1504: Ivan Volk Kuritsyn, Ivan Maksimov and Dmitry Konoplev, Judaizers

ExecutedToday.com ^ | December 27, 2013 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1504, three Russians were executed for Judaizing.

These were the casualties that marked the end of the Zhidovstvuyushchiye, a little-known late 15th century circle of “Judaizers” or “Jewish-thinking people.” We know them mostly through their enemies so the precise nature of their beliefs is hard to pin down, but they don’t look like actual converts. “There was nothing Jewish about them,” Philip Longworth contends. “‘Judaizer’ was simply a term of ideological abuse, like ‘Trotskyist’ in the 1930s.”

According to this thesis by Cambridge Slavonic lecturer Jana Howlett, the term itself dates to a Byzantine (meaning not labyrinthine, but historically related to Byzantium) typology of heresies and didn’t necessarily have any direct reference to practicing Judaism even within its own context. It just meant that they’d strayed from orthodoxy into heresy.

Be that as it may, they’re recorded to history as “the Judaizers”. Exactly what these so-called Judaizers thought and where to situate them among the various factions and interests within Russian society at the time has long been a matter of dispute among scholars of the period. (Again, see the Howlett paper for a survey of the historiography — at least, as it stood in the 1970s.)

of the historiography — at least, as it stood in the 1970s.)

There’s a putative Hebrew association in the form of a scholar named “Skhariya the Jew” whom Mikhail Olelkovich brought to Novgorod. “Skhariya” — or Zacharia ben Aharon ha-Cohen — translated a variety of Hebrew astronomy and philosophy texts into Russian, and seems to have contributed to a burgeoning intellectual current. We might perhaps consider this ferment in the vein of western Europe’s humanism or its abortive pre-Protestant “heretical” religious innovations....

[sauropod]

‘Judiazers’ were converted Jews in the 1st century A.D. that tried to re-inject Christian practices back then with Jewish rituals and sacrifices.

In other words, Christ’s death on the cross was not enough (for them).

[JesusIsLord]

‘Judiazers’ were converted Jews in the 1st century A.D. that tried to re-inject Christian practices back then with Jewish rituals and sacrifices.

My understanding is the Russian government's application of the term 'Judaizer' for the case in question is not the same as Paul's use of the term in the 1st century.

From Wiki - "According to most accounts though, the Belief of Skhariya renounced the Holy Trinity and the divine status of Jesus, monasticism, ecclesiastic hierarchy, ceremonies, and immortality of soul. Some adherents also professed iconoclasm. The adherents also promoted the idea of "self-authority", or the self-determination of each individual in matters of faith and salvation. Priests Denis and Aleksei were considered ideologists of this heretical movement."