Kevin de Ataíde’s Reviews > The History of Jewish Christianity from the First to the Twentieth Century > Status Update

Almost done. The history gets more dull when it comes to the non-conformist period, when the 'Jewish Christian' groups begin to look like every other evangelical sect.

I thought for a while that the author would place his 'Jewish Christians' on the side of the protestants in the wars of religion. Nevertheless, even the charlatan Luther himself, when he found that he couldn't draw Jews into his new religion, turned severely against them. The Dominican Fathers are still big villains here, for their continued pursuit of the conversos.

Ebionitism is long dead, but now the author is fascinated with what he says is an offshoot of it - the eastern religions of Catharism, Albigensianism, Waldensianism, etc. These are essentially proto-protestant movements, aimed squarely at Catholic devotions to the Holy Eucharist and to the Blessed Virgin. The inquisition, he concludes, was established to counter some consequence of 'Jewish Christianity.'

Gosh, there's next to no record of Jewish Christians even in the West throughout the medieval period... the author is reduced to talking about conversos and their descendants.

Quite a good book, this...

Decent, short book. I hadn't expected this to be a history of what we call the ebionites or ebionaeans. It will be interesting to see how that old sect morphs into present-day messianic judaism.