Before Jerusalem Fell

A Catena of Scholars
Th Role ofJewtih Christiani~ 229
Many scholars recognize the significance of A.D. 70 in the separation
of Judaism and Christianity. Perhaps a catena of their authoritative
statements will prove helpful in throwing light upon the matter.
Schaff writes:
A few years afterwards followed the destruction of Jerusalem, which
must have made an overpowering impression and broken the last ties
which bound Jewish Christianity to the old theocracy. . . .
The awfiul catastrophe of the destruction of the Jewish theocracy
must have produced the profoundest sensation among the Christians.
. . . It was the greatest calamity ofJudaism and a great benefit
to Christianity; a refutation of the one, a vindication . . . of the
other. It separated them forever. . . . Henceforth the heathen could
no longer look upon Christianity as a mere sect of Judaism, but must
regard and treat it as a new, peculiar religion. The destruction of
Jerusalem, therefore, marks that momentous crisis at which the Christian
church as a whole burst forth forever from the chrysalis of
Judaism, awoke to a sense of maturity, and in government and
worship at once took its independent stand before the world. 3
i
Harnack agrees with this view when he notes that “it was the
destruction of Jerusalem and the temple which seems to have provoked
the final crisis, and led to a complete breach between the two
parties [i.e., Jew and Christian] .“3 2
Ewald observes in this regard: “As by one great irrevocable
stroke the Christian congregation was separated from the Jewish, to
which it had clung as a new, vigorous offshoot to the root of the old
tree and as the daughter to the mother.”3 3
Henderson concurs: “The destruction of the Temple incidentally
liberated Christianity from the gravest peril which still threatened
the diffusion of the new religion, releasing it in its youthful years from
shackles by which its straiter Jewish adherents, defiant of the memory
of the Apostle of the Gentiles, sought to fetter and impede its growth. “3 4
31. Scha~ History, 1:196,403-4.
32. Adolf Harnack, The Mimion and Expam”on of Christianip in ths Ftrst Three Centuries,
2 VOIS. (New York: Putnam, 1908) 1:63.
33. G. H. A. Ewald, Geschichti des Volkes Israel, 2nd cd., vol. 7, p. 171. Cited in Schaff,
Histoy, 1 :4Q4n.
34. B. W. Henderson, Five Romun Emperors (Cambridge University Press, 1927), p. 9.