Jesus the Jew

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Ancient Jewish law focused on three sources of ritual impurity: corpses; male and female genital discharges; and skin conditions known in Hebrew as tzaraʿat, translated into Greek as lepra. English translations of the Bible mistakenly identified this with leprosy, a disease that would have been unknown to the ancient Israelites. In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the King of the Jews, both at the beginning of his life and at the end. In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, e.g., in John 19:3, this is written as Basileus ton Ioudaion ( βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων). [1]

Buth, Randall; Pierce, Chad (2014). "Hebraisti in Ancient Texts: Does ἑβραϊστί Ever Mean 'Aramaic'?". In Buth, Randall; Notley, R. Steven (eds.). The Language Environment of 1st Century Judea Vol. 2. BRILL. ISBN 9789004264410. Andreopoulos, A. (2005). Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 978-0-88141-295-6.Brown, R.E. (1988). The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary. Concise Commentary. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-1283-5. In Kosher Jesus (2012), Shmuley Boteach argues that the authentic Jesus was a Torah-observant Jew and an active opponent of Rome. Like Montefiore, who saw Jesus as a proto-Liberal Jew, Boteach’s Jesus is a mirror of the author’s own version of Judaism: ­traditional and committed to the Torah. He portrays Jesus as “a Torah-observant teacher who instructed his followers to keep every letter of the Law, whose teachings quoted extensively from the Bible and rabbinical writings, who fought Roman paganism and persecution of the Jewish people, and was killed by Pontius Pilate for his rebellion against Rome, the Jews having had nothing whatsoever to do with his murder”.

From as early as the second century to today, some Christian readers of the New Testament Gospels have concluded that these depict Jesus doing away with Jewish law or replacing Judaism. This interpretation often includes the view that Jesus told his audiences that rules regarding ritual purity were irrelevant and outdated. But these views are simply incorrect. Hebrew ימים, נור, רוח, יבשת ( Yammīm, Nūr, Rūaḥ, Yabešet, "water, fire, wind, earth" — the four elements) New Testament scholars have spent an impressive amount of energy on the study of the historical Jesus and much of it in the last few decades has revolved around his Jewishness.We know more about Jesus than we know about many ancient historical figures, a remarkable fact given the modesty of his upbringing and the humility of his death. Jesus did not grow up in one of the great cities of the ancient world like Rome or even Jerusalem but lived in a Galilean village called Nazareth. He died an appalling, humiliating death by crucifixion, reserved by the Romans for the most contemptible criminals. The letters of Paul contain reliable but meagre evidence. Their main theme, that Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, is especially prominent in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul evokes an early tradition about Jesus’ death and subsequent appearances to his followers. The Crucifixion and Resurrection were accepted by all first-generation Christians. Paul also quotes a few of Jesus’ sayings: the prohibition of divorce and remarriage (1 Corinthians 7:10–11), the words over the bread and cup at Jesus’ Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23–25), and a prediction of the imminent arrival of the Saviour from heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:15–17).

It is worth thinking also about the word Christ. This is not Jesus' surname. The Greek-derived Christ is the same word as the Hebrew Messiah and it means Anointed One. In the Old Testament, it is the word used for both priests and kings who were anointed to their office (just as David was anointed by Samuel as King of Israel); it means someone specially appointed by God for a task. By the time that Jesus was on the scene, many Jews were expecting the ultimate Messiah, perhaps a priest, a king or even a military figure, one who was specially anointed by God to intervene decisively to change history. I think he would also have seen himself as a prophet. There are real signs that he sees himself in continuity with Old Testament prophets and just as Old Testament prophets were persecuted and suffered, Jesus thought that was likely to be his end too. He saw himself as following a line of prophets that had suffered for what they believed and sometimes even suffered from the hands of their own people as well as from others. Such was the power of this message, clearly, that for some the prospect of its all coming to nothing on the cross was beyond bearing or believing. "Jesus lives" is a phrase that can be interpreted variously. For many of his followers it meant no more than that the work he had started had to go on. Jesus as a force within Judaism continued for decades after his death. Jesus the Jew would have expected nothing less and nothing more. Alive, he confined his teaching to his own people. "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel," he told a woman of Canaan who needed his help, though it must be remembered that in that instance he relented. It took Paul, however, to realise the transforming power not only of the supernatural but the universal. Christianity triumphed over Judaism when it abandoned the law and the people to whom it had been given. Christians may glory in that if they choose, but such had never been Jesus's intention.These events demonstrate Jesus caring so much about ritual impurity that he took actions to resolve it wherever he encountered it, because it was a barrier to accessing the temple, where God’s presence dwelt. Passover and Easter both commemorate liberation — one in terms of escaping the bondage of slavery, the other in the form of resurrection from the dead and freedom from sin. Some earlier biblical scholars believed that what the Gospels describe as Jesus’s Last Supper was in fact his celebration of the Passover seder, but most scholars now disagree.