Israel, the Church, and the Bible

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Their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. Psalm 1:2

The Jewish Roots of Christianity

As we read the New Testament, it is clear that one of the issues the church first had to face was its relationship to Israel and to the promises made to Abraham and his descendants forever. According to the witness of the Gospels, during Jesus' lifetime there were those who associated him with Elijah, John the Baptist, or others among the prophets (Matt 16:14; Mark 6:15; 8:28; Luke 9:18-19). Jesus himself repeatedly referred to the sacred Scriptures of Israel. The same was true of his earliest followers, as well as all the writers of the New Testament.

Even Paul, the "Apostle to the Gentiles," usually began his preaching in the cities he visited by speaking at the synagogue, constantly quoted the Hebrew Bible—although in a Greek translation— and according to Acts declared himself to be preaching "the hope of Israel" (Acts 28:20).

Yet it was some of the religious leaders of Israel who, according to the Gospels, believed Jesus to be a danger to the nation and its religion, and therefore turned him over to the Roman authorities to be crucified. When, after the events of Holy Week and Pentecost, his disciples began their preaching, they had to contend with the opposition of many in the Jewish Sanhedrin, which ordered them to cease their activities, and punished them when they did not obey.

As Christianity spread into the Gentile world, many of its first converts were either Jews or those whom the Jews knew as "God-fearers," that is, people who believed in the God of Israel and who followed most of the moral teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures, but who were not ready to accept circumcision, nor to follow all the ritual and dietary laws of Israel. Traditionally, when such God-fearers decided to join Judaism, they were accepted into Israel's fold through a series of steps that included a baptismal rite and were known as "proselytes." Now the preaching of Christianity provided such God-fearers with a new option. They could join the church through a process that also culminated in a baptism, and within this community they could worship the God of Israel without having to submit to the ritual strictures that had stood in their way to becoming Jews. Many actual Jews accepted the preaching of Christians, and Jesus as the Messiah—to the point that for quite some time a large proportion of Christians were of Jewish origin. For some, this new form of Judaism that seemed to make it easier to be part of the surrounding society without fear of being defiled by ritually unclean Gentiles seemed less demanding, and therefore more appealing, than a stricter form of Judaism. In this, they were continuing a trend that had developed in some Jewish quarters, for even before the advent of Christianity there were many Jews who were seeking ways to bridge the gap that separated them from Hellenistic culture and society. For many such Jews, and not only for God-fearers, Christianity seemed to provide an attractive alternative.

Thus was set up a spirit of competition and often suspicion between Christians and Jews—a competition that centered mostly on the question of whose interpretation of ancient Scripture was correct. Christians claimed the Hebrew Bible as their own, accusing Judaism of misinterpreting its own scriptures. They insisted that there were prophecies in the Hebrew Bible that pointed to Jesus. Soon they began circulating lists of "testimonies"—passages from the prophets and other sacred Jewish writings that, according to Christian polemicists, foretold the coming of Jesus and many of the events of his life. In the heat of competition and controversy, Christians increasingly blamed Jews in general—and not just the religious leadership of Jerusalem—for the death of Jesus. Blaming Jews for the death of Jesus served their anti-Jewish polemics, and it was also more convenient and less dangerous than constantly reminding themselves and others that Jesus had been executed as a subversive criminal by the powerful Roman Empire.

In the midst of polemic and competition, Judaism also stiffened its opposition to Christianity, particularly after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 left it devoid of a temple and territorial identity. Judaism, until then the national religion of a people with a land and an ancient center of worship, now found itself having to define itself by means other than a temple and a land and competing for a place in the maelstrom of religions of the Greco-Roman world. In that competition, its most serious rival was Christianity, precisely because Christianity had Jewish roots and now claimed for itself much of the religious inheritance of Israel. A center of the ensuing revival of Jewish scholarship and polemics was in Jamnia (now Yavneh, in Israel). In the year 90, the rabbis in Jamnia listed the official books (the "canon") of the Hebrew Scriptures. Scholars still debate to what degree this was simply a reaffirmation of what most Jews had long held, and to what degree it was a reaction to Christianity and its propaganda. At any rate, the canon of Jamnia excluded many of the more recent books that for a number of reasons were often quoted by Christians.

It is difficult for us today to understand the full measure of the debate and controversy involved in this process. For many centuries—even though there have always been differences in the midst of each of the two—Christianity and Judaism have been fairly well defined. For much of that time, Christians have had the upper hand politically and socially and have often used their power to suppress Judaism and to harass its followers. But such was not the case in the early centuries of the Christian era. Both Christianity and Judaism were in the process of taking shape—Christianity because it was new, and Judaism because it was learning to live under new circumstances. Thus, neither Judaism nor Christianity was exactly what it is today—and which of the two would eventually win out was still much in doubt.

The Hebrew Bible

The first Christians, like Jesus himself, were Jews. They did not think they were part of a new religion. They were convinced that the "gospel," the good news, was that in Jesus and his resurrection the ancient promises made to Israel were being fulfilled—in other words, that "the hope of Israel" was now coming to fruition. As Acts tells the story, at first they did not even conceive that this was a message of hope for all humankind, and it was only after some astonishing experiences that they decided that their good news was also for the Gentiles. Even then, all you have to do is read the epistles of Paul to realize that the good news for Gentiles is that they, too, are invited to become children of Abraham by faith—or, as Karl Barth put it in the twentieth century, that they could become "honorary Jews."

As Jews, no matter whether by physical descent or by adoption through faith, Christians had a...