University
of Nebraska Press
Shofar
- Books Received
Shofar
- Advertising &
Mailing List Info
Shofar
- Book Reviews |
Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment, by Michael J. Cook. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights, 2008. 416 pp. $29.99.
The title is meant to suggest that Jews can overcome their centuries-old fear and apprehension by reading the sacred scriptures of Christian belief and practice. Rabbi Michael J. Cook (Bronstein Professor in Judeo-Christian Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati) asserts that the time is long overdue for Jewish educators, clergy, and lay people to penetrate responsibly into Christian scriptures in order to discover and appraise the historical Jesus which can help to illuminate and correct the misgivings and misdirection about the Jews found in Christendom. Reciprocally, attributed Jesus admonitions (“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they teach you” [Matt 23:2a] and “salvation is from the Jews” [John 4:22b]) mandate the Ecclesia to engage the Synagoga on matters of Heaven and Earth. Birthing Jewish-Christian dialogue is an exciting and exacting learning experience for the enrichment and betterment of two sibling religions committed to biblical narrative and teaching.
Cook appraises the books of the New Testament as documents of human instruction meant to be reverently received and critically reflected in the light of academic research. Generally speaking, however, the educated Christian believer would differ; he or she would assert a balance of divine and human instruction construed in the instruction to acquire scriptural spirituality and wisdom. And herein lies a major dilemma. Devotees of the New Testament advocate the “Bible as is” and so stress the content (kerygma and didache), whereas Cook sees conflated and conflicted textual data that demand problem-solving techniques. Thus his book is a reflective reservoir that is fed by a range of interpretations and options. Feeding the depths (to continue the aquatic metaphor) are tributaries that combine the Synoptic problem and the quest for the historical Jesus, and old–new currents, such as the history of Christian-Jewish polemics and the importance of modern and post-modern thought on Christian origins. His assessment of textual variants explained in the context of dissimilar groupings of believers in the Way—with all its wisdom and wrangle—is even-handed and his assent to the incontrovertible fact that Pauline Epistles more than the teachings of Jesus molded the central role of the Jew in Christian Heilsgeschichte is academically sound.
In presenting a Jewish understanding of the New Testament, Cook begins his journey by cutting through a labyrinth of technicality and detours of ideological babble. Around short and selective episodes, told in reader-friendly style, he introduces the known and not so known bits of biblical criticism, which demonstrate the courage of his conviction that historical accuracy is the right direction to portray the Jews correctly in the “Greatest Story Ever Told.” Against the background of first-century Judaism, he examines key scriptural ideas in a literary, political, and cultural context. He explores their message concerning who Jesus is, how much or little his ministry is imbued with proto-rabbinic values and tradition, and the importance of the historical Jesus sans Christology in the life of contemporary Jewry.
In twenty-three tightly written chapters, organized in seven parts (whose main narrative is pillared by boxes and charts of additional excurses), the author pays close attention to the Evangelist tradition that proclaims that the revealed Word and sacred words are holistically transmitted. His goal is to examine the Jewishness of Jesus in the layers of the New Testament and the face of Jews and proto-rabbinic Judaism arranged in this axis. Also, by parsing and sequencing the received text, he attempts to make sense of scriptural and theological antisemitism, which has darkened Christian verities and blackened the pages of Christian-Jewish history ever since Calvary.
Cook’s scholarship concerning Jesus and his contemporaries is rooted in “Gospel Dynamics”—his term for the traditions molded by post-Crucifixion Christians (Jews and Gentiles) to address the role of Jesus for their Christological needs and developing Christian identity. Pauline Christianity sets the stage. Paul’s discontent with other Jewish believers in the fledging Christian movement in how to teach meaningfully God-in-Christ, his teaching about Jesus for the different Christian communities in the Mediterranean world, his emphasis on the centrality of Jesus’ resurrection, and his ubiquitous teaching to Jew and Gentile alike that the title “Israel, the chosen people” is not conscripted by kinship nor land nor sanctuary nor obedience to the Torah but defined by the faith-claim that the risen Jesus, the Christ, is the Son of God. On the latter, he severely departs from other Jewish Christians who attest to the divinity of Jesus while obeying the teaching of Moses and from the elder apostles James and Peter, who affirmed respectfully God’s Spirit in the way of Torah and the centrality of the Temple worship and its purity laws and baptize not pagans but God-fearers.
Thus incarnation theology brought a radical departure from traditional Israelite religion. Christological views are a non sequitur in Jewish thought and offer an ideological justification of compromising the authority of Jewish tradition; namely, the organic relationship of God-Torah-Israel (religion, culture, peoplehood). By bestowing equality, identity, and salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (see 1 Cor 12:13, Gal 4:26–29, Eph 2:11–22, and Col 3:11) the process of redefinition and replacement of Second Temple Judaism began in earnest. And this is transmitted in a number of core events (birth and infancy narrative, last meal, trial and execution of Jesus, resurrection) and vilified proclamations associated with the Jews’ desire to kill Jesus (e.g., Matt 27:25, John 8:31–47, 1 Thess 2:14–15) dispersed in the Four Gospels and in the Pauline letters. Nonetheless, Cook sees the historical Jesus as a charismatic first-century proto-rabbi whose torah is exclusive of the evolving changes toward Judaism in the apostolic era and beyond. Under the veneer of concise textual exegesis and criticism, he forges an indisputable link between Jesus and the Jews, a lesson Christians ought to know and Jews need to discover. A bridge-builder.
Zev Garber
Los Angeles Valley College
and American Jewish University
|
