Journal of Ecumenical Studies

“Jesus was a Jew!?” This was the response from a teenager to a recent sermon of mine. Certainly, the public can benefit from a greater understanding of the Jewish roots of Christianity. The same is true in academia as well—a problem that Evans and Mishkin attempt to address in this book. Evans writes from Texas, and Mishkin Israel, as do many of the chapter authors. The editors seek to go beyond merely examining Christianity’s origin out of Judaism to look at how it grew in a specifically Jewish way and how the Second Testament documents can themselves “be understood as Jewish” (p. 1). Mishkin writes in the introduction, “By ‘roots’ we were referring not only to background information but also to an ongoing interconnectedness that remains relevant today” (p. 1). [End Page 613] The book examines both vertical ecumenism (how Judaism is Christianity’s parent religion) and horizontal ecumenism (how the two have interacted throughout history). This horizontal ecumenism is addressed, for instance, in section 4.8 and the entirety of section 5. The volume consists of five sections, with multiple authors contributing articles to each section.

The first section is “Textual Roots.” The book gets off to a bit of a slow start with an article on the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels. While helpful, it does not really relate to the theme of the Jewish roots of the Gospels. The rest of this section explores parallels between the Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature.

Sections 2–4 examine the Jewish “Intertextual,” “Narrative,” and “Theological” roots of the Gospels. Much of this material examines references to the Hebrew Bible in the Gospels. While this has been much discussed in prior literature, some new research is contributed. Seth Postell’s contribution (article 2.4) particularly stands out. He was a student of the late Hebrew Bible scholar John Sailhamer. With much experience in tracing the reuse of scripture within the Hebrew Bible, Postell examines the Gospel of Matthew and how it traces Moses’ themes in its depiction of Jesus.

Jim R. Sibley includes in his contribution a quote that illustrates the point of noticing such connections, namely, that the concern of the Second Testament’s authors was to demonstrate the essentially Jewish character of Jesus and his mission (p. 275). The Second Testament claims to represent a genre or fulfillment of Judaism; that is, it claims to represent what is true Judaism.

Since the Hebrew Bible is shared by both religions, Christians might not see it as having the same quintessentially Jewish nature as do Jewish texts that are not traditionally read by Christians. As such, the especially useful, unique, and convincing contributions of this volume come from selections interspersed throughout sections 2–4 that examine Gospel parallels with rabbinic and Second Temple literature such as the Pseudepigrapha.

Overall, the book is a helpful reference on the topic of the Jewish roots of Christianity, by scholars from varied backgrounds. [End Page 614]