The Jewish Annotated New Testament (138 page)

Ninth is the insistence that Jesus objected to the “temple domination system” that overtaxed the population, forced upon them oppressive purity laws (see above), and functioned as an elitist institution in cooperation with Rome. Thus we have the common stereotype that the “money changers” were overcharging pilgrims. Jesus never makes this charge, although there are rabbinic notices that the high priests would sometimes take the tithes due to the poorer priests. Nor have we evidence that the Temple oppressed the peasants or overtaxed them. The vast majority of the Jewish people loved the Temple, visited it on pilgrimage festivals, protected it from Roman profanation, and mourned its destruction. According to the book of Acts, Jesus’ followers, including Paul, continued to worship there. When in the first revolt against Rome, the Zealot factions gained control of Jerusalem, they did burn the Temple debt records, but they also appointed their own high priest. To some extent, the idea of the temple domination system stems from Jesus’ comment about the “den of robbers” (Mt 21.13) ; however, “den of robbers” is a quotation from the Hebrew Bible, from Jer 7.11, and it refers not to where people steal but where thieves go to feel safe.

Tenth is the claim that early Judaism was narrow, clannish, and exclusivistic and that Jesus invented universalism. For example, in Acts 10.28a, Peter states, “it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile.” The claim is false, as the Gospel of Luke itself indicates (see Lk 7.1–10), as the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple proves, and as the presence of God-fearers and the conversion of pagans to Judaism in the first century all indicate. Yes, some Jews were narrow (the Qumran scroll 1QM, which divides the world into the “Sons of Light” and the “Sons of Darkness” is hardly a model of ecumenical and interfaith alliance); others were not. Universalism has important precedents in the Hebrew Bible, especially in texts describing the ideal future (“the messianic age”; see, e.g., Isa 2.1–4), and such ideas continued in rabbinic texts as well.

These common stereotypes, and there are others, can be addressed by reading and teaching the entire New Testament carefully within its context. The commentaries and essays in this volume should provide for readers not only a greater appreciation for the Scriptures of the Christian Church but should also prevent the false teaching that deforms the “good news” of Jesus.

THE NEW TESTAMENT BETWEEN THE HEBREW BIBLE (TANAKH) AND RABBINIC LITERATURE

Marc Zvi Brettler

It is impossible to read the New Testament aptly without knowledge of the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh (an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im [Prophets], and Ketuvim [Writings], what the church calls the “Old Testament,” and what is sometimes called the “Hebrew Bible”). Most of the books that comprise the New Testament presume the background of that collection of writings—usually in its Greek translation, the Septuagint (see “The Septuagint,” p.
562
); they quote it, allude to it, use its thought forms and concepts, and in general rely upon it as a source of ideas, history, and religious meaning.

But such appreciation of the Hebrew Bible is not enough for a full understanding of how the New Testament discerns this earlier biblical material. Informed reading of the New Testament must also take account of the development of Jewish thought, including Jewish biblical interpretation, through the time of Jesus of Nazareth and his early followers. Of the approximately 8,000 verses in the New Testament, more than 250 quote the Tanakh, and perhaps twice as many directly allude to it; if verses with more distant allusions are included, the number is far greater. For example, in Matthew 2.2, the magis’ question—“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage”—likely alludes to Numbers 24.17, “a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.”

The New Testament authors also find significant continuity between the Scriptures of Israel and the story of Jesus: Jesus is portrayed as a new Moses in Matthew 2–7 (both savior figures are rescued when children around them are slaughtered by royal decree; both descend to Egypt, cross water, endure temptation in the wilderness, ascend a mountain, and deliver a law); the depiction of the crucified Jesus as an offering whose blood atones (Heb 9.11–28; cf. Mk 10.45) evokes the Priestly writings (Lev 16.1–19; Num 19.1–10). Gospel accounts, such as the multiplication of food (e.g., Mk 6.30–44) or bringing a child back to life (Mk 5.22–24,35–43) recall the prophetic stories of Elijah (see 1 Kings 17.8–16,17–24); similar multiplication of food, and cleansing from leprosy (Mk 1.40–42) bring to mind those of Elisha (2 Kings 4.1–7; 5.1–19). (To a lesser extent, such miracle stories are found about a small number of rabbinic sages, such as
Ḥ
oni the Circle Drawer [see
b. Ta’an
. 19a]; see “Jewish Miracle Workers,” p. 536). A wide variety of other stories, beginning with the creation narratives, are recalled (see e.g., 1 Tim 2.13). The New Testament frequently quotes or alludes to Israel’s laws (e.g., Lev 19.18 and Deut 6.5 in Lk 10.25–28, where Jesus elicits the references from a lawyer; in Mk 12.28–31 and Mt 13.16–17, Jesus quotes the verses himself). The Christian texts frequently appeal to the book of Psalms, and sometimes regard them as prophecies (e.g., Ps 16.8–11 in Acts 2.25–28; Ps 2.7; 104.4; 45.6–7; 102.25–27; 110.1 in Heb 1.5,7,8,10–12,13); much of the description of Jesus’ crucifixion, especially as presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, draws upon Psalm 22. Some of Jesus’ aphorisms (e.g., Mt 6.27,34) are continuous with the Israelite wisdom tradition in Proverbs 10–31, and the Prologue to the Gospel of John (1.1–5,10–18) is based on the idea of wisdom personified at the beginning of Proverbs (1.19–20; 8.22–31). Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, depends on the similarly apocalyptic Daniel, to which it frequently alludes (compare e.g., Rev 2.18 with Dan 10.6); it is by far the most allusive New Testament writing, with hundreds of allusions to many books of the Tanakh, although with no exact direct quotations.

Both the Tanakh and New Testament incorporate multiple, contradictory traditions, as we see when the same story is narrated in Kings and Chronicles, or among the four Gospels. This is very different from modern books, which typically, especially when they deal with the past, take a single viewpoint. The variety of opinions on crucial ideas in the Tanakh (Is God corporeal? Are people essentially good? Is there intergenerational punishment?) anticipates the variety of ideas in the New Testament (Is the new age imminent or has it been delayed? Should Jesus’ followers marry or live singly? Is Jesus an incarnate divine being or an adopted son of God? Does early Christianity mean to replace the law?). Both the Tanakh and the New Testament do not participate in the either/or world of the twenty-first century.

And yet there is much in the New Testament that is not anticipated in the Tanakh, such as the core idea of a divine messiah who brings redemption by dying for Israel’s sins. Some of these ideas exist separately in the Hebrew Bible—a messiah (though that term is never used there of the future ideal Davidic king), a future ideal king who has some supernatural or at least hyperbolically described characteristics (see Isa 11.1–5), though he is never called divine, and a suffering servant (see esp. Isa 53), though the identity of this servant is very unclear, and it is uncertain if the Hebrew Bible intends an individual or a group, and if this servant lives in the past, present, or future.

Thus, some of what is new in the New Testament reflects a bringing together of separate ideas found in the Tanakh. Some of the New Testament’s themes draw not directly upon the Tanakh but upon Hellenistic Jewish literature. For example, the concept of the martyr, put to death by the state, whose sacrifice has salvific meaning for fellow Jews, begins to be developed in the apocryphal book 2 Maccabees (a book in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox but not the Protestant versions of the Old Testament). The shift of Satan from a member of the heavenly court to a personification of evil likewise developed in this milieu.

There is also, of course, material in the New Testament that is not anticipated in the Tanakh; the best examples of this are the epistles, letters written to individuals or to congregations. Nor does the Tanakh offer “Gospels” in the sense of a focused biography of an individual, although the stories of Moses and David, are developed in detail. Furthermore, the Hebrew materials tend to point out the flaws of even the principal figures discussed; no figure in the Tanakh is depicted as perfect or sinless.

Much of what is new is found in the Jewish texts from approximately the same period of the New Testament. For example, the formula used to introduce many citations from the Scriptures of Israel in the New Testament is “(as) it is written” (e.g., Mk 1.2), like the rabbinic formula
kakatuv
(see, e.g., the Aleinu prayer, where
kakatuv
introduces the citation of Deut 4.39). (This term is also used in some the latest texts in the Hebrew Bible, such as Ezra 3.4, which are closer in time to the NT.) There are also forms of argument well attested in rabbinic texts, such as the argument from the minor to the major, also known the
qal vahomer
(lit., “light and heavy”; see the seven principles of Hillel, found at the beginning of the rabbinic midrash
Sifra
), found several times in the New Testament using the phrase “how much more so” (e.g., Mt 12.12). Rabbinic readings of the biblical text are often fanciful and decontextualize the text from its original historical setting—a feature of the New Testament as well. For example, Matthew 13.14–15 and its parallels quote Isaiah 6.9–10, which in its original context is about Isaiah’s generation in the eighth century BCE, yet the Gospels understand these verses as being fulfilled in the period of Jesus. This is no different from the way similar prophetic texts were understood by the rabbis and the Dead Sea Scrolls community as being fulfilled centuries after they were first recorded (see esp. the pesher texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, or R. Akiva’s understanding that Num 24.17 was fulfilled with Bar Kochba [see
y. Ta’an
. 4.8]).

Reflecting on how rabbinic Judaism appropriates and interprets the Tanakh can also help readers understand more deeply the relation between the New Testament and the Tanakh. A Jewish reader might say the suffering servant passage in Isaiah 53, emphasized by a variety of New Testament texts (see e.g., Mk 10.45 in relation to Isa 53.12), is peripheral to the Tanakh, which generally emphasizes personal responsibility rather than vicarious punishment. Thus, the New Testament reading of this passage of the Tanakh could be seen as a distortion. But in the same way, rabbinic Judaism does not represent the Hebrew Bible in a proportionate fashion, and it can emphasize relatively marginal passages. For example, the notion of “chastisement of love,” that righteous people are punished as a sign of divine love and should accept this punishment with love, is found only rarely in the Tanakh (most clearly Prov 3.12). Yet within rabbinic Judaism, it becomes much more central, probably as a result of the Hadrianic persecutions of 132–35 CE (the Bar Kochba revolt), in which many righteous Jews were killed while and for observing the Torah (e.g.,
b. Sanh
. 101a). For both rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament, the Tanakh should be seen as a sourcebook, where the later traditions pick particular themes or ideas to emphasize and interpret, and consequently de-emphasize others.

The rabbis and the New Testament authors do not interpret their respective texts (the Hebrew Bible for the rabbis, the Septuagint, usually, for the NT authors) in a straightforward fashion. The casual reader of the Tanakh would not imagine that the phrase “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (Ex 23.19; 34.26; Deut 14.21) suggests that no milk and meat products may be eaten or cooked together, as the rabbis adduced (
b. Hul
. 115b). Nor would the casual reader of Jeremiah assume that

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jer 31.31–33)

refers to an entirely new revelation that replaces the old, as suggested in Hebrews:

But Jesus has now obtained a more excellent ministry, and to that degree he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted through better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one.

God finds fault with them when he says:
    “The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
         when I will establish a new covenant with
                     the house of Israel
         and with the house of Judah;

not like the covenant that I made with their
             ancestors,
         on the day when I took them by the hand to lead
                    them out of the land of Egypt;

for they did not continue in my covenant,
         and so I had no concern for them, says the
                    Lord.