Time has a story on ten ideas that are changing the world. Coming in at number ten is “Re-Judaizing Jesus.” Writer David Van Biema begins with describing a spat between Ben Worthington and Rob Bell over how to correctly interpret Jesus’ Jewish identity. The main point, however, is not that they disagree about understanding Jesus’ Jewishness, but that they consider Jesus’ Jewishness to be vitally important to understanding who he is as portrayed in the Gospels. We Gentile Christians are saying to ourselves, “Just about every one of those fellows who wrote all those books in the Bible were of Hebrew background. I bet that’s an important detail.”
For centuries, the discipline of Christian “Hebraics” consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God’s new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that “if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong.”
The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus’ passionate dedication “to Jewish ideas of his day” on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.
(HT: Emergent Village)
From a practical standpoint, how does this shift make a difference in the way folks in your seminary generation understand faith and practice?
Comment by Tom Pratt — March 27, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
Interesting question. I’m hesitant to speak for a generation and I don’t want to take credit for something we picked up from our professors who have worked with understanding Jesus through a Jewish lens well before I got to seminary. I’ll share what I can.
By focusing on Jesus’ Judaism, we saw that the division of Judaism as an orthoprax religion (right actions) and Christianity as an orthodox religion (right thinking) doesn’t make much sense. If Jesus saw himself as the fulfillment of Judaism and a renewal movement within that faith, then it is unlikely that he would have separated practice from belief or emphasized one over the other. Recovering Jesus’ Judaism reminds us that to be orthodox is to practice orthopraxy and to be orthoprax is to adhere to orthodoxy. Focusing on believing over practice has been tempting for American Evangelicals for a while. Anabaptists have maintained the connection perhaps better than most traditions, though it wasn’t because they were so in tune with Jesus’ Judaism. I think we’ve got a lot to learn from our Messianic Jewish sisters and brothers.
Also, remembering Jesus’ Jewish roots better locates him in history. He isn’t a figure devoid of context and to understand him, like understanding Confucius or Cleopatra, requires understanding his setting. Thus the OT becomes that much more relevant because in order to understand Jesus, we must be students of the same texts he studied. The whole OT, with its rich descriptions of practice and worship, opens up. We can no longer focus on just those few inspiring Psalms or the passages in Isaiah we read at Christmas and Easter. There is continuity between the OT and NT that we can see when we realize Jesus’ Jewishness.
Comment by Tyler Watson — March 28, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
I wonder too if a Christian take that fully embraces Jews along with Greeks energizes service among the poor.
And here I mean an acceptance of Jewishness that rejects the kind of support American fundamentalists typically give the current nation of Israel. I’m personally deeply sympathetic to the most recent iteration of Israel, but have no need for motivation from odd apocalyptic/dispensationalist biblical interpretations to take that stance.
If you haven’t read it already, take a look at Krister Stendahl’s “Paul Among Jews and Gentiles.”
Made a big impression on me in college and shaped a good bit of my work since then. Stendahl brings out Paul’s cross-cultural character but restores his Jewishness in the same way this new movement wants to make Jesus a Jew again.
As you say, people for a long time have been trying to underline the Jewishness of Jesus and the apostles and advocating for a faith that gives a certain kind of very concrete ‘Book of James’ type orthopraxy its due. Always glad to hear when that crowd gets a more popular foothold.
Comment by Tom Pratt — March 29, 2008 @ 7:16 pm
I read the article and perhaps I need a much broader context because the article did not come across as newsworthy or the idea as that revolutionary. Perhaps, I’ve understood the Jewishness of Jesus more-so than most people.
What your post and interaction seem to also get at is not just recovering the Jewishness of Jesus, but recovering the Jewishness of faith, God, religion, etc… It’s not just acknowledging like Owen Wilson’s character in Meet the Parents, “JC was a Jew”, but to recognize that there is a whole bit of relating to God that is very much “western” (Greek) thinking rather than Middle Eastern/Palestinian/Jewish. John Sanders and William Hasker draft a helpful history and context of the westernization of relating to God (Openness of God, IVP, 1994)
Comment by Eddy E — March 30, 2008 @ 11:16 pm
Wow, two book recommendations—looks like I’ll have to get reading. Tom, the book you mention sounds like early New Perspective stuff. I don’t know if I’m completely in the New Perspective camp, but I certainly agree with their emphasis on understanding Paul and early Christianity in terms of its Jewish context. I just read the Wikipedia page on him and I love his “three rules of religious understanding.” I’ll throw them in a post.
Eddy, I think you’re right about recovering the Jewishness of faith. In my experience, people have acknowledged Jesus is a Jew (I like the Meet the Parents citation by the way), but that fact meant little in terms of understanding his life and teachings. Jesus could have been any other ethnicity and their understanding of him wouldn’t have changed. This is an extreme example, so please don’t take it as normative, but once I was at a dinner and a gentleman who gladly proclaimed he was a fundamentalist offered this strange interpretation of Romans 9 in which God had originally chosen the Hebrews, but their unfaithfulness cut them off and basically God started over with Jesus and the Church. (I think he misinterpreted the miracle of that passage is that God has now included more into his people, not that God has made a switch.) It was pretty anti-Jewish stuff. I finally offered that Jesus was Jewish, which drew mild applause, and the gentleman huffed for a second and then said, “He converted.”
I’d be curious to read that book, Eddy. I’m hesitant to draw too much of a rigid distinction between Greek and Hebrew ways of thinking. If we consider Plato versus Ecclesiastes, then I think we may be onto something considering those eras of Greece and Israel didn’t interact. By the time Jesus came around, however, Palestine had been under Hellenistic influence for a long time and it seems more likely to me that we would see a combination of Hebrew and Greek influences in peoples’ way of thinking—not to mention Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Canaanite, etc. Philo is an example of a Jewish thinker influenced by Greek thinking. Do the authors play with this interaction? It seems just from the title that the book deals with the Greek notions of perfection (immutable, omniscient, etc.) and the Hebrew notions of perfection (faithful, righteous, etc.).
Comment by Tyler Watson — March 31, 2008 @ 9:25 am
By the time a take on religion gets into Newsweek it’s already yesterday’s news, Eddy. So I understand your reaction. Today’s life-giving religious change seems to get whatever props it may receive tomorrow. That makes sense from a long-term faith perspective.
I particularly appreciated your comments, Tyler, re Jews and Greeks. I think biblical religion is a cultural hybrid from the start.
Seems to me the myths of Genesis are mostly reworked Mesopotamian stories with a revelatory and life giving difference. Abraham carries Mesopotamian culture in his saddle bags on the way to the Promised Land. Moses delivers the content of the profound and saving Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law in a form that would make most Egyptian and Middle Eastern dictators of his day feel pretty much at home.
Hard to escape culture and context. Even for prophets and apostles.
Comment by Tom Pratt — March 31, 2008 @ 9:51 pm