In my second post in this series, I mentioned that the late Yale historian, Jaroslav Pelikan’s title question, Whose Bible Is It, could be taken in more than one way. In that post, I tried to begin an initial conversation about the differences between the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh, especially focusing on the question of hermeneutics (i.e interpretation for those of you who do not like flowery words). In this post, I want to focus not on two books per se – although one could rhetorically make that point - but two views of the same book.
Julie Galambush, who teaches at William and Mary has written an amazing introductory text for anyone who wants to seriously study the New Testament especially in our interfaith age where religious pluralism and the ensuing dialogues are leading to the mutual transformation of all of our particular faiths. The book is titled The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book.
The book itself emerged out of a series of study groups on the New Testament led by Gallambush at Temple Bet Aviv in Columbia, Maryland. The study sessions jokingly dubbed by one participant as “New Testament for Jewish Dummies” sought to introduce these texts to members of the synagogue who mostly did not own, nor had they ever read the New Testament.
Galambush, a Jewish convert, who previously was an ordained American Baptist clergy stands in a unique position to bridge the interpretive gap between these two communities.
Galambush prefaces her introductory chapter with a quote from Jewish Elder and Professor Leo Baeck:
The New Testament is a Jewish book…A Jewish spirit and none other lives in it…Jewish faith and Jewish hope, Jewish suffering and Jewish distress, Jewish knowledge and Jewish expectations. Judaism may not pass it by, not forsake it, nor wish to give up all the claims here. Here, too Judaism should comprehend and take more of what is its own.
Galumbush affirms Baeck’s proposition that the New Testament, which in truth did not exist except as a series of texts for the early Christian Jewish community, was written by Jewish writers. She, however also suggests that much of it was written to be read by Gentiles.
This is particularly important to recognize. In the early First Century synagogue communities there were at least three parties. The largest group was traditional Jews. The remaining community was Jewish as well but with a Christian point of view, i.e. Jews who preached one way or another identification of Christ with messianic images. Not Jewish Christians, the group is more properly understood as Christian Jews.
Prophetic visions had anticipated in these “end times” the turning of Gentiles to the Jewish idea of God and so among the Christian Jews, the small community split apart over the issue of how these Gentile converts might act out their new found faith. Were they required to keep kosher? Must males be circumcised? For the most part, the writers of the New Testament were representative of the more liberal faction.
I have spoken more than once of the need to distinguish between the early Jesus movement as a Jewish sect and the later Jesus movement as a Hellenistic pagan cult. This transformation happened over many years and involved several factors including the general expulsion of Christian Jews from synagogues, the growth of primarily Gentile ekklesia (which in their beginnings functioned as Jewish not Christian institutions) and the emergence of a second generation of Jesus followers who interpreted the meaning of his mission in Gentile terms.
Particularly important is the fact that in the rhetoric of the various texts, statements that were initially written as descriptions of inter-Jewish conflict became after the “reluctant parting” statements that expressed inter-faith hostilities. Soon the one pluralist religion became two competing faiths. Differences which originally were understood to be talking about the conflict between what might be called (depending on where one stood) “good Jews” and “bad Jews” became conflicts between “good Christians” and “bad Jews.” We have ample examples of passages where the New Testament was later read as condemning the Jewish nation minimally as obsolete, more strongly as perverse.
Consequences of the morphing of a Jewish text into a Christian book are well known. But several scholars have recently turned their attention to the recovery of the Jewish background of Jesus and the texts themselves. I have mentioned in particular Paula Fredricksen who teaches at Boston University who I have found most helpful in this regard.
Galumbush’s text is written to be an introductory resource and following preface materials, the bulk of the chapters take each of the New Testament books and engages in what James Carroll calls a “deeper reading.”
For this post, it is sufficient to examine one example. Galumbush’s chapter on Hebrews created for me a paradigm shift allowing me to see the text in a whole new way - if you will, with Jewish eyes.
Hebrews has traditionally been read by later Christians as drawing serious contrasts between our two faiths. In Jesus, (read “in Christianity”) we have a new high priest. Different than the traditional high priest (read “in Judaism”) we have something far better. Drawing on the Platonic distinction between the spiritual, i.e. the perfect forms and the material i.e. copies of the forms, in Christ (again read “in Christianity”) we have a true form. Traditionally, (read “in Judaism”) we have a poor copy. The analogy continues contrasting imperfect sacrifices which must be made over and over again with the one perfect sacrifice made by Christ (of himself) once and for all.
The argumentation in Hebrews is difficult and obscure. Galumbush notes that “Hebrews combines the Platonic allegorizing of Philo with the sectarian exclusiveness of Qumran.”
Galambush suggests that we read a little deeper and indeed she finds in Hebrews a struggle taking place not between Christians and Jews (it is too early for that) but conflict happening across Jewish lines.
Galambush notes that finally, we don’t have enough data to assign dates to the text or for that matter audience, location or author. However, she builds for me a tentative case that does seem to reflect several key points from the text. Speaking in the very first verse where it says that God spoke to our ancestors, the text seems to point to a Jewish audience. Given that much of the discussion comparing priesthoods would be unnecessary if the book was written after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE., this fact also points to an earlier dating
Again arguing for a Jewish audience, Galumbush notes that the author expects some familiarity with Jewish tradition. She writes:
The metaphors assume the readers Jewish identity. They are told that just as Jesus had to suffer crucifixion “outside the city gate, so they too must “go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured.” The image is drawn from Israel’s wilderness wanderings when the unclean were sent outside the camp. Hebrew’s audience is currently inside the camp but must voluntarily put itself outside. Such imagery makes no sense if the text is addressed to Gentiles who are already outside the camp. Hebrews addresses insiders who the author believes must choose between inclusion in the larger Jewish community and a new identity “outside the camp.” Like the Gospel of Matthew, Hebrews seems poised at a moment of realization that those who follow this way will pay the cost of becoming outsiders to their own tradition.
Evangelical Christians have found in Hebrews the discussion of Jesus as a priest sanction for atonement theology that speaks of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice. Galumbush rightly points out that this connection is problematic. “The similarity between the Roman’s execution of Jesus and the levitical priest’s job of performing temple sacrifices is not obvious, and it is worth considering why the author would connect the two in the first place.”
Later in her chapter, she points out that “Hebrew’s elaborate and lengthy discussion of Jesus’ priesthood is in some ways peripheral to the author’s intentions.” I would likewise point out that while sacrifice is discussed in general, there is no detail about types of sacrifice, its purpose or practically how this image squares at all with the historical realities of the lynching of Jesus by Roman occupying forces.
Hebrews is not quite a letter, rather a sermon out to encourage those who have as she indicates become not so sure in light of delayed expectations that this Christian stuff is all that it is cracked up to be. The technical term for this rhetorical genre would be an “encomium.” Facing growing conflict and perhaps exclusion from traditional practice, Hebrews urges steadfast endurance - waiting for things yet unseen, but promised.
In the text, traditional Jewish images are turned on their head and spiritualized. Gallumbush writes, “Hebrews accomplishes a great displacement of Jewish symbols and traditions. None mean what they have traditionally meant. Abraham becomes a man who desired, not the Holy Land, but “a better country, i.e. a heavenly one.” (11:16) Temple, covenant, Torah and land become mere way stations on the path toward heavenly reality.”
This theological move is not uncommon among the various Judaisms of the day. But again at the point where separation becomes unavoidable, tradition becomes not only spiritualized but its material form becomes demonized.
Galumbush holds out the vision that while the separation can not be reversed, it may in fact (seen through Jewish eyes) be taken in a different light.
In the meantime, I think it behooves us as Christians to take special care to not simply repeat the vilifications that have been the basis of 19 centuries of persecution. Rosemary Ruether in her landmark book, Faith and Fratricide speaks of strategies that can go a long way to avoid this tendency for us to unconsciously ignore these elements in our scriptures, our worships practices and our commentaries. The addition of the simple word, “some” as in “some of the Jews” may go a long way to erasing stereotypes. Rather than speak of the high priests and elders of the nation, or to blythly repeat charactures of Pharisees, scribes and other parties of the day, we might simply read the text to say “some of the leadership”. The Christian-Jewish dichotomy can also be recast in contemporary terms. So in John’s Doubting Thomas story instead of saying the disciples are meeting behind locked doors because the Jews are out to get them, maybe we should read it to say that those who are hunting for Jesus’ followers come from the district committee on ministry!
See Also:
Being Honest About the Bible, Pt 1 - IronyBeing Honest About the Bible, pt 2 - Two Books
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