ABSTRACT
In the first century, the struggle for Christianity’s distinctive identity took place within the Jewish context. In order to proclaim Christ, first-century preachers had to consider Jesus’ relationship to the Torah, circumcision, the Abrahamic promises, the temple and its sacrifices. Has Christ brought any change to God’s covenantal relationship with Abraham and his offspring? What, if anything, is new about the New Testament in Jesus’ blood? In the second century, early Christian answers to these questions entailed two extreme trajectories. First, the Ebionites, second-century heirs of Paul’s opponents, maintained that there was nothing essentially new about Christianity. God’s relationship to humankind has been ordered once and for all through God’s covenant with Abraham and the gift of the Torah. Christ may represent a new act in the play, but the narrative plot has essentially been defined from beginning to end by God’s protological covenant with Abraham. Thus, Jesus comes merely to cleanse and restore the ancient law to its former glory; the newness of the New Testament amounts to little more than the repristination of a primordial relationship.
