BOOKS AND ARTS
05 July 2012, Review by Michael Peppard
A moment in our shared history
The Jewish Annotated New Testament
Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler (eds)Oxford University Press, £22.50
Tablet bookshop price £20.25 Tel 01420 592974
In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI made waves when he engaged with the work of Jacob Neusner on the subject of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ most famous block of teaching. In Jesus of Nazareth, the Pope asked, “How then are we to understand this Torah of the Messiah? Which path does it point towards? What does it tell us about Jesus, about Israel, about the Church? What does it say about us, and to us? In my search for answers, I have been greatly helped by the book … by the Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner’s A Rabbi Talks with Jesus.”
Now it’s hardly news for Christian scholars, in general, to read the work of Jewish scholars. But for the Pope to use the critical work of a living rabbi as a means by which to interpret central teachings of Jesus – that certainly is of lasting importance to Catholic theology and Jewish-Christian relations. It manifests the spirit encouraged by the Pontifical Biblical Commission under the supervision of then-Cardinal Ratzinger: namely, to regard the Jewish tradition of biblical interpretation as living and vibrant.
One wonders, then, how such high-level Jewish-Christian dialogue might advance once the Pope gains access to the epochal new book, The Jewish Annotated New Testament. I cannot speak highly enough about this book’s conception, execution and potential impact on a wide variety of readers. It brings together in one place many of the emergent consensus views in the fields of early Judaism and New Testament studies. It offers sparkling new insights into issues of Jewish history, society and literature. For a first-time Jewish reader, there is no better way to orientate one’s perceptions of the New Testament; for a seasoned Christian reader, there is a rare opportunity to reorientate them.
The star-studded list of contributors to the book – no fewer than 50 Jewish scholars – attests to a unique moment in the shared history of Jews and
Christians. Even 20 years ago, it might have been impossible to find 50 Jews with doctoral-level training in the study of the New Testament, much less to corral them for a cooperative venture such as this. The resulting book thus ratifies the contemporary importance of sober scholarly enquiry into religious matters. It is a culmination of years of Jewish-Christian interaction at graduate theology and religion programmes in Europe, Israel and North America.
The book is not a new translation of the New Testament. It prints the New Revised Standard Version, which is the scholarly standard, along with copious annotations running along the bottoms of the pages. Some have annotations consuming more than half the page, causing the book’s presentation to resemble an academic thesis or, better, a page of the Talmud. These commentaries, written by one author per book of the New Testament, overflow with references to rabbinic and other non-canonical literature. Passages of special relevance for Jews or Jewish-Christian relations receive sidebar essays (“Circumcision and ‘Works of the Law’”; or, “Eucharist and Passover”). Texts that have generated anti-Jewish interpretations down the years are given extra attention throughout.
At the back of the book stands a rewarding set of 30 longer essays, which constitutes a formidable introductory textbook on early Judaism. Top scholars in their respective fields crystallise decades of scholarship on the New Testament and its era (“The Law”; “The Synagogue”; “Jewish Family Life”; “Josephus”; “Jesus in Rabbinic Tradition”). For instance, Daniel Boyarin, arguably the most pivotal interpreter of Jewish and Christian identity formation in antiquity, manages to summarise one of his signature scholarly contributions in just a few pages. In “Logos, a Jewish Word”, Boyarin encapsulates his view on “this link between heaven and earth”, which is called variously Logos (in Greek) or Memra (in Aramaic). He calls the understanding of the Logos in John 1 a “thoroughly Jewish usage. It is even possible that the beginning of the idea of the Trinity occurred precisely in pre-Christian Jewish accounts of the second and visible God that we find in many early Jewish writings”. For Boyarin, John 1:1-5 is a Jewish Midrash on Genesis 1:1-5, “a piece of perfectly unexceptional non-Christian Jewish thought”. So if the Logos is not unique to John’s gospel, what is? “Only from John 1:14, which announces that ‘the Word became flesh’, does the Christian narrative begin to diverge from synagogue teaching.”
In a different essay, David Stern declares, “No topic touches more directly on the ‘Jewishness’ of the New Testament than the place of Midrash – classical Jewish biblical interpretation – in its pages, and few topics are more fraught with complications.” Stern himself has sought, over several decades, to delineate the forms of Midrash in rabbinic literature. In this essay, he addresses the most contested form of Midrash in the New Testament, the narrative parables of Jesus. Christians have long thought of Jesus’ parables as unique – the Son of God’s own style of
narrative theology. Stern and others have responded by drawing out “more than a thousand examples of the parable or mashal” preserved in rabbinic literature, many of which sound like Jesus’ famous teachings about kings, fathers and sons, masters and slaves, landowners and tenant farmers and day labourers. And yet, like Boyarin’s scholarship, Stern’s work on the parables does not discount Christian claims to distinctive teachings. Rather, it generates more acute analyses of what precisely was unique about the earliest Christian texts. Taken together, the essays help Jews and Christians to discern what is and isn’t “new” in the New Testament.
The book’s scholarly and spiritual benefits for Christians are numerous. But the audience that profits most from this book, in the long run, will consist of Jews who have been open to learning from the New Testament but have also been justifiably wary of proselytism. In other words, The Jewish Annotated New Testament has made the New Testament safe again for Jews. Considering our tortuous shared history, that is no small accomplishment.
The book is not a new translation of the New Testament. It prints the New Revised Standard Version, which is the scholarly standard, along with copious annotations running along the bottoms of the pages. Some have annotations consuming more than half the page, causing the book’s presentation to resemble an academic thesis or, better, a page of the Talmud. These commentaries, written by one author per book of the New Testament, overflow with references to rabbinic and other non-canonical literature. Passages of special relevance for Jews or Jewish-Christian relations receive sidebar essays (“Circumcision and ‘Works of the Law’”; or, “Eucharist and Passover”). Texts that have generated anti-Jewish interpretations down the years are given extra attention throughout.
At the back of the book stands a rewarding set of 30 longer essays, which constitutes a formidable introductory textbook on early Judaism. Top scholars in their respective fields crystallise decades of scholarship on the New Testament and its era (“The Law”; “The Synagogue”; “Jewish Family Life”; “Josephus”; “Jesus in Rabbinic Tradition”). For instance, Daniel Boyarin, arguably the most pivotal interpreter of Jewish and Christian identity formation in antiquity, manages to summarise one of his signature scholarly contributions in just a few pages. In “Logos, a Jewish Word”, Boyarin encapsulates his view on “this link between heaven and earth”, which is called variously Logos (in Greek) or Memra (in Aramaic). He calls the understanding of the Logos in John 1 a “thoroughly Jewish usage. It is even possible that the beginning of the idea of the Trinity occurred precisely in pre-Christian Jewish accounts of the second and visible God that we find in many early Jewish writings”. For Boyarin, John 1:1-5 is a Jewish Midrash on Genesis 1:1-5, “a piece of perfectly unexceptional non-Christian Jewish thought”. So if the Logos is not unique to John’s gospel, what is? “Only from John 1:14, which announces that ‘the Word became flesh’, does the Christian narrative begin to diverge from synagogue teaching.”
In a different essay, David Stern declares, “No topic touches more directly on the ‘Jewishness’ of the New Testament than the place of Midrash – classical Jewish biblical interpretation – in its pages, and few topics are more fraught with complications.” Stern himself has sought, over several decades, to delineate the forms of Midrash in rabbinic literature. In this essay, he addresses the most contested form of Midrash in the New Testament, the narrative parables of Jesus. Christians have long thought of Jesus’ parables as unique – the Son of God’s own style of
narrative theology. Stern and others have responded by drawing out “more than a thousand examples of the parable or mashal” preserved in rabbinic literature, many of which sound like Jesus’ famous teachings about kings, fathers and sons, masters and slaves, landowners and tenant farmers and day labourers. And yet, like Boyarin’s scholarship, Stern’s work on the parables does not discount Christian claims to distinctive teachings. Rather, it generates more acute analyses of what precisely was unique about the earliest Christian texts. Taken together, the essays help Jews and Christians to discern what is and isn’t “new” in the New Testament.
The book’s scholarly and spiritual benefits for Christians are numerous. But the audience that profits most from this book, in the long run, will consist of Jews who have been open to learning from the New Testament but have also been justifiably wary of proselytism. In other words, The Jewish Annotated New Testament has made the New Testament safe again for Jews. Considering our tortuous shared history, that is no small accomplishment.
