Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity

Biblical, Theological, and Historical Essays on the Relationship Between Christianity and Judaism

Gerald McDermott

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781683594628
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

How Jewish is Christianity?The question of how Jesus' followers relate to Judaism has been a matter of debate since Jesus first sparred with the Pharisees. The controversy has not abated, taking many forms over the centuries. In the decades following the Holocaust, scholars and theologians reconsidered the Jewish origins and character of Christianity, finding points of continuity. Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity advances this discussion by freshly reassessing the issues. Did Jesus intend to form a new religion? Did Paul abrogate the Jewish law? Does the New Testament condemn Judaism? How and when did Christianity split from Judaism? How should Jewish believers in Jesus relate to a largely gentile church? What meaning do the Jewish origins of Christianity have for theology and practice today? In this volume, a variety of leading scholars and theologians explore the relationship of Judaism and Christianity through biblical, historical, theological, and ecclesiological angles. This cutting-edge scholarship will enrich readers' understanding of this centuries-old debate.

1

Introduction

Gerald R. McDermott

Since the Holocaust there has been a veritable explosion of scholarship on the relationship of Judaism to Christianity. Scholars and church members alike asked how one of the most Christianized countries in history could have attempted a systematic extermination of Jewry. After centuries in which radical discontinuity between the two religions was both assumed and argued, this catastrophe prompted new generations of scholars to look for continuities that might have been missed. Perhaps, it was suggested, our previous assumption of radical discontinuity helped provoke historical anti-Semitism that eventuated in the Holocaust.

Theologians and New Testament scholars such as Karl Barth, Marcus Barth, C. E. B. Cranfield, and Peter Stuhlmacher reread Paul for clues of what might have been missed. Cranfield concluded that an impartial reading of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans demanded a revision of supersessionism: “These three chapters [9–11] emphatically forbid us to speak of the church as having once and for all taken the place of the Jewish people.”1 Like Cranfield, scholars began to notice that Paul seemed to believe that Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah did not abrogate God’s covenant with them, for in Romans 11 he says explicitly that “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (11:2 NRSV). As W. D. Davies notes in his landmark work on the biblical concept of land, “Paul never calls the Church the New Israel or the Jewish people the Old Israel.”2

If Paul research found new startling things, so did research into the historical Jesus. E. P. Sanders, N. T. Wright, John P. Meier, and Ben F. Meyer were among the most important scholars to show that Jesus was far more interested in Israel than scholars had previously imagined.3

In the last three decades these trends have accelerated. Marvin Wilson, for example, summarized in 1989 what had been uncovered to that point: Jesus and the early church had deep roots in Judaism, and neither attempted to break from those roots.4 Brad Young produced a pair of studies on Jesus and Paul as theologians whose framework was fundamentally Jewish.5

Jewish scholars came to similar conclusions. David Flusser, for example, argued that the Jesus of history was an observant Jew. Pamela Eisenbaum maintained that while Paul was not a Christian as historically understood, he kept Torah and insisted that Jewish followers of Jesus do the same.6 In her new When Christians Were Jews (2018), Paula Fredriksen argues similarly, that both Jesus and Paul were observant Jews. One had minimal contact with gentiles (Jesus), and the other thought of gentile destiny in Jewish terms (Paul). The eventual takeover of the church by gentiles has obscured ever since the Jewish identity and practice of “the first generation.”7

More recently scholars have explored the history of supersessionism—the idea that God’s covenant with Jewish Israel has been superseded by God’s new covenant with the gentile church.8 Leading mainline Protestants have argued that this is faulty exegesis and bad theology.9 Christian historians insist that early Jesus-followers placed Jesus’ divine identity within the unity of the God of Israel.10 A leading Jewish thinker suggests that Jesus was fully observant, and that his followers’ belief that he was a messiah was not dissimilar from other Jewish messianic expectations.11

Pauline scholars contend that Paul’s use of Jewish law revised that of many Jewish contemporaries or was remarkably similar.12 Several insist that he saw two communities within his churches—Jewish and gentile—and saw no problem with Jewish Jesus-followers keeping Mosaic law.13 Other scholars are now seeing the Letter to the Hebrews—long interpreted as showing a fundamental break between the two religions—as showing more continuity than discontinuity.14

Jews are using their rabbinic tradition to cast whole new light on this thorny relationship. A leading messianic theologian is proposing a theology of the New Testament that springs from a revised view of Jerusalem’s place within it.15 A non-Messianic Jewish historian argues that Christian incarnation is not inconsistent with Jewish thinking about God’s multiple bodies.16 Another Jewish historian contends that the Last Supper did not violate Jewish purity laws concerning blood and was not, as has been routinely alleged, an attack on the temple—and that Paul regarded Jerusalem’s sacrificial worship positively.17

In this enormous world of scholarship, new findings continue apace. This book provides even more. These essays are by leading scholars who are doing cutting-edge work. They show readers the latest thinking in this exciting field.

Mark Gignilliat uses the most recent biblical scholarship to argue that New Testament authors regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as their grammar for thinking about how the God of Israel could have a divine Son and Spirit. Matthew Thiessen uses new thinking about social memory and obligation to deny the old notion that Jesus intended to start a new religion. Pauline scholar David Rudolph suggests that some passages in Paul’s letters are weightier than others, thus providing a way through the thicket of conflicting interpretations. David Moffitt turns to Hebrews, long thought to prove radical discontinuity, to show that covenantal logic in the letter shows the opposite.

Liturgical scholar Matthew Olver asks whether there are Jewish roots to Christian liturgy and proposes that sacrifice, which is fundamentally Jewish, is at the heart of Christian worship. Jewish historian Isaac Oliver revises long-held views of the historical separation between the church and synagogue, arguing that the parting of the ways did not emerge until Constantine. Eugene Korn, who has long been at the forefront of Jewish-Christian dialogue, reviews the painful history of the church and the Jews between Constantine and the Holocaust. With new insight, he argues a connection between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, and its relation to the Holocaust.

Jen Rosner discusses new theologies of Judaism that arose after the Holocaust, principally the works of Karl Barth and Franz Rosenzweig, two twentieth-century giants. With fresh perspective, she draws connections between these two thinkers and the rise of Messianic Judaism. Sarah Hall unfolds the largely unknown story of how Anglicans participated in the fateful rise of Zionism and the state of Israel.

Foremost messianic theologian Mark Kinzer argues that the parting of the ways in the fourth century was a regrettable tragedy, but suggests that it can be transcended. The Messianic Jewish community can provide the church with a new opportunity to heal wounds and transcend ancient barriers.

The volume closes with an essay by Anglican Archbishop Foley Beach on what these new discoveries mean for Anglican and other Christian churches, and my own chapter on its implications for Christian theology and churches more generally.

2

Old Testament: How Did the New Testament Authors Use Tanak?

Mark S. Gignilliat

A mother in our church stopped me after Sunday school one day to tell me about her son. He has high-functioning autism, she relayed, and, as many with autism, Jeremiah demonstrates a high level of focus and energy on subject matters that interest him. His mom told me about Jeremiah’s passion as of late, the Old Testament. He reads nonstop about it, she reported, and loves this portion of Holy Scripture. I listened carefully because I was sensing with this little boy that we were dealing with someone whose election was sure. So, I was intrigued.

I spent some time with Jeremiah at Beeson Divinity School this past summer. He came to my office, and we looked at books together and talked about the kings of the Old Testament and his other interest, the Neo-Assyrians. Jeremiah was very curious about what the ancient Israelites ate, and I had to hunt around the office for some information to satiate his curiosity. Our conversation in my office was delightful and memorable.

When we went down to our chapel together, I asked Jeremiah to look at the painted panels around the apse. They each depict a scene from the Bible, with the last scene displaying Martin Luther’s tacking up of the Ninety-Five Theses on the Castle Church’s door in Wittenberg. I said, Jeremiah, do you notice something troubling about our panels? There are ten of them, and only one depicts a scene from the Old Testament. Jeremiah was aghast. In the midst of our shared incredulity, one of the chapel attendants overheard me and came to our rescue. The panels are representative of the church calendar, he explained, beginning in Advent (the Isaiah panel) and moving forward through Christmas to Epiphany. Fair enough. But what I meant as good tongue-in-cheek humor, Jeremiah took with all seriousness, and he had a hard time letting it go. For the rest of our time together that morning, Jeremiah kept asking me, Why is there only one Old Testament scene in your chapel?

THE OLD TESTAMENT’S SIGNAL ROLE IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Jeremiah’s question is a good one, despite our chapel attendant’s best efforts to minimize it by liturgical means. In fact, it is the kind of question that helps to frame the thesis of this chapter. The church has never operated apart from the Scriptures of Israel as a governing body of authoritative Scriptures. Moreover, the New Testament leans on the Old Testament for its own theological sense making and, perhaps more provocatively, does not even exist apart from its relation to the Old Testament. This chapter will lean into these claims and aim to unpack them in the ensuing material.

Despite the complexities of sifting through the canonical history of the New Testament documents, there was never a time that Jesus Christ, the apostles, or the earliest members of Christ’s church did not recognize the Scriptures of Israel as a constraining authority and privileged source of divine revelation. In other words, the church from its inception did not operate without scriptural authority. The Scriptures of Israel provided much of the substance and language for the earliest of Christians in their coming to terms with the identity of Jesus Christ in that unique moment of God’s eschatological unveiling—“In the former days he revealed himself in various and sundry ways but in these latter days in the Son” (Heb 1:1–2).1

In Hans von Campenhausen’s classic work The Formation of the Christian Bible, he puts a point on the matter when he claims that for the early church, the question was never, What do we do with the Scriptures of Israel now that Jesus Christ has appeared? Rather, the question was quite the reverse. What do with do with Jesus Christ in light of the assumed and anterior authority of our canonical inheritance in the Scriptures of Israel?2 The canonical logic is plain to see in terms of classic Christian theology. If knowledge of the Triune God is the subject matter of Christian theology, then Holy Scripture is theology’s chief and principal instrument for apprehending that knowledge. Whatever gray area may exist in the early church’s life as it pertains to the New Testament canon’s composition and canonization, such gray area does not exist with what Christians call the Old Testament.

Little wonder that the church’s second-century struggles against the cruelty of heresy sat right on top of the Old Testament’s enduring authority. Brevard Childs describes the onslaught of Marcion’s theological and canonical outlook in the following description:

The first major challenge to the unbroken continuity between the Old Testament and the church was raised when Marcion opposed the traditional view of the canon and sought to introduce a critical principle by which the church could determine its authentic scriptures. He argued that the original Christian tradition had been corrupted and needed not only to cut loose from the Jewish scriptures, but also to be critically recovered by sifting the allegedly authentic sources of the faith.3

The earliest of Christian apologists recognized that to cut the church off from Israel’s Scriptures was to cut us off from the very word of God. Or as I tell my students at Beeson Divinity School, they are called to a ministry of exorcism wherever and whenever Marcion’s lingering ghost might still pester Christ’s church.4

THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: BROAD BRUSHSTROKES

Despite Marcion and his progeny’s best efforts to suggest otherwise, it does not take a deep reading of the New Testament to see the Old Testament’s presence from beginning to end. The past forty years of New Testament scholarship has given an inordinate amount of attention to the presence of the Old Testament in the New Testament, stemming from the work of Barnabas Lindars and Earle Ellis, and the catapulting efforts of Richard Hays.5 I remember reading Hays’s Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul as a young seminarian and feeling as if the sky of Scripture had opened to me in new ways. Hays’s work spawned a whole generation of New Testament scholars who pur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction (Gerald R. McDermott)
• Chapter 2: Old Testament: How Did the New Testament Authors Use Tanak? (Mark S. Gignilliat)
• Chapter 3: Did Jesus Plan to Start a New Religion? (Matthew Thiessen)
• Chapter 4: Was Paul Championing a New Freedom from—Or End to—Jewish Law? (David Rudolph)
• Chapter 5: Jesus’ Sacrifice and the Mosaic Logic of Hebrews’ New-Covenant Theology (David M. Moffitt)
• Chapter 6: Missed and Misunderstood Jewish Roots of Christian Worship (Matthew S. C. Olver)
• Chapter 7: The Parting of the Ways: When and How Did the Ekklēsia Split from the Synagogue? (Isaac W. Oliver)
• Chapter 8: From Constantine to the Holocaust: The Church and the Jews (Eugene Korn)
• Chapter 9: Post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian Relations: Challenging Boundaries and Rethinking Theology (Jennifer M. Rosner)
• Chapter 10: Anglicans and Israel: The (Largely) Untold Story (Sarah Lebhar Hall)
• Chapter 11: Messianic Judaism: Recovering the Jewish Character of the Ekklēsia (Mark S. Kinzer)
• Chapter 12: Christian Churches: What Difference Does the Jewishness of Jesus Make? (Archbishop Foley Beach)
• Chapter 13: Christian Theology: What Difference Does This Make? (Gerald R. McDermott)
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Subject Index
• Scripture and Other Ancient Sources Index
• Old Testament