It is daunting to think of the number of books a Jew “must” read in order to achieve Jewish literacy. With trepidation I suggest yet another volume to add to that list: the New Testament (NT).
Anyone who lives in a country with a Christian majority (such as the United States or Canada) should acquire basic knowledge of the foundational literature of the dominant faith. Students of the arts need to know stories like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-44), and the “passion” of Jesus (i.e. his trial, suffering, and death) or they will be at a disadvantage when studying many works of literature, art, and music. But there are also reasons why Jews, specifically, would gain from study of the New Testament. It is a rich source for a better understanding of
Jewish history,
Jewish thought,
Jewish law, and the
history of anti-Semitism.
Almost all of the books of the NT were written by Jews, many of them during one of the most eventful periods of Jewish history: just before and just after the destruction of the
Second Temple (in 70 C.E.). Very few Jewish writings from that century survive, and none by the rabbis, the representatives of what soon became normative Judaism, since the rabbis of that period felt that their teachings had to remain oral (a position they eventually abandoned). So really the only surviving religious books written by Jews in the first and second centuries are a few of the later
Dead Sea Scrolls and the NT.
Ancient Jewish Sects
Any rabbinic text describing the
factions and sects of Jews in Israel in the first century were written much later–only after groups like the Sadducees and the Essenes no longer existed. And while biblical critics teach us that most of the NT authors never actually saw Jesus–and so their descriptions of his words and actions are at best second-hand reports–these authors definitely did record their first-hand knowledge and experience of what it was like for a Jew to live in the Land of Israel in the first century, under the oppressive
Roman occupation. They often described the old Jewish sects and the tensions between them in very realistic ways...........