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Bible Dictionaries
Judaizers
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
or
(Greek: Ioudaizo, adopt Jewish customs)
A party of Jewish Christians in the early Church who advocated the retention of certain Jewish ordinances in the Christian law. The main principles on which they insisted were circumcision, abstinence from unclean food, and the observance of certain Jewish festivals. In the preamble to the meeting of the Apostles and priests at Jerusalem to consider the matter, the Pharisees "that believed" expressed the formula of the Judaizers: "They must be circumcised and be commanded to observe the law of Moses" (Acts 15). Some of the Judaizers were men of evil principles infected with the foul Gnostic heresies, but many of them were of good faith, who labored under the difficulty of divesting their minds of traditionalism. Saint Peter himself in his great vision at Jaffa recoiled at first from the idea of eating the flesh of animals which were declared unclean by the Mosaic Code. The Judaeo-Christians who came to Antioch of Syria and declared: "except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved," persuaded Saint Peter to separate himself from the Ethnico-Christians (Acts 15; Galatians 2).
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Entry for 'Judaizers'. 1910 New Catholic Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ncd/j/judaizers.html. 1910.
