Jewish Jesus

1001 Books to Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 101
David H. Stern, Ph.D., Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel: a Message For Christians

Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef was Jewish. So were his Apostles and earliest converts. Even Paul, the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” never stopped calling himself Jewish. Though Yeshua’s ministry included stops among Samaritans and Romans, his outreach centered on fellow Jews, and included extensive citations from the Hebrew Tanakh. But after the last Apostles died, Yeshua’s ministry became dominated by Gentiles. During Bar-Kochba’s Rebellion, Jews and Yeshua-followers split permanently.

Dr. David Stern, a Princeton-trained economist and lifelong Jew, became persuaded in middle age that Yeshua was the Messiah of prophecy, the promised one to reunite the scattered people of Israel. He has written about this conviction since the 1970s, becoming a leader in the Messianic Jewish community. But, half a century later, confusion remains around what Messianic Judaism means. Dr. Stern hopes to solve some of that confusion.

History hasn’t been kind to Jews who believe Yeshua fulfills the Covenant prophecy. Such Jews were rejected by fellow Jews, particularly surrounding the violence enacted by Roman conquerors. Then Gentile Christians required Jews who wanted to follow Yeshua to abjure their Judaism, contrary to Scriptural messages from Jesus and Paul. Only since the middle 1800s has the Venn diagram of Judaism and Yeshua-belief reclaimed the overlap that once dominated.

Messianic Judaism isn’t Christianity. Stern emphasizes that, the few times the word “Christian” appears in Scripture, it always describes Gentile converts. Instead, Messianic Jews remain Jews, with all the controversy of identity that this entails (for instance, should we keep kosher? Stern and his family do, but he refuses to criticize others who don’t). As such, the Hebrew Covenant continues to govern his people, who continue living under the Law of Moses.

This causes some confusion, since Paul’s letters, and to a lesser degree the Gospels (particularly John’s) proclaim believers’ freedom from the law. Doesn’t that mean the Hebrew Covenant doesn’t apply? No, Stern insists, and uses the historical context under which Paul and the Evangelists wrote to prove his point. He makes a persuasive case that, while Gentile converts live under a New Covenant, the Hebrew Covenant still governs Yeshua-beliving Jews.

Jesus as a young Jew, painted by Rembrandt

Moreover, he writes, Christians owe Jews heavily. Stern describes what he calls “olive-tree theology,” based on an analogy Paul writes in Romans, Chapter 11, that all Israel is a cultivated olive tree, onto which new believers are grafted. New Yeshua-believers needn’t necessarily become Jewish (see Acts 15), but based on statements from Paul and Yeshua, Stern believes Gentiles are grafted onto Israel, and eventually both will become one tree.

(It’s worth asserting here, that some organizations calling themselves “Messianic Jewish” aren’t Jewish in any true sense. Though they use Jewish liturgical language and selectively apply kashrut law, their theology is Evangelical Protestant. Dr. Stern doesn’t address these organizations; his interest is in actual Jews who consider Yeshua the Messiah of prophecy, and his message is unambiguous: Jews who become Yeshua-followers never stop being Jewish.)

As such, since new believers become joined into the Hebrew Covenant, Jewish believers have a different relationship with Yeshua than Gentile Christians do. Gentiles are invited into covenant which begins with relationship with Yeshua. But Jews already have their covenant; they don’t need invited in. Instead, for them, Yeshua becomes the culmination of a covenant they already possess, the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy, and the unity of the Jewish nation.

Based on this, Stern believes it’s anti-Semitic for Christians to not extend outreach to Jews. Many Christians, he acknowledges, are justifiably reluctant to evangelize Jews, because historically, Christians have used high-handedness, even violence, to forcibly convert Jews. But Stern asserts this doesn’t mean we should refuse to evangelize; it only means our evangelism must begin in humility, willing to seek forgiveness for our forebears’ failure to follow their own teachings.

This synopsis does Stern’s theology a disservice. Though brief, his book is dense with references to Jewish and Christian history, deep dives into Scripture, and careful analysis of ways Yeshua and (especially) Paul speak from categorically Jewish foundations. He carefully translates these concepts into laypersons’ language, aware that he’s writing for a diverse audience. But he doesn’t shy away from complicated theological arguments.

Recently, I’ve heard much about Gentile Christians becoming curious about their religion’s Jewish foundations. Not long ago, the firewall between Christianity and Judaism was difficult to breach, but not anymore. Dr. Stern writes for Gentiles willing to learn more about where their religion originated, and Jews eager to discover the figure Yeshua who claims to be the Messiah. Both audiences will find much to discover.

On a related topic: Indigenous Jesus