Ponder Anew 1!

David R. Larson            Loma Linda, California 

This book surprised me. As a Gentile Christian, I have long rejected the claim that we no longer need Judaism because my community of faith supersedes it. Although I still deny this doctrine, I now do so for somewhat different reasons.

Before reading this volume, I held that Judaism and Christianity are so fused that the second cannot flourish if the first languishes. Although I still believe this, I now am more aware of their differences. This is so because in this book Jacob Neusner, one of the most prolific and effective Jewish scholars of religion in our time, pinpoints several junctures at which Judaism and Christianity diverge and why he believes Judaism chooses the better routes. With goals that are neither apologetic nor polemical, Neusner’s seeks to help Jews understand why they are Jews and Christians why they are Christians. He attempts to demonstrate that their differences are real, deep and important. He succeeds.

Neusner accomplishes these goals by portraying himself as a first century Jewish inquirer who gains greater appreciation for his own religious heritage in several conversations with Jesus of Nazareth as depicted by the Gospel of Matthew, the most Jewish of the New Testament’s first four books. It is difficult to imagine exchanges that would be more honest, courteous and cordial than the ones Neusner depicts between himself and Jesus. It is even more difficult to imagine ones in which he would claim more candidly that, at least when Hebrew Scripture is the standard, Judaism is right and Jesus is wrong. Christians are still free to believe in Jesus Christ, Neusner writes, "but not because he fulfilled the Torah or sustained the Torah or conformed to the Torah; not because he improved on the Torah."

In as many chapters, Neusner unfolds his understanding of seven divergences between the teachings of Jesus and those of Torah, understood primarily as "God’s revelation to Moses at Mount Sinai" and secondarily as a master’s "continuation, expansion, elaboration and clarification" of this gift. These differences concern (1) the Torah itself, (2) family loyalty, (3) Sabbath keeping, (4) moral perfection, (5) true holiness, (6) Gentiles and (7) religious rituals. Neusner contends that in each of these instances the teachings of Jesus and Moses differ and that it is better, at least for those who take seriously the Torah, to travel with Moses.

Neusner makes his case while honoring three of his own rules for such debates: (1) The parties "must speak to the same issue;" (2) "Each party to the debate has to concede the other’s integrity;" and (3) "Each party to the debate owes the other respect." The basic question is whether the Gospel of Matthew correctly asserts that Jesus fulfills Israel without destroying it. Neusner’s answer is a polite but pointed "no."

Neusner writes early in this book that faithful Jews ought "to enter a dissent at the teachings of Jesus, on the grounds that those teachings at important points contradict the Torah." Yet in his last chapter he crowns a claim that he develops throughout his book: the teachings of Jesus and Moses do not contradict each other as much as they fail to intersect because they move in contrary directions on different planes.

On the one hand, he contends, the teachings of Moses focus upon the community of Israel, tangible words and deeds and developing the Kingdom of God here and now. On the other, the teachings of Jesus focus upon the individual, inward thoughts and feelings and anticipating the coming Kingdom of God. "So he walked his way," he writes, "and I mine. Really, I concluded, an argument is not all that easy when one party speaks of tomorrow, the other, today."

To my way of thinking, this conclusion is an exaggeration, albeit a forgivable one. Although the teachings of Moses, according to the Torah, and the teachings of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew, do diverge, I believe we go too far if we say either that they contradict each other or that they do not intersect. Don’t their differences lie in what they make more central and in what they repeat more often? Surely the teachings of Moses and Jesus are more like each other than either is to the teachings of Buddha, Confucius or Lao Tzu, for instance.

As I understand it, in the Sermon on the Mount as presented by the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus affirms the Hebrew law and prophets. He also invites his followers to exceed the righteousness of the Jewish religious leaders of his time in three specific and concrete ways. First, his disciples are to be even more aware of possible moral distortions in their own inner lives, pathologies such as malice and lust. Second, they are to be even more thoroughgoing in their attempts to obey God’s will in practical matters such as divorce, taking oaths and retaliation. Third, they are to be even more inclusive in their attitudes and actions toward strangers.

Although he does elsewhere, in these verses Jesus does not criticize the Jewish religious leaders. He invites his disciples to emulate and surpass their evident moral achievements in these three ways. Furthermore, the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel invents none of these three priorities. He finds them in the Hebrew literature that is Scripture for him and then he makes them especially prominent in his own teachings. When Jesus declares, "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times….But I say to you," he neither contradicts nor opposes the Hebrew past. He intensifies, extends and expands it in directions that some of its most important spokespersons are already moving. Or so I gather.

Neusner strikes me as more uncomfortable with what, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says about moral inclusiveness than he is with what Jesus says about moral inwardness and moral thoroughness. This may be the most important of fork in the road, the point at which the journey divides toward increasing Jewish exclusiveness, on the one hand, and increasing Christian inclusiveness, on the other. In this connection, I was surprised by the emphasis Neusner places upon genealogical accounts of true Israel in passages like this one:

We pray to the God we know, to begin with, through the testimony of our family, to the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. So to explain who we are, eternal Israel, sages appeal to the metaphor of genealogy, because to begin with, they point to the fleshly connection, the family, as the rationale for Israel's social existence.  And Jesus would do the same, turning the metaphor on its head:  my family is made up of people who do what God wants, turning genealogy into the effect of true piety.

It is as if at this major fork in the road there is a sign with arrows pointing in contrary directions. Beneath the arrow pointing toward Judaism, Neusner scribbles "Genealogy first, piety second." Below the one pointing toward Christianity, he scrawls the opposite:  "Piety first, genealogy second."

Even in Neusner’s account, however, this divide is neither clean nor constant. In the brief passage just cited, he twice says that the people of Israel "begin" to know the God they worship from their genealogical ancestors. This suggests that, even though genealogy precedes piety in the life cycle of Jewish people, it is not necessarily more important for them and that for others even this sequence may be different. Furthermore, according to Neusner, "any person may become one of God’s people, Israel." Such inclusive invitations discount the value of genealogical connections.

Even more significantly, although Neusner never doubts that Jesus is Jewish, he does suggest that Jesus’ prophetic utterances are more like those of Balaam, a Gentile. Jesus "talks like an outsider, or if he is the insider, then much that he says makes the rest of us outsiders," he writes. Why? Not because the genealogy of Jesus differs, but because his piety does. In the final analysis, piety rather than genealogy separates the "insiders" from the "outsiders," to Jesus’ disadvantage.

Neusner’s comparison of Jesus with Balaam suggests that even in his view not all those who are of Israel by genealogy are also of Israel in piety. This coincides with his invitation in this book’s Preface to secular Jewish men and women to take their religious heritage more seriously. Is the opposite not also the case? Is it not also true that some of those who are of Israel in piety are not so by genealogy? Most importantly, if it is possible to be of Israel either by genealogy or by piety or both, don’t the second and third options count for more than the first, if we are probing the authenticity of being of Israel instead of its etiology?

This suggests to me that on this issue of genealogy Jesus is right and that Neusner implicitly agrees, even though explicitly he argues otherwise. Despite his protests, his own observations about Jesus as a Jewish but Gentile-like prophet demonstrate his conviction that genuine theological genealogy is an effect of piety after all. In our own time, who is more truly of Israel, the Gentile who converts to Judaism or the Jewish person who converts to secular atheism, Christianity or some other religion? Don’t we all agree that in such matters piety is more vital than genealogy?

Maybe so, maybe not. For this and other reasons we need both Judaism and Christianity on a continuing basis. Particularity appears to be Judaism’s great strength, exclusiveness its great danger. Inclusiveness appears to be Christianity’s great strength, generality its great danger. Judaism without Christianity could become so isolated and insular that both it and other communities of faith would suffer. Christianity without Judaism could become so vague and vacuous that both it and other religious movements would wither.

The idea that Christianity supersedes Judaism is still an untenable doctrine; however, contrary to what I presumed before reading this book, we should reject it, not only because these two communities of faith are so alike, but also because they are so different.

Let us still be wary of making too much of these differences, however. Some doubt that Yogi Bera ever said, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." However, in a television interview I once viewed he claimed this wisdom as his own with the explanation that when he shared it he lived in a house that was equally accessible from each of two diverging streets. Which road should we take: genealogy or piety? It matters little if we traverse each one wisely and if we travel all the way home.

Down with "Judeo-Christianity"! Up with "Judaism and Christianity"!! Three cheers for Jacob Neusner!!!