New Testament scholars have long held that the Jerusalem community headed by Ya’akov (James) was (1) primarily composed of Jewish believers in Yeshua who (2) remained within the symbolic universe of Second Temple Judaism, and (3) strictly lived according to the Torah, with some members observing Pharisaic halakhah (Acts 15:4–5; 21:20–21). However, going back as far as Jerome, exegetes and ecclesial leaders have evaluated the Jerusalem congregation negatively because it retained its social identity within Judaism. As Craig Hill puts it:

In the first instance, the Jerusalem church is regarded as having been too Christian to be Jewish; in the second, it is thought too Jewish to be Christian.  The assumption in either case is that one could have been truly Christian only to the extent that one was not authentically Jewish. On a popular level, it is the first approach that dominates. Christians such as James and Peter, both leaders of the Jerusalem church, are thought to have thrown off the shackles of their Jewish past. It is not difficult to see this view as an uncritical retrojection of modern Gentile Christianity onto the primitive church. Issues more characteristic of Judaism, such as the restoration of Israel (a concern repeatedly mentioned in the description of the Jerusalem church in Acts 1-3), are therefore ignored. The opposite approach, more common in scholarly circles, is to regard figures such as Peter and, especially, James as too Jewish, and therefore sub- or pre- Christian. Christianity instead is the product of the Hellenistic church (ironically, those who did not have the benefit—or, apparently, the distraction—of having known Jesus), especially the apostle Paul. Hence, “Jewish Christianity” becomes secondary, problematic, and largely dismissible—except, that is, as a foil, the source of whatever one finds distasteful in early Christianity.¹