Rejudaized Jesus: The Early Transylvanian Sabbatarian Concept of the Messiah

Réka Újlaki-Nagy

doi:10.1515/jemc-2023-2052

Article Open Access

Rejudaized Jesus: The Early Transylvanian Sabbatarian Concept of the Messiah

Réka Újlaki-Nagy

Published/Copyright: November 2, 2023

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From the journal Journal of Early Modern Christianity Volume 10 Issue 2

Abstract

The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Transylvanian Sabbatarians represented one of the most radical form of the Reformation whose only retained doctrinal link to Christianity was belief in Jesus. By the mid-nineteenth century, even this last doctrine dropped out of their faith and they officially converted to Judaism, thus founding the only proselyte congregation in contemporary Europe. They were immediately suspected of having ulterior motives for their conversion, and in the twentieth century, accusations proliferated of deliberate Jewish proselytizing and bribery. Here, we go back to the beginnings and search the Sabbatarians’ earliest texts for the original, theological grounds that they themselves asserted. The working hypothesis is that analysis of this key article of faith, belief in Jesus, is sufficient to mark out the later course of the Sabbatarians’ theological development. The interpretation of the messianic mission and tasks clearly indicates which side the Sabbatarians would lean to in the course of their several centuries of balancing between Christianity and Judaism.

Keywords: Sabbatarianism; Christian/Jewish messianism; the roles of Jesus; rejudaization; proselytes

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Transylvanian Sabbatarianism is frequently said to have taken the Reformation to its furthest extreme, and to the limits of Christianity.^[1] Indeed, they were a religious group who interpreted Reformation endeavours to reach back to the beginnings as insufficient if they only went as far as the apostolic age. They believed that Jesus had not succeeded in his mission, because he did not fulfil the promises prophesied in the Old Testament and did not establish a blessed empire of peace. Thus, as he had failed in his mission, neither his coming nor his Crucifixion could have made any difference with regards to the salvation of humankind. He had not established a new covenant, and thus the old covenant was still in force, with all its laws, regulations, and practices. For the Sabbatarians, then, the task was not simply the restitution of early Christianity but the restitution of Jewish laws and practices in all instances in which Christianity had changed these laws and practices (for instance the Lord’s Supper, baptism, etc.). In this sense, they both differed from and indeed went far beyond the ambitions of other figures and denominations of the Reformation. They sought to “rejudaize” (to coin a term) Christian practices, by which I mean to cleanse them (so to speak) of the traditions that had been attached to them over the centuries, to restore the original Jewish practices. They thought to have discovered, in the original feasts and rituals, a layer of messianic meaning and symbolism that, in their view, had been hidden in these practices for thousands of years but become obscure to the Jews. They believed that by changing religious practices, Christianity had also removed the original symbolism pointing to Jesus, and this had led to a confused understanding of the Messiah.^[2]

The small initial group, under the influence of the Heidelberg theologian Matthias Vehe-Glirius, reached the conclusion that Jesus and the apostles lived during a special period when only temporary dispensations were granted to pagans living at the time. After the apostles died, everything went back to normal, the Old Testament rules regaining their universal validity for all humanity. By calling into question the belief that the Messiah had succeeded in his mission and by suggesting that the Crucifixion was not the immensely meaning moment of redemption, the Sabbatarians cast doubt on the relevance or applicability of the New Testament itself to any later era.

Glirius became an Antitrinitarian under the influence of books written in Transylvania.^[3] He belonged to an Antitrinitarian circle in Heidelberg that sought contacts with the Transylvanian Antitrinitarians.^[4] He moved to Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca, today Romania), probably because – in addition to being forced to flee – the Antitrinitarian bishop of Transylvania, Ferenc Dávid (all Transylvanian denominations at that time being headed by the same bishop), invited him to take part in an Antitrinitarian Bible translation project in which the Greek Jacobus Palaeologus would have translated the New Testament and Glirius the Old Testament.^[5] In the course of his studies, Glirius had gained a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew language and rabbinical literature, and had translated several rabbinical works from Hebrew to Latin and German.^[6] He synthesized this knowledge idiosyncratically with Christian teachings, and it was from this synthesis that Sabbatarianism formed among his followers in Transylvania.

For a short period, Glirius taught at the Antitrinitarian college in Kolozsvár. That was the time – late 1579 – that the bishop Ferenc Dávid was put on trial, accused of constant revision by his co-religionists, particularly the influential court physician and pioneer of Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism Giorgio Blandrata. Dávid’s increasingly radical view of Christological questions had led him to the conclusion that Jesus was human in the full sense and not an object of veneration. The judgement against him, however, included the accusation that he had come under the influence of Glirius, who was living in the same house, and had become a Judaizer. It is now impossible to assess the grounds for this accusation. There are no impartial sources, and the interpretative tradition bears the influence of interested parties.^[7] What is certain is that the bishop was found guilty and Glirius had to leave Transylvania, but his writing and doctrines had put down roots. Among the Antitrinitarians, who were not yet confessionalized and represented diverse beliefs and theological ideas, many took the Nonadorantist (Lat. adoro=worship) line, denying the worship of Jesus, and some attempted to reinterpret Jesus’ mission and attribute a greater role to deeds and laws. Those most open to the new ideas were the intellectual elite who had spent time in Padua and included figures with considerable influence in diplomatic circles.^[8] They provided the founders of Sabbatarianism, first of all András Eőssi, who, armed with Glirius’ theological teachings, started to work in Székely Land, applying the doctrines to Transylvanian affairs, translating them to the practical level and disseminating them. As adherents began to multiply, the authorities were initially relatively lenient. The main reasons for this were the relative freedom in Transylvania concerning religious questions and the lack of authoritative Church institutions with longstanding traditions.^[9] Only a few villages in Székely Land were Catholic at that time; Lutheranism had spread mainly among the Transylvanian Germans; and the Calvinists were in constant dispute and struggle for position with the Antitrinitarians. No Jewish communities had settled in Transylvania at that time, and the Romanian-speaking populace, adherents of the Orthodox Church, were not significantly influenced by the Reformation.^[10] The Unitarian Church had not yet consolidated, and many different Antitrinitarian movements lived together under a great common umbrella. The Sabbatarians were effectively one of these movements.^[11] Until the late 1630s, the Sabbatarians were able to spread their teachings without any drastic interventions by the authorities (with the exception of a few measures that were not taken seriously) in part because they enjoyed the support of some prominent members of the aristocracy.

Starting out in the 1580s and growing to a community of a few thousand by the 1630s, the Sabbatarians wished to differentiate themselves from the Jews in only one single respect, the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah. As the only doctrinal principle that bound them to Christianity, it was undeniably of central importance in the formation of the Sabbatarian system of faith. The Sabbatarians’ belief in Jesus dwindled over time, however, and by the second half of the nineteenth century, the community declared that they desired to belong to Judaism officially as well as in spirit.^[12] This wish, and their conversion, brought them into conflict with outsiders who could not understand how ethnically Székely people could entertain the idea of becoming Jews.^[13] The Jews were immediately accused of luring naïve peasant people with money and various promises. These accusations intensified later, particularly in the lead-up to the Second World War.^[14] Jews were presumed – without evidence – to be deliberately proselytizing.

Here, I go back to the beginnings, the root of the problem, and show that what happened through conversion in the nineteenth century was only a symptom or after-effect of a theological process that had taken place much earlier. A close look at the surviving Sabbatarian manuscripts yields the answer to the question of how the last doctrine that tied them to Christianity came to be dropped. A close examination of the key doctrine itself, belief in Jesus, reveals the weight it carried in the system of Sabbatarian beliefs.

I have addressed this question by examining how Sabbatarian texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries treat the roles and names that Christian Christologies traditionally ascribe to Jesus. The question of the Holy Trinity and the person of Jesus appear in the vast majority of surviving early texts, and so nearly all texts in the surviving corpus (three congregational collections of hymns and three codices of miscellaneous texts), in which the subjects of interest here appear sporadically, are usable sources.^[15] The texts are mostly undated and anonymous, but from the copying dates and other philological information we know they were written between 1580 and 1621. Because this does not give us precise dates, we cannot determine the transitions over time. It is assumed for the purpose of the study that an account of the state of affairs in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is sufficient to foretell the changes that would take place in later centuries.

I wish to emphasize that the nature of the sources permits only a synchronic study of the subject. As the texts are undated, one is compelled to treat the 40 or so years within which these writings may have been produced as a whole. From a Christological point of view, these texts are completely consistent, and some of them, especially the liturgical texts, were presumably continuously in use.

Even if one includes later ages in discussion, it is still not possible to do a diachronic examination.^[16] This is the case simply because no Sabbatarian writings on Jesus or the Trinity have survived from later periods. In addition to the persecution suffered by Sabbatarians in later periods (which also meant the destruction of their writings), two other factors may have contributed to this silence or absence. One of these factors was probably the charismatic personality of Simon Péchi, who exerted a strong influence on Sabbatarianism after 1621. Péchi translated the basic works of the rabbinic literature necessary for religious life and introduced them into use by the Sabbatarian community. By doing this, he essentially replaced the Sabbatarians’ own writings with Jewish prayers and texts, which were copied and put into use. With the exception of a few congregational songs, all that has survived from the periods following Péchi’s activity are copies of earlier liturgical texts, mostly Péchi’s prayers and psalms. Apart from a few incidental remarks, of course, these texts do not deal with the person of Jesus. The only conclusion one can draw on the basis of them is that the Sabbatarians of Péchi’s time still regarded Jesus as the Messiah.

Another major reason for this silence or absence (i.e., the absence of writings on Jesus by Sabbatarians) may have been the manner in which the Sabbatarians were increasingly compelled to turn inward (and go into a kind of inward hiding) in response to the persecution they suffered. Discussions of the Trinity and the person of Jesus were found mainly in polemical writings and not so much in texts for internal use. As there were no longer any genuine opportunities for polemics, there was no longer much reason for any discussion of the person of Jesus.

After the trial in Dés,^[17] the Sabbatarians became increasingly distanced from notions of Jesus as a major figure of their faith.^[18] In 1753, György Lukács, the parish priest of Bözödújfalu, wrote, in connection with the Sabbatarians, that they identified the Messiah with Christ and expected him to return to establish his millennial kingdom on earth.^[19] From then onwards, however, there is hardly any mention of Jesus in the Sabbatarian manuscripts, and they even scratched his name out of existing codices and omitted it from their songs, replacing it with the general title “Messiah” or even with other figures (“Abraham” or “the holy people”) or simply abandoning the songs in which he was mentioned.^[20] As one particularly interesting feature of their image of God, they began to refer to him with the grammatical formal pronouns and verb tenses in Hungarian (something similar to the difference between the “tu” and “vous” forms in French) instead of using the casual forms, as they had done earlier.^[21] In 1855, Sándor Ürmösi, the Unitarian priest in Bözödújfalu, painted a very negative picture of the Sabbatarian view of Jesus. It would be hard to determine whether there was any foundation for the contentions he made or they were simply the product of misunderstanding and prejudice, but he claimed that the Sabbatarians made those who converted to their faith deny Christ and that they taught their children to spit on and impale the crucifix.^[22] Even if these accusations were unfounded, it is quite certain that by the middle of the nineteenth century, faith in Jesus as the Messiah had disappeared entirely from the Sabbatarians’ religious worldview, and their conversion to Judaism in 1868 brought any discussion of this question to a close.

The study is therefore necessarily and intentionally a synchronic analysis, as the sources do not allow any other kind of examination. Nor, for that matter, do they allow one to write about the impact of Christology and messianism on practical religious life among the Sabbatarians. They reveal essentially nothing about everyday life in the Sabbatarian community, but on the basis of Sabbatarian theology, one can conclude that their Christology could not have had a major influence on their way of life. They claimed that Jesus had brought nothing new and, indeed, had changed nothing. Thus, his person was not important to them in terms of practical life. Their ideas of everyday ethics were primarily determined by the Mosaic commandments and precepts, and not by New Testament teachings.

Returning to the study of the early Sabbatarian texts concerning the person of Jesus, I must note that the analysis of names and roles of Jesus is based entirely on the early Sabbatarian texts and Mattaniah, the chief opus of the intellectual father of the Sabbatarians, Matthias Vehe-Glirius.^[23] He was the originator of their view of Jesus, and indeed nearly all of their teachings. They regarded him as their model and point of reference. I attempt to present strictly the ideas of Glirius and the Sabbatarians and what they considered could be known about certain roles and names. I do not take a position on the matter or propose a modern opinion or value judgement, even though there are clearly erroneous facts in the Sabbatarian texts. Rather, I have aimed to form as accurate a picture as possible of the Sabbatarians’ own, internal viewpoints and to communicate them clearly.

1 Jesus

The Sabbatarian texts assert that this is not a unique name, but a variant of a common Hebrew male name rooted in a word that means “saviour.” The names Joshua, Jesus and Yehoshua are all variants of this root. The first judge, Joshua, was so named because he was the liberator of the people, presaged by his having been born with the name. The Apostle Judas used the same word with a similar meaning of saviour for Moses, who freed the people from slavery in Egypt.^[24]

Since it was a popular name among the Jews, an interpretive epithet was usually appended to distinguish the bearer from others with similar names. In Jesus’ case, this was “the Nazarene.” Such linguistic identification was very common in Hebrew, the best-known example being the permanent epithet “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”^[25] The same is to be found in the Apostles’ Creed, also applying to Jesus: “born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, crucified under Pontius Pilate.”^[26]

For the Sabbatarians, this crucially implied that the name emphasized Jesus’ humanity. It highlighted that he belonged to the Jewish nation, a common man like everyone else, just one of the many. A similar Hebraism, in their view, was the New Testament “Son of Man,” which also demonstrated human nature.^[27] Overall, the Sabbatarian texts tended to diminish the uniqueness of the name and the task of Jesus, his special nature, and his supernatural character. By stressing his human character, they degraded his role in the history of humanity, and by reference to linguistic elements and Hebraism they attempted to place him back in the linguistic and cultural milieu in which, as they saw it, the Jewish Jesus belonged.

2 Christ

This word, meant “sanctified or anointed [unctus], used for all Jewish kings, prophets and leaders.”^[28] There were many “christs” in Old Testament times. King David, for example, used the term for himself (Ps 105:15; Ps 2:1–2) and for Saul (1Sam 24:7; Ps 20:7). In the New Testament, Paul the Apostle applies the term to Moses when writing about the Jews who accompanied him in the wilderness (1Cor 10:9). Since Jesus did not live in Old Testament times, it is clear that Paul meant Moses when he used the expression “christ.” Jesus Christ himself used the expression for himself and accepted, indeed appreciated, others calling him so. When Peter the Apostle declared his faith in Christ’s mission and name, Jesus made him head of the Church (Matt 16:13–19).^[29]

In every case, the attribution of this name may be traced to the act of anointing. It was upon his baptism in the Jordan that Jesus gained the right to bear the name. By becoming Christ, he was anointed king, and thus also became the Son and the Messiah. In this event, the angel’s prophecy to Mary was fulfilled, and the prophecy of the song of Zacharias also became true: that the anointed one will free his people from their sins.^[30] The expression “in his name,” when it appears in the Scriptures, always refer to the name Christ, and it is written that “no other name was given under heaven.” In every case they mean “for the proof of his Christness” (e.g., Acts 4:12), and so, for example, many people were healed so that his Christness may be proved (Matt 16:13–16).^[31]

As with the name Jesus, we see that the Sabbatarians attempted to widen the meaning and use of the name Christ and to diminish its uniqueness and specialness. They were not alone in this. It is an integral part of the interpretive tradition of Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism, which had long insisted that the word Christ meant no more than “the anointed,” and that the Bible used the expression for other kings, such as David.^[32]

3 Emmanuel

This name, which first appears in the Bible in Isa 7:14, refers to the son of a virgin woman of the time of Isaiah and Ahaz. Christians interpreted the word literally and thus linked his prophecy to Jesus. This error arose from bad translations and the fact that Matthew’s Gospel also makes an erroneous reference to him (Matt 1:23).^[33] The Gospel states, “they shall call his name” Emmanuel, but in the original Hebrew, it is written “you call him.” Notably, it is Matthew rather than the angel who mentions what the prophet foretold, and he is the source of the erroneous quotation. The correct translation would be as written by Sebastian Münster: “look, one virgin is pregnant now, she will give birth to a boy and you call his name Emmanuel.”^[34] The original does not say that a virgin will be with child, but that a pregnant virgin will give birth to a boy.^[35]

The promise of the prophet was clearly directed at King Ahaz, assuring him that the two opposing kings, whom he feared, would not defeat him. The divine sign of this promise was a pregnant virgin, who would give birth to a son who had the gift of distinction between good and bad food. If the promise had not applied to Ahaz’ time but only to Jesus, the king would not have understood it, and it would not have been a sign to him. The fact that the promise as written applied to a child of Ahaz’ time does not preclude the possibility of it applying to Jesus in another sense. Not because of the similarity of conception and birth, but purely because of the name. The meaning of the name, that God is with us through the Messiah and creates happiness, peace and justice, may also be applied to Jesus even if the promise has not yet been fulfilled. As befits a divine promise and prophecy, however, it will be fulfilled in future, in the Messianic realm, where bliss and plenty await the faithful.

As with the previous name, the Sabbatarians were basically continuing the Antitrinitarian exegetic tradition. This prophecy was one of the favourite themes in disputes about the Holy Trinity. Some Antitrinitarian accounts challenged only the divine attributes of the name and the characterization, while others addressed the meaning of the word “virgin.”^[36] The Sabbatarian position brought nothing new or unfamiliar in this respect. It was perhaps unique only in the insistence on the fulfilment of the promises of the prophecy in the literal sense. The conception of fulfilment on the material level in the Messianic realm may certainly be regarded as a specifically Sabbatarian view.

4 Mediator and Elohim

Intercession is a task undertaken by every major Jewish figure who cared about his or her people.^[37] Jesus was not the only one to intercede with God for the forgiveness of sins. Many prophets and kings did so before him. Moses was the most active in this role, mediating a covenant between God and the people. The apostles regarded him as the mediator of the Old Testament and “the chief gubernator in God’s house” (Heb 3:3). Through his intercession, Moses saved the lives of many people, including his own sister Miriam, who contracted leprosy, and whole multitudes, including those who worshipped the golden calf. After Moses, this task and calling passed to Joshua, and from him to the judges and prophets, and so on. These Old Testament intercessions were effective and productive in themselves and had no need – as some Christians have asserted – of being supplemented by the intercessions of Christ. King David said, “Our fathers cried out to you and you listened to them” (Ps 22:4–5). God many times gave mercy to his people for the merits of their elders at the intercession of such persons as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David (Isa 1:9, Exod 32:13; Deut 9:27; 1Kings 11:11–12).

Although Luther erroneously asserted (!) that the angels appearing before the patriarchs in the Old Testament were the embodiments of Christ,^[38] Jesus did not take part in these intercessions, because he did not exist at the time.^[39] In the passages of Scripture in question, there is no proof that the word Elohim has the plural sense, applying to more than one person, because grammatically it only has the plural form. If a word only has a plural form, whether it has a plural meaning in a particular sentence cannot be proved.^[40] This is the case with the “royal we,” which is grammatically plural but the sovereign who uses it refers only to himself or herself.^[41] We must also bear in mind that the primary meaning of Elohim is not God, but prince, leader or angel.^[42]

The Old Testament figures differ from Jesus and his apostles in the manner and time of mediation. Jesus cannot be a mediator in the same way or to the same extent as the prophets and Moses, who were also literally mediators. He and the apostles interceded in spirit. Moses’ intercession started when God sent him from the land of the Midianites to Egypt, and this kind of literal intercession continued up to John the Baptist.^[43] Jesus started his intercession when he was thirty years old, after the Holy Spirit, from heaven, had anointed him for kingship. He then started to reconcile the people with God.^[44] His intercession consisted of praying for his disciples and those who would believe in him in future. He did not manage to fully complete this mission, which awaits his Second Coming.^[45]

In interpreting the role of the mediator, the Sabbatarians were taking the road already laid out by the Antitrinitarians and mainly followed their theological authority, Matthias Vehe-Glirius.^[46] They did not deprive Jesus of the role but claimed, like their predecessors, that he did not appear in the Old Testament in this respect. They put forward nothing new in the Trinitarian debates surrounding the word Elohim, but repeated the typical Antitrinitarian arguments. They narrowed the concept of intercession and degraded it inasmuch that they did not value the intercession of Jesus above that of the great persons who had lived before him. They also alleged that Jesus would fulfil this mission in the full sense only in the Messianic realm.

5 The Good Shepherd and Saviour

Since the Sabbatarians claimed that original sin did not exist and was a dogmatic invention that had built up in the Church, there was clearly no need for anyone to save humanity from this curse.^[47] Denial of original sin was a universal stance among Antitrinitarians, and many also challenged the role of the Crucifixion. The Nonadorantists (who rejected the adoration of Jesus) went further than saying that there was no need for a substitute sacrifice, and asserted that God had no fondness for human sacrifice and would not accept such. God in any case had the power in himself to forgive sins.^[48]

This all left the problem of finding some interpretation of the Crucifixion and Jesus’ role as saviour. The Sabbatarians addressed this by reducing the role solely to the time and the people who lived and believed in the time of Jesus and the apostles. They understood expressions such as “He redeemed, saved and cleansed the world” and “he took away the sins of the world” to apply only to the people who lived during his time.^[49] These people could receive salvation purely by their faith in Jesus as Messiah, without good deeds. This had passed away, however, and the merits of Jesus’ death did not bring anyone salvation purely by faith.^[50]

In addressing the question of death by crucifixion, Glirius and, through him, the Sabbatarians, were assisted by a New Testament parable. They claimed that the parable of the good shepherd in the John’s Gospel, chapter 10, presents the divine plan. Before the birth of Jesus the Messiah, God decided that if there was no other way that the sheep could escape the wolves, then the shepherd, which meant Jesus, had to sacrifice his life for them. The shepherd proved his loyalty to the sheep by saving them at the cost of his own life. Another way of putting this is that God saved the sheep at the price of their shepherd, sacrificing the shepherd for the sheep.^[51] This, however, was only a secondary reading. Jesus did not have to die at all costs. It was not a prescribed, essential act but was only something that was foreseen and permitted. Jesus died because of the faithless Jews, or rather the wolves, the “envious priest kings who lived for their stomach.”^[52] If he had not obeyed God unto death, God could have sent another shepherd who would have done so in his stead. Jesus, however, would not then have played a part in saving sinners.^[53]

The consequence of his obedience was that the prince of this world was damned and had no power over it.^[54] By his death, he confirmed his teaching and made it more credible and acceptable to people. If he had not given his life for the people, the freeing and cleansing of those who converted in his name would have gone to waste. In this way, God showed mercy to his own people. For the merits of the shepherd, those who believed in him and his teaching were saved and gained forgiveness. Jesus’ merits did not, however, take effect beyond these people, or more precisely the first generation, who believed in his teachings.

It was also for his obedient death that Jesus was raised by God to a position of honour that nobody before him had held.^[55] Glirius also adds that because of the gospel proclaimed by Jesus and confirmed by his blood, Christians will never be completely erased. This is similar to the belief that Israel can never be destroyed because of the merits of the patriarchs and the covenant made with them.^[56]

The function of the “good shepherd” in Sabbatarian theology was thus to give an explanation for the cross and place in Christian soteriology the image of the Messiah that the Sabbatarians developed for Jesus. Their purpose in doing so was to prove to those who were outraged at their doubts regarding the Crucifixion that the Crucifixion was useful but not absolutely necessary. The identity of the shepherd was secondary. Jesus undertook and obediently performed the role, but someone else might have done so instead.

6 God’s Lamb

In this case, as with the foregoing, the Sabbatarians followed their intellectual leader Glirius, who was highly critical of the widespread interpretation of this expression. Glirius and his followers claimed that Christians erroneously placed the expression in the context of Jesus’ crucifixion.^[57] The idea that the expression “God’s Lamb” had anything to do with the goat on whose head the high priest placed the sins of Israel in the Day of Atonement ceremony (Lev 16:21–22), was false. This goat, after being invested with the sins, was taken to the wilderness and let go, to bear the iniquities of the children of Israel. It is remarkable that this ceremony involves a goat rather than a lamb. This accursed goat is called the goat of the devil/Azazel, and another goat was chosen to be sacrificed to God and its blood sprinkled on the Holy of Holies.^[58] The Epistle to the Hebrews compares Christ to this sacrificed goat rather than to the live goat let go in the wilderness, who bore the iniquities of Israel (Heb 13:11). Jesus’ death, however, was not a sacrifice for sin in the literal sense as the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament were, and it was not inevitable. Nonetheless, three reasons may be adduced for Jesus to be called God’s Lamb. Firstly, he bore the Cross humbly and with forbearance, as prophesied by Isaiah (chapter 53). Secondly, he may be regarded as a lamb for his righteous life, because he lived a life that was “without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet 1:18–19). Finally, his life and death may be regarded as self-sacrifice in the sense that he interceded for Israel during his earthly life and strove to create harmony and reconciliation between God and his people.^[59]

In the Sabbatarian view of Jesus as God’s Lamb, the Cross is blurred and the link between the meaning of the expression in the New Testament and the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is broken. Jesus may be called God’s Lamb only by virtue of his characteristics and his life spent in mediation and self-sacrifice.

7 High Priest

The role that the Sabbatarians – and, above all, Glirius – most strenuously strove to take from Jesus is that of his calling as high priest. One of the most compelling reasons for this was that the book where the high priest attribution is set out in greatest detail is the Epistle to the Hebrews, a text that Glirius, the Sabbatarians and many other Antitrinitarians regarded as of dubious authenticity. Nonetheless, or perhaps for that very reason, Glirius devoted 24 pages to the subject in his main opus, the Mattaniah.^[60] His purpose was to prove that the author of the book explicated the expression “high priest” as applied to Jesus by an abstract Jewish exegetic method, the drash. The use of this method was not justified as a means of giving grounds for an important article of faith. One text may have several drash interpretations, and they can be misleading.^[61] According to Glirius, Jesus cannot be regarded as a high priest in either the literal or the figurative sense. The Jews would never accept that he could be regarded as a priest.^[62] To support this view, Glirius gave several historical arguments concerning the conditions for selecting a high priest in Old Testament time and the duties of a high priest.^[63] A high priest strictly had to be born into the tribe of Aaron, the choice had to be made by other priests, he had to live and study in the temple until the age of 30, he had to be married, he had to sacrifice animals, food and drink, and he was not allowed to touch the dead. Jesus did not meet any of these requirements, and he never called himself a priest.^[64] Glirius thus approached the calling of high priest from the Old Testament point of view, insisting on the literal meaning of the expression and deploring as spurious any figurative Christian interpretation and the drash interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Here, the Sabbatarians slightly deviated from the stance of their intellectual leader. Although they agreed that Jesus could not be regarded as a high priest in the literal sense, they still thought that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had good reason for applying the title to Jesus.^[65]

Their explanation of why and in what sense the author of the epistle (Paul, in their view) called Jesus a high priest was aimed at praising the New Testament at the expense of the Old. In Old Testament times, the high priest ranked higher in Jewish society than the king. This was the basis for the attack on Jesus by the Jewish priests, who considered themselves superior to him. The Apostle Paul did not agree with them, and defended Jesus in a discussion of the priesthood. Jesus was a priest in the figurative sense in that he cleansed his fellows of their sins if they believed in him, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, made them capable of observing the Law.^[66] By contrast, the Old Testament high priests were unable, by giving sacrifice for the sins of the people each year, to free the people from sinning again and again. The Sabbatarians thus did not completely reject the widespread Christian interpretation that attributed high priesthood to Jesus, but greatly restricted its meaning, and considered that even in the figurative sense, it applied to him only in his own time.

8 Prophet

Sabbatarian texts refer to Jesus’ prophetic calling only for the purpose of comparison with Moses, a capacity in which they find him wanting. “As regards prophecy, Moses was the greater.”^[67] To accept Moses as the greatest prophet, “the chief governor in the house of God” was something they considered to be one of the foundations of divine faith.^[68] Only he had a calling to give laws.^[69] God himself said that Moses was greater than other prophets, because he spoke to him not in dreams or visions, but face to face.^[70] “Christ did not speak with God in the sight of the people of Israel, just as he did not take a commandment to revoke the Law of Moses before the whole people.”^[71] Unlike Moses, he had no great multitudes to witness his divine mission and miracles. Every other prophet was to be measured against Moses. By this means, someone may be recognized as a true prophet if “he proclaims the God” and “puts the people on the path” that Moses did, and if he entreats the people to uphold the foundations of the faith. Thus acted the Apostle Paul and Christ, whose words must be “adapted” to Moses, the greatest prophet, because the greater may correct and interpret the lesser.^[72] Jesus himself spoke to the people in parables and obscure speech. By contrast, clear, understandable, direct speech is always a more valuable message, as we see with Moses.^[73]

The prophet’s role thus does not make Jesus truly extraordinary and does not raise him above the ranks of other prophets, and since Sabbatarian texts constantly stress that in this respect he was a lesser figure than Moses, it rather degrades him.

9 King and Messiah

Perhaps the most important role that the Sabbatarians attributed to Jesus was that of earthly king and Messiah. His birth of the seed of David entitled him to this function.^[74] In this role he is the greatest, greater than every other Messiah and king, greater even than David and Solomon.^[75] He was anointed by the holy spirit for the messianic task when he was baptised in the Jordan.^[76] The terms Christ, Son of God, and King of the Jews refer to this act of anointing.^[77] The main purpose of his mission was to save the people from their sins, to write the Law into their hearts by the Holy Spirit, and to free them from the yoke of other peoples and bring about the thousand-year happy, just and abundant earthly realm. This was foretold for him by the Old Testament prophets and it was his own endeavour and purpose. The Jews did not err in their expectations when they took the Old Testament prophecies literally and insisted on their fulfilment. Jesus’ task would have been exactly what the Jews awaited and await from the Messiah; they merely failed to recognize him.

Jesus attempted to prove his messianic nature by occasionally deliberately violating some part of the Law. For example, he contravened the Sabbath law. That is how the prophets also proved their divine mission.^[78] The Jews, however, did not accept this kind of proof from him and demanded other miracles.^[79] He himself did not know of the failure of his mission or that he must sacrifice his life for the people until Elijah and Moses told him on Mount Tabor.^[80]

The implication of Jesus’ failure in his most important mission is not that his promises will not be fulfilled, but that fulfilment has been postponed to some time in the future.^[81] Until then, he is in heaven as the Messiah, sitting at the right hand of God and waiting for the time that the Father fulfils his promise and places him on the throne of David, giving unto his power dominion over the angels and judgement of the living and the dead. At present, God teaches him and he is learning “as a man chosen for such a high dignity that he be worthy in every respect.”^[82]

10 Conclusions

It was through Jesus that the Sabbatarians maintained their link with Christianity. For them, he was the crossover point between Christianity and Judaism, where the Christological and Jewish messianic conceptions could be united. Writings about Jesus form the clear majority of surviving Sabbatarian documents. He was also the principal subject of their eschatological expectations. They saw Jesus as bringing the covenant and knowledge of the true God closer to believers converted from paganism. The identity and the place of the Messiah were, for them, much disputed theological subjects, but the conclusions were clear right from the beginning. Since the Sabbatarians did not attribute to Jesus the role of redeeming and saving from sin in the classical sense, he was a person of secondary significance in their theology. Sabbatarian texts, like Glirius and his rabbinical source of inspiration, Josef Albo, did not consider belief in Jesus as bringing salvation or as one of the fundamental tenets of divine faith or religion. Since this belief was absent from the covenant with Israel, it could not be a condition for salvation. It was useful, but even for converted pagans, only in Jesus’ time was it a condition for salvation.^[83]

Glirius and the Sabbatarians, without fully breaking with the Christian interpretation of Jesus’ roles, attempted to degrade them and to deprive Jesus of his supernatural characteristics. They attempted to interpret his missions as far as possible at the material level and to suppress his image as a spiritual leader. The mission of the Messiah was not, in their conception, spiritual reform but the foundation of an earthly kingdom. Only in this sense did he surpass his predecessors; otherwise, he was an ordinary person and he fell short of such great figures as Moses.

The Sabbatarians sought to discover the historical Jesus, the ordinary Jewish Jesus, who lived in the culture of his people.^[84] What they wrote about Jesus in the texts mentioned above and the ways in which they thought about the historical Jesus were part and parcel of the entire approach on the basis of which they strove to correct and “rejudaize” their practices by tracing them back to Jewish practice. The Sabbatarian Messiah is ultimately a “rejudaized” Jesus, completely human, but endeavouring to fit the Jewish conception of a Messiah-king. In essence, in the Early Modern Period, they stuck only to the person and name of Jesus, but in their understanding of the purpose and tasks of the Messiah, they strove to follow the Jews as much as possible and to “rejudaize” their beliefs concerning his mission, or in other words, to interpret his place and importance in a Jewish manner. They attempted to delay the fulfilment of what was lacking from the Jewish version of the Messiah to the time of the Messianic realm.

The radical, daring historicism with which Sabbatarians approached the New Testament texts and the person of Jesus was exceptional in the Early Modern Period (especially at the community level) and only became a feature of emerging historical criticism centuries later.^[85] Although their view on Jesus was not part of the basic tenets of their faith, it provided them with a particular point of separation from and connection with both Christianity and Judaism. In other words, their belief in the person of Jesus connected them to Christianity, but almost everything else they believed about him separated them from other Christians. Their view of the Messiah’s roles and tasks linked them to the Jews, but the name and person of Jesus still separated them from Judaism. In the Sabbatarian Jesus, we find an endeavour to reconcile the Christian and Jewish religions, or indeed reunite them, through the “Christian” person and the “Jewish” or “rejudaized” roles of the Messiah. This has no parallel in Europe in the Early Modern Age, or perhaps at any time since.

11 Aftermath

Sabbatarian writings, unfortunately, did not elicit a widespread response and remained in manuscript form, in an archaic language and form of expression that is hard to understand. They exerted most influence on the small communities that upheld these doctrines. Through them, however, they may have contributed to the special opening that was a characteristic of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Transylvania.

After the period of theological dispute ended, New Testament themes came up less frequently and messianic expectations were little mentioned. Belief in Jesus as Messiah receded into the background and gradually faded. It is clear from the roles of Jesus discussed here that this process did not take place by external influence but was a feature of the immanent development of Sabbatarianism as a religious phenomenon, and was foreseeable and predictable.

The political situation in Transylvania changed towards the end of the 1630s.^[86] The chancellor, Simon Péchi, who had served under three princes and adhered to Sabbatarian doctrines, was imprisoned for treason. The suppression of this “attempted putsch” caused the Sabbatarians to lose their position, and their most influential supporter turned to another area of work. During his years in prison, making use of his Hebrew studies in Constantinople, Péchi translated the texts fundamental to the practice of the Jewish religion (everyday and feast prayer books, Pirkei Avot, books of the Bible with commentaries, etc.) from Hebrew to Hungarian, thus bringing Sabbatarian religious practice close to the Jewish. In the great trial known as the “Dés complanatio” in 1638, the Sabbatarians and other Nonadorantists were condemned to forfeit of life and property. Although only one of them was executed, the Sabbatarians lost their property and were forced to join one of the “received” denominations. This reduced the number of Sabbatarians from several thousand to a few hundred. Having lost their aristocratic supporters, they carried on in a few villages as an underground movement until 1868. At that time, the steadfast remnants of the Sabbatarians, who lived only in Bözödújfalu (Bezidu Nou) and some scattered small villages in the area, interpreted the Emancipation Law of Austria-Hungary to provide them with the opportunity of officially taking up the Jewish religion, and they acted accordingly.^[87] This move did not bring them true peace, wellbeing or acceptance. They lived on as poor tillers of the land, usually looked down on by Orthodox Jews, until the Second World War, when they became subject to the Jewish laws. Although several efforts were made, and laws amended, to save them, they were taken to the Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureş) ghetto in April 1944 together with the Jews of the area. Through the courageous, self-sacrificing rescue effort of the Catholic priest of Bözödújfalu, István Ráduly, most of them came out alive, but some were deported and never returned.^[88] Those who survived were immediately forced to finally change their religion. Some families eventually settled in Israel, and the others were scattered and assimilated. The final blow came when the Romanian Conducator Nicolae Ceauşescu made a reservoir that inundated Bözödújfalu, the “Székely Jerusalem.”^[89] Today only a few mossy, crumbling gravestones with Hebrew and Hungarian inscriptions preserve their memory in the overgrown Sabbatarian cemetery on the slope beside the lake.

Corresponding author: Réka Újlaki-Nagy, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of History, Budapest, Hungary, E-mail: nagy.reka@abtk.hu

Acknowledgments

This study was written with the support of the project NKFI K 129236. Special thanks to Pál Ács and Béla Isaszegi for their useful advice.

Published Online: 2023-11-02

Published in Print: 2023-11-27

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2023-2052

Keywords for this article

Sabbatarianism; Christian/Jewish messianism; the roles of Jesus; rejudaization; proselytes

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