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Religion
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Title: 10. Re-Judaizing Jesus
Source: Time.com
URL Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2 ... 720049_1720050_1721663,00.html
Published: Mar 12, 2008
Author: DAVID VAN BIEMA
Post Date: 2008-03-15 14:24:13 by robin
Keywords: None
Views: 582
Comments: 14

Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2008

Re-Judaizing Jesus

By David Van Biema

Recently a popular blogger — let's call him Rabbi Ben — zinged the scholarship of a man we shall call Rabbi Rob. R. Ben claimed R. Rob did not "understand the difference between Judaism prior to the two Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and later Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism." He helpfully provided a syllabus.

Actually, neither man is a rabbi. (Sorry.) Ben Witherington is a Methodist New Testament scholar, and Rob Bell a rising Michigan megapastor. Yet each regards sources like the Mishnah and Rabbi Akiva as vital to understanding history's best-known Jew: Jesus.

This is seismic. 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.

What does this mean, practically? At times the resulting adjustment seems simple. For example, Bell thinks he knows the mysterious words Jesus wrote in the dust while defending the adulteress ("He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," etc.). By Bell's calculation, that showdown occurred at the same time as religious Jews' yearly reading of the prophet Jeremiah's warning that "those who turn from [God] will be written in the dust because they have forsaken [him]." Thus Jesus wrote the crowd's names to warn that their lack of compassion alienated their (and his) God.

A trickier revision for readers involves Paul's Letter to the Romans, forever a key Christian text on sin and Christ's salvific grace. Yet this reading necessitates skipping over what seems like extraneous material in Chapters 9 through 11, which are about the Jews. Increasingly, says Jason Byassee, an editor at the Christian Century,, scholars now read Romans through those chapters, as a musing by a lifelong Jew on how God can fulfill his biblical covenant with Israel even if it does not accept His son. Byassee the theologian agrees. But as a Methodist pastor, he frets that Romans "is no longer really about Gentile Christians. How do you preach it?"

That's not a frivolous query. Ideally, the reassessment should increase both Jewish-Christian amity and gospel clarity, things that won't happen if regular Christians feel that in rediscovering Jesus the Jew, they have lost Christ. Yet Bell finds this particular genie so logically powerful that he has no wish to rebottle it. Once in, he says, "you're in deep. You're hooked. 'Cause you can't ever read it the same way again.

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#8. To: robin (#0)

Who was the First Jew?

John Standring

We know that Saul was the first king of Israel and that John was the first man called Baptist, but who was the first Jew? Neither Adam, Seth or Noah are called Jew. Nor were Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. Moses was not called a Jew and neither were Saul, David or Solomon called Jew. In fact you will not find the word Jew in the first eleven books of the Bible. The first time Jews are mentioned in the Bible, is in II Kings 16:6 (and then only in translations revised in the eighteenth century) where we find Israel was at war with the Jews and drave the Jews from Elath. Isn't it interesting that we can read over five hundred pages of the Bible before we find a Jew anywhere, yet those who call themselves Jew today claim the first five books of the bible and call it their Torah. Do you not find it rather strange that those who claim to have written the first five books of the Bible and call themselves Jew, can't find the word Jew written anywhere in the book they call their own bible, and claim to have written? Jesus Christ tells John in Revelation 2:9 "I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN". We know that God changed the name of Abram to Abraham in Genesis 17:5, and that He changed the name of Jacob to Israel in Genesis 32:28, but nowhere in the Bible do we find where God changed the name of Israel to Jew! There is therefore no authority by which those who say they are Jews can claim to be Israel!

Rube Goldberg  posted on  2008-03-15   21:23:51 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: Rube Goldberg (#8)

I don't believe it is any stranger than christians being called something else, or christianity being called somethig else. The Way is what christianity was originally labeled.

They were also called ekklesia, or outcalled ones. We don't hear that much today, either.

I also disagree with your idea that the 'jews' of Jesus time were just pharisees. The pharisees were the fanatics on adhering to the law that they, priests, and scribes over time had so drawn up they worshipped the law rather than God. And it is that which Jesus was condemning.

There were also Sadducees, and Ebionites.

rowdee  posted on  2008-03-16   1:15:12 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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