Jesus Christ, Master Speechwriter

Lois Tverberg, Reading the Bible With Rabbi Jesus: How a Jewish Perspective Can Transform Your Understanding

The Bible wasn’t written for Westernized Europeans living in the 21st Century. Let’s start with that premise. Like most literature, its intended audience shared certain cultural touchstones and spoke a shared language. The Scriptures from which Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul quoted extensively, were written in Hebrew, a language which doesn’t share our modern correlation between “word” and “meaning.” And that’s saying nothing of non-literal meanings hidden below the surface.

Lois Tverberg isn’t the first Hebraicist to publish on themes of cultural meaning which Jesus’ original Jewish apostles would’ve understood, but which modern Christians have forgotten. She cites Athol Dickson and E. Randolph Richards, to name just two. This isn’t even her first book on the topic, though it’s her first to focus substantially on language rather than action. Christianity’s Hebrew roots have gotten voluminous coverage in the last twenty years.

However, just because Tverberg’s topic isn’t new doesn’t mean her information is well-known. Many Chritians remain unaware of Judaism’s collectivist impulse, as Tverberg writes, and misinterpret Jesus’ promises as purely personal salvation. They see the New Covenant as completely negating the Old Covenant, which Jesus rejected, both explicitly and implicitly. And they see Hebrew Scripture as a rough draft of Chrisianity, which Jesus, she demonstrates, did not.

Tverberg identifies the problem as “Greek thinking,” a form of Westernized rationalism based on literal language and if-then reasoning. Importantly, Tverberg doesn’t insist Greek thinking is wrong; she just considers it the incorrect framing to understand the Hebrew Scriptures, written in metaphor and poetry. We must recognize, Tverberg writes, that in Hebrew, words get their meanings from situations, and messages come from story, not syllogism.

Working from this premise, Tverberg explicates several situations where Jesus, working from Hebrew Scripture, weaves stories, speaks in poetry, and plays off single words’ double meanings. Jesus especially quoted from Isaiah and the Psalms, but Tverberg shows ways he alluded widely to Micah, Jeremiah, the Torah, and elsewhere throughout Hebrew tradition. After all, Jesus taught during Judaism’s great Mishnah period of intense oral tradition.

From the beginning, an immersion in Jewish tradition provides a distinct look at meanings. Modern Christians have worked hard to create definitions of “Christ” which encompass all the theological weight we expect Jesus to bear (while excluding historical or current religious trends we find distasteful). But to Jews living in the First Century CE, “Christ” had very specific meanings. Without that history, we lose understanding of what Jesus himself intended.

Lois Tverberg

Further, Hebrew tradition was considerably more collective than modern Euro-American culture. We miss important threads because English doesn’t have a plural “you,” leading today’s readers to perceive Jesus’ directions and promises as very individualist. But many times Jesus and the prophets say “you,” they mean “you all.” The great prophetic promises are intended for the people united, not individuals. (In my experience, this weakness is more common in White than Black churches.)

Jews understood Jesus’ extensive scriptural quotations, Tverberg avers, because they memorized Scripture in ways Christians don’t. Jesus’ ability to create immediate recognition using just one or two words meant something powerful to his first-generation audience. Without that ability to call entire prophetic books to mind by rote, Christians miss entire huge swaths of what Jesus actually intended, because his allusions are both subtle and frequent.

Throughout this book, Tverberg returns to Emmaus as her metaphor. In Luke’s Gospel, the resurrected Jesus teaches two disciples how the Hebrew prophetic tradition pointed toward Jesus’ ministry. This relationship between the prophets and Christianity has been substantially lost to contemporary Christians, because we don’t memorize Scripture, don’t think collectively, and don’t remember the Messianic promise woven into Jewish liturgy.

However, Tverberg warns us, don’t mistake what Emmaus means. Just because the prophets all pointed toward Jesus doesn’t mean the entire Hebrew Scripture is a dead letter, intended for prooftexting Jesus’ ministry. Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles understood Christ’s ministry as a continuation of the prophetic continuum, and themselves as heirs of Jewish tradition. That’s why Jesus and Paul quote Isaiah and Jeremiah widely, and Plato and Aristotle never.

Jesus and his first-generation apostles had important rabbinical assumptions wrapped up in their language, assumptions hidden behind what, to modern readers, look like simple turns of phrase. Tverberg and other Hebraicists like her want to reclaim this heritage for modern believers. Because without Jesus’ Hebrew thinking, we receive only an abridged version of Jesus’ message. Tverberg admits she doesn’t cover Jesus’ every Jewish allusion. But she opens our minds to a Truth of surpassing beauty.