Introduction to Messianic Judaism

Zondervan, David J. Rudolph, Joel Willitts

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780310555667
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

This book is the go-to source for introductory information on Messianic Judaism.

Editors David Rudolph and Joel Willitts have assembled a thorough examination of the ecclesial context and biblical foundations of the diverse Messianic Jewish movement. Unique among similar works in its Jew-Gentile partnership, this book brings together a team of respected Messianic Jewish and Gentile Christian scholars, including Mark Kinzer, Richard Bauckham, Markus Bockmuehl, Craig Keener, Darrell Bock, Scott Hafemann, Daniel Harrington, R. Kendall Soulen, Douglas Harink and others.

Opening essays, written by Messianic Jewish scholars and synagogue leaders, provide a window into the on-the-ground reality of the Messianic Jewish community and reveal the challenges, questions and issues with which Messianic Jews grapple. The following predominantly Gentile Christian discussion explores a number of biblical and theological issues that inform our understanding of the Messianic Jewish ecclesial context.

Here is a balanced and accessible introduction to the diverse Messianic Jewish movement that both Gentile Christian and Messianic Jewish readers will find informative and fascinating.

PART 1

The Messianic Jewish Community

CHAPTER 1

Messianic Judaism in Antiquity and in the Modern Era

DAVID RUDOLPH

When we speak of Messianic Judaism in antiquity and in the modern era, we are referring to a religious tradition in which Jews have claimed to follow Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah of Israel while continuing to live within the orbit of Judaism. Communities of such Jews existed in the first four centuries of the Common Era and then reappeared in the eighteenth century. The aim of this essay is to survey this history up until the present day.

Messianic Judaism in the New Testament Period

During the New Testament period, Messianic Judaism existed in the Land of Israel, Syria, and beyond. Here I will focus on two communities that practiced Messianic Judaism: Matthew’s community and the Jerusalem community.

In his published dissertation Community, Law and Mission in Matthew’s Gospel, Paul Foster describes an emerging “new consensus” in New Testament studies concerning the social identity of Matthew’s community.¹ An increasing number of scholars are now identifying Matthew’s community as a “deviant movement operating within the orbit of Judaism.”² The case for this view is made by Anthony Saldarini, J. Andrew Overman, Phillip Sigal, Daniel Harrington, Joel Willitts, and Anders Runesson, among others.³ Roland Deines, who disagrees with this perspective, nonetheless acknowledges the existence of a new consensus emerging over three points:

1. The Matthean community in the last third of the first century CE is composed of mainly Jewish believers in Christ.

2. These Christian Jews see no reason to break with their mother religion just because they believe that Jesus is the Messiah, although they are experiencing some pressure in this direction from mainstream Judaism.

3. These Christian Jews live according to the Law of Moses and its valid halakhic interpretations of their time, with some alterations, softenings, or modifications based on the teachings of Jesus. Jesus is seen as a Law-observant Jew, who offered his own individual points of view on some matters and gave his specific interpretations of disputed halakhic rules, but they remained — as Markus Bockmuehl points out—”conversant with contemporary Jewish legal debate and readily accommodated on the spectrum of ‘mainstream’ first-century Jewish opinion.” The Law-critical aspects in the Jesus tradition have to be interpreted within this frame.⁴

It is now commonly recognized that Matthew viewed his community as a reformist Messianic movement within first-century Judaism.

Similarly, New Testament scholars have long held that the Jerusalem community headed by Ya’akov/James was (1) primarily composed of Yeshua-believing Jews who (2) remained within the bounds of Second Temple Judaism and (3) lived strictly according to the Torah (Acts 15:4 – 5; 21:20 – 21).⁵ Michael Fuller, Richard Bauckham, Craig Hill, Darrell Bock, Robert Tannehill, and Jacob Jervell are among the many Luke-Acts scholars who maintain that the Jerusalem congregation viewed itself as the nucleus of a restored Israel, led by twelve apostles representing the twelve tribes of Israel (Acts 1:6 – 7, 26; 3:19 – 21).⁶ Their mission, these scholars contend, was to spark a Jewish renewal movement for Yeshua the Son of David within the house of Israel (Gal 2:7 – 10; Acts 21:17 – 26).

The Jerusalem congregation functioned as a center of halakhic/ecclesiastical authority, and its leaders, headed by James, resolved disputes for the international community of Yeshua believers by issuing council decisions of the kind we see in Acts 15. Here Luke writes that the Jerusalem Council exempted Yeshua-believing Gentiles from proselyte circumcision and full Torah observance. While the significance of the Jerusalem Council decision for Yeshua-believing Gentiles has long been recognized in New Testament studies, the implications for Yeshua-believing Jews has only recently come to the forefront of Acts scholarship. As F. Scott Spencer points out, “The representatives at the Jerusalem conference — including Paul — agreed only to release Gentile believers from the obligation of circumcision; the possibility of nullifying this covenantal duty for Jewish disciples was never considered.”⁷ If the Jerusalem leadership had viewed circumcision as optional for Yeshua-believing Jews, there would have been no point in debating the question of exemption for Yeshua-believing Gentiles or delivering a letter specifically addressed to these Gentiles. Michael Wyschogrod rightly notes that “both sides agreed that Jewish believers in Jesus remained obligated to circumcision and the Mosaic Law. The verdict of the first Jerusalem Council then is that the Church is to consist of two segments, united by their faith in Jesus.”⁸

A growing number of New Testament scholars now concur with Wyschogrod that an important implication of the Jerusalem Council decision is that Yeshua-believing Jews were to remain practicing Jews.⁹ To put it another way, the Jerusalem Council validated Messianic Judaism as the normative way of life for Jewish followers of Yeshua. In Acts 21:17 – 26 — the mirror text of Acts 15 — this validation is made explicit by Paul’s example.¹⁰ At the request of James, Paul sets the record straight before thousands of Torah-observant Messianic Jews in Jerusalem that he remained within the bounds of Judaism. He testifies in the holy Temple that (1) the rumours about him are false — he teaches Diaspora Jews not to assimilate but to remain faithful Jews — and (2) he observes the Torah (present active tense) like the “zealous for the Torah”¹¹ members of the Jerusalem Messianic Jewish community. Paul’s testimony is fully consistent with his “rule in all the congregations” that Jews are to remain practicing Jews (1 Cor 7:17 – 24), a probable Pauline restatement of the Jerusalem Council decision.¹²

Messianic Judaism and the Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity

For centuries, scholars have taught that a decisive parting of the ways took place between Judaism and Christianity during the New Testament period. Today this narrative is widely disputed. In their book The Ways That Never Parted, Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed document the history of this reassessment and demonstrate that the evidence supports a “variety of different ‘Partings’ at different times in different places.”¹³ Becker and Reed concur with Daniel Boyarin, Paula Fredriksen, Philip Alexander, John Gager, Judith Lieu, John Howard Yoder, Edwin Broadhead, and a growing number of scholars who have concluded, based on textual and archaeological evidence, that “the fourth century CE is a far more plausible candidate for a decisive turning point than any date in the earlier period.”¹⁴ This reassessment is strengthened by the recognition that communities of Yeshua-believing Jews who practiced Judaism existed as late as 375 CE. Epiphanius, the fourth-century church father, describes the Messianic Judaism of his day:

[They] did not call themselves Christians, but Nazarenes…. [T]hey remained wholly Jewish and nothing else. For they use not only the New Testament but also the Old like the Jews…. [They] live according to the preaching of the Law as among the Jews…. They have a good mastery of the Hebrew language. For the entire Law and the Prophets and what is called the Scriptures, I mention the poetical books, Kings, Chronicles and Esther and all the others are read in Hebrew by them as that is the case with the Jews of course. Only in this respect they differ from the Jews and Christians: with the Jews they do not agree because of their belief in Christ, with the Christians because they are trained in the Law, in circumcision, the Sabbath and the other things.¹⁵

In his essay “Jewish Believers in Early Rabbinic Literature (2d to 5th Centuries),” Philip Alexander notes that Messianic Jews who lived in Galilee during the Tannaitic period remained within the orbit of Judaism:

They lived like other Jews. Their houses were indistinguishable from the houses of other Jews. They probably observed as much of the Torah as did other Jews (though they would doubtless have rejected, as many others did, the distinctively rabbinic interpretations of the misvot). They studied Torah and developed their own interpretations of it, and, following the practice of the Apostles, they continued to perform a ministry of healing in the name of Jesus…. [T]hey seem to have continued to attend their local synagogues on Sabbath. They may have attempted to influence the service of the synagogue, even to the extent of trying to introduce into it the Paternoster [the Lord’s Prayer], or readings from Christian Gospels, or they may have preached sermons which offered Christian readings of the Torah. The rabbis countered with a program which thoroughly “rabbinized” the service of the synagogue and ensured that it reflected the core rabbinic values.¹⁶

Direct evidence of Jews who practiced Messianic Judaism after the First Council of Nicaea is scanty. This is because the view that Jews could not become Christians and remain Jews was backed by canon law and Constantine’s sword. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 was the first ecumenical council to ban Messianic Jews from the church. Messianic Jews were required to renounce all ties to Judaism through professions of faith like the one from the Church of Constantinople (“I renounce absolutely everything Jewish, every law, rite and custom”).¹⁷ From the fourth century until the modern period, millions of Jews converted to Christianity and left behind their Jewish identity.

Messianic Judaism and the Moravian Judenkehille in the Eighteenth Century

The earliest known post-Nicene attempt to restore Messianic Judaism was undertaken by the Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut, Germany (1735).¹⁸ Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf established in the Brüdergemeine (the Brethren community) a congregation in which Yeshua-believing Jews were encouraged to live out Jewish life and identity. He called this congregation a Judenkehille (Jewish community):

Soon the program of “gathering firstlings” emerged. The program aimed at integrating individual Jews into the Brüdergemeine without encouraging them to abandon their identity. To this end, several liturgical innovations were implemented. These included the celebration of the Day of Atonement and, later on, the Sabbath Rest and the intercession for Israel within the services on Sundays. A christianized Jewish marriage ceremony for the “firstlings” was created. The new converts were intended to be gathered in a Jewish-Christian congregation within the Brüdergemeine, the Judenkehille (“Jews’ Qehillah,” the latter part of the word being derived from the Hebrew word for “community”).¹⁹

As the years passed, Zinzendorf reassessed his approach and concluded that it would be better for Judenkehille congregations to exist autonomously within the Jewish community rather than within Gentile Christian churches. He thus redirected German Pietist efforts toward this end:

In the early 1750s, Zinz...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• PART 1: The Messianic Jewish Community
• PART 2: The Church and Messianic Judaism
• PART 3 : Summary and Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• About the Author
• Praise
• Copyright
• About the Publisher:
• Share Your Thoughts