Second Encounter of the Jewish-Christian Study Group on 22nd November 2007:

The Jewish-Christian group for in-depth critical and respectful study of the New Testament met again on 22 November to study chapter 2 of the Gospel of Mathew.

We continued with the line of pointing to the effort to connect to the Hebrew Bible. As a descendent of Kind David, Jesus has to be born in Bethlehem.

Also: as Ruth who came from Moab (which is in the east) and from the gentiles, so do the three wise-men come from the east and from the gentiles, to shed light on a phenomena in Judea. Ruth lived in the time of the Judges, which is characterized by the repeating phrase "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes". This situation resulted in horrible cases such as the Temple of Micah (whose priest was from Bethlehem) and the concubine in Gibeah (who was also from Bethlehem). In this situation of darkness within Israel, we see the reversed situation of Ruth who brings light from the nations – instead of Israel bringing light to the nations. The Talmud says that initially David was not accepted, until the Midrash was found saying that only a male Moabite is not acceptable but a female may be accepted, validating Ruth's conversion.

Herod plays here the role of Pharaoh. This is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Samuel when a king was first asked for (Samuel 1, chapter 8).

Mathew contrasts Herod – the king of the Jews, who despite having the revelation and the Torah do not accept Jesus – with the wise people from the east – who had neither revelation nor Torah and through the reading of nature did accept Jesus. For Mathew – the fact that the Jews did not accept Jesus is a terrible challenge.

One of us commented that in Judaism every person is the son of God. The Christian response was that so it is in Christianity but Jesus is considered as the perfect son. In Christianity Jesus is actually the third son of God. The first one failed – Adam. There is no explicit mention of Adam being the son of God in the Hebrew Bible but there is a series of relations that could be interpreted in this way: Adam is created in the image of God, God gives Adam his name, find a wife for him, takes care of his living, makes him inherent the land etc. The Christians do have an explicit mention in Luke 3, 38: "the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God".

The second son is "Israel is My son, My first-born" (Exodus 4, 22) and he is a success story but needs his completion. According to the Christian belief – Jesus brings this completion, while according to the Jewish belief – it is still waited for.

We then came to discuss the status of the Christian belief in salvation only through Jesus, vs. its acceptance of the Jewish covenant. We quoted Cardinal Kasper:

"The central question which Jewish-Christian dialogue revolves around for us is: How can the thesis of the continuing covenant be reconciled with the uniqueness and universality of Christ Jesus, which are constitutive for the Christian understanding of the new covenant? Can or should we replace the exclusivity of the substitution theory with a dualism in the sense of a co-existence of the old and new covenants, or even a pluralism in the sense of a number of covenants? Giving up the claim to the universal truth and salvation of Christ Jesus would be equivalent to giving up Christianity itself. So in this question Christology remains the real stumbling block."

We said that this question touches on the very essence of dialogue: are we seeking agreement and willing for its sake to hide our differences or are we seeking to learn to really understand each other and develop mutual relations of respect that are not conditioned by agreement and include respect for our differences. We said that the first is an early stage of dialogue development but we definitely should aim for the second.

From another aspect: we stressed that a way out of the dilemma described by Cardinal Kasper could be the understanding that the writers of the New Testament were Jews who were debating what Jews should believe and were able to criticize harshly as they were criticizing their own community. Unlike them – the Christians today are not part of the Jewish nation so both can only state what they believe in (but can not say what Jews should believe in) and are should use manners and respect when speaking to the Jewish community, which is not their community.


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