Among the first adherents of Skhariya and his teachings were the priests, through whom the heresy spread especially disastrous and terrible. The first of them was the priest Dionysius, then the Novgorod archpriest Alexis and some others. These priests and the clergy and laity seduced by them, as St. Joseph testifies, "committed such iniquities as even the ancient heretics did not commit."

On the surface, the adherents of the heresy remained Orthodox Christians and retained outward piety. Before people who were firm in the faith, they appeared as strict zealots of Orthodoxy, denouncing and cursing false teachings. In secret, they committed their foul deeds. They began by arousing doubt in the faint-hearted and weak-believing in certain passages of Holy Scripture, and above all of the New Testament; they also seduced with the help of the "renounced" they distributed, i.e.

books condemned by the Church – manuals on the secret sciences and distorted copies of the Holy Scriptures; they also used all the arsenal of Jewish blackbooks and sorcery available to them to deceive inexperienced souls. Step by step, the deceived man came to the fullness of heretical teaching. The Judaizers denied the Holy Trinity, blaspheming the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. They rejected the Divinity of the Saviour and His Incarnation, did not accept the saving Passion of Christ, did not believe in His most glorious Resurrection; nor did they recognize the general resurrection of the dead, they denied the Second Glorious Coming of Christ and His Dread Judgment.

They did not recognize the Holy Spirit as a Divine Hypostasis. The heretics rejected the apostolic and patristic writings and all Christian dogmas, taught to observe the law of Moses, to keep the Sabbath and to celebrate the Jewish Passover. They denied church institutions: sacraments, hierarchy, fasts, feasts, temples, icon veneration, all sacred objects, services and rites.

They especially hated and blasphemed monasticism. The Judaizers cursed at the Holy Cross, holy icons and relics, committing outrages against them, unimaginable for a person who grew up in Orthodox Russia. According to the testimony of the "Enlightener", mocking the shrines, they said: "Let us desecrate these icons, as the Jews desecrated Christ." The continuation of this mockery of all that is holy was fornication and debauchery.

The Judaizer priests celebrated the Divine Liturgy after eating and drinking, after fornication, blasphemously cursed the Holy Body and the Precious Blood of Christ, and committed other desecrations, of which, in the words of the Monk Joseph, "it is impossible even to write." The heresy of Judaism was an irreconcilable and at the same time secret denial of the foundations of Christianity. This negation was its meaning and content.

That is why it is easy to find in it not only a clearly readable Jewish basis, but also numerous echoes with the most diverse anti-church and anti-Christian teachings. In the strict sense – and this is especially emphasized by St. Joseph – the "heresy of the Judaizers" was not a heresy, that is, an arbitrary distortion of Christian truth, but an apostasy – a complete negation of Christianity and its complete opposite; The fact that this denial was not declared clearly and openly only added to the danger.

When the Jews, the planters of heresy, became convinced that the cause of the destruction of the Orthodox faith had become firmly established thanks to the zeal of the new converts, they withdrew from the Russian land. Their disciples continued their criminal work. In 1480, Grand Duke Ivan III visited Veliky Novgorod, where he heard about the "piety and wisdom" of the two main heretics, Dionysius and Alexis; as a result, both were taken to the priesthood in the Moscow Kremlin: Alexis was taken as an archpriest in the Assumption Cathedral, and Dionysius as a priest in the Archangel Cathedral.

Thus the heresy penetrated into the heart of Russian Orthodoxy. Hence both priests, who appeared in public as meek, righteous, and temperate, widely spread the pernicious false teaching and acquired zealous like-minded people and accomplices among the closest circle of the Grand Duke. Among them were: the Duma clerk Fyodor Kuritsyn, who was especially close to the Grand Duke, and his brother Wolf, the daughter-in-law of John III, the Moldavian Elena, the archimandrite of the Simonov Monastery Zosima and many others.

Более благоприятных условий для распространения ереси невозможно было и вообразить. Губительное лжеучение, быстро распространяясь, в то же время долго оставалось сокрытым от духовных и мирских властей: ведь тайный характер исповедания, ложные клятвы, запирательство, лицемерие были принципиальными методами еретиков. Божиим Промыслом еретическое нечестие обнаружилось лишь тогда, когда на святительской кафедре Великого Новгорода, ставшего колыбелью ереси, Господь воздвиг великого поборника Православия — преосвященного Геннадия (

поставлен во архиепископы Великого Новгорода 12 декабря 1484 г.). В 1487 г., 17 лет спустя от начала ереси, в Новгороде пьяные еретики, надругавшись над святыми иконами, обнаружили этим перед православными свое нечестие. Архиепископ Геннадий учинил розыск и, уличив нескольких еретиков, донес о них и о новой ереси великому князю; вскоре еретики бежали в Москву, где у них имелись могущественные покровители.

Благодаря стараниям святителя Геннадия беглецы все же были найдены и подвергнуты наказанию — биты кнутом. Святитель Геннадий ревностно занялся розысками еретиков и искоренением ереси. Новонайденных жидовствующих, если они приносили покаяние, он подвергал епитимьи, упорствующих же отсылал для наказания к гражданским властям. В борьбе с ересью святитель Геннадий искал совета ученых старцев — преподобного Нила Сорского († 1508, память 7 апреля) и Паисия Ярославова (позже, в 1490 г., они участвовали в Соборе на еретиков)

, разыскивал по монастырям книги, нужные для борьбы с жидовством, распространял в обществе сочинения, защищающие Православную веру и Церковь от нападений еретиков (Многие документы, относящиеся к ереси жидовствующих, в том числе послания святителя Геннадия, опубликованы в книге: Н. А. Казакова, Я. С. Лурье. Антифеодальные еретические движения на Руси XIV — начала XVI века. М.-Л., 1955.).

В Новгороде еретики присмирели; однако просьбы об окончательном осуждении жидовствующих, посылаемые святителем в Москву, не находили отклика: еретики по-прежнему находили там покровительство. В 1490 г., после смерти митрополита Геронтия († 1489 г.), на первосвятительскую кафедру был поставлен симоновский архимандрит Зосима, тайный последователь жидовствующих.