Wilson, Marvin R. Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

This is a balanced look at the Jewish roots of Christianity (the best I have read so far) and an excellent book for someone who knows little about Judaism and is wondering what it means to say that Christianity has Jewish roots. He traces the history of the synagogue and the Church touching on their theological conflicts. Wilson also takes some time to talk about Hebrew thought and why it is foundational. A few selected studies cover subjects like marriage, Passover and the last supper, the land and learning.  This would be a great book to read before Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew. Both books will show different perspectives and concerns and will raise important questions for both Jews and Christians.

“The Protestant tradition, especially Lutheranism, has tended to see the leitmotif for Paul’s understanding of the Gospel in the emphasis on justification by faith as opposed to the works of the law. Though this theme is certainly important to Paul, we are in essential agreement with Davies, who finds the locus of Paul elsewhere, namely, in his ‘subordination of the Law to Christ as in Himself a new Torah—new not in the sense that He contravened the Old but that He revealed its true character, or put it in a new light.’” (Wilson 1989: 28-9, quoting W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, p. xxxiv).

Levine, Amy-jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. HarperOne, 2006.

To me, the main value of this book is seeing the perspective of someone who is committed to Judaism but also  happens to be a New Testament scholar.  She begins by drawing an analogy—a tad strained, she admits—that, I believe, shapes the way she writes the book: “the Torah functions for the synagogue as Jesus does for the church: it is the ‘word’ of the divine present in the congregation” (Levine 2006: 17). Therefore, looking carefully at the worldview of each community is important if one is to understand the relationship between the two.  She has many things to say about the interaction between Jews and Christians throughout history and the different ways that each misunderstands the New Testament. Although some will quibble about Levine’s exegesis of some passages, she does challenge Christians to take a closer look at those passages more critically, and I personally found her discussion of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-collector to be illuminating. All in all, it is a fascinating read even when there are points of disagreement.

You may also want to watch a video of her lecture entitled Reassessing Jewish-Christian Relations, 2008.

“When Jesus is located within the world of Judaism, the ethical implications of his teachings take on renewed and heightened meaning; their power is restored and their challenge sharpened. Jews as well as Christians should be able to agree on a number of these teachings today, just as in the first century Jesus’s followers and even those Jews who chose not to follow him would have agreed with such basic assertions as that God is our father, that his name should hallowed, and that the divine kingdom is something ardently to be desired. Conversely, the failure to understand the Jewish Jesus within his Jewish context has resulted in the creation and perpetuation of millennia of distrust, and worse, between church and synagogue” (Levine 2006: 20).

I recently read a fascinating book entitled They Also Taught in Parables: Rabbinic Parables from the First Centuries of the Christian Era by Harvey K. McArthur and Robert M. Johnston. The first part is a collection of selected parables of the תנאים (tannaim – the Rabbinic sages in the Mishnah from approximately 70-200 CE) and the second part comprised of essays on the nature of their parables and some comparisons with the parables of Jesus.

The rabbinic word for parable(s) is mashal/meshalim, and, to mark a literary item as a narrative mashal, the authors chose the following elements:

Explicit label. Often the introductory formulas to the items explicitly label them as meshalim. Some typical introductions are: “A parable”; “A parable: It is like unto . . .”; and “They parable a parable. Unto what is the matter like? It is like unto. . . .”

Abbreviated label. Frequently the introductory formulas are abbreviated in such a way that the word mashal itself is omitted: “It is like unto. . . .”

Structural characteristics. The immediate environment and internal structure of the typical narrative mashal in its fullest form include these five parts:

Here is an example:

Read more »

Holmgren, Fredrik C. The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus: Embrancing Change – Maintaining Christian Identity. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999.

This book is interesting for many reasons. One of them is that the author tries to show the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, both of which share in common what Christians call the Old Testament. He tries to explain the various interpretive methods that Jews and Christians use to understand “their Bibles.” For example, he argues that Christians did not find Jesus by reading the OT but tried to explain their experience of Jesus through the Scriptures. This involved a depth/imaginative interpretation (which I think is his way of referring to midrash). For this reason it is hardly fair for Christians to criticize Jews for not seeing Jesus in their Bible. Of course, the same holds true for Jews who also engage in depth/imaginative interpretation for their own purposes. Jacob Neusner says:

Judaism inherits and makes the Hebrew Bible its own, just as does Christianity. But just as Christianity rereads the entire heritage of Ancient Israel in light of the “resurrection of Jesus Christ” so Judaism understands Hebrew Scriptures as only one part, the written one, of the one whole Torah of Moses, our rabbi” (124).

The author then talks about the meaning of “and it was fulfilled” in the NT. For the author the Greek word for “fulfill” can have the meaning of “corresponds to,” “is similar/analogous to,” or even “reminds one of” (42). Then he tackles the subject of Jesus and the sinaic covenant (in other words, how Christians came to see the law). He attempts to show that the attitude towards Torah in the NT is not unified and failure to understand the different emphases is due to a failure to pay attention to the context within which the subject of Torah is being treated. He then talks about the “New Covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31-34 both in the OT and NT. Read more »