Reading Within Judaism
Last week, I suggested that the historical rejection of Judaism by the church left us reading the New Testament out of context, working with fragments but not understanding the system they came from. Whenever we seek to arrange fragments into a coherent system, that system will inevitably be a reflection of our own thinking. If you have any doubt of this, just look at the number and diversity of denominations and theological systems within Christianity today.
Within a few generations of the Apostles, the church had come to define itself in opposition to Judaism and to arrange its understanding of the New Testament in a way that reflected that self-definition. Perhaps the best way to see how much of that arrangement we're still holding on to is to contrast it to a Jewish perspective. Professor Eliezer Segal traveled to Alberta, Canada to teach Western religion at the University of Calgary. He recounts his thoughts as he began reading the New Testament:
In researching the material for my courses I became more and more overwhelmed by the feeling that as a Jew I had a different perspective on the text than was standard in the Christian world. I felt that these records were largely internal Jewish documents, saturated in the realities of first-century Eretz Israel and full of allusions to a variety of political, religious and halakhic questions. The subjects are familiar to those who have been brought up in the literature and lifestyles of Talmudic Judaism. But could they possibly mean anything significant to someone from outside the fold of traditional Judaism? (Segal, 1989)
As someone "brought up in the literature and lifestyles of Talmudic Judaism," Professor Segal recognized the text as thoroughly Jewish and even wondered why non-Jews were interested in it. To better define this idea, I'd like to introduce you to another professor, Anders Runesson, for a Christian perspective.
For centuries, Christians have understood some of the texts included in the New Testament as ‘Jewish,’ in the sense of them being written by (converted) Jews for other Jews. From a historical perspective, a new development in the academy suggests that such approaches do not do justice to the nature of these texts. Indeed, even more recent attempts at understanding the New Testament against the background of Judaism are also found wanting. Instead, placing these texts within the broader context of the diverse ways of embodying Jewish ancestral customs in the pre-rabbinic Second Temple period, this interpretive trajectory, involving scholars from a wide array of backgrounds, insists that Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Revelation etc., should be understood as expressions of Judaism. (Runesson, 2023)
Runesson alludes to two inadequate historical approaches to the New Testament. The first is the to read the text through the lens of replacement theology. This approach acknowledges that much of the text was written by and for Jews, but still interprets the text in a thoroughly anti-Jewish way. The second approach recognizes Judaism as the "background" of the New Testament. This is an improvement, but a Jewish background implies a non-Jewish foreground. Runesson says we have to go further, reading the New Testament writings as "expressions of Judaism" (emphasis his).
It's easy to read the Gospels in particular, and to conclude that they're rather negative about Jews—this has been the majority reading for centuries—but if we read the way Segal and Runesson read, if we understand the Gospels as "internal Jewish documents" and the discussions they report as internal Jewish dialog and debate, then a different picture begins to form, a picture that is more consistent with the Old Testament, and more internally consistent with itself.
We'll come back to how Paul's writings fit into this in the coming weeks, but I'd like to conclude today's thoughts by addressing the awkwardness in all this. If this feels like foreign territory to you, you're not alone. Since late antiquity, both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism have largely defined themselves in opposition to one another. If you ask the average man on the street what he knows about Judaism, even if he knows nothing else, he will most likely say that Jews don't believe in Jesus. For both Jews and Christians today, the idea of reading the New Testament within Judaism is an uncomfortable idea.
Christians who first encounter a Jewish approach to the Bible often wonder, does this mean rejecting Jesus or the New Testament? Does it mean becoming legalistic or trying to earn my salvation? The answer is an emphatic no. God has often challenged me along this journey. He's challenged my motives, the things I value, and the way I live my life. Perhaps some of my convictions are different from yours, but I can say one thing. The more I have come to understand the Bible in a Jewish way, the more deeply I have come to know and love my Lord and Savior and the more aware I have become of my dependence on Him.
Sources
Runesson, Anders. “What Does It Mean to Read New Testament Texts ‘within Judaism’?” New Testament Studies 69, no. 3 (2023): 299–312. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688522000431.
Segal, Eliezer. “Jesus on My Mind,” Eliezer Segal’s Web Site, https://eliezersegal.ca/890825_jesus-on-my-mind/. Originally published in The Jewish Star, August 25 1989.