Judaism

arrepto veritate said:

Why don't Christians study the Jewish perspective of the Old Testament? I believe that Judaism is the father of Catholicism and the grandfather of Protestantism. I have found some fascinating perspectives from Jewish traditions. Some of those traditions we may not agree with I think some give a greater understanding of the New Testament.

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Some of us do. With pope Pius XI we say "Spiritually we are Semites." While we are not on board with every word of rabbinic Judaism we do see ourselves as inheritors of the faith of the Hebrew people. We can't even understand ourselves outside of that. The grandchildren lose sight of that. The children might even from time to time get a little fuzzy about that.

arrepto veritate said:

Why don't Christians study the Jewish perspective of the Old Testament? I believe that Judaism is the father of Catholicism and the grandfather of Protestantism. I have found some fascinating perspectives from Jewish traditions. Some of those traditions we may not agree with I think some give a greater understanding of the New Testament.

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The Jews were not given the Great Commision.
Christians today have the indwelling Holy Spirit, which the old Jews did not have.
The OT stories are great, important, and can help bring some people to Christ, but the NT has a lot more about Christ.

To get a Jewish perspective on knowing Jesus Christ as God and Savior, I would study works from Messianic Jewish believer David H. Stearn. He has a complete Bible translation & commentary among other things.

Here is a sample online search:



General info on the late Mr. Stearn:

arrepto veritate said:

Why don't Christians study the Jewish perspective of the Old Testament? I believe that Judaism is the father of Catholicism and the grandfather of Protestantism. I have found some fascinating perspectives from Jewish traditions. Some of those traditions we may not agree with I think some give a greater understanding of the New Testament.

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Some do study the Jewish perspective on both the OT and the NT and there is a tremendous among of insight to be gained by doing so. Even with works like Justin Martyr's monologue with Trypho we can see the problems of not studying the Bible from a Jewish perspective.

Rabbinic Judaism is basically the surviving sect of the Pharisees who worked tirelessly against Christ and ultimately worked with the Sadducees to crucify Christ. They created the Tradition of men that Jesus constantly corrected. The Holy Tradition of the Jewish people was fulfilled in Christ. His church was built on that Tradition and the fulfilled application of the Law of Moses was understood and properly applied to the church By the Jewish disciples of Christ. I would personally suggest studying Orthodox Christianity instead of the people who killed Jesus out of hate and envy. The Jewish prospective is obviously slanted against losing their place and their people still to this day. Thus they will attempt to show the ancient Jewish culture in a way that hurts your faith in Christ and not help it.

dan.pine said:

Rabbinic Judaism is basically the surviving sect of the Pharisees who worked tirelessly against Christ and ultimately worked with the Sadducees to crucify Christ. They created the Tradition of men that Jesus constantly corrected. The Holy Tradition of the Jewish people was fulfilled in Christ. His church was built on that Tradition and the fulfilled application of the Law of Moses was understood and properly applied to the church By the Jewish disciples of Christ. I would personally suggest studying Orthodox Christianity instead of the people who killed Jesus out of hate and envy. The Jewish prospective is obviously slanted against losing their place and their people still to this day. Thus they will attempt to show the ancient Jewish culture in a way that hurts your faith in Christ and not help it.

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Jesus was a Jewish rabbi with disciples, so he was part of Rabbinic Judaism. Jesus set a sinless example of how to walk in obedience to the Torah, so he was much more zealous for it than the Pharisees were, and he never criticize any of them for obeying it, but he did criticize some of them for not obeying it or for not obeying it correctly. For example, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that tithing was something that they ought to be doing while not neglecting weightier matters of the Torah of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, so he was not opposing their obedience to it, but rather he was calling them to a fuller obedience to it in a manner that is in accordance with its weightier matters.

The Pharisees were far from a monolithic group, so what Jesus said about one group of Pharisees should not be mistaken as speaking about all Pharisees. In Deuteronomy 17:8-13, God's word gave authority to priests and judges to make rulings about how to obey the Torah that the people were obligated to follow. In Matthew 23:2-4, Jesus recognized the authority of the Pharisees by saying that they sit on the Seat of Moses and by instructing his followers to do everything that they said, but warned about their hypocrisy. However, there were some Pharisees who also criticized other Pharisees for their hypocrisy, so Jesus was not the only Pharisee to do that. In regard to debate between rabbis Hillel and Shammai, Jesus was virtually in complete agreement with Hillel.

Paul never stopped identifying as a Pharisee (Acts 23:6) and we are told to be imitators of him as he was of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:11), so we are told to be imitators of a Pharisee and most of the NT was written by a Pharisee. Likewise, in Acts 15:5, Pharisees were included among the believers. Jesus and his disciples were all Jews and he spent most of his ministry speaking to other Jews, so there is a lot that we miss or misunderstand if we neglect to study the Jewish cultural and historical context of the Bible. Jesus spent three years with the Pharisees, so they were the people that he wanted to work with, but it was spending a week with the Sadducees that led to his death.

We’ll hopefully agree to disagree, especially on God becoming a Pharisee. I never had the intention to debate Christianity in the forum only to give some Orthodoxy perspective to questions posed. May God bless you on your journey towards the truth of Christ.

arrepto veritate said:

Dan I know you are not saying the Jew killed Christ. I was under the impression that a group of Jews in Jerusalem who were there condemned Jesus. If the Jewish tradition is tainted should the Old Testament be something to read and understand or leave it by the wayside?
I am reading about early doctrinal and church history, once I get to the big schism of 1054 which Orthodox should I choose? I have thought about looking into the Oriental and Greek Orthodox. I know I will read more about the reformation and what changed and what didn't. Thank your for your response.

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Morning,
In Orthodox theology, the Masoretic texts are useful but not recognized as the Scriptures that the Church was using even during the Apostolic Era. A lot of quotes come from the Septuagint rather than Hebrew sources. Outside of Judea, you would not have found a lot of Hebrew readers and documents but the Greek Septuagint.

As for the schisms, you can ask in the EO section in The Ancient Way here on CF.

arrepto veritate said:

Dan I know you are not saying the Jew killed Christ. I was under the impression that a group of Jews in Jerusalem who were there condemned Jesus. If the Jewish tradition is tainted should the Old Testament be something to read and understand or leave it by the wayside?
I am reading about early doctrinal and church history, once I get to the big schism of 1054 which Orthodox should I choose? I have thought about looking into the Oriental and Greek Orthodox. I know I will read more about the reformation and what changed and what didn't. Thank your for your response.

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So I would say there’s two traditions. Tradition of God (Holy Tradition) and Tradition of men. All of Holy Tradition from Adam until now is what I would consider Orthodoxy. As far as the second question, As an Orthodox Christian I would always suggest going Eastern Orthodox. sorry for typos, my phone doesn’t like this forum. Spell check and prediction don’t work properly.

arrepto veritate said:

Dan I know you are not saying the Jew killed Christ. I was under the impression that a group of Jews in Jerusalem who were there condemned Jesus. If the Jewish tradition is tainted should the Old Testament be something to read and understand or leave it by the wayside?
I am reading about early doctrinal and church history, once I get to the big schism of 1054 which Orthodox should I choose? I have thought about looking into the Oriental and Greek Orthodox. I know I will read more about the reformation and what changed and what didn't. Thank your for your response.

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Jesus had just had the triumphal entry, so he was extremely popular with the people, it was spending a week with the Sadducees that led to his execution, and the Sadducees were corrupt at that time. Jesus was arrested and rushed through an illegal trial in the middle of the night, so the vast majority of Jews had no idea what had happened until it was already too late. There was one crowd that was stirred up against Jesus maybe on the order of hundreds of Jews out of millions of Jews who were in Jerusalem.

However, even if every Jew had been corrupted, then that would not mean that we should leave what God instructed in the OT by the wayside, especially when about a third of the verses in the NT contain quotes or allusions to the OT to support what they were saying. For example, Jesus quoted three times from Deuteronomy to defeat the temptations of Satan, so it wouldn’t make sense to leave it by the wayside because Jews who wanted to kill him.

I would agree with PsaltiChrysostom. In EO we use the Septuagint which was translated by Jewish leaders prior to Christ. The Hebrew language had basically died. MT seems to have some anti-Jesus modifications. I don’t have any lists to show that. You would have to do some research.

There is a book by Fr James ( Bernstein) who converted from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity. I have not read it but have heard it is a good book.