This week's conclusion will present Rosemary Radford Ruether’s perspective on the New Testament, stating that its text vilified other first-century Jewish sects, like the Sadducean Temple leaders (see quotes and source below). My rebuttal rounds out this discussion. As always, your insights are encouraged in the comment section below.
Recapping, I last mentioned that 1) there were multiple first-century Jewish sects that 2) argued their respective claims as the next Sinaitic faith and 3) represented “true” Israel (see parts 1-2). Notably, they argued their perspectives using the same corpus, using the same modes of argumentation, and responding within the same sociopolitical setting.1
We finished the last post with a glimpse at the Zealots (Fourth Philosophy). Indeed, there is more to share on each “philosophy,” using Josephus’ term, a mid-first-century Jewish historian, referring to Jewish sectarian society. Perhaps Jewish sectarianism should be the next installment of discussions. It would, in fact, aid understanding of New Testament literature—the goal of any theologian!
Again, these differing approaches sought to answer the same urgent question of God’s reign and, further, their involvement in heralding the Messianic Era. Regarding the New Testament, these differences pose, to some theologians, as anti-Judaism. However, in the context of first-century Jewish diversity, including the Jesus Movement (later called “Christianity”), sages argued from the same source (Scriptures). To wit, Jesus often argued from the rabbinic hermeneutic, kal v’ chomer, “If, then … how much more,” contrasting light and weighty matters (cf. Matt. 7:11).
Also, Jesus used protective “fences” to broaden the boundaries around the Mosaic Law during the Sermon on the Mount, underscoring the span of early and late rabbinic trends: “They (the Men of the Great Assembly, 6th BCE) said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, develop many disciples, and make a fence around Torah” (Mishnah Avot 1:1).2 In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus sharpens the Torah’s prohibition against murder by adding the ruling against brotherly anger based on a midrashic reading of Deuteronomy 19:11, noting, “But suppose someone hates his neighbor, waits in hiding for him, rises against him, strikes him dead, then flees to one of these cities.”3 The point of the midrash and Jesus’ teaching is that due diligence averts an escalation toward murder. Consequently, failure to recognize these trends challenges reading the New Testament literature as a statement of first-century Judaism.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, author and church historian holding a doctorate in classics and patristics, advocates anti-Judaism tendencies in the New Testament:
“Like the Qumran community, Christianity vilified the Judaism outside its converted community as an apostate, sinful, worse than the Gentiles, and even of the devil. It regarded the others as fallen outside the true covenant and ranked with the enemies of God.”4
She supports her strongly worded premise with a perception that the New Testament throughout evinces Jewish rejection rather than co-existing Judaisms, who sometimes hotly debated similar claims. Indeed, Jesus was not fighting the Jews or Judaism but with some Jews over the “right kind of Judaism.”5 Additionally, the debates occurred within “Jewry,” as within a family.
Further, Ruether identifies “patterns” of anti-Judaism indicative of the “entire synoptic tradition,” particularly in Matthew’s gospel (e.g., blind fools, whitewashed tombs, serpents).6 Likewise, the Gospels of Luke and John present the Church as the only “true Plant (Israel) of God,” while those not planted will be “rooted up and thrown into the fire” (Luke 13:3; John 15:1-6).7 Ruether continues to explain that the Synoptics project Israel’s historical pattern of “killing prophets” onto the death of Jesus to demonstrate Israel’s unrepentant apostasy (cf. Matt. 23:30; Mark 12:1-12).8 However, a better reflection of the authorial intent reveals prophetic calls for repentance, a life of fruitfulness, and warnings of judgment—concepts inhering all Judaisms.
Moreover, her phrase, “negativity toward the Jews in the New Testament,”9 uncovers a typical sectarian “supersessionism,” where each sect strongly advocates that they are the faithful and “true Israel” of God.10 Namely, the New Testament’s claim as the “Israel of God” and “sons of God” fits easily into a mainstream sectarian perspective and, thus, bears no particular animosity towards other Judaisms (cf. Gal. 6:16; Rom. 8:14). It follows that Paul’s identification of Christianity, using this designation anachronistically, as the “Israel of God” did not establish a separate or “new race,” advanced in the Epistle to Diognetus, but rather, falls within the fluidity of first-century Judaisms.11
Nonetheless, Ruether’s point regarding the Qumranites, especially Essenes, is well taken. As an Intertestamental Judaism, they present a robust claim as the “true Israel.” Within their community and similar to Christianity, they sought purity of body and soul, practiced mikvah (immersion) for the purification of sin, sent temple offerings, followed their “Teacher of Righteousness,” and believed themselves to be the “sons of light.”12 Christianity claimed no less while asserting the right to be called “sons” of the Highest” (Rom. 8:14). Equally, this point applies to Pharisaical piety—the Amidah's main themes being representative. The Pharisees desired to bring temple purity into the home and the sanctification thereof through daily prayer, regarding themselves as priests of God.13 Unwittingly, Ruether's opposition fits Christianity neatly within the Judaic system, not separate from it, advancing the claim to read it as such.
That Judaic system spans Sinaitic Judaism, Amidah's pre-rabbinic window into Jewish thought and theology, and later rabbinic sources (Mishnah) that point back to New Testament concepts. Since the Amidah pre-dates Jesus and spans Rabbinic Judaism, its value as a continuum of Jewish theology sheds essential light on New Testament themes such as God's Father-King identity, kingdom imminency, and prayer. What is more, these themes provided vigorous dialogue between sects. Regarded as animosity, Ruether's argument for early Christianity's vilification of Judaism removes Jesus, his disciples, the apostolic writers, and literary works from this theological continuum.
However natural an ultimate “parting of the ways” seems, whether based on Christianity's claim as the “true people of God,”14 historical pogroms, or geographical upheavals, the major Jewish streams envisioned God's sovereign rule and their role in bringing it about. In particular, the Essenes employed purity and steadfastness as a means to “hasten the day of the Lord” (Manual of Discipline 1QS8).15 Obedience indicated fidelity for the Pharisees and Zealots, while Christianity envisioned “live tree theology” (cf. Rom. 11).
Like the Amidah and the Lord's Prayer, a study of Judaism in the New Testament highlights similar theological mindsets of first-century Judaisms represented in liturgical prayers central to worship.16 Their shared themes and expressions indicate a relational context that aids New Testament exegesis and approaches contemporary theological implications.
Illustrated in previous posts, the Lord's Prayer provides a liturgical glimpse into God's Father-King relationship with His people, might against the powers of sin and death, and his coming kingdom. Also, the Sermon on the Mount, where the Lord's Prayer resides, forms the outline of a New Testament “Torah," one that emerges from the Sinaitic faith. Undoubtedly, the Sermon on the Mount serves as an expression of the Torah of Moses with practical “fences” that protect against infractions while addressing the origins of waywardness. Hence, the New Testament must be viewed and studied as a Judaism within a Judaic system that seeks unity between the Gentile and Messianic Jewish branches of Christianity and dialogue with rabbinic institutions for beneficial scriptural understanding and practice.
Other theological implications suggest “covenantal unity” God's means of kingdom expansion throughout Scripture17 (e.g., Gen. 12:3; Rom. 4:16) and consistent biblical themes that maintain the theological character of the New Testament. Jacob Neusner sums up the character of the New Testament text:
The Founder of Christianity, and all of his disciples and continuators, derived from Israel, believed Israel’s Scriptures conveyed God’s word and understood this new way within Israel solely in terms provided by the Judaic setting. … Scarcely a line of the New Testament is to be fully and exhaustively understood without reference to pertinent passages in the Old Testament.18
Such a view accords with Jesus’ presentation of the Lord's Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount and His presentation of Torah life for disciples. The dynamics of the covenantal community, inaugurated in Jesus’ communion, patterned after and participating in God's love, marks the bridge between God's transcendent and imminent kingdom.19 It meant “God with Us” in the Amidah and “His kingdom come” in the Lord's Prayer. Thus, the implications for a New Testament Judaism foster a significant understanding of the texts, intimacy with God, and, ultimately, His glorification in the world. The aim of reading the Bible always endeavors “to see the glory of the triune God in its pages”20
Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel, and the Initial Confrontation (University of Chicago Press, 1987), x, accessed October 21, 2018, http://www.bibliovault.org/BV.landing.epl?ISBN=9780226576527.
Thank you, Patty, for this anthologized commentary on Pirkei Avot (Artscroll Mesorah Series, 1989).
Brad H. Young, Meet the Rabbis: Rabbinic Thought and the Teachings of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 46.
Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (Eugene, OR.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1997), 74.
Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of Jesus Christ (New York: The New York Press, 2012), Kindle loc. 1556.
Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 75.
Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 75.
Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 91.
Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 63.
Chilton and Neusner, Judaism in the New Testament: Practices and Beliefs, 5.
David B. Woods, “Jew-Gentile Distinction in the One New Man of Ephesians 2:15” in Conspectus 18 (2014): 95–132.
J. Julius Scott, Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1995), 177, 222–223.
David Clark, On Earth as in Heaven: TheLord’s Prayer from Jewish Prayer to Christian Ritual (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), Kindle, 10.
Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine, 83.
Scott, Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament, 224.
Solomon Schechter, “Introduction” in Aspects of Rabbinic Theology: Major Concepts of the Talmud (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 9.
Richard Pratt Jr., “Reformed Theology Is Covenant Theology by Richard Pratt Jr.” Ligonier Ministries, last modified June 1, 2010, accessed August 11, 2021, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/reformed-theology-covenant-theology/.
Chilton and Neusner," "Introduction” in Judaism in the New Testament: Practices and Beliefs, xiii–xiv.
Grenz, Theology for the Community of God, 609.
John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture (Wheaton, IL.: Crossway Books, 2017), 95.
Yeah, that "Patty" sure is helpful!
Always a interesting read. Appreciate the insight and education. And whoever "Patty" is...tell her that your sister 'Patti" is glad she got that book for you at the bookstore 😁😘