The setting was Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, a Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side, whose limud (learning) program has since two years ago included an annual monthlong "Inter Faith Study." This year's topic: "A Parting of the Ways? Christians and Jews in the Early Centuries of the Common Era." I heard about it in my church bulletin (two of our members have partners who are members of BJ, and both couples attend both BJ's Friday and Holy Apostles' Sunday services), and thought I'd tag along to see what I might learn.The historian started with a wonderful and completely nonreligious account of the history of Palestine, which experienced three peak periods (as can be verified by archaelogy) - the 8th century BCE, the 1st centuries BCE and CE, and from the late 4th to the 6th century CE. In between, the population was much smaller and little trace remains of who was there or what they were doing. The standard religious view of the period of our inquiry, he said, is that temple Judaism disappeared with the destruction of the Second Temple, to be replaced by the domesticated and more ethically-oriented rabbinic Judaism we all love - but that's history the way the rabbis tell it. In fact, the centuries after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and the second Jewish revolt were periods of confusion and improvisation. We don't find traces of synagogues before the 4th century (though there must have been some), when Judaism defined itself against a Roman Empire now identified with Christianity.
I thought this a fantastic way to set the stage, but the Orthodox theologian - after emphasizing the deep differences in approach - didn't build on it. Rather, he focused on the apostle Paul's interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures through Jesus whom he understood "parahistorically" - Christ was eternal, there at the creation, and is the subject not only of what Christians call the New Testament but also (allegorically) of the Old. I'd forgotten that Luke has Jesus say as much to the disciples on the road to Emmaus: "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. (24:24) Paul, too, reads the Jewish scriptures typologically, and thinks the Jews have a veil over their minds when encountering the Pentateuch, which, when one turns to the Lord [Jesus] ... is removed (2 Corinthians 3:16). The theologian gave us a handout with these passages on it.
Predictably, the audience, composed mostly of members of BJ, was affronted. "What prooftexts are their for your claims about the scriptures," asked one man not without hostility. "You mean Paul's?" "No, yours." I felt like saying that this was a historical discussion, a discussion of the emergence of new Christian as well as Jewish ideas and practices, but of course the theologian had explicitly closed that door. I thought he should say that one should understand what Paul was doing in the context of the chaos and improvisation which the historian had mentioned, that the Jesus movement was only one of many similar Jewish sects at the time. Why didn't he? I felt the theologian was making things unnecessarily difficult for himself (and for the other Christians in the room), but this isn't his first experience of interfaith work - he presumably knows what he's doing. As he made clear, he was speaking as a theologian, and for a theologian the similarities between Paul and these others are superficial and misleading, since Paul was inspired and the others were not, and Paul's inspired "spin" reveals the true significance of the Hebrew scriptures, which Jewish readings inevitably miss. But still: why point this out the very first night? I suppose his intention was to show how seriously he was taking this event by not pussyfooting around the deep differences between the two faiths - you can't really discuss the differences if you minimize them - but he must have known this would come across as arrogance.
Difficult! But in the remaining three discussions perhaps we'll learn to appreciate why the theologian was so brazen in presenting the nature of the difference between Christian and Jewish readings of Moses and prophets, and why the historian was so coy in presenting only historical background - and that that brazenness and coyness are not just the trademarks of theologians and historians, but might also be stances demanded by an honest encounter of Jews and Christians. Or not. (In a way I may have been expecting the opposite - a coy Christian and a brazen Jewish participant - along with the rest of the audience.) Had we a Jewish theologian and a Christian historian, we might be apprehensive in entirely different ways! I'll keep you posted.
