Was Jesus a Jew?
Discovering the Jewish Jesus
Was Jesus a Jew? Some people claim that Jesus was a Christian. Some have claimed that he was an Aryan Christian. But in recent decades scholars have been returning to ancient historical settings and discovering the Jewish Jesus. Anthony J. Saldarini’s Bible Review article “What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?” cautions against wrenching Jesus out of his Jewish world.
Was Jesus a Jew? This late-15th-century painting by the Spanish artist known as the Master of Perea depicts a Last Supper of lamb, unleavened bread and wine—all elements of the Seder feast celebrated on the first night of the Jewish Passover festival. Whether the Last Supper was a Passover Seder is one issue scholars have raised as they have been discovering the Jewish Jesus. Photo: Christie’s Images/Superstock.
Jesus himself didn’t write the Gospels. They are late-first-century accounts that we are continually interpreting. In seeking to emphasize the uniqueness of Jesus, traditions have distanced Jesus from the cultural setting of his day, whether that be his Jewish roots or the larger Greco-Roman world.
In the 19th century, German theologians emphasized this distance as Saldarini explains below. Was Jesus a Jew? Was Christianity a Jewish sect? The conflicts in the early church between Peter, claiming his Jewishness, and Paul, the missionary to Gentiles, were more complex than some 19th-century theologians have allowed.
Albrecht Ritschl saw a Jesus who attacked Scribes and Pharisees and, he claimed, Judaism itself. Jesus taught something so new that it overthrew and superseded his Jewishness. Christianity itself was to be purified of its Jewish elements. Ritschl turned this theology to attacks on Jews, giving ammunition to the 20th-century Holocaust.
Ritschl’s Jesus focused on his personal relationship with God—a relationship that transcended historical contexts. But Jesus was born in a Jewish home and lived in the Jewish culture and in the land of Israel. Was Jesus a Jew? Yes, Theological study is further discovering the Jewish Jesus and what his Jewishness means to Christian theology and Jewish-Christian relations.
For Christians, Jesus’ Jewishness is critically connected to his familiar role as Christ—more than an ethereal spiritual role but a role rooted in the history of the people of Israel. Disassociating Jesus from his ethnic roots can lead to violence toward Jesus’ own people. As Anthony J. Saldarini elaborates below in “What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?” discovering the Jewish Jesus is a task that can give Christians a better understanding of Jesus.
What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?
To wrench Jesus out of his Jewish world destroys Jesus and destroys Christianity
Bible Review, June 1999
by Anthony J. Saldarini
When I was growing up in St. Kevin’s Parish in the Dorchester section of Boston in the 1940s and ’50s, Jesus was unquestionably a Christian. Even more strangely, in Germany during the Nazi era Jesus was an Aryan Christian. How did a first-century Galilean Jew become a Christian and, for some, an Aryan Christian at that?
Before we laugh at this foolishness, we should remember that we have not one word written by Jesus and not one contemporary account of his activities. Instead, we have four late-first-century interpretations of Jesus: the Gospels. Each demands and has received constant reinterpretation. Though the risk of misinterpreting Jesus is great, every generation has no choice but to try to make sense of the Gospels.
We necessarily interpret as we read, but not all interpretations are created equal, despite the claims of some postmodern thinkers. A Christian Jesus is a parochial, self-serving myth and an Aryan Jesus a perverse one. But why then have Christians so persistently thought of Jesus as a Christian and resisted admitting the obvious, that Jesus was a Jew? Answer: the pervasive problem of uniqueness.
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All religious traditions seek to present themselves as somehow special, better or primary, as irreplaceable or unique. For Christians this means that either Jesus as a person or his teachings and actions must stand out from his historical setting. For centuries the theological claim that Jesus is divine sufficed. In our empirical world of science and history, many Christian scholars take another tack; they seek to make Jesus dissimilar from the Judaism of his day and from the Greco-Roman world in which it was set.
As is often the case, contemporary historical and theological conflicts have their roots in the fertile scholarship of 19th-century Germany. The names Ferdinand Baur (1792–1860) and Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) may not immediately leap to mind, but a brief sketch of their activities will help illuminate Christian biases then and today.
Baur argued successfully that early Christianity had originated historically within Judaism and, less convincingly, that all of early Christian history reflected a struggle between a Jewish wing (led by Peter) and a gentile wing (led by Paul) until a synthesis was achieved. Subsequent scholarship has established that Paul was much more Jewish, and the conflicts among the early followers of Jesus much more complex, than Baur thought. But his fundamental point, the Jewish matrix of Christianity, endures.
In “Uncovering the Jewish Context of the New Testament,” Amy-Jill Levine reveals what Jews (and Christians) should know about Christian scripture and Jesus the Jew.
A Jesus who taught like a Jew and an early Christian community that looked like a Jewish sect troubled many 19th-century German Lutheran scholars, who preferred to envision a Jesus who taught a new and unique doctrine that overthrew the established tradition. In reaction to Baur, Albrecht Ritschl “solved” the problem by attacking the Jews. For him, Jesus did not reform or transform Judaism, he condemned it. Jesus the Jew, in Ritschl’s view, transcended Judaism by purifying Christianity of its Jewish elements. From the middle of the 19th century until World War II, numerous German scholars, including Adolf Harnack and Rudolf Bultmann, followed Ritschl’s lead in one way or another. None were Nazis, but reading them after the Holocaust leaves us with an eerie sensation.
Ritschl protected the uniqueness of Jesus and extricated him from his Jewish setting by replacing the Jewish Jesus with a Romantic Jesus who had a supernatural, ineffable relationship with God, a relationship that superseded all historical influences. Deep personal relationships are the stuff of modern theology and spirituality, but separated from the weave and grit of historical reality, the personal Jesus quickly devolves into a personal projection disconnected from community and culture.
FREE ebook, Who Was Jesus? Exploring the History of Jesus’ Life. Examine fundamental questions about Jesus of Nazareth.
So we must face the crucial question: Does Jesus the Jew—as a Jew—have any impact on Christian theology and on Jewish-Christian relations? Or is Jesus’ life as a Jew just accidental? After all, he had to be born something: Incan or Ethiopian, Mongolian or whatever. Is Jesus’ Jewishness superseded by his role as Christ, the Messiah (the “Anointed One”), sent by God to save all nations?
To wrench Jesus out of his Jewish world destroys Jesus and destroys Christianity, the religion that grew out of his teachings. Even Jesus’ most familiar role as Christ is a Jewish role. If Christians leave the concrete realities of Jesus’ life and of the history of Israel in favor of a mythic, universal, spiritual Jesus and an otherworldly kingdom of God, they deny their origins in Israel, their history, and the God who has loved and protected Israel and the church. They cease to interpret the actual Jesus sent by God and remake him in their own image and likeness. The dangers are obvious. If Christians violently wrench Jesus out of his natural, ethnic and historical place within the people of Israel, they open the way to doing equal violence to Israel, the place and people of Jesus. This is a lesson of history that haunts us all at the end of the 20th century.
“What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?” by Anthony J. Saldarini originally appeared in Bible Review, June 1999. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in September 2011.
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Was Christianity a Jewish sect?
They were first called Christians in Antioch, this was after Christ died and rose from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God. They were called Christians then because they kept proclaiming “Christ in you” “Christ in you” which was being born again and having God and Christ in you.
Is that a Jewish sect? No! After you have Christ in you there is no more Jew or Gentile but one body through Christ Jesus.
Was Christianity a Jewish sect?
They were first called Christians in Antioch, this was after Christ died and rose from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God. They were called Christians then because they kept proclaiming “Christ in you” “Christ in you” which was being born again and having God and Christ in you.
Is that a Jewish sect? No! After you have Christ in you there is no more Jew or Gentile but one body through Christ Jesus.
Without a Christian background, reading the gospels gives a clear answer that Jesus was a Jew. The gospels, however, perhaps because of subsequent editing or speaking to foreign audiences, already distanced Jesus from his origins by speaking of “the Jews”.
Without a Christian background, reading the gospels gives a clear answer that Jesus was a Jew. The gospels, however, perhaps because of subsequent editing or speaking to foreign audiences, already distanced Jesus from his origins by speaking of “the Jews”.
An understanding of the Jewish community and the fact that Jesus was a Jew and the Apostles were also Jewish is key to a full understanding of Scripture. When they spoke of Scripture, they were referring to the Tanahk, the Old Testament, the new Testament had not been written yet, so in order to understand all of the teachings, one must look at it from the Jewish mindset of the time
An understanding of the Jewish community and the fact that Jesus was a Jew and the Apostles were also Jewish is key to a full understanding of Scripture. When they spoke of Scripture, they were referring to the Tanahk, the Old Testament, the new Testament had not been written yet, so in order to understand all of the teachings, one must look at it from the Jewish mindset of the time
Judaism of the first century is not inherently evil, bad, or nasty. It needed refocusing and redirection which Jesus provided as Rabbi.
Paul makes it abundantly clear that the Gospel is the the Jew first and then the Gentile until all the world acknowledges that Jesus is God with Us. Furthermore, Gentiles are grafted into the stock of faithful Abraham. If we who are grafted in are not faithful in return, we can be loped off just as easily.
God is not finished w/the Jews nor has He given them to destruction. His word to them and to us in the Torah is plain as are the words in the prophets. Whoever curses Israel will find the curse back on him/herself.
Without being steeped in the Old Testament, the teaching of Jesus and subsequently of His apostles, incl Paul, makes no sense whatsoever. Jesus was a reformer and did not dismiss Judaism of His day. He had harsh words to the leadership who should know better and did no better! He busted the chops of the hypocrites, not the average Jew. He came to save the lost sheep of Israel — not the Gentiles in His earthly ministry and said as much.
However, He extended God’s grace to a few Gentiles (goyim) when He was asked in faith.
The Judaism of His day had become over ritualized. It was the ritual that seemed to matter to the powers that were. Jesus redirected them to the relationship — corporate and individual.
It is hard for us humans to focus on two things at once — we tend to throw the baby out w/the bath water…we go for the ritual to the exclusion of the relationship. We go whole hog for the personal intense relationship at the expense of an outward focus of ministry. We denigrate ritual in favor of only a powerful relationship.
Jesus calls us to both in BALANCE. If we are in Christ, we are also part of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If we lose sight of that, we lose sight of why we were grafted in and the corporate nature of our life in Christ suffers damage.
Jesus practiced the ritual of His day at the Temple in Jerusalem. He practiced the ritual of His day at the local synagogue. He also practiced the relationship and discipline of prayer before He met the needs of the sons and daughters of Israel.
We are called to emulate His example to the best of our ability. So, Christian, steep yourself in the Old Testament, knowing that is it also a love letter fm God to you as well as to the Jew! Ruth put it well — your people are MY people!
Judaism of the first century is not inherently evil, bad, or nasty. It needed refocusing and redirection which Jesus provided as Rabbi.
Paul makes it abundantly clear that the Gospel is the the Jew first and then the Gentile until all the world acknowledges that Jesus is God with Us. Furthermore, Gentiles are grafted into the stock of faithful Abraham. If we who are grafted in are not faithful in return, we can be loped off just as easily.
God is not finished w/the Jews nor has He given them to destruction. His word to them and to us in the Torah is plain as are the words in the prophets. Whoever curses Israel will find the curse back on him/herself.
Without being steeped in the Old Testament, the teaching of Jesus and subsequently of His apostles, incl Paul, makes no sense whatsoever. Jesus was a reformer and did not dismiss Judaism of His day. He had harsh words to the leadership who should know better and did no better! He busted the chops of the hypocrites, not the average Jew. He came to save the lost sheep of Israel — not the Gentiles in His earthly ministry and said as much.
However, He extended God’s grace to a few Gentiles (goyim) when He was asked in faith.
The Judaism of His day had become over ritualized. It was the ritual that seemed to matter to the powers that were. Jesus redirected them to the relationship — corporate and individual.
It is hard for us humans to focus on two things at once — we tend to throw the baby out w/the bath water…we go for the ritual to the exclusion of the relationship. We go whole hog for the personal intense relationship at the expense of an outward focus of ministry. We denigrate ritual in favor of only a powerful relationship.
Jesus calls us to both in BALANCE. If we are in Christ, we are also part of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If we lose sight of that, we lose sight of why we were grafted in and the corporate nature of our life in Christ suffers damage.
Jesus practiced the ritual of His day at the Temple in Jerusalem. He practiced the ritual of His day at the local synagogue. He also practiced the relationship and discipline of prayer before He met the needs of the sons and daughters of Israel.
We are called to emulate His example to the best of our ability. So, Christian, steep yourself in the Old Testament, knowing that is it also a love letter fm God to you as well as to the Jew! Ruth put it well — your people are MY people!
Of course Jesus was Jew! I find it difficult to imagine anybody reading the New Testament without realizing this. Even the so-called “gentile” Paul/Saul identifies himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews of the tribe of Benjamin (Philipians 3)(b.t..w. the name change Saul -> Paul didn’t occur after his conversion, but only when he started to preach to the gentiles (in Greek), suggesting that it was simply his Greek name in contrast to his Hebrew name… cf. also Mark John (Markos, Jochanan Acts 15:37)). Moreover, the very term “Christ” (Annointed) is simply a translation of “Mashiach” and have no meaning in a getile context. It can only be understood in the context of the promises given to the Jews in their Scriptures.
@Gerald: There are pretty good arguments to be made that the term in the context of the gospels refer to the Judeans (the Jews living in the Southern area) in contrast to the Galileans. I would suggest that a major reason for the gentile Christians later distancing themselves from the Jews were the result of the Jewish rebellions (esp. the Bar Kochba rebellion which probably estranged even the Jewish followers of Jesus as Messiah). The Christians were already being persecuted for turning their backs on the pagan gods (and worshiping the God of Israel instead), no need to appear to sympathise with a rebellion as well!
Of course Jesus was Jew! I find it difficult to imagine anybody reading the New Testament without realizing this. Even the so-called “gentile” Paul/Saul identifies himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews of the tribe of Benjamin (Philipians 3)(b.t..w. the name change Saul -> Paul didn’t occur after his conversion, but only when he started to preach to the gentiles (in Greek), suggesting that it was simply his Greek name in contrast to his Hebrew name… cf. also Mark John (Markos, Jochanan Acts 15:37)). Moreover, the very term “Christ” (Annointed) is simply a translation of “Mashiach” and have no meaning in a getile context. It can only be understood in the context of the promises given to the Jews in their Scriptures.
@Gerald: There are pretty good arguments to be made that the term in the context of the gospels refer to the Judeans (the Jews living in the Southern area) in contrast to the Galileans. I would suggest that a major reason for the gentile Christians later distancing themselves from the Jews were the result of the Jewish rebellions (esp. the Bar Kochba rebellion which probably estranged even the Jewish followers of Jesus as Messiah). The Christians were already being persecuted for turning their backs on the pagan gods (and worshiping the God of Israel instead), no need to appear to sympathise with a rebellion as well!