Here it is Sunday morning, and I am not going to church. In point of fact, I haven't gone to church on a Sunday morning for about 40 years, and I have been an atheist for even a little longer. I do, however, think about Christianity quite a lot, and I try to learn about it, mostly about the beginnings of the movement and who believed what and when, and how Christianity have come to be what it now is.
One might wonder, and indeed I have wondered, if I were to be a Christian, what sort of Christian would I be. This is assuming that I could possibly be a believer, but if I could become one, what would I believe?
I think, if it were possible for me to beleive, I would be a Jewish Christian. By that I don’t mean that I would become Jewish. What I do mean is that I might believe as I think the early Jewish Christians came to believe as time went on.
We know what sort of Christianity the rest of the Mediterranean world come to believe although it took a few centuries to get the doctrine straight with everyone walking on the correct doctrinal path: a path begun by Saul become Paul of Tarsus.
Essentially, Paul wrote the New Testament, and except for a book or two, what Paul didn’t write was highly influenced by his teachings. It seems pretty clear, for example, that the four gospel writers were all familiar with Paul's theology.
Paul was a man who never met Jesus and who, in his writings, gave little indication that he knew much about his Lord. While Paul had a vision of a risen and exalted Christ, he seemed either unaware or unconcerned about the teachings of the Jesus who actually walked the earth and taught what he taught. For Paul, belief in the Christ was essential, and the teachings of Jesus the man were not particularly espoused.
For the most part, Christianity has believed in Christ's atonement while almost ignoring Jesus' key teachings. Of course, there are exceptions but how many 21st century Christians love their neighbours as themselves or forgive others as God forgives them? How many love and pray for their enemies? And how is turning the other cheek going?
There does, however, appear to have been an alternate version of Christianity early in the movement, one that tried to take the teaching of Jesus to heart. They were, apparently, the Jews who stayed in Jerusalem and region and became a group known as the Ebionites, or poor ones.
This group of Christians did not believe that Jesus was the eternally existent God but that he became uniquely accepted and elevated by God at his baptism. They did not believe in a virgin birth, and not all Ebionites believed in Jesus' physical resurrection.
They did believe in keeping the Law as Jesus taught although their version of the Law did not necessarily mean the full version that other Jews may have practiced. They did seem to live communally in some way and not strive to amass personal wealth. They rejected Paul, thinking he was an apostate but venerated James the Just, the brother of Jesus whom they deemed to be true successor to Jesus. link
The Ebionites were a Jewish Christian sect that believed Jesus was a human Messiah, not a divine being, and that one must strictly follow the Jewish Law to be righteous, rejecting Paul as an apostate. They denied Jesus' divinity and virgin birth, believing he was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, adopted as God's son due to his perfect observance of the Law. Ebionites practiced asceticism, holy poverty, and religious vegetarianism, and revered Jerusalem as a holy city. (Google)
I do think that, as decades passed, stories about Jesus grew and spread around the Mediterranean: stories of miracles, healing, a virgin births, the resurrection, and so on. These are the stories that were described in the four gospels. I do not think that for the most part these were the beliefs of all of the early Jewish Christians. Apparently, their form of Christianity, the Jesus part, existed in a small pocket for another few centuries. Over time this small group faded into history, and the Christ doctrines with which we are familiar became mainstream.
If I could believe, I think I would believe more as these Jewish Ebionites believed. I don't think that I could ever believe in the virgin birth, the raising of the dead, or the feeding of the multitudes. If I could believe something, it would be that Jesus was a good teacher who taught righteous living. Just perhaps, I might come to believe that Jesus was accepted and exalted by God in a special way. Mostly, however, my religion would entail living an upright life and not hoping that adhering to the right doctrine would be the key to salvation.
