Christianity and Judaism

Christianity began as a movement within Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions gradually diverged over the first few centuries of the Christian Era. Differences of opinion vary between denominations in both religions, but the most important distinction is Christian acceptance and Jewish non-acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah prophesized in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Early Christianity also distinguished itself by determining that observance of halakha (Jewish law) was not necessary for non-Jewish converts to Christianity. Another major difference is the two religions' coneptions of God. The Christian God consists of three persons of one essence (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), with the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son in Jesus being of special importance. Judaism emphasizes the Oneness of God and rejects the Christian concept of God in human form. While Christianity recognizes the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament by Christians) as part of its scriptural canon, Judaism does not recognize the Christian New Testament.

The relative importance of belief and practice constitute an important area of difference. Most forms of Protestant Christianity emphasize correct belief (or orthodoxy), focusing on the New Covenant as mediated through Jesus Christ, as recorded in the New Testament. Judaism places emphasis on correct conduct (or orthopraxy), focusing on the Mosaic covenant, as recorded in the Torah and Talmud. Mainstream Roman Catholicism occupies a middle position, stating the both faith and works are factors in a person's salvation. Some schools of thought within Catholicism, such as Franciscanism and liberation theology, explicitly favor orthopraxy over orthodoxy. Praxis is of central importance to Eastern Christianity as well, with Saint Maximus the Confessor going as far as to say that "theology without action is the theology of demons." Christian conceptions of right practice vary (e.g., liberation theology's praxis of the preferential option for the poor; the Eastern Orthodox Church's practices of fasting, hesychasm, and asceticism), but differ from Judaism in that they are not based on following halakha or any other interpretation of the Mosaic covanent. While more liberal Jewish denominations may not require observance of halakha, Jewish life remains centred on individual and collective participation in an eternal dialogue with God through tradition, rituals, prayers and ethical actions.

Jewish self-identification

Judaism's purpose is to carry out what it holds to be the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The Torah (), both written and oral, tells the story of this covenant, and provides Jews with the terms of the covenant. The Oral Torah is the primary guide for Jews to abide by these terms, as expressed in tractate Gittin 60b ("the Holy One, Blessed be He, did not make His covenant with Israel except by virtue of the Oral Law") to help them learn how to live a holy life, and to bring holiness, peace and love into the world and into every part of life, so that life may be elevated to a high level of kedushah, originally through study and practice of the Torah, and since the destruction of the Second Temple, through prayer as expressed in tractate Sotah 49a "Since the destruction of the Temple, every day is more cursed than the preceding one; and the existence of the world is assured only by the kedusha...and the words spoken after the study of Torah."

Since the adoption of the Amidah, the acknowledgement of God through the declaration from Isaiah 6:3 "Kadosh oly kadosh, kadosh, is HaShem, Master of Legions; the whole world is filled with His glory". as a replacement for the study of Torah, which is a daily obligation for a Jew, and sanctifies God in itself. This continuous maintenance of relationship between the individual Jew and God through either study, or prayer repeated three times daily, is the confirmation of the original covenant. This allows the Jewish people as a community to strive and fulfill the prophecy "I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand and keep you. And I will establish you as a covenant of the people, for a light unto the nations." (i.e., a role model) over the course of history, and a part of the divine intent of bringing about an age of peace and sanctity where ideally a faithful life and good deeds should be ends in themselves, not means (see also Jewish principles of faith).

According to Christian theologian Alister McGrath, the Jewish Christians affirmed every aspect of then contemporary Second Temple Judaism with the addition of the belief that Jesus was the messiah, with Isaiah 49:6, "an explicit parallel to 42:6" quoted by Paul the Apostle in Acts 13:47 and reinterpreted by Justin Martyr. According to Christian writers, most notably Paul, the Bible teaches that people are, in their current state, sinful, and the New Testament reveals that Jesus is both the Son of man and the Son of God, united in the hypostatic union, God the Son, God made incarnate; that Jesus' death by crucifixion was a sacrifice to atone for all of humanity's sins, and that acceptance of Jesus as Savior and Lord saves one from Divine Judgment, giving Eternal life. Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant. His famous Sermon on the Mount is considered by some Christian scholars to be the proclamation of the New Covenant ethics, in contrast to the Mosaic Covenant of Moses from Mount Sinai.

Sacred texts

The Hebrew Bible is composed of three parts; the Torah (Instruction, the Septuagint translated the Hebrew to ''nomos'' or ''Law''), the Nevi'im (Prophets) and the Ketuvim (Writings). Collectively, these are known as the Tanakh the Torah was revealed by God to Moses; within it, Jews find 613 Mitzvot (commandments).

Rabbinic tradition asserts that God revealed two Torahs to Moses, one that was written down, and one that was transmitted orally. Whereas the written Torah has a fixed form, the Oral Torah is a living tradition that includes not only specific supplements to the written Torah (for instance, what is the proper manner of ''shechita'' and what is meant by "Frontlets" in the Shema), but also procedures for understanding and talking about the written Torah (thus, the Oral Torah revealed at Sinai includes debates among rabbis who lived long after Moses). The Oral Law elaborations of narratives in the Bible and stories about the rabbis are referred to as ''aggadah''. It also includes elaboration of the 613 commandments in the form of laws referred to as ''halakha''. Elements of the Oral Torah were committed to writing and edited by Judah HaNasi in the Mishnah in 200 CE; much more of the Oral Torah were committed to writing in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, which were edited around 600 CE and 450 CE, respectively. The Talmuds are notable for the way they combine law and lore, for their explication of the midrashic method of interpreting texts, and for their accounts of debates among rabbis, which preserve divergent and conflicting interpretations of the Bible and legal rulings.

Since the transcription of the Talmud, notable rabbis have compiled law codes that are generally held in high regard: the Mishneh Torah, the Tur, and the Shulchan Aruch. The latter, which was based on earlier codes and supplemented by the commentary by Moshe Isserles that notes other practices and customs practiced by Jews in different communities, especially among Ashkenazim, is generally held to be authoritative by Orthodox Jews. The Zohar, which was written in the 13th century, is generally held as the most important esoteric treatise of the Jews.

All contemporary Jewish movements consider the Tanakh, and the Oral Torah in the form of the Mishnah and Talmuds as sacred, although movements are divided as to claims concerning their divine revelation, and also their authority. For Jews, the Torah—written and oral—is the primary guide to the relationship between God and man, a living document that has unfolded and will continue to unfold whole new insights over the generations and millennia. A saying that captures this goes, "Turn it he Torah's wordsover and over again, for everything is in it."

Christians accept the Written Torah and other books of the Hebrew Bible (alternatively called Old Testament) as Scripture, although they generally give readings from the Koine Greek Septuagint translation instead of the Biblical Hebrew/Biblical Aramaic Masoretic Text. Two notable examples are:
* Isaiah 7:14 – "virgin" instead of "young woman"
* Psalm 22:16 – "they have pierced my hands and feet" instead of "like a lion, (they are at) my hands and feet"

Instead of the traditional Jewish order and names for the books, Christians organize and name the books closer to that found in the Septuagint. Some Christian denominations (such as Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox), include a number of books that are not in the Hebrew Bible (the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books or Anagignoskomena, see Development of the Old Testament canon) in their biblical canon that are not in today's Jewish canon, although they were included in the Septuagint. Christians reject the Jewish Oral Torah, which was still in oral, and therefore unwritten, form in the time of Jesus.

Covenant theology

Christians believe that God has established a New Covenant with people through Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles, and other books collectively called the New Testament (the word ''testament'' attributed to Tertullian is commonly interchanged with the word ''covenant''). For some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, this New Covenant includes authoritative sacred traditions and canon law. Others, especially Protestants, reject the authority of such traditions and instead hold to the principle of ''sola scriptura'', which accepts only the Bible itself as the final rule of faith and practice. Anglicans do not believe in ''sola scriptura''. For them scripture is the longest leg of a 3-legged stool: scripture, tradition and reason. Scripture cannot stand on its own since it must be interpreted in the light of the Church's patristic teaching and ecumenical creeds. Additionally, some denominations include the "oral teachings of Jesus to the Apostles", which they believe have been handed down to this day by apostolic succession.

Christians refer to the biblical books about Jesus as the New Testament, and to the canon of Hebrew books as the Old Testament. Judaism does not accept the retronymic labeling of its sacred texts as the "Old Testament", and some Jews refer to the New Testament as the Christian Testament or Christian Bible. Judaism rejects all claims that the Christian New Covenant supersedes, abrogates, fulfills, or is the unfolding or consummation of the covenant expressed in the Written and Oral Torahs. Therefore, just as Christianity does not accept that Mosaic law has any authority over Christians, Judaism does not accept that the New Testament has any religious authority over Jews.

Law

Many Jews view Christians as having quite an ambivalent view of the Torah, or Mosaic law: on one hand Christians speak of it as God's absolute word, but on the other, they apply its commandments with a certain selectivity. Some Jews contend that Christians cite commandments from the Old Testament to support one point of view but then ignore other commandments of a similar class and of equal weight. Examples of this are certain commandments that God states explicitly be a "lasting covenant." Some translate the Hebrew as a "perpetual covenant."

Christians explain that such selectivity is based on rulings made by early Jewish Christians in the Book of Acts, at the Council of Jerusalem, that, while believing gentiles did not need to fully convert to Judaism, they should follow some aspects of Torah like avoiding idolatry and fornication and blood. This view is also reflected by modern Judaism, in that Righteous gentiles need not convert to Judaism and need to observe only the Noahide Laws, which also contain prohibitions against idolatry and fornication and blood.

Some Christians agree that Jews who accept Jesus should still observe all of Torah, see for example Dual-covenant theology, based on warnings by Jesus to Jews not to use him as an excuse to disregard it, and they support efforts of those such as Messianic Jews (Messianic Judaism is considered by most Christians and Jews to be a form of Christianity)
;Orthodox
:
;Conservative:
;Reform:
; Reconstructionist/ Renewal:


*
*
*
* Stetzer, Ed (13 October 2005)
"A Missional Church"
, ''The Christian Index''. "Missional churches are indigenous. Churches that are indigenous have taken root in the soil and reflect, to some degree, the culture of their community... The messianic congregation (is)... in this case indigenous to Jewish culture."
to do that, but some Protestant forms of Christianity oppose all observance to the Mosaic law, even by Jews, which Luther criticised as Antinomianism.

A minority view in Christianity, known as Christian Torah-submission, holds that the Mosaic law as it is written is binding on all followers of God under the New Covenant, even for gentiles, because it views God's commands as "everlasting" and "good."

Concepts of God

Traditionally, both Judaism and Christianity believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for Jews the God of the Tanakh

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases