The first Celtic community to emerge in recorded history as accepting Christianity was Galatia in modern Turkey Christianity arrived in Galatia in the person of Paul of Tarsus who visited Pessinus, on the Galatian frontier, which was the tribal capital of the Tolistobogii, sometime between 40 and 50AD. Paul was apparently sick when he arrived but was surprised by the warmhearted Celtic hospitality he received and, on his recovery, succeeded in converting many to the new faith. The Galatians received a permanent place in Christian history when, about 50-55AD, Paul wrote his famous ‘Letter to the Galatians’ which is now part of the New Testament. Paul admonished them:
I am astonished to find you turning so quickly away from him who called you by grace, and following a different gospel. Not that it is in fact another gospel; only there are persons who unsettle your minds by trying to distort the gospel of Christ.
Paul, is so heated that at one point he exclaims: ‘You stupid Galatians! You must have been bewitched!’
The document is reflective of the first great schism within the early Christian movement; the break between the teachings and ideas of Paul and those of the original Christian movement led by Jesus’ brother Jacob (James) in Jerusalem. Paul, who had Latinised his name from Saul, was a native of Tarsus in Cilicia; a Jew born a Roman citizen and brought up within a Hellenistic cultural environment but also with a strict Judaic orthodoxy. He was sent to Jerusalem to study under the celebrated Pharisee Rabbi Gamaliel and also learnt the trade of a tent-maker. But Paul was a Sadducee, an aristocratic traditionalist sect. He became an agent for the Sadducee High Priest and began a persecution of the Christian sect. This sect, then called the Nazarenes, still saw themselves as part of the Judaic faith, believing in Jesus as the last of the Jewish Messiahs. Jesus was not regarded as divine by them nor did they consider themselves to be outside Judaic law. This was the movement led by the original disciples of Jesus.
Paul had witnessed the execution for blasphemy of Stephen in Jerusalem in 35AD, acknowledged as the first Christian martyr. It was about the following year that he converted to the Nazarene sect and soon established himself as one of its teachers. However, his views of Jesus’ life and philosophical teachings were at variance with the leaders of the movement. It was Paul who gave Jesus a divine status, declared that he had abrogated Judaic law and introduced the ‘salvation doctrine’ and gnosticism. Many ideas seemed to spring from his Greek background. Paul’s important innovation was that he did not see his religious interpretation as being confined as part of Judaic religion and he went out of his way to convert non-Jews. Initially those non-Jews who converted to Christianity were seen as converts to Judaism and had to be circumcised. But soon Paul was teaching that this was not necessary. The bulk of his followers came from a pagan Hellenistic background which enabled them to respond to the gnostic aspects of his teachings.
Paul’s innovations brought him into bitter conflict with the Nazarene leaders such as Jacob (James), John and Simon Bar-Jonah who was nicknamed ‘The Rock’ – Kephas in Greek and Petra in Latin and it is by the Latin, Peter, that he is known to Christendom. Paul freely admits his quarrel with them and speaks of a face to face confrontation with Peter. To the compilers of the New Testament it seemed unseemly that Paul should quarrel with Peter; after all, according to the Gospel writers Peter was the man designated by Jesus to lead his movement. To get round this, they left the Greek ‘Cephas’ in the contentious passages while translating the name to the Latin Peter in others. Thus, in places, Cephas and Peter appear two different people instead of the same man – Simon Bar-Jonah.
Paul himself, claiming authority for his breakaway group, wrote to the Galatians that Jacob, John and Peter had given him their wholehearted approval. They
acknowledge that I had been entrusted with the Gospel for the Gentiles as surely as Peter had been entrusted with the Gospels for the Jews. For God whose action made Peter an apostle to the Jews, also made me an apostle to the Gentiles.
Recognising, then, the favour bestowed on me, those reputed pillars of our society, James (Jacob), Peter and John, accepted Barnabas and my self as partners and shook hands upon it, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles while they went to the Jews.
On the evidence of the later conflict it was obvious that the Nazarenes were appalled that Paul was surrendering their teaching to pagan idolatory, as they saw it. Within a short time there had been a deep split between the Nazarenes, who claimed they were the authentic transmitters of Jesus’ teachings, and Paul’s new movement. In this conflict the Nazarenes held their own for a little while and sent out missions to counteract Paul’s teachings, spreading their version of Jesus’ message. The Celtic Galatians were among the first to take notice of the Nazarenes and it was this that brought forth Paul’s famous letter which was an attempt to bring them back to his movement. ‘You were running well,’ he told them. ‘Who was it hindered you from following the truth? Whatever persuasian he used, it did not come from God!’
For one breathtaking decade, during the 60s AD, the struggle between the original Nazarene Christians and Paul’s breakaway ‘Gentile Christians’ continued with neither side pre-eminent. Then in 67AD the Roman emperor Nero, angered by the continuing Jewish revolts against Roman rule, decided to move against the Jewish insurgents. The veteran general Vespasian was sent to bring them to heel. In the spring of that year he over-ran the flat regions of Galilee and attacked the stronghold of Jotapata, defended by Flavius Josephus (born in Jerusalem about 37-38AD). Josephus surrendered and, thankfully for posterity, was allowed his freedom. As a historian Josephus provides an invaluable source of information on the period.
After Nero’s death in July 69AD, Vespasian was elevated to emperor and the campaign against the Jews continued under the general Titus. Jerusalem was besieged that summer. After its fall the Nazarenes, who had been in the forefront of the fight against Rome, suffered greatly. Josephus tells us that Annas, the High Priest, saw a chance to destroy this irritating movement completely. ‘He assembled the Sanhedrin of judges and brought before them Jacob (James) the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, and some other men whom he accused of breaking the law and delivered them to be stoned.’
This single event was a considerable blow to the Nazarenes although they continued to exist and, indeed, existed as late as the 5th Century AD. The ‘Gentile Christians’ now constituted the bulk of the Christian movement and saw their opportunity to declare the Nazarenes as heretical. In 90AD the Nazarenes were also expelled from the Judaic fold for the same reasons. Their Gospels were suppressed although fragments have been found. To the end they taught that Jesus was the last Jewish Messiah but not a divinity and that Paul was the heretic who had perverted the teachings and merged them with pagan Hellenistic philosophy.
For the first two centuries of Paul’s ‘Gentile Christian’ movement, both Peter and Paul were treated as equal apostles. But the early tradition was that Jesus had personally nominated Peter to found his church. According to the Gospel of Matthew, written about 80AD, Chapter 16, verse 17:
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jonah for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in heaven. And 1 say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock 1 will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven
It was at the beginning of the 3rd Century AD that Pope Callistus, quoting this passage as his authority, declared Rome as the centre of the Christian Church; a claim hotly disputed by the Eastern and African Churches. Tradition then had it that Peter had journeyed to Rome, worked with his old antagonist Paul, and was executed there about the same time as Paul during the repression of Nero. There is no evidence of this, however, and, in view of the schism between the Nazarenes, of whom Peter was a leader, and Paul’s ‘Gentile Christians’, it does not seem credible. An interesting point about Matthew’s Gospel is that its author was not a Jew and that scholars claim that he was probably a Galatian.
(Peter Berresford Ellis, Celtic Inheritance. Frederick Muller Ltd, London, 1985.)