Is there any benefit to learning about/integrating the "Jewishness" of Jesus

[Myson]

For some reason, my whole life I've gone back and forth on this. There has been a part of me that has always really wanted to know about things I've missed in the NT because I'm not Jewish, and don't really have a great perspective on what being Jewish in the NT meant to those who lived/wrote it. Furthermore, I'd like to know certain things that seem fine to us, but shouldn't have seemed fine to the NT characters - like baptizing in the name of the Trinity. Where is the Jewish precedent for some of these things? How Jewish was Paul, really? What cultural and Biblical themes am I missing? Does the Transfiguration have any Jewish meaning? Are there any Jewish customs that we see in the Epistles that help explain problem passages, like in Galatians or Revelation?

On the other hand, whenever I look for books on this subject, all I get is Messianic Judaism apologetics, dispensational nonsense, and secular criticism denying any validity to the Gospels. This leads me to think that I should just stick to Calvin and Luther and ignore the Jewish heritage of the Scriptures and just read them as has been interpreted by the Church, and not the faithful in the Old Covenant, since we'd be going backwards not forwards. Something about that seems wrong, but on the other hand, I'm wondering what choice I have.

So is there any benefit to actually learning about the "Jewishness" of the NT and Christ? If so, what is it, what would it look like to reflect that value in our churches while remaining faithful to our tradition and the Scriptures, and are there any books people might point me to that aren't dispensational or MJ? Thanks!

 

[beloved7]

Do you have any idea how much treasure there is to be found in the old testament? How much Jesus there is, how much messianic prophecy? Isaiah for instance will theologically rock any follower of Jesus. These are the books that Jesus knew by heart and cited. Not to mention the Psalms which are an absolute treasure. We should thirst for everything that is Jesus. Including the law that He, and only He, kept.

As far as sacraments are concerned, Baptism can be traced to circumcision and the Lord's Supper to passover.

 

[ccravens]

Edersheim's 2 volume Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah was very helpful to me in this area.

I would think that the Jewish heritage should not, could not be ignored.

 

[Jack K]

It certainly can be helpful to understand both the Jewish and Greek culture of the New Testament era. But we should remember that the Jewish culture of that era was not 100% a biblical culture; that is, Jewish culture was not what it should have been. And Jewish culture in subsequent centuries has departed even more from God's ideal, so that to interpret the Bible by understanding Jewish culture is to do things backwards. It should be the Bible that informs culture.

This is why, although an understanding of the culture is helpful for interpreting the New Testament, an understanding of the Old Testament is far more helpful.

 

[RamistThomist]

Well, Docetism is a heresy, so we can't ignore the Hebraicness of Jesus. Jesus would have prayed the psalms, etc. He would have lived and thought in covenant categories. He would have been more comfortable in a synagogue than in Plato's bathhouse discussing eros.

Don't want to overdo it, though. A lot of Hebrew roots--well, all of them--are silly.

 

[RamistThomist]

While people are correct to point out that there isn't anything magical about Hebrew or Koine Greek, nevertheless there are Semitisms there and the people praying and reading these Scriptures did think differently than the debauched Greek.