OK, so one of the things I’ve been hocking about for a year or so is the mistaken sense that Judaism is “older” than Christianity, in some meaningful sense. What is true is that modern Judaism has a deeper, stronger continuity with Temple Judaism than Christianity has. But both Pauline/Nicene Christianity and Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism form in response to the events from, say, 50 to 150 CE, including the destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem. In fact, I’d be inclined to agree with John H. Elliott, when he says in the abstract for Jesus the Israelite Was Neither a ‘Jew’ Nor a ‘Christian’: On Correcting Misleading Nomenclature that “The concepts ‘Jew’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ as understood today are shaped more by fourth century rather than first-century CE realities….” I haven’t read the whole article, I’m afraid.
A.J. Levine, (in The Misunderstood Jew, pp. 161-163), disagrees strongly with Mr. Elliott. In talking about the issue, she tells about being interrupted during a lecture by a neo-nazi who insisted that Jesus was not Jewish, and who had taken some aspects of his ideas from this sort of thing. It’s an alarming story. Is it incumbent on us (meaning us who talk about this sort of thing) to emphasize the continuity, even at the expense of underemphasizing the discontinuity? I emphasize the separation myself; Rabbinic Judaism is different from Temple Judaism. Yes, the continuity is there, and yes, we share some experiences of Judaism with Hillel or Saul of Tarsus. But let's make some lists.
Things Jewishness would have meant to Saul or Jesus or Hillel, that I don't have: animal sacrifice in the temple. Tithing (more or less) to support a hereditary caste who carry out Temple business. Having contracts, divorces, and other matters adjudicated by a religious court. Hebrew as a daily language. Temple coinage. Semi-official enforcement of Levitical law.
Things I share with Saul or Jesus or Hillel: The five books, the prophets, most of the writings. A history of kashrut. Circumcision. Ritual reading of Scripture (I think). Some of the brachot (I think). Mezzuzahs (to some extent). Passover. Yom Kippur. Shavuot. Sukkot. Shabbat.
Things Jewishness means to me that Saul or Jesus or Hillel didn't have: Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmud all as a legacy, with semi-Scriptural status. The L’cha Dodi. The Amidah. The siddur. The haggadah. The disputative tradition. Hanukkah. Purim. Bar Mitvah. Yiddish. Klezmer. Bagels. Many of the brachot, particularly the blessing over the candles.
Things that that I still think of as “Yiddishkeit” in some sense, although I don't actually do them or consider myself obligated: payess, kashrut, mikvah, t’fillin, the rules of ritual purity, sexual restrictions, tithing, shatnes.
Those are more or less off the top of my head. I’d welcome others. My point is that (a) it seems to me that the continuity is slim, but very important, and (2) I think it’s a mistake to think that the continuity part, the overlap part, is the important part of my tradition. As a moderately observant Jew, I might list a variety of things as important, depending on my mood, but any Top Five that I rattled off would clearly have something that dates from Temple era and something that dates from afterward.
To some extent, that’s just time, but to some extent, there’s a line there. Anglicans think of the line as Thomas Cranmer, I would guess, and think of everything in their sect since then as Anglicanism, and everything before then as a sort of proto-Christianity. And all the same Lutherans and Wesleyans. I don’t mean that the Methodists don’t think of themselves as Christian, as such, and thus in some sort of communion with earlier Christians. But I would think an attack on the practices of Christianity under Pope Urban would not make a Wesleyan feel uneasy. I suspect that Catholics experience a lot more continuity between their own practices and those of Peter, or at least of, let’s say, Gregory the Great, but it may well be that an attack on practices before the Council of Trent would be similar.
All of which notwithstanding, there’s certainly no reason to be quiet about false attacks on Temple Judaism. More important, we should be, in whatever interfaith situations we find ourselves (this is one), clear that Modern Judaism (vaddevah dat means) is what it is, and isn’t what it isn’t, so that when Christians read their Gospels, they don’t think ah, Pharisees, we’re not like those Jews.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I’ve run across the same thing when I’ve mentioned that Jesus was Jewish. Some people just want to believe that Jesus tapped into previously unrevealed universal truths, and don’t want to hear that His ministry was rooted in anything that came before. I refer them to 1John:38 (not that I have chapter & verse memorized, but I did find an online Bible for research) where His disciples call Him Rabbi. The word “Rabbi” wasn’t chosen randomly.
However, history is no friend to the kind of ignorance you find with, say, neo-Nazis interrupting A.J. Levine. If they knew the history of the church, then they’d see where it was rooted. If they knew that history, they’d know how the hardliners took control of the direction of Judaism and Christianity around 70 A.D. Gee, the Romans destroy one temple and everybody gets all apocalyptic and reactionary…
Possibly the most important thing you share with Jesus, Saul, and Hillel: A myth of common origin and belonging to the same people, whatever you call it. Also, that all four of you are the sort of thing that outsiders are/were pointing to when they call someone a Ioudaios/Jew.
Does A.J. have anything to say about Shaye Cohen’s work? I think his _Beginnings of Jewishness_ is fantastic, especially the article on how you know a Jew in antiquity when you see one, but I’m just an outsider trying to fake it in the study of ancient Judaism, and could do with some expert guidance.