📜 **The Jerusalem Assembly — The Original Hebrew Gathering of The Way**
**🔹 Founded:** Around 30–33 AD, immediately after the events surrounding Yeshua's death and resurrection.
**🔹 Location:** Jerusalem
**🔹 Language:** Hebrew and Aramaic
**🔹 Leadership:** Ya’aqov (James), the brother of Yeshua
**🔹 Name of the group:** *HaDerekh* (הדרך) — “The Way”
**🔹 Core Belief:** Torah obedience, repentance, love of Yhwh, and walking as Yeshua walked — no blood sacrifice for sin, no worship of Yeshua as a god.
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### 🕊️ **What They Believed**
The original followers of Yeshua did **not** create a new religion. They:
* Kept **Shabbat** (7th-day Sabbath)
* Followed the **Torah** and the Prophets
* Rejected **animal sacrifice** as the goal (Micah 6:6–8, Hosea 6:6)
* Believed Yeshua was a **prophet**, servant of Yhwh — not Yhwh himself
* Understood that **each person is judged for their own sin** (Ezekiel 18)
* Saw the **New Covenant** (Jeremiah 31:31–34) as writing Torah on hearts — **not abolishing it**
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### 📚 **Their Scriptures**
Used only the **Hebrew Tanakh**, preserved in:
* Paleo-Hebrew scrolls
* Aramaic writings from exile (Daniel, Ezra)
* Early Square Script copies with no vowels
❌ No Greek Septuagint
❌ No Paul
❌ No Trinity doctrine
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### ⚔️ **Conflict With Rome and the Temple**
* Rejected Roman authority over worship
* Exposed corruption of the Temple leadership
* Saw the **destruction of the Temple (70 AD)** as judgment for disobedience (Jeremiah 7)
* Fled to **Pella** before the Roman siege (Eusebius, *Church History* 3.5.3)
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### 🚫 **Why They Were Hated**
They would not:
* Join the Greek-Roman assemblies
* Accept Paul’s gospel of “grace without Torah”
* Worship on **Sunday** or recognize the **Roman Jesus** as God
* Participate in animal sacrifices, even at the Temple
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### 🔥 **Suppression and Erasure**
* By **135 AD**, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jews were banned from Jerusalem
* Roman Christianity (under Constantine by 325 AD) declared this original group heretical
* Their Hebrew gospels and writings were **burned or rewritten in Greek**
* Only fragments survived — quoted by church fathers like **Origen**, **Jerome**, and **Epiphanius**
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### 📖 Surviving Names and Records
* Known as **Ebionites** by hostile Greek writers (meaning “the poor”)
* Their Gospel was called **“The Gospel of the Hebrews”** or **“Gospel of the Nazarenes”**
* They called themselves simply **Followers of The Way** — not “Christians”
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📌 **Conclusion:**
The Jerusalem Assembly was **the original root** — Torah-based, Yhwh-centered, Hebrew-speaking followers who walked in righteousness. What followed — Roman Christianity — was a **replacement**, built on **Greek theology, pagan customs, and Paul’s gospel**.