The true branch...

[visionary]

Another branch of the Messianic Jewish faith flourished in South-West India for about 1400 years, in the Malayali-speaking state of Kerala.

Jews and Hindus already living in the area were evangelized by St. Thomas, and their customs, worship, and identity was uniquely Judeo-Christian.

NSC NETWORK – Lifestyle of Kerala Syrian Christians

NSC NETWORK – Some of the traditions and rituals among the Syrian Christians of Kerala

These Christians called themselves "Nasrani" or roughly "Nazarenes", worshipped in Aramaic, celebrated the Eastern Syriac liturgy on Saturday, kept kosher, and had Jewish names like Yakob, Simon, Thoma, Yohanan, etc.

Later contact with Portuguese missionaries greatly disrupted their traditions and practices, as many were converted into the Catholic Church, while others sought help from and joined the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Today, the St. Thomas Christians are Assyrian Chruch of the East, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant.

 

[visionary]

It is clear that the Culdees were much closer to the Jewish Christianity than the Catholic Church, and that they preserved many unusual customs. For example, clearly they were Sabbath-observers, abstaining from work on the Seventh Day of the week. And here are some other such traditions they seemed to follow like abstaining from the unclean meats, and and circumcision..

I will see if I can find more about this group.. as it lends itself to the fact that the "gospel" from the disciples did reach the "known world" of their time. Most of their history I have found to be re-written to obliterate the Judaism/Christian foundation at its earliest roots and the taking over with catholic control in its later years.. Is this fact or fiction? there seems to be some wisp of legend left to indicate Judaism observances with a Yeshua faith.

 

[visionary]

Irenaeus, who followed the Sunday custom, also stated, however, that bishop Polycarp (a disciple of John the Apostle) of Smyrna (c.69-c.155) in Asia Minor, one of the Seven churches of Asia, was Quartodeciman, celebrating on Nisan 14. Shortly after Anicetus became bishop of Rome in about 155, Polycarp had visited Rome, and among the topics discussed was this divergence of custom. But, Irenaeus noted,

Anicetus could not persuade Polycarp to forgo the [Quartodeciman] observance inasmuch as these things had been always observed by John the disciple of the Lord, and by other apostles with whom he had been conversant; nor did Polycarp persuade Anicetus to keep it: Anicetus said that he must hold to the way of the elders before him.
Quartodecimanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.keithhunt.com/Quarto.html
http://www.yahweh.org/publications/fsdy/fs17Chap.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Pascha-Quartodecimans-22Popular-Patristics-22-Patristics/dp/0881412171

This book indicates their history of sabbath observance...
http://books.google.com/books?id=3q...CcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=culdees sabbath&f=false

 

[visionary]

An Irish presbyter, Columba, feeling himself stirred with missionary zeal, and doubtless knowing the wretched condition of the savage Scots and Picts, in the year 565 took with him twelve other missionaries and passed over to Scotland! (Clintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, Vol. II, page 601.)

They were called Culdees, and settled and made their headquarters on the little isle of Iona. They had, for the most part, a simple and primitive form of Christianity; very different from the pomp of Romanism. Two eminent Catholic authors speak of Columba as follows:

Having continued his labors in Scotland thirty-four years, he clearly and openly foretold his death, and on Saturday, the ninth of June, said to his disciple Diermit, This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me. For it will put an end to my labors.(Butler's Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints, art. St. Columba, A.D. 597.)

Today is Saturday, the day which the Holy Scriptures call the Sabbath, or rest. And it will truly be my day of rest, for it shall be the last of my laborious life. (The Monks of the West, Vol. II, page 104.)

http://www.giveshare.org/HolyDay/changeofsabbath/change-of-sabbath-17.html

 

[visionary]

http://www.yahweh.org/publications/fsdy/fs32AppG.pdf

Because the Smyrnaean letter known as the Martyrdom of Polycarp states that Polycarp was taken on the day of the Sabbath and killed on the Great Sabbath, some believe that this is evidence that the Smyrnaeans under Polycarp observed the seventh day Sabbath.

This book may shed some light ..

Polycarp Summary | BookRags.com

The Smyrnaeans Christians kept the Sabbath while Rome was adding Sunday...

http://smyrnaeanchurch.org/AboutUs/History.dsp

 

[visionary]

Here is a collection of quotes..

http://jerusalemcouncil.org/articles/reference/history-torah-observant-believers/

 

[visionary]

Jewish believers have been called by many names, among them Notzrim (Nazarenes), Ebionim (Ebionites meaning “poor of this world, but rich in faith”), maaminim (believers), minim (heretics), anusim (forced converts), meshumadim (apostates), Hebrew Christians, Jewish Christians. In the last thirty years, the term of choice that has gained ascendancy both in the Diaspora and in Israel is Meshichim Yehudim (Messianic Jews) which both retains the identity of Yeshua as Messiah and the Jewish identity. Thus, the faith of this regrafted branch is called Messianic Judaism, vying for recognition as a legitimate faith for the Jewish Nation, not for a place among the other brands of Judaism.

Israel In Prophecy » KeyIssues/Rabbinic Judaism vs. Christianity in the 1st Century?

 

[visionary]

There is a book written on this very subject. Amazon.com: Nazarene Jewish Christianity (9789652237989): Ray Pritz: Books

 

[visionary]

ABU'L FARAJ, Gregory , also called BAR-HEBRAEUS(1226-1286) born in Melitena, son of the Aaron the Jewish physician who cured Saurnavinus, a Tartar general from a disease. Master of Greek, Syriac and Arabic, student of philosophy, theology and medicine, he became an Anchorite in Antioch and ordained Bishop of Gubos at the age of twenty by Mar Ignatius, Patriarch of Saba, then again Maphrian of the Eastern Church at forty.

From then on, he was known as Bar-Hebraeus. As bishop of the West Syrian Jacobite church, he was renowned for his justice, integrity, great learning and cosmopolian leadership. His writings span a wide sphere including commentaries on Scripture, moral treatises (Ethikon), on commerce, science, astronomy, medicine, logic, philosophy, history, poetry, humorous fables and devotions. While clear and resolute on matters of church doctrine, he shunned ecclesiastical disputes as an abomination. "During his forty years' episcopate he was never known to have received a farthing from anyone; and like Paul, he sought to be chargeable to no man and therefore supported himself by his own scholastic ability, giving his labors freely to the cause he loved.

Churches were erected wherever he went. Even the Mohammedan body who would be naturally opposed to his belief held him in great respect. At his death, none were found in the Jacobite church to equal his spiritual stature. He was appropriately named Abu'l Faraj, meaning "father of comfort."

For those not familiar to the Jacobite church..Thomas the Apostle is credited by tradition for founding it in India.

 

[visionary]

"It seems to have been customary in the Celtic churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labor. They obeyed the fourth commandment literally upon the seventh day of the week." (James C. Moffatt, D. D.,The Church in Scotland, Philadelphia: 1882, p.140)

 

[visionary]

"In this latter instance they seemed to have followed a custom of which we find traces in the early monastic church of Ireland by which they held Saturday to be the Sabbath on which they rested from all their labours." (W.T. Skene, Adamnan Life of St. Columba, 1874, p.96)

 

[psalms 91]

Yup and hasnt changed

 

[visionary]

As noted above, the Christianity which first reached France and Britian was of the school of the apostle John, who ruled the churches in Asia Minor. Colonists from Asia Minor laid the foundations of the pre-Patrick church. They brought with them the doctrine which they received of John, Paul, Philip, and the other apostles of the Lord, which included not only the observance of the seventh day Sabbath, but also the commemoration of Christ's death upon the 14th of Abib--Passover!

"It is probable that the primitive Christians kept the Pasch on the 14th of Nisan as determined by the Jewish authorities, and regarded it as the anniversary of the crucifixion. ...The churches of the Roman province of Asia...followed the older custom, keeping the Pasch on the 14th of Nisan, whatever the day of the week." (James F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, Vol.1, pp.211, 212; Columbia University Press, New York, 1929)

 

[visionary]

"...they ignorantly refuse to observe our Easter [Pascha] on which Christ was sacrificed, arguing that it should be observed with the Hebrew Passover on the fourteenth of the moon." (Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II, 19 wherein Bede quoted "Pope" John's words concerning the Celtic brethren)

 

[visionary]

Other doctrines that Patrick, Columba, and the Celtic assemblies held included the observation of the other Festivals of the Eternal (Lev.23), the belief in the mortality of man and the hope of the resurrection (vs. immortality of the soul and going to heaven, hell, and/or purgatory); the distinction between clean and unclean animals; "improvised" prayers (from the heart, rather than merely from the lip with repetitions); that Christ Jesus is our only Mediator--as opposed to various "saints," Mary, angels, etc.; and that redemption and atonement comes through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ alone--separate from works and heeding commandments/doctrines of men (see The Celtic Church in Britian by Leslie Hardinge, as well as Truth Triumphant by B.G. Wilkinson, for documentation).

 

[visionary]

"The Roman Catholics have proudly and exclusively claimed St. Patrick, and most Protestants have ignorantly or indifferently allowed their claim...But he was no Romanist. His life and evangelical Church of the 5th century ought to be better known." (McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. VII, p.776; article: Patrick, St.)

"Saint Patrick" and the Early Celtic Church: Sunday-Keeping Catholics or Sabbath-observant Christians?

 

[visionary]

A shining source of inspiration was Joseph Rabinowitz's establishment of a Messianic synagogue in Kishinev, Russia, in 1884 called Beney Israel, Beney Brit Chadashah (Israelites of the New Covenant) . Neither Rabinowitz nor his synagogue was connected to a Christian denomination; the government of Bessarabia legally designated the Messianic Jewish community a distinct Jewish sect. Rabinowitz's synagogue considered circumcision, the Sabbath, and festivals incumbent upon Jews, as section 6 of the community's Twenty-Four Articles of Faith makes clear:

[As] we are the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, who was the father of all those who were circumcised and believed, we are bound to circumcise every male child on the eighth day, as God commanded him . And as we are the descendants of those whom the Lord brought out of the land of Egypt, with a stretched out arm, we are bound to keep the Sabbath, the feast of unleavened bread, and the feast of weeks, according as it is written in the law of Moses.

Kjaer-Hansen, Joseph Rabinowitz and the Messianic Movement, 104

 

[visionary]

Olarius, who wrote a preface to a Hebrew translation of the Augsburg confession prepared by Philipp Gallus in 1888, reports of Paulus, a rabbi in Prague who had been his teacher. The rabbi came to faith after reading the Hebrew translations of the Gospel of Matthew and Paul's epistle to the Romans.

Source:

Bernstein, A. Jewish Witnesses for Christ. O.J.C.I. Palestine House, Bodney Road, London N.E. 1909

 

[visionary]

Christianity which first reached France and Britian was of the school of the apostle John, who ruled the churches in Asia Minor. Colonists from Asia Minor laid the foundations of the pre-Patrick church. They brought with them the doctrine which they received of John, Paul, Philip, and the other apostles of the Lord, which included not only the observance of the seventh day Sabbath, but also the commemoration of Christ's death upon the 14th of Abib--Passover!

"It is probable that the primitive Christians kept the Pasch on the 14th of Nisan as determined by the Jewish authorities, and regarded it as the anniversary of the crucifixion. ...The churches of the Roman province of Asia...followed the older custom, keeping the Pasch on the 14th of Nisan, whatever the day of the week." (James F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, Vol.1, pp.211, 212; Columbia University Press, New York, 1929)

 

[visionary]

Thomas is said to have begun preaching the gospel to the already existing Jewish settlers in the Malabar Coast and other locals. According to the Acts of Thomas, the first converts made by Thomas in India were Malabari Jews, who had settled in Kerala since the time of King Solomon of Israel. David de Beth Hillel, 1832; Lord, James Henry, 1977; Thomas Puthiakunnel 1973; 'Acts of Thomas' Bevan, 1897., Koder S. 1973