The Jewish Annotated New Testament (167 page)

In the Gospel of John, written at the end of the first century, Jesus claims equality with God (5.18; 10.24–25,33,38; 19.7) and applies many “I am” sayings (the meaning of God’s name in the Tanakh [see Ex 3.14]) to himself (8.24,28,58; 13.19). To some Jews, these would sound suspiciously like ditheism, claims to be a second God. In fact, later rabbis will reject as an apostate a rabbi who claims there are “two powers in heaven” (
b. Hag
. 15a). Celsus mentions conflict between Jews and Christians over the meaning of scripture and Jesus’ identity, calling it bickering over “the shadow of an ass” (Origen,
Cels
. 3.1–4). He adds that Jews resent Christians stirring up the Jewish community and inviting the attention of the Romans.

The broader argument between some Jews and believers in Jesus, Jewish and Gentile, is the question of “Whose book is it?” Who inherits and rightly understands the scriptures of Israel? Such an argument is inevitable, since the Gospels and Paul predicate claims about Jesus on the promises made in the Torah and the Prophets. For all Jews, the Torah was one of the real and symbolic elements left to them after two disastrous revolts and the destruction of the Temple. So the understanding of the Tanakh and the authority to interpret it was fundamental to the development of different groups. The idea that it might belong to Jews
and
Christians, mentioned anonymously in the
Epistle of Barnabas
(4.6; 13.1), did not gain much traction. Justin’s
Dialogue with Trypho
, even if a rhetorical composition, shows the urgency of defeating Jewish claims on scripture.

PHYSICAL ACTIONS

Paul relates that he received the thirty-nine lashes five times (2 Cor 11.24), the penalty of flogging imposed by a Jewish court (
m. Makk
. 3.10–11) for a variety of offenses (e.g., prohibited marriages, stealing, consuming what is offered in the Temple while unclean or going into the Temple while unclean [
m. Makk
. 3.1ff.]). This discipline imposed by the synagogue sought to keep a recalcitrant Jew in good standing in the community. That Paul submitted to this punishment indicates that both he and the synagogue regarded him as a Jew. In the same way, Matthew’s Gospel, written forty years later, puts in Jesus’ mouth the prediction, “they will flog you in their synagogues” (10.17), suggesting the same kind of discipline.

Paul says that before he became a follower of Jesus, he violently persecuted the church (1 Cor 15.9; Phil 3.5–6; Gal 1.13–14,22–23). Acts 7.57–60 depicts the stoning of Stephen, in what—if the story is historically credible—is spontaneous mob violence. He refers (1 Thess 2.14–16) to the disciples in Judea suffering some kind of persecution from the Jews, and Paul says he is in danger from “unbelievers in Judea” (Rom 15.31). These general references suggest a persecution that went beyond verbal polemic.

John 16.2–3 predicts, “an hour is coming when those who kill you [i.e., Jesus’ closest followers] will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.” Justin likewise claims several times (e.g.,
Dial
. 123,131) that Jews contribute to the deaths of Christians, but he often includes statements of Jewish powerlessness, such as “you curse Christians in your synagogues, and other nations carry out the curse, putting to death those who simply confess themselves Christians” (
Dial
. 96.2). Justin Martyr further says that Bar Kochba (a second-century CE Jewish military leader, who headed the second revolt against Rome, 132–35) ordered terrible punishments for Christians (
1 Apol
. 31.6). No other reference supports this claim, (an ambiguous mention of “Galileans” in a Bar Kochba letter does not seem to mean “Christians”), but in a situation of siege, a military leader might see anyone loyal to another messiah as a threat. The second revolt finished the work of Roman suppression of Jewish life in Jerusalem that had begun with the first, in 70 CE.

The Roman state was not interested in internal matters, but it did attend to charges of atheism or lack of loyalty to Caesar. Such charges were leveled against the Jews themselves by the Roman historian Tacitus, writing around 110 CE (
Hist
. 5.5). According to John’s Gospel, “the Jews” fear Jesus will get them in trouble with the Romans (11.48–50; 18.13–14; 19.12; cf. Acts 5.28). Later sources depict members of the Jewish community as turning the followers of Jesus over to the state. Revelation refers to the “slander of the synagogue of Satan” (2.9), and the mid-second-century
Martyrdom of Polycarp
implicates Jews as secondary participants in his execution (they gather sticks for the fire) and part of the crowd that called Polycarp an atheist. These sources suggest anxiety that Christ-followers will invite Roman persecution of Jews as a whole. Some references, like the
Martyrdom of Polycarp
may simply be imitating the Gospels. Just as the Jews are there implicated in Jesus’ death, so too they play a part in Polycarp’s death.

Believers in Jesus were not routinely expelled from synagogues. John’s Gospel reports that those who confessed Jesus as Messiah were to be put out of the synagogue (9.22; 12.42–43; 16.2–3). Some scholars have linked this expulsion to a Talmudic statement (
b. Ber
. 28b) that one who falters while reciting the
birchat ha-minim
(a euphemism for curse against the heretics; the prayer is part of the
Shemoneh Esreh
), is to be “removed.” Early versions of this prayer, found in the Cairo geniza, in a number of fragments from the early medieval period, targets “Nazoreans [Christians?] and
minim
[sectarians, heretics].” Some scholars have argued that this is a special prayer denouncing Jewish followers of Jesus as heretics, particularly those later called “Nazarenes,” who believed in Jesus as the messiah and accepted his divine status. Many questions dog this theory, including the inclusiveness of the term “minim,” the earliness of the word “Nazoreans,” and the vagueness of the Talmudic reference. (Was one to be removed from the temporary position of praying on behalf of the community, or taken out of the synagogue? Was the removal temporary or permanent?) Recent work has shown that “Nazoreans” seems to be an original and stable tradition, so it is as early or late as the statements in which it appears.

While Justin says (
Dial
. 17.1; 108.2) that Jews send emissaries to warn their communities of the Christian
hairesis
(a Greek term, source of the English word “heresy,” [party]; Josephus applies the same term to Pharisees and Sadducees), his examples show these measures are more prescriptive than real, not unlike urging the members of one’s group not to associate with the wrong people from another group.

TOLERANCE

People who generally accept one another and tolerate neighbors with differing beliefs and practices usually do not leave much evidence behind. Given the range of people, Jew and Gentile, accommodated in Greco-Roman synagogues, and the variety of attitudes apparent among the rabbis, tolerance might have been
the
most common Jewish response to early Jesus-followers.

Josephus, from the Jewish elite, writing in the 90s under Roman patronage, makes two references to Christians. The famous
Testimonium Flavianum
, about Jesus and his immediate followers, is preserved by the church and contains many Christian interpolations (
Ant
. 18.3.3). The core of the passage is probably authentic, and it suggests that Josephus found Christians a little gullible, but inoffensive. More telling is his information about the execution of James the brother of Jesus at the hands of a Sadducean high priest (
Ant
. 20.197–203), who accused James and perhaps fellow believers “as breakers of the law,” and “delivered them to be stoned.” (See “Josephus,” p.
575
.) Josephus speaks approvingly of the “reasonable ones” (perhaps Pharisees), prominent Jews who go to meet the incoming Roman governor, Albinus, to protest the injustice against James, the prominent leader of the first generation of Jesus-followers in Jerusalem after Jesus’ death; other Jews brought their protest on James’s behalf to King Agrippa II.

In Acts, a variety of Jews defend Jesus’ followers or promote a policy of “benign neglect,” including Gamaliel (a first-century CE rabbi, sometimes called “the Elder”) (5.34–39), Pharisaic scribes (23.6–9), and Roman Jewish leaders (28.21–25). While these scenes are not necessarily historical, Luke assumes his audience could imagine such benevolent Jews who are willing to tolerate the followers of Jesus and who will urge their fellow Jews to treat them with respect. In John’s Gospel, not calculated to flatter Jews, “the Jews” comfort Mary and Martha in their grief at their brother’s death (Jn 11.19). Even Justin’s Trypho emerges as a courtly, fair-minded person, an intellectual Jewish friend to the Gentile Christian Justin, even as Justin complains about Jewish treatment of Christians. If, as seems likely, Trypho is a “type,” rather than a specific historical character, that would make this depiction an even stronger witness to perceived Jewish benevolence.

The rabbinic references are relatively few in number, and in materials redacted at the beginning of the third century at the earliest. If anything, they show that from the Jewish perspective, Jews who believed in Jesus did not impinge much on the rabbinic consciousness. Some stories are playful, some cryptic, and some probably fold Christians in with other groups. Rabbinic Jews worried more about other people, like those attracted to Epicureanism, or those who rejected belief in resurrection (
m. Sanh
. 10.1).

Jews who did not believe in Jesus continued to see Jesus-believers as part of their community for some time. If Israel’s core identity revolved around God, Torah, and Temple, Christians also made those things central, but with a peculiar (to others) slant. Believers in Jesus may have been a source of anxiety, or in need of group discipline, but they still belonged to the community. Other Jews seemed to hold out hope of their return to the right path, long after Jesus-followers saw themselves as a separate group, with their own practices and identity.

JESUS IN RABBINIC TRADITION

Burton L. Visotzky

Only a very minuscule proportion of rabbinic literature concerns Jesus or Christianity, but even within this small sample attitudes vary depending upon the era and provenance of the tradition’s composition.

The earliest rabbinic texts (tannaitic) were composed in Roman Galilee, from the late first century through their editing in the early- to mid-third century. These texts largely ignore Jesus and Christianity, probably because Christianity was seen as but a minor heresy posing no real threat to rabbinic Judaism. One text (
b. Hul
. 2.24) reports Jesus’ teaching within the context of Roman persecution of Christianity. While it slurs Jesus’ origins, it is somewhat ambivalent about the content of his teaching, even admiring its cleverness. Hence it calls him “Jesus son of the Panther” (a common nickname for a Roman soldier), deriding the Gospels’ emphasis on Jesus’ divine paternity. But Jesus’ teaching on whether money earned from prostitution can be used to benefit the Temple priests (an arcane point of Temple law), is accepted by a prominent rabbi, Eliezer.

One of the few other early rabbinic texts (
t. Shabb
. 14.5) opines that Christian works caught in a fire should not be saved on the Sabbath due to the prohibitions of carrying and extinguishing on that day—although one should save a Torah scroll. Each rabbi who offers an opinion agrees on the impermissibility of saving a Christian text. The Hebrew refers to the
avon gilayon
, which sounds like
euangelion
(the term that comes into English as “Gospel”). The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “the Scroll of Sin.” This is a puerile but nevertheless negative assessment of Christian Scripture.

From the time the Roman Empire became Christian (post-312 CE), rabbinic attitudes toward Jesus and Christianity changed. While careful to speak in allegory or thinly veiled code (which makes identification of anti-Christian material notoriously difficult to distinguish from other heterodox views), rabbinic literature in Roman Palestine joins inner-Christian debate, weighing in negatively on questions of virgin birth (e.g.,
Lev. Rab
. 14.5) and the resurrection of Jesus (see
Lev. Rab
. 6.6). The Palestinian Talmud (edited in fifth-century Galilee) contains a series of texts refuting the idea of the Trinity and the efficacy of invoking Jesus as a patron for protection (
y. Ber
. 12.9). Yet in their commentaries on Genesis the rabbis share some attitudes with the church fathers as they explicate Adam and Eve’s sin as a source of human failings. The rabbis of the land of Israel also employ many of the same methods as the church fathers in their approaches to interpreting Scripture (see “The New Testament between the Hebrew Bible [Tanakh] and Rabbinic Literature,” p.
504
). These are interpretive methods that both rabbis and church fathers learned from their Hellenistic milieu.