[The complete title of this book by Amy-Jill Levine is: The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. The author is another Jewish writer who endeavors to bridge the gap, the chasm between Jews and Christians. This book is downloadable from amazon.com as an ebook, readable on the free kindle app.]
Excerpts from the INTRODUCTION:
My Christian friends had modeled for me the grace and friendship that are at the heart of the church; my parents had told me that Jesus was a Jew speaking to other Jews, and that his basic message was exactly the same as Judaism: to ‘love the Lord your God’; and to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ So I knew that, although the New Testament could be read as being anti-Jewish, it did not have to be read that way.
Unless we Jews understand the beliefs and practices and histories of our Christian neighbors and unless Christians understand Jews and Judaism — we’ll never achieve the shalom (“peace”) that the children of Abraham (including Muslims) all claim to be seeking. Thus I write not only as an academic who teaches New Testament in a predominantly Protestant divinity school but also as a Jew —and a member of an Orthodox synagogue —who recognizes the beauty of the Christian tradition, the harm that has been perpetrated in its name, and the several means by which its basic, important messages of justice and peace can be heard anew. Further I am convinced that interfaith conversation is essential if we are to break down the prejudices that have kept synagogue and church in enmity, or at best tolerance, for the past two millennia.
Jews and Christians can, and must, talk to each other. Although all interfaith dialogue is educational and salutary, Jews and Christians have a number of special reasons for engaging each other. It is sometimes said that Judaism is the mother religion and Christianity the daughter, but church and synagogue are better seen as siblings fighting over the parents’ legacy. Who are the true children of Abraham and the heirs to the books of the Bible, the Law, and the Prophets? Who followed the correct path and who veered off? . . . . The break between the two traditions began not at the cross or the tomb but centuries later. . . .
The point of interfaith conversation is not to convert the person across the table, but it is also not to abdicate one’s own theology for the sake of reaching agreement. Put another way: there is no reason for Jews and Christians to sacrifice their particular beliefs on the altar of interfaith sensitivity.
. . . . Today Jesus’s words are too familiar, too domesticated, too stripped of their initial edginess and urgency. Only when heard through first-century Jewish ears can their original edginess and urgency be recovered. consequently, to understand the man from Nazareth, it is necessary to understand Judaism. More, it is necessary to see Jesus as firmly within Judaism rather than as standing apart from it, and it is essential that the picture of Judaism not be distorted through the filter of centuries of Christian stereotypes; a distorted picture of first-century Judaism inevitably leads to a distorted picture of Jesus. Just as bad: if we get Judaism wrong, we’ll wind up perpetuating anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic teachings, and thus the mission of the church — to spread a gospel of love rather than a gospel of hate — will be undermined. For Christians, this concern for historical setting should have theological import as well. If one takes the incarnation — that is, the claim that the “Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14) seriously, then one should take seriously the time when, place where, and people among whom this event occurred.
Christians obtain yet another benefit in seeing Jesus in his Jewish context, for the recognition of Jesus’s Jewishness and his speaking in a Jewish idiom can also restore faith in the New Testament. Doing just a bit of historical investigation provides a much-needed correction to American’s Christ-saturated, albeit biblically ignorant, culture. For example, those who prefer the fiction of The Da Vinci Code over the facts of history because the novel seems to enhance the role of women in early Christianity will find that studies of the Jewish Jesus reveal the leadership roles and economic freedoms women had at the time. Moreover, such studies yield more options to women than the relegation of Mary Magdalene to the role of “Mrs. Jesus.” Those who prefer the Gospel of Judas over the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because they see it as eliminating anti-Jewish views from Christian origins would do well, instead, to see how Jesus fits into his Jewish context, and that includes the notice that Judas does not, in the Gospels, represent “the Jews.”
Jews too can learn much from appreciating Jesus within his Jewish context, for the New Testament texts preserve for Jews part of our own history. The stories of Jesus tell us a great deal about Jewish life in Galilee and Judea in the first century, and the only uncontested Pharisee from whom we have extant written sources is Paul of Tarsus. I find that the more I study Jesus, Mary Magdalene, James, Peter, and Paul in their own historical contexts, the more I come to appreciate my own Judaism: the diversity of its teachings, the richness of its encounter with the divine, the struggles it faced in accommodating to the Roman world, I appreciate, even find inspirational, the message of the kingdom of heaven, a message that spoke of the time when all debts are forgiven and when those who have willingly give, without thought of reciprocity, to those who need; a time when we no longer ask, “Who is my neighbor?” but “Who acts as neighbor?”; a time when we prioritize serving rather than being served . . . . But as much as I admire much of the message, I do not worship the messenger. Instead, I find Jesus reflects back to me my own tradition, but in a new key. I also have to admit a bit of pride in thinking about him —he’s one of ours.
If on the popular level we Jews are willing not only to acknowledge but also to take pride in the Jewishness of such generally non-observant Jews as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, the Marxes (Karl and Groucho, although Karl was baptized as a child), and Jerry Seinfeld, why not acknowledge the quite observant Jesus? Such recognition need not entail citing the Gospels in a bar mitzvah talk or in a d’var Torah, an interpretation of the biblical reading for the week, although I have heard rabbis in Reform and Conservative synagogues cite Homer (both the Greek poet and Bart’s father), Plato, the Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, and even Madonna (the Kaballah besotted singer, not the mother of Jesus). At least Jesus is Jewish with regard to family, practice, and belief.
A critically aware, historically informed study of Jesus in his Jewish context does more than provide benefits to Christians and Jews alike; it aids in preventing the anti-Semitism that tends to arise when the history is not known. The concern to recover Jesus’s Jewishness is these days particularly urgent. . . .
After two thousand years of ignorance, the time has come for church and synagogue, Jews and Christians, to understand our intertwined histories, to see Jesus as a Jew who made sense to other Jews in a Jewish context, to learn how our two traditions came to a parting of the ways, to recognize how misunderstandings of Jesus and Judaism continue even today to foster negative stereotypes and feed hate, and to explore how the gains in interfaith relations made over the past several decades can be nurtured and expanded.
C O N T E N T S
1. Jesus and Judaism
2. From Jewish Sect to Gentile Church
3. The New Testament and Anti-Judaism
4. Stereotyping Judaism
5. With Friends Like These . . . .
6. Distinct Canons, Distinct Practices
7. Quo Vadis?
8. Epilogue
Excerpt from the Epilogue: The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document states: “In the past, the break between the Jewish people and the Church of Christ Jesus could sometimes, in certain times and places, give the impression of being complete. In the light of the Scriptures, this should never have occurred. For a complete break between church and the synagogue contradicts Sacred Scripture.” The connections church and synagogue share, not only in the recognition of the same sacred stories, but also in the similar interpretive understandings, necessarily hold the two movements together. If Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau, can learn to live together in peace, there is hope not only for the responsible and the prodigal; there is hope for church and synagogue as well. And if the church and synagogue both could recognize their connection to Jesus, a Jewish prophet who spoke to Jews, perhaps we’d be in a better place for understanding.