Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

1959); John Gager,
Kingdom and Community: The Social World of the Early Christians
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1975); and Martin Dibelius,
Studies in the Acts of the Apostles
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956), have all demonstrated that the early followers
     of Jesus were unsuccessful in persuading other Jerusalemites to their movement. Gager
     notes correctly that, in general, “early converts did not represent the established
     sectors of Jewish society” (26). Dibelius suggests that the Jerusalem community wasn’t
     even interested in missionizing outside Jerusalem but led a quiet life of piety and
     contemplation as they awaited Jesus’s second coming.
    Gager explains the success of the early Jesus movement, despite its many doctrinal
     contradictions, by relying on a fascinating sociological study by L. Festinger, H.
     W. Riecken, and S. Schachter titled
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted
     the Destruction of the World
(New York: Harper and Row, 1956), which, in Gager’s words, demonstrates that “under
     certain conditions a religious community whose fundamental beliefs are disconfirmed
     by events in the world will not necessarily collapse and disband. Instead it may undertake
     zealous missionary activity as a response to its sense of cognitive dissonance, i.e.,
     a condition of distress and doubt stemming from the disconfirmation of an important
     belief” (39). As Festinger himself puts it in his follow-up study,
A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957): “the presence of dissonance gives rise
     to pressures to reduce or eliminate the dissonance. The strength of the pressure to
     reduce the dissonance is a function of the magnitude of the dissonance” (18).
    There is a great deal of debate about what exactly “Hellenist” meant. It could have
     meant that these were gentile converts to Christianity, as Walter Bauer argues in
Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity
(Mifflintown, Pa.: Sigler Press, 1971). H. J. Cadbury agrees with Bauer. He thinks
     the Hellenists were gentile Christians who may have come from Galilee or other gentile
     regions and who were not favorably disposed toward the Law. See “The Hellenists,”
The Beginnings of Christianity
, vol. 1, ed. K. Lake and H. J. Cadbury (London: Macmillan, 1933), 59–74. However,
     the term “Hellenist” most likely refers to Greek-speaking Jews from the Diaspora,
     as Martin Hengel convincinglydemonstrates in
Between Jesus and Paul
(Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1983). Marcel Simon agrees with Hengel, though he
     also believes (contra Hengel) that the term had derogatory connotations among the
     Jews of Judea for its Greek (that is, pagan) accommodations. Simon notes that Hellenism
     is numbered among Justin Martyr’s list of heresies in
Trypho
(80.4). See
St. Stephen and the Hellenists in the Primitive Church
(New York: Longmans, 1958).
    That the Seven were leaders of an independent community in the early church is proven
     by the fact that they are presented as actively preaching, healing, and performing
     signs and wonders. They are not waiters whose main responsibility is food distribution,
     as Luke suggests in Acts 6:1–6.
    Hengel writes that “the Aramaic-speaking part of the community was hardly affected”
     by the persecution of the Hellenists, and he notes that, considering the fact that
     the Hebrews stayed in Jerusalem until at least the outbreak of war in 66 C.E ., they must have come to some sort of accommodation with the priestly authorities.
     “In Jewish Palestine, only a community which remained strictly faithful to the law
     could survive in the long run”;
Between Jesus and Paul
, 55–56.
    Another reason to consider the Jesus movement in the first few years after the crucifixion
     to be an exclusively Jewish mission is that among the first acts of the apostles after
     Jesus’s death was to replace Judas Iscariot with Matthias (Acts 1:21–26). This may
     indicate that the notion of the reconstitution of Israel’s tribes was still alive
     immediately after the crucifixion. Indeed, among the first questions the disciples
     ask the risen Jesus is whether, now that he was back, he intended to “restore the
     kingdom to Israel.” That is, will you perform now the messianic function you failed
     to perform during your lifetime? Jesus brushes off the question: “it is not for you
     to know the times or