Wait... Jesus was Jewish?

I want to share a story with you that emphasises the importance of understanding Jesus’ Jewish context when speaking to your Jewish friends about Him.

I recently met with an elderly Jewish woman whose daughter was being baptised and she wanted to understand why. “How could she?” she asked me as I sat down. “How could she give up on her identity like that? I could never do that!”

“Why?” I asked her.

“Because I’m Jewish!”

I paused for a moment and inwardly prayed for direction. “What do you think a Jew is?”

She stopped. She thought. “That’s a good question - I suppose someone who believes the Old Testament?” This was a proud, secular, Jewish lady.

“You don’t believe the Old Testament! And every Christian does," I replied.

I suggested to her that there are, in fact, three ways of being Jewish:

1. Someone whose ethnicity is Jewish
2. Someone whose cultural heritage is Jewish
3. Someone who practices the religion "Judaism"

The first and second, I assured her, could no more be washed away by the waters of baptism than could skin colour or citizenship. But, the third is more complex. So, I decided to give her a bit of a history lesson.

What is "Judaism?"

In the first century, I said, there were many ways of being Jewish. There were, for example the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essens, the Sicarri, the Therapeutae and, a fledgling group, commonly referred to as "The Way."

After the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. only two of these groups survived in any serious way: The Pharisees, whose ideas gave birth to what we might call Halakhic or Rabbinic Judaism, and is what most people think of as Judaism today; and "The Way," later named "Christianity."

Christianity, I told her, is a legitimate expression of the historic Jewish faith. In fact, Jewish Scholar Daniel Boyarin states that Christianity preserved a "more conservative" form of Judaism, than Halakha! ^[1]

I explained to her that a major reason that Christianity and Judaism looked so different to her was that they were moulded by different cultures; the Judaism that she is familiar with is essentially Eastern European, while the Christianity that her daughter had embraced was essentially Western (this is not to downplay the obvious and serious theological differences). Christianity doesn't look like what she expects a Jewish movement to look like, in the same way that most of the Jews of the first century would not be recognisably Jewish to her!

Furthermore, I told her that Jesus, Yeshua, was a Rabbi (she later told me that she had never heard this) and that all His followers addressed Him as such. Likewise, that He spoke like a Rabbi, He entered into the hot-button theological topics that the Rabbis of His day were debating, and that He remained essentially Jewish from the moment He was born to the moment He died. Jesus, I told her, is the most successful Rabbi in history.

By putting her faith in Jesus, her daughter was not giving up on her Jewish identity, but becoming more Jewish, by accepting the Jewish Messiah.

Don't assume knowledge

I’m not going to end this by saying that she suddenly accepted Jesus at the end of our conversation, but she has been slightly softer than before. She has been very excitedly telling people that she has discovered that Jesus was Jewish and it has allowed her more possibility to think about this.

This conversation reminded me, firstly, never to assume knowledge. Another gentlemen I have been meeting with was shocked to find an Old Testament in a Christian Bible - he had only ever seen and New Testament, Proverbs and Psalms, and believed this was all Christians read.

It’s easy to assume knowledge when we share our faith, but it is increasingly important to realise that, for some people, you may be their introduction to faith.

I was also reminded of the value - for this woman and for others, Jewish and not - of properly framing Jesus within His culture and people.

1. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 92.