A recent New York Times article discusses the newly published book, “The Jewish Annotated new Testament,” edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, which provides a Jewish translation and perspective on Christian texts. a fascinating project that serves as a hallmark for just how far Christian-Jewish dialogue has come.
I flicked through as much as I could on the Amazon preview. each book of the new Testament has introductions and annotations, and the compilation includes essays written by 50 preeminent Jewish scholars. Just a taster, Daniel Boyarin, UC Berkeley, wrote about, “Logos, a Jewish Word: John’s Prologue as Midrash”; Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College, has an essay on “Jesus in Modern Jewish Thought,” and my professor from USC, Joshua Garroway also included his piece entitled “Ioudaios,” meaning Judean in Greek (thank you, Google).
For Christians, this book should enrich their understanding of the new Testament by highlighting the positive influence of early Judaism. for Jews, this books makes the study of the Christian Bible inviting and accessible, enriches the understanding of rabbinic literature, and confronts problematic passages used against Jews to perpetrate anti-Semitism.
What this work represents is that Jews are looking beyond the history of persecution from the Church to appreciate and encounter Christian texts. this gesture towards greater understanding must be recognized within the developments of Christian-Jewish relations in the last century.
From around the end of the fourth century, where Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, until the sixteenth century, crusades, massacres, forced baptisms, ghettos, and blood libels marked Jewish life in Christian Europe. in particular it was the teaching of contempt against Jews and Judaism that led to their marginalization. at the heart of this teaching was the collective guilt of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus. in the early 60’s, however, with the memories and wounds from the Holocaust still fresh, the Catholic Church underwent a tremendous theological shift in its perspective towards Jews and Judaism. it was in 1965 when the second Vatican Council published “Nostra Aetate,” which would begin reversing two thousand years of marginalization if not vilification of Jews by Catholics.
The doctrine was groundbreaking to many as it upended the charge of deicide and the notion that the Church superseded the Jewish people’s covenant with God. it also decried “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.” for me, the pinnacle of this transformation was exemplified by John Paul II, who repeatedly stated that the Jews are the people of God’s covenant and when visiting the Great Synagogue of Rome he called the Jews “our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham.” These gestures of embrace represented a radical transformation and shift from the often disdainful language used prior.
A parallel gesture from Jews came in September 2000 when a group of American rabbis issued an important document entitled, “Dabru Emet [Speak the Truth]: a Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity,” signed by 170 Jewish scholars and rabbis. The statement recognized the transformations, affirmed the special relationship, and stated that they did not consider Nazism to be a Christian initiative. Theologically, it also asserted that Jews and Christians worship the same God.
It’s incredible how far Christian-Jewish relationships has come in such a short period. As I mentioned in my last post, the world needs interreligious dialogue. Our own faith is enlarged and enriched by learning about other heritages, we acquire border-crossing skills to communicate and connect with others, and we can combat misunderstanding and hatred. By learning each others scriptures and sharing our stories, we are able to recognize how we differ and how we are the same. this book in particular seems to highlight the common heritage, showing how modern Christianity and Judaism were birthed from the same environment. It’s a great privilege to live in an age where Jews and Christians can civilly learn from each other out of mutual respect.
Jewish literacy of Christianity is probably far better than Christian understanding of Judaism. That’s inevitable, we live in a predominantly Christian society. Growing up in England, despite attending a Jewish primary and secondary school, I was aware of the legacy of Jesus, and knew about all the holidays and the basic beliefs. I have sweet memories of visiting my old neighbor, a WW1 veteran, every winter to see his Christmas tree, sit by the fire place, and have some great home-made pudding. Mince pie is still my favorite.
Jews know about Christianity from living in a multifaith society, but how many have ever sat down and read the new Testament? (Then again, most of the Jews I know are barely literate of their own scriptures.) I haven’t read the new Testament cover-to-cover, but I have at least been exposed to a good amount of academic study of the texts, including the anti-Jewish polemics. I do want to learn more and think that every educated person, Jew or gentile, should be literate in these texts that has so shaped the Western imagination.
While there’s more Jews can learn about Christian scripture, work needs to be done to teach Christians that Jews today are not simply the Pharisees in the Christian Bible. There also needs to be a parallel effort to teach Christians about the Tanach, the Talmud, and all the great commenters and thinkers that shape our current practice from Maimonides and Rashi to Joseph Solveitchik and Judith Plaskow.
In the last line of the NY Times article, mark Oppenheimer quotes Amy-Jill Levine as saying, “The more I study new Testament,” Dr.Levine said, “the better Jew I become.” at first I was very uncomfortable with this statement, as the reverse would imply that Jews are somehow less or incomplete if they don’t accept the new Testament. That to be a better Jew, one must study the new Testament, a viewpoint I obviously find to be offensive. (I tweeted Oppenheimer my complaints about the editing but have yet to hear a response). I don’t really think this is what Levine’s implying, though the editor could have done a better job than to just leave such a dramatic statement hanging. I think Levine means to say that there’s meaning and value to learn from Christianity, and I fully agree. Of course you can become a better person by learning from other people’s wisdom,” as one of my favorite statements in Ethics of the Father 4:1 goes, “Ben Zoma would say: who is wise? one who learns from every person.”
In the introduction to the book, written by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, the editors discuss the term “holy envy,” coined by Krister Stendahl, Emeritus Bishop of Stockholm. The term was used to “express the idea that a religious tradition different from the one we practice may express beautiful and meaningful notions. no religion contains all wisdom expressed perfectly and there is much in the new Testament that we find both beautiful and meaningful.” It’s their intention that Jews should experience this “holy envy” when reading the new Testament, which is a better than saying it will make you “become a better Jew.”
They give the example of appreciating Paul’s description of love:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
I welcome this holy envy and this great development, and in case anyone out there is looking to get me a Christmas/Chanukah present, I’m putting this on my wish list.
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