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TO THE NEW TESTAMENT |
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by
Doug Ward |
OXFORD, OHIO-When the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth began to
proclaim that Israel's Messiah had come, they divided the Jewish world of the first
century. Some gladly received the message of Jesus' resurrection from the dead,
while others vehemently opposed it (see e.g. Acts 13; 14:1-4; 17:1-5, 10-13;
18:1-17; 19:8-9).
The
apostle Paul, who longed for all of his fellow Israelites to follow Jesus,
reflected on this state of affairs in chapters 9-11 of his epistle to the
Romans. Based on his understanding of the scriptures, he asserted that one day
"all Israel" would come to accept Jesus as Messiah (Romans 11:26). He
admonished Christians in the meantime to be respectful, not arrogant, toward
God's covenant people (v. 18).
Regrettably,
Christians through the centuries too often have ignored the instruction of
Romans 11:18. Instead of honoring the countrymen of Jesus and Paul, Christians
have treated Jews with contempt and hatred. The story of centuries of
persecution of Jews is one of the darkest chapters of Christian history.
Today,
thankfully, the overall situation is much different. Controversy between
Christians and Jews over the Messiahship of Jesus
continues, but in an atmosphere more often characterized by openness and mutual
respect.
In
such an atmosphere, there are opportunities for people on all sides of the
controversy to learn from each other's views. For example, Christians can find
it eye-opening to learn more about how the New Testament appears from a Jewish
perspective. One expert on this subject is Rabbi Michael J. Cook, who holds the
Sol and Arlene Bronstein Professorship in Judaeo-Christian
Studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. In teaching courses on the New
Testament to many future rabbis, Cook has seen firsthand how educated Jewish
readers approach the Christian Gospels and Epistles. On April 16, 2009, he
shared some of his insights in a lecture given at Miami University.1
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Ecclesia
and Synagoga |
Dr. Cook began his lecture by relating how he came to be a New
Testament scholar. He noted that nothing about his childhood gave a hint of such
a career path. He grew up in a New York neighborhood in which ninety-five per
cent of the people were Jewish. In this environment, the name of Jesus was
rarely mentioned.
Things
changed, however, when he moved away from home to attend Haverford College near
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Jewish students were a small minority in the
early 1960s.2 Suddenly
he was confronted by Christian culture, history and scripture.
In
an art history course at Haverford, Cook saw European Renaissance works in
which Jesus was flanked by two women. On Jesus' right was a woman called
Ecclesia, representing Christianity. On Jesus' left was a second woman, Synagoga, symbolizing Judaism. In these pictures,
"Ecclesia is often portrayed as graceful and crowned,
with staff in hand. Synagoga, however, is often
represented as blindfolded, with broken staff, and sometimes decorated with
broken tablets of the Law".3
Cook
learned that in Christian tradition, the wives of the patriarch Jacob were
sometimes seen as types of these two women. Rachel, Jacob's favorite wife,
represented the favored and triumphant Church, while the "weak-eyed"
Leah was a type of the blinded and defeated Synagogue.
Cook
resented these depictions of Judaism as blinded. At the same time, he had to
admit that he knew nothing about Jesus or Christianity. He resolved to do
something about his ignorance, and his new interest turned into a passion and
eventually a career. His latest book4 is
intended to help Jewish readers come to terms with the New Testament and
introduce Christians to Jewish perspectives on Jesus and Paul.
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Mixed
Feelings |
Based on extensive experience, Dr. Cook noted three tendencies that
he has often observed in Jewish readers of the New Testament:
· a
certain detachment, since these readers are dealing with a text that is not
scripture for them.
· a particular interest in sections of the New Testament that
seem to have the greatest relevance for Jews and Judaism.
· a sadness, because Christian understandings of the New
Testament have contributed to Christian persecution of Jews.
Jewish
readers also quickly notice many parallels and similarities between Jesus and
the sages of rabbinic Judaism. For example,
· like the sages, Jesus taught
in parables, often dealing with aspects of the kingdom of God.
· Jesus was in agreement with
the sages in upholding the reality of the resurrection of the dead.
· there are a number of
striking parallels between the sayings of Jesus and the sayings of the rabbis
recorded in Pirke Avot, the
most famous compilation of early rabbinic teaching.
· the Lord's Prayer has much in
common with tradtional Jewish daily prayers.
At the same time, the Gospels often portray conflict between Jesus and Jewish
teachers and leaders, especially the Pharisees, the predecessors of the
Talmudic sages.
Understandably,
then, Jews often experience mixed feelings in reading the New Testament. On one
hand, they see in Jesus a faithful Jew whose teachings were similar to those of
Hillel the Great and other esteemed ancient Jewish teachers. On the other hand,
they see a Jesus in conflict with Jewish leaders. The conflicts described in
the Gospels prefigured later strife between Jews and Christians, which
eventually led to Christian persecution of Jews.
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Resolving
Tensions in the Gospels |
To resolve the tensions they perceive in the Gospels, Dr. Cook
explained, Jewish readers often try to distinguish between an
"authentic" original Jesus and one presumably created later in the
first century by Jesus' followers. Cook has identified five perspectives often
adopted toward the Gospels by Jewish readers.
One
of these is the idea that as the relationship between the early Christians and
the rest of the Jewish community changed during the first century, Christian
portrayals of Jesus' relationship with other Jews were adjusted accordingly.
According to this view, Christians initially saw themselves as a part of the
larger Jewish community and emphasized that Jesus was a faithful Jew. Later,
when they cane to regret the fact that more Jews had not decided to follow
Jesus (as in Rom 9-11), they had Jesus express such regret (e.g. Matt 23:37;
Luke 13:34). After that, as friction increased between Christians and the rest
of the Jewish community, Jesus was pictured in sharp conflict with Jewish
leaders (e.g. Matt 23; John 5, 8).
A
second perspective sees the epistles of Paul, the earliest Christian writings, as
having influence on the Gospel portrayals of Jesus. Adherents of this
perspective suspect, for example, that Gospel passages implying that some
Gentiles would belong to the Kingdom of God, while some Jews might be excluded
(Matt 3:9; 8:10-13; 21:28-46), were attributed to Jesus in order to support
Paul's mission to the Gentiles.
The
third perspective in Dr. Cook's list charges that Christians invented certain
parts of the Gospel narrative in order to respond to challenges they faced in
later years. According to this view,
· Christians portrayed John the
Baptist as an Elijah figure in order to answer the argument that a coming of
Elijah must precede the coming of the Messiah.
· the tradition of the empty
tomb and the story that guards were paid to say that Jesus' body had been
stolen (Matt 28:11-15) were fictions created to answer questions frequently
encountered by early evangelists.
· the idea that Jesus knew
about his crucifixion in advance and died voluntarily as a fulfillment of biblical
prophecies (Mark 10:33-34; Matt 26:53-54) were added to the traditions about
Jesus in order to answer those who said a crucified man could not possibly be
the Messiah.
· Jesus' prediction that his followers would be expelled from
synagogues (John 16:2) was invented later to comfort Christians who had been expelled
from synagogues.
A fourth perspective is based on the widely held theory that the Gospel of Mark
was written earliest and was available to the compilers of the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke. This perspective asserts that the later Gospel writers added
anti-Jewish elements to their narratives that were not present in their
sources. Cook offered four examples:
· Comparing Mark 14:55-56 and
Matt 26:59-60, he noted that Mark says the Sanhedrin sought testimony against
Jesus, while Matthew has the Sanhedrin seeking false testimony.
· Comparing Mark 12:13-17 and
Matt 22:15-22, he observed that Mark attributes hypocrisy to those questioning
Jesus, while Matthew mentions malice as well.
· He pointed to Mark 12:28-34
as a cordial exchange between Jesus and a scribe, with each praising the other.
In the parallel account in Matthew (22:34-40), on the other hand, the mutual
admiration of Mark's account is absent and the scribe is replaced by a lawyer trying
to test Jesus.
· Comparing the Synoptic
accounts of Pilate's decision to have Jesus crucified (Mark 15:12-15, Matt
27:22-26, Luke 23:21-25), he noted that the crowd was more insistent on the
death sentence in Matthew and Luke than in Mark.
The fifth perspective involves the relationship of Jesus to the messianic
prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. Rabbi Cook explained this perspective with
an analogy. Christians, he said, view these prophecies as an arrow that hits a
bull’s eye (Jesus). Many Jews, on the other hand, suspect that Christians
painted the bull’s eye around the arrow after the fact, using the Hebrew
Scriptures to invent details about Jesus' life and death.
As
an example, Cook cited the account of Jesus' "triumphal entry" into
Jerusalem recorded in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 21:1-11). He asserted that
Matthew, misunderstanding the parallelism of Zech 9:9, created a ludicrous
scene of Jesus somehow riding upon two donkeys at the same time in order to
have Jesus fulfill that prophecy.
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Anti-Judaism
Has Created a Stumbling Block |
In listening to Dr. Cook's lecture, I was struck by the extrene skepticism toward the New Testament expressed in
these five perspectives. Here it should be explained that Cook's rabbinical
students come mainly from Reformed Judaism, a liberal branch of Judaism.
Scholars from the Reformed tradition often espouse text critical
interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures. Understandably, students who are
taught to view their own scriptures with a critical eye are likely to be even
more critical of the scriptures of a rival religion.
However,
I believe the main reason that Cook's students approach the Gospels with such
sensitivity and wariness is the fact that Christians have so often used these
writings as a weapon against Jews. By reading the New Testament in anti-Jewish
ways and persecuting Jews on that basis, Christians have made it difficult for
many Jews to even consider reading the Gospels, let alone give the message of
the Gospels a chance.
It
is important for Christians to understand that the episodes recorded in the
Gospels took place within the Jewish world of the Second Temple Period. This
was a world in which people often engaged in passionate discussions about the
Hebrew Scriptures, learning by debate with "iron sharpening iron."
Thus when Jesus had occasion to correct some of the Pharisees, he was not a
"Christian" making a blanket condemnation of Jews. Instead, following
in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, he was reaching out in love toward
people for whom he cared deeply. (Surely one of the reasons that Jesus and the
Pharisees spent so much time in close proximity is that they had a great deal
in common.)
Jewish
readers are especially sensitive about the Gospels' descriptions of the events
leading to the crucifixion of Jesus. Sadly, Christians have often labeled Jews
as "Christ-killers" because of the role of Jewish leaders in these
events. Such accusations show a profound lack of understanding of authentic
Christian teaching. Christians believe that Jesus came in order to die an
atoning death for the sins of all mankind. Since all people have sinned (Romans
3:23), we are all equally responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus'
death was foreordained by God (Acts 2:23), so the extent of the involvement of
Jewish leaders in the events leading to the crucifixion is of no real
consequence in the larger scheme of things.
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Responses
to the Five Perspectives |
Although I can understand why Jewish readers have adopted the
perspectives described by Dr. Cook, I dispute the accuracy of these
perspectives. One major difficulty with elaborate models of this type, in which
it is posited that a biblical text developed in a series of successive
"layers", is that there is no textual evidence for them. No one has a
Gospel manuscript containing just the earliest layers, before the later ones
were allegedly added.
Such
models also presuppose careless, sloppy editing. If an editor wanted to add a
layer to give the text a certain perspective, why would that editor allow
evidence of other perspectives from earlier layers to remain? If one is
tampering with a text, why do only a partial job of it? Good editors surely
would cover their tracks.
Text
critical models of the Gospels provide a means of creating a text, and a Jesus,
with which one is comfortable. If a Gospel passage describes deeds or sayings
of Jesus that one finds troublesome, one can just claim that this passage was
added to the original text by a later editor. That seems to be the main function
of the five perspectives outlined by Rabbi Cook.
The
first perspective suggests that Gospel accounts of conflicts between Jesus and
Jewish leaders were invented by Jesus' followers as a reflection of their own
later experiences. In response, I see no reason why Jesus would not have been
involved in such conflicts. Jesus lived in an era in which there were lively
debates among the people of Israel on a whole range of issues. It is not
unlikely, then, that a popular but controversial teacher was in the middle of
some of them.
The
second perspective claims that statements about inclusion of non-Israelites in
the people of God were put in Jesus' mouth in order to support the evangelistic
efforts of the apostle Paul. A simpler explanation is that teachings of Jesus
led to Paul's evangelistic mission. Gospel passages on Gentile inclusion are
consistent with Jesus' proclamation that the Kingdom of God was at hand (Mark
1:14). According to the prophets, people from all nations would seek the God of
Israel at the time when that Kingdom was established (Isa 2:2-3; 49:6; 56:8;
66:19; Zech 2:11; 8:21-23). So it is perfectly reasonable for Jesus actually to
have made the statements on Gentile inclusion that are attributed to him.
The
third perspective says that the early Christians added a layer of "answers
to frequently asked questions" to the Gospel accounts in order to answer
critics and encourage Christians. Underlying this perspective is the assumption
that Christianity is a sort of clever hoax. However, I do not think that Jesus'
disciples would have given their lives for a hoax. Instead, the basic claims of
Christianity are based on eyewitness accounts, like those of the over five
hundred people who had seen the resurrected Jesus (I Cor
15:3-8).
The fourth
perspective is highly speculative, since it rests on unproven assumptions about
how the Gospels were compiled. It would be difficult to make some kind of
quantitative comparison of the overall levels of tension between Jesus and
Jewish leaders as portrayed in each Gospel. Again, that such tension existed is
quite consistent with the boldness of Jesus' preaching and the times in which
he lived.
New
Testament claims that Jesus fulfilled Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew
Scriptures have been a source of ongoing controversy between Christians and
Jews. The example mentioned by Cook is Matt 21:1-7:
"As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples,
saying to them, `Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a
donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If
anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will
send them right away.' This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the
prophet: `Say to the Daughter of Zion, "See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."' The
disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey
and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them" (NIV).
The
scriptural quote in this passage actually combines two scriptures with a common
theme. The introductory phrase, "Say to the Daughter of Zion" comes
from Isa 62:11, where it is followed by the announcement,
"See, your Savior comes!" Then follows a quote from Zech 9:9,
which pictures the Messiah riding on a young donkey.
The artful juxtaposition of scriptures in Matt 21:5 suggests an author very
familiar with the Bible, not one who would have misunderstood the parallelism
of Zech 9:9.
Matthew's
Gospel is the only one that mentions two donkeys. Mark and Luke instead mention
a young donkey "which no one has ever ridden" (Mark 11:2; Luke
19:30). Here Matthew is making the same point as Mark and Luke, but in a
slightly different way. Mentioning that the young donkey is still with its
mother is another way of emphasizing that the donkey has never been ridden
before. All three Synoptic Gospels bring out this detail for symbolic reasons.
Commentator D.A. Carson explains:
"In the midst, then, of this excited crowd, an unbroken animal remains calm under the hands of the
Messiah who controls nature (8:23-27; 14:22-32). Thus the event points to the
peace of the consummated kingdom (cf. Isa 11:1-10)."5
Matthew
also mentions the mother to show that the young donkey precisely fulfills Zech
9:9 by being "a colt, the foal of a donkey."
Matthew
21:7 states that cloaks were placed on the donkeys, and Jesus sat on
"them"-i.e., Jesus sat on the cloaks that had been placed on
the young donkey. It is hard to imagine Matthew saying that Jesus somehow
simultaneously sat on both donkeys. (Jesus was a miracle worker but not a
circus performer.)
Matthew
21:1-7 does not have to be read in a way that implies its author was stupid.
But readers who come to the Gospels with a jaundiced eye and are trying to find
fault with the text will inevitably find ways to see it in the worst possible
light.
|
Conclusion |
Rabbi Cook's lecture was very informative and thought-provoking. I
am thankful to live in an era and location when Jews and Christians can
dialogue freely about their differences in an atmosphere of openness and mutual
respect. Both groups can learn much from this kind of dialogue. Moreover, I
believe that it is in such an atmosphere that Christianity's evangelistic
outreach to the Jewish people ultimately can bear the most fruit.
Further Reading: Further discussion of the issues raised in this article,
from a Christian point of view, can be found in the books of the Jewish
Christian scholar Dr. Michael L. Brown. Brown's books include the five-volume Answering
Jewish Objections to Jesus (Baker Books, 2000-2006; Purple Pomegranate
Productions, 2010), of which Volume 4 (New Testament Objections) is
especially relevant to the topic of this article; Our Hands Are Stained with
Blood: The Tragic Story of the "Church" and the Jewish People
(Destiny Image Publishers, 1992); and What Do Jewish People Think about Jesus?:
And Other Questions Christians Ask about Jewish Beliefs, Practices, and History
(Chosen Books, 2007).
For
more on how modern Jewish scholars have interpreted the Gospels, see The
Jewish Reclamation of Jesus : an Analysis and Critique
of Modern Jewish Study of Jesus by Donald A. Hagner
(Academie Books, 1984).
1This lecture was
loosely based on the material in Cook's article, "Jewish Reflections on
Jesus: Some Abiding Trends," pp. 95-111 in The Historical Jesus through
Catholic and Jewish Eyes, Leonard J. Greenspoon,
Dennis Hamm, and Bryan F. LeBeau, Editors, Trinity
Press International, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 2000.
2By the late 1970s,
when I attended Haverford, the number of Jewish students had increased
substantially.
3Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the
Christian Faith, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids,
Michigan, 1989, p.99.
4Modern Jews Engage
the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment
(Jewish Lights, 2008).
5Donald A. Carson, Matthew,
Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 8, Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1984.
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