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Description: Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries examines the formative first five centuries of Christian history as experienced by individuals who were ethnically Jewish, but who professed faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Offering the work of an impressive international team of scholars, this unique study examines the first five centuries of texts thought to have been authored or edited by Jewish Christians, including the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament Apocrypha, and some patristic works. Also considered are statements within patristic literature about Jewish believers and uses of oral traditions from Jewish Christians. Furthermore, the evidence in Jewish, mainly rabbinic, literature is examined, and room is made for a judicious sifting of the archaeological evidence. The final two chapters are devoted to an enlightening synthesis of the material with subsequent conclusions regarding Jewish believers in antiquity.
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Review Summary: another type of christianity |
Date: 2008-12-01 |
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Details: What scholarship? Perhaps the Hebrew-christians, Messianic-Jews or what ever they want to call themselves (believing in jesus) would consider a present day example of "another type of christianity" in the making - Those of Chabad that beleive that The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson is Mashiach. The whole scene is painted with those that don't believe this and those that do - and that only within Chabad. And then of course you have the rest of Judaism.
Once again people place there hope and faith in man and don't keep their eyes steadily upon The One That Brings About Salvation. Perhaps the Chabad people can learn from the mistakes of christianity, even though christian development details are but a misty cloud, if not imagination of man. Never the less, my question still stands: What scholarship? I don't see any! |
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Review Summary: Excellent, dispassionate scholarship |
Date: 2007-10-15 |
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Details: The previous review, which accuses this massive volume of engaging in apologetics is actually an example of apologetics itself. In point of fact, the scholars involved in this project on the history of Jewish believers in Jesus are far more nuanced in their treatment than the reviewer imagines, and they are well aware of the different groups that would be included under heading of "Jewish believers in Jesus." This volume is actually the first of its kind, demonstrating the ongoing presence and influence of these believers in the early centuries of Church history, despite the every-growing influences of supersessionism. Church historians and historical theologians cannot ignore this important book, which represents the first in a series authored by a multi-national, multi-confessional team of scholars, not polemicists or apologists. |
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Review Summary: Apologetics Is Not Scholarship |
Date: 2007-10-12 |
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Details: This book presents itself as a work of biblical scholarship. In fact it is not: It is a work of evangelical Christian apologetics. The fatal flaw in the book is contained already in its title, "Jewish Believers in Jesus" as if the phenomenon could be dealt with under one category. There were, in fact, two categories of Jewish believers in the first century, and they had fundamentally different Christologies and an uneasy relationship with each other that eventually degenerated into unremitting hostility. The first group was the Jews of the Jerusalem Church and the second, Jews converted by Paul to his brand of Pauline Christianity. To attempt to lump these two into a single category, Jewish believers in Jesus, is to put two wild cats into one bag, and this book does so persistently, to the point of wearyness. The main issue between the two groups was the status of Jesus. To the Jerusalem Church Jesus was the Messiah of traditional Jewish expectation, whose purpose was to liberate the Jews from Roman tyranny. He was a normal human being born in a normal way from biologically normal parents. He had been executed by the Romans for claiming to be King of the Jews, a political execution not a religious one, but as a special mark of God's favor had been raised from the dead and would soon come again to complete his mission. The Jerusalem Church, described in the Acts of the Apostles, as founded on the day of Pentecost, was made up of Jesus disciples, the twelve, and also Jesus' mother, Mary, Jesus' brothers, one of whom, James, succeeded Jesus in the leadership of the movement, and many other Jews who had known Jesus and heard him teach during his earthly ministry. Paul, who never met Jesus in life, claimed apostleship as the result of seeing a vision of Jesus on the Damascus road, and stated plainly that his Gospel did not come from men, that is people who had known Jesus and been taught by him, but rather as a direct revelation from Jesus to himself. Paul's Gospel proclaimed Jesus as "Lord", "Adonai" in Hebrew. Now to the Jews "Adonai" was a divine title. It was the word used in the Hebrew Scriptures to substitute for the sacred name of God, which could not be pronounced by pious Jews. To call Jesus "Lord" was for religious Jews to call him divine. We, of course, who are the heirs of Pauline Christianity still call Jesus divine. To us the title is not offensive, but to first century Jews it was highly so. It was for them, in fact, a reversion to pagan polytheism. There were many varieties of Judaism extant in the first century, but all of them, without exception, were strictly monotheistic. To attribute divinity to any thing or person, except God alone, was blasphemy. The Shema, the prayer every devout Jew said and still says twice daily begins, "Hear, Israel, the Lord (Adonai) is our God, the Lord (Adonai) is One." No Jew could call Jesus divine and remain a Jew. From that moment he was an apostate. When Christians trouble to trace their roots back to the very beginning it is disturbing to them to find their quest ends not in the life and ministry of Jesus as embodied in the Jerusalem Church, but in a vision on the Damascus road. There is a radical disjunction between the Christianity of the Jerusalem Church and Pauline Christianity that Christian scholars for two thousand years have attempted to blur, to disguise, to paper over or just plain ignore, because it is important for the church to connect palpably with Jesus. This book is in that tradition, and like all previous efforts it fails miserably, because ultimately the truth will prevail. |
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out of 3 Reviews
