

The influence of the Judaizers in the church diminished significantly after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Jewish-Christian community at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans during the Great Jewish Revolt. However, Christian groups following Jewish practices did not vanish immediately; though most had been suppressed as heretical by the 5th century, in some (particularly Coptic) churches, Old Testament practices have survived to this day, including circumcision, and in the Ethiopian Coptic church, dietary laws and Saturday Sabbath as well. [1]

Later effects of Judaizer controversy

The letter to the Galatians strongly influenced Martin Luther at the time of the Protestant Reformation because of its exposition of Justification by Grace.

See also

• Circumcision in the Bible

• Council of Jerusalem

External links

• Judaizers The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910.