Long before the word Christianity existed, there were the Believers of the Way—the Natzratim, followers of Yeshua of Natzeret who kept the Torah, honored the feasts, and awaited the Messiah’s return. This is the untold story of the first-century faith—how it began as a Jewish movement, survived persecution, and was transformed by empires into something unrecognizable. Discover the roots of the original Messianic community and the enduring light of the Way that still burns today.
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LearningTranscript
00:00In the beginning, before the word Christianity was ever spoken, before emperors or councils
00:10decided what faith should mean, there were only the believers of the way. They met quietly
00:16in homes lit by oil lamps, in courtyards filled with the smoke of sacrifices, in upper rooms
00:23where the sound of whispered prayers mingled with the distant call of shofars. They did
00:29not call themselves Christians, nor did they build temples of stone. They were Jews, men
00:36and women who believed that Yeshua of Nazareth was the promised Mashiach, the anointed one
00:42foretold by the prophets. To the world around them they were a strange sect of Judaism, a
00:49splintered branch on the ancient tree of Israel. Shaul of Tarsus, who would later be known
00:55as Paul, was once their greatest enemy. He hunted them across the dusty roads between
01:00Yerushalayim and Damasek, driven by the fire of his conviction that this way was heresy.
01:07Acts tells of him breathing murderous threats against the Talmudim, the disciples, seeking
01:12letters from the Kohen Haggadol that would grant him authority to seize the followers of Yeshua.
01:17But even Shaul could not see then that the seeds he tried to destroy would one day split empires
01:24and reshape the world. Those early believers called themselves Nazratim, Nazarenes, because
01:32Yeshua was from Nazareth, the small Galilean town that no prophet had ever honoured by name
01:38until that moment. To them the prophecies were alive.
01:43He shall be called a Nazrati, Matthew would write, fulfilling what had long been murmured
01:49through the scrolls of old. The Nazratim, Nazarenes saw themselves not as rebels against Judaism,
01:56but as its truest sons and daughters. They kept the Torah, celebrated Shabbath, observed the Moedim,
02:02the appointed feasts, and spoke the words of the Shema every morning and night. Yet even among
02:08these early followers, divisions began to grow like cracks in a pot left too long in the sun.
02:15Some groups clung fiercely to the law of Moshe, insisting that every convert must be circumcised
02:21and bound to every mitzvah. They became known as the Ebionim, the poor ones. They believed Yeshua was a
02:29human prophet chosen by God, not divine. They rejected Shaul, accusing him of betrayal and
02:36compromise, of watering down the covenant for the sake of Gentile acceptance. Shaul, in turn,
02:42warned against them in his letters to the Galatians, lamenting the circumcision faction that tried to
02:48chain new believers to the old yoke. In contrast stood those who began to open their doors to Gentiles,
02:55who gathered not in the synagogues, but in homes, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Egyptians drawn by the
03:03message of the risen Messiah. These gatherings became known as the Ecclesia, the Assemblies.
03:10They were the assimilationists, willing to shed the distinctly Jewish garments of the faith to make
03:16room for the nations. From Yerushalayim, their teachings spread across Asia Minor,
03:21to Ephesus, Corinth, and Antioch. In time, these assemblies began to speak less of Torah and more
03:28of grace, less of the festivals and more of the cross. The Nazaratim, Nazarenes, watched this shift
03:36with sorrow. To them, faith without Torah was faith without roots, a tree severed from its soil.
03:44They kept lighting candles every Erev Shabbath, kept breaking bread with blessings in Hebrew,
03:50kept teaching their children to remember Pesach and Sukkot, Yom Kippur and Shavuot. They prayed facing
03:58Jerusalem. To them, Yeshua had not abolished the covenant. He had fulfilled it. He had walked the
04:05path of Moshe and the prophets, restoring the law to its original light. But time, as always,
04:12brings empires into the story. When Rome's iron shadow fell upon Judea, when the temple was burned
04:20and the sacred stone scattered, the followers of the way fled eastward, some to Pella beyond the
04:27Jordan, some into Syria, some as far as Babylon. Their gatherings became hidden, their prayers whispered
04:34in fear of both Roman swords and rabbinic condemnation. In the final years before the fall
04:40of Jerusalem, tension hung heavy over Judea. The revolt against Rome had turned the holy city into
04:47a battlefield, and factions within the walls fought one another as fiercely as they fought the legions
04:53outside. Amid this chaos, the followers of Yeshua of Nazareth, known as believers of the way,
05:01remembered his words recorded in the Besorah. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,
05:07then know that her desolation is near. Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Pray that
05:14your flight be not on the Sabbath or on a holy day. To them, these were not poetic warnings,
05:20but clear instruction. According to the historian Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History,
05:28Book 3, 5. The people of the church in Jerusalem were commanded by an oracle given by revelation to men
05:36of approved piety there before the war, to leave the city and dwell in a certain town of Perea called
05:42Pella. His account, written in the early fourth century, draws on earlier sources from the second
05:48century. Epiphanius of Salamis, writing a generation later, confirms this tradition in his Panarion,
05:5629.7. The believers departed from Jerusalem and went to Pella because they had been warned by Christ.
06:05Both historians, writing independently, preserve the memory of the exodus of the Nazratim,
06:11Jewish followers of Yeshua, across the Jordan before Titus' siege began in 70 CE. The flight likely
06:20occurred during one of the pilgrimage seasons, perhaps Pessah or Sukkot, when the roads were crowded
06:26and the Roman patrols distracted. Some traditions suggest it was on the eve of a Sabbath, lending
06:33weight to Yeshua's own words about praying that their escape would not fall upon the holy day.
06:39They travelled eastward down the Jericho road, crossing the Jordan River into the region of Perea.
06:44The town of Pella, lying in the Decapolis, became their refuge. Archaeological evidence shows a
06:51first-century Jewish population there, and Eusebius later notes that their whole body removed to Pella
06:58and dwelt there. While the Messianic believers fled east, many other Jews sought safety in Galilee,
07:06particularly in Tiberias and Sepphoris, which remained comparatively untouched by the revolt.
07:11After Jerusalem's destruction and the burning of the temple, Jewish life had to reorganize itself.
07:19The Sanhedrin could no longer meet in the capital. The priesthood had lost its place of service.
07:26Out of this vacuum arose Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, a Pharisaic sage who, according to the Talmudic
07:33tractate Gittin 56b, was smuggled out of the besieged city in a coffin and granted audience with the
07:41Roman general Vespasian. When Vespasian became emperor, he allowed Ben Zakkai to establish a new
07:48centre of learning in Yavne, Jamnia. At Yavne, the foundations of post-temple Judaism were laid.
07:56Prayer replaced sacrifice, study replaced pilgrimage, and the canon of Scripture began to take shape.
08:03Within those early gatherings, a diversity of Jewish expressions still existed.
08:08The believers of the way, those same refugees from Jerusalem who had fled to Pella, were known to
08:15the sages. While many rabbis viewed them with suspicion, some regarded them as one of several
08:22sects within Israel rather than as outsiders. Eusebius hints at this coexistence when he refers to
08:29the faithful from the circumcision, who continued to observe the customs of their fathers while
08:35believing in Christ. Tradition holds that Rabbi Ben Zakkai and later Rabbi Akiva were aware of these
08:43Messianic Jews. Akiva himself, living a generation later, would become a key figure in the Bar Kokhba
08:50revolt, 132-135 CE. Early Messianic writings suggest that some of his contemporaries still recognized the
09:00followers of Yahshua as Jews, even if they were a controversial sect. In the period between Yavne
09:07and the Bar Kokhba rebellion, the Nazratim thus existed in a liminal space, part of Israel's internal
09:13diversity, tolerated if not embraced. Over time, however, as rabbinic Judaism solidified its authority
09:21and Christianity in the Gentile world grew apart from Jewish life, this fragile coexistence faded.
09:29By the second century, official rabbinic rulings distanced themselves from the believers,
09:35and the emerging church councils did likewise. Yet, for a brief and critical period after the
09:41temple's fall, the believers of the way stood as one among the streams of Judaism, heirs to the same
09:48covenant, living witnesses that faith in Yeshua and loyalty to Torah could coexist. The flight to
09:55Pella thus became more than a physical escape. It marked the beginning of a theological and cultural
10:01journey. The Messianic Jews who crossed the Jordan carried with them the memory of the temple,
10:07the words of the prophets, and the teachings of the Messiah. From their refuge they maintained contact
10:14with Jewish life in Galilee and Tiberias, where other refugees rebuilt their faith around study and
10:20community. For decades afterward, the Pella believers sent emissaries back to Judea and Syria, keeping alive a
10:28network of assemblies that honored both the covenant of Israel and the message of Yeshua.
10:34Historians such as Eusebius, Epiphanius, and later Jerome, viewed this episode as proof of divine
10:41foresight. The Natsratim, guided by revelation, survived when Jerusalem fell. To the rabbis of Yavne,
10:50it demonstrated another lesson, that Torah and peoplehood could endure without the temple.
10:57Two communities, sharing origin and scripture, walked parallel paths on opposite sides of the Jordan.
11:04For a time their destinies remained intertwined before history drove them apart.
11:08Yet the record preserved by these historians and sages confirms that after the fire of 70 CE the believers
11:17of the way did not vanish. They regrouped, rebuilt, and remained within the Jewish world,
11:24acknowledged, if uneasily, by the councils at Yavne and later at Tiberias. Their faith, born in the courts of the
11:32temple and tested in exile, endured against all odds, leaving traces that would echo in later centuries
11:39when new generations rediscovered the ancient way of the Natsratim. And still they endured,
11:47against all odds, through persecution, exile, and erasure. It was centuries later that Eusebius,
11:55the historian of the early faith, would record their existence. He wrote of the Natsratim,
12:03Nazarenes who remained in the hills of the Levant, describing them as a remnant, a stubborn branch
12:09that refused to die even when the tree around it had been grafted into foreign soil. In his chronicles,
12:16they appear not as conquerors, but as survivors, keepers of an ancient light, faithful to the Torah
12:24and the testimony of Yeshua when the rest of the world had turned toward Rome. Meanwhile,
12:31in the halls of power, something new was being forged. The ecclesia, spreading through the Gentile
12:37world, had begun to take on Roman color and form. Bishops arose, councils met, and doctrines hardened
12:45into creeds. When Emperor Theodosius issued the Order of Thessalonica, declaring Catholic
12:51Christianity the state religion, the transformation was complete. The way of Yeshua. The Natsrati was
12:59no longer a sect of Judaism. It was now the faith of the empire. The ancient words of Torah were
13:06replaced with Latin liturgy. The Shabbath candles gave way to Sunday masses. The feasts of Adonai were
13:13exchanged for the festivals of Rome. And yet, not all bent the knee to this new order. In the hills of
13:21the Galilee, in the markets of Antioch, and deep within the deserts of the Levant, small groups of
13:27Natsratim, Nazarenes still met by moonlight. They whispered the old blessings in Aramaic and Hebrew.
13:36They taught their children to remember Yeshua as the Mashiach who honored the Torah,
13:40not as a God who replaced it. Their scrolls were few, their teachers often hunted, but their memory
13:48endured like embers beneath the ashes of empire. Centuries passed, and the empire that had declared
13:55Christianity its crown cracked and fell. New kingdoms rose, each claiming the name of Christ,
14:03yet divided by doctrine and philosophy. Some argued over the nature of divinity, others over sacraments,
14:10others still over the authority of popes or scriptures. Protestant, orthodox, catholic,
14:16all tracing roots to the same soil, yet each grafted by human hands. Wars were fought not for Yeshua's
14:23message, but for interpretations of it. Still among these countless divisions, the quiet flame of the
14:30messianic way remained. They were never many, but always present. Those who sought to walk as Yeshua
14:37walked, not merely to believe in His name. They lit candles at sunset on Shabbath, broke bread and
14:44blessed wine with ancient words, and watched the new moon to count the feasts. They called their
14:50gatherings Kehila, assembly, just as their ancestors had done in the first century. Modern Christian
14:58organizations stand divided, denominations splintered by theology, politics, and pride. Some exalt grace to the
15:07exclusion of law, others ritual to the exclusion of spirit. Yet the messianics, still few, still
15:13steadfast, keep to the path of the way. To them it was never about religion but covenant, never about
15:21empire but obedience. When they gather today, perhaps in a small room above a bakery in Jerusalem,
15:28Jerusalem, or a rented hall in New York, or beneath the open sky of the Negev. They still recite the
15:35Shema. Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad. They remember the first believers who risked their
15:44lives to follow Yeshua of Nazareth. They read from the Torah and from the Besorah, the Good News, not as two
15:52separate scrolls but as one continuous story of promise and fulfillment. They remember Sha'ol's
15:58transformation on the road to Damasek, the blinding light, the voice calling his name, and they remember
16:06that he too became a man of the way. They recall Kepha and Yaakov, Miriam of Magdala, and the thousands who
16:14once filled the courtyards of Yerushalayim singing psalms of redemption. To them, the story never
16:22ended. It only scattered like seed across centuries. Even now, when the world speaks of Christianity as
16:29a thousand branches of one tree, the messianic believers whisper that the root still remembers its
16:36name. The Nazarethim. Nazarenes never vanished. They simply remained small, choosing faithfulness
16:44over fame. The world changed around them, emperors, councils, cathedrals, but their table remained
16:51the same. A loaf of bread, a cup of wine, a candle's flicker marking the sacred rhythm of the Creator's
16:58time. In that simple light lies the memory of the first century, the way that was before Christianity,
17:06before Theodosius, before Rome laid its seal on faith. It is a way of walking rather than naming,
17:14of living rather than arguing. It is the path of those who still believe that Yeshua of Nazareth was
17:22the Mashiach, that Torah remains holy, and that the covenant between God and His people was never
17:28replaced, only renewed. So the story continues, not in the monuments of stone, but in the quiet houses of
17:37prayer where Hebrew songs still rise. The world may call them by many names, Jews, Christians, sectarians,
17:44but they call themselves what they always were, believers of the way, the remnant that survived
17:51against all odds, just as Eusebius once wrote, the Nazarethim who kept the ancient faith alive.
17:59In the earliest decades of the first century, the followers of Yeshua of Nazareth, those described
18:06in the New Testament simply as those belonging to the way, Acts 9.1-2, formed a movement entirely
18:14within the framework of Second Temple Judaism. They were known especially in the early decades as the
18:20Nazarenes, Nazratim, and also by the broader Hellenistic Jewish world as a sect of the Nazratim,
18:27Acts 24.5. They did not yet call themselves Christians, nor were they organized as a separate
18:35religion apart from Judaism. Rather, they gathered in synagogues, home assemblies, and upper rooms.
18:42They observed Shabbat and the appointed festivals. They taught that Yeshua was the promised Messiah who
18:48had fulfilled the scriptures and would one day restore Israel. The historian Eusebius of Caesarea,
18:54writing in his Ecclesiastical History, records that, following the destruction of Jerusalem,
19:00a remnant of Jewish Christians continued to adhere to the Mosaic law while professing faith in Jesus as
19:07Messiah and divine son, Ecclesiastes. History, chapter 113. In the section entitled,
19:15Nazarenes and Ebionites, he records that the Nazarenes were conservative and non-heretical,
19:21continuing both the law of Moses and the messianic faith, see chapter 113. Thus, Eusebius describes the
19:30Nazratim as a surviving remnant of the original Jerusalem community, even while the surrounding
19:36structure of Christianity took on new form. From the start, the Nazratim lived against all odds,
19:43Roman occupation, Jewish revolt, temple destruction in 70 CE, and subsequent dispersions meant that the
19:52Jewish Messiah followers were a minority within a minority. Many of the surviving believers from
19:59Jerusalem are said to have fled to Pella in Perea, according to Epiphanius and supported by Eusebius'
20:05account. As the city fell, their gatherings maintained Sabbath observance, new moon sanctification,
20:13the feasts of the Lord. In Coela, Syria, Decapolis and Bacinitis, the Nazarenes,
20:19still existed in the late 4th century, according to Epiphanius. They were regarded by some Orthodox
20:26Christians as neither fully Gentile church nor purely Jewish synagogue. Yet they held on. In the 3rd and 4th
20:34centuries, as the Roman Empire increasingly recognized Christianity as a distinct religion,
20:41the Nazratim found themselves caught between worlds. Councils, creeds, synods were formed
20:48that defined Orthodoxy in terms of the Bishop of Rome, theologies of Trinity and Christ's nature,
20:54liturgical calendars, Sunday worship. Meanwhile, the Nazratim continued to meet in local assemblies,
21:02break bread in Hebrew and Aramaic, keep Shabbat on the seventh day, and observe the festivals under
21:08Jewish names. Their numbers were few. Scholars often termed them a remnant precisely because
21:14they maintained the original pattern of the way amidst the vast transformation of the faith.
21:20By the Middle Ages, the Nazratim were largely hidden. They survived in small communities dispersed
21:26across the Levant, Mesopotamia, and beyond. Persecution came from various sides, from dominant
21:32Christian bodies who viewed Sabbath-keeping, Hebrew-speaking believers as aberrant, from Islamic
21:38rulers whose tolerance varied, from the pressure of mainstream rabbinic Judaism, which saw adherence
21:46to a Messiah faith, even if Jewishly patterned, as at best heterodox, at worst apostasy.
21:52The survival of the remnant was therefore marked by quiet perseverance in homes, caves, remote
21:58hamlets, against all odds. They preserved Torah observance and the remembrance of Yeshua as the
22:05Messiah of Israel. With the Reformation and the rise of modern European Protestantism,
22:11a new possibility opened for Jewish believers in Yeshua. Yet rather than those communities directly
22:18tracing their roots to the ancient Nazratim, most were individual converts or missionary efforts.
22:25In Eastern Europe in the 19th century, figures such as Ignaz Lichtenstein, also called Isaac
22:31Lichtenstein, emerged. Lichtenstein, formerly a rabbi in Hungary, began to believe that Yeshua was the
22:38Jewish Messiah, taught elements of the New Testament while retaining his Jewish identity,
22:44and refused baptism. His case is described in scholarship as part of the conversation about
22:50Hebrew Christians and the struggle for legitimacy within both Jewish and Christian worlds.
22:57See Kesha journal article. Another early leader, Joseph Rabinowitz, 1837-1899, of Kishinev,
23:06founded a Hebrew Christian congregation called Bnei Yisrael Biberit Chadasha in 1884 and was baptized in
23:15Berlin in 1885 while nevertheless defending the Jewish character of his services. These men exemplified a
23:23movement toward the Jewish Messiah faith, but still their work remained marginal, even within the broader
23:30Christian world. The mid-20th century marked a defining milestone. In the 1960s, during an era of cultural
23:38upheaval, the movement that would become modern Messianic Judaism experienced a revival. Martin
23:45Hernoff and his wife Johanna C. Hernoff pioneered this renewal. They recognized that Jewish believers in
23:52Yeshua needed their own identity, rooted in Jewish life and heritage, rather than merely being absorbed into
23:59Gentile church structures. According to one account, in the late 60s and early 70s, they caught the
24:06Messianic vision, founded one of the first Messianic congregations and became a great influence in this
24:12modern Messianic movement. Their home congregation in Cincinnati became a nucleus for many Jewish young
24:19people drawn to Yeshua, bridging the gap between the ancient Nazratim remnant and the emerging global movement.
24:26From this point, the movement grew into a major force. What began in the first century as a small
24:34Jewish assembly faithfully following Yeshua, and described by Eusebius as a remnant persevering
24:40against all odds, has now taken shape in the modern era as a worldwide Messianic Jewish community.
24:48These congregations often retain Jewish liturgy and tradition, lighting Shabbat candles, reading
24:54Torah and the New Covenant, Besorah in Hebrew or bilingual formats, celebrating Pesach, Shavuot,
25:02Sukkot, Yom Kippur, and yet profess Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel and the hope of the nations.
25:09They view themselves not as an offshoot of Gentile Christianity, but as a continuation of the first
25:16century way. This chain of continuity, from Jerusalem through the Nazarenes, surviving through exile,
25:24hidden in the margins, emerging again in modern times, suggests that the Nazaratim were more than
25:30just a footnote. They were the root from which the modern Messianic movement grew. The ancient
25:37historian's reference to a remnant was not simply metaphorical but descriptive of a people who refused
25:43assimilation, refused erasure, refused to surrender caste, heritage, or identity. They refused, against
25:51all odds, to cease being the believers of the way. In the present day, the Messianic movement represents
25:58a promise fulfilled and a story resumed. With thousands of congregations in dozens of countries,
26:04with leaders who take seriously Jewish identity, Torah observance, and the Messiahship of Yeshua,
26:11the community sees itself as heir to that first-century assembly. The message remains the same.
26:19To proclaim the resurrection of Yeshua of Nazareth, to walk in the commandments, to assemble in community,
26:26to be a witness from the heart of Israel to the ends of the earth. And so what was once small,
26:32persecuted and hidden has become visible, not in triumph of empire or creed, but in the quiet
26:39faithfulness of a people who survived centuries of adversity. The Nazareth, Nazarene's remnant lives on,
26:47now in millions, still lighting Shabbat candles at sunset, still breaking bread and blessing wine in
26:54Hebrew, still saying the Shema, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad. This movement stands against all odds,
27:04because it carries both the heritage of Israel and the revelation of the Messiah, united as one new
27:10Messianic community. Amen.
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