Jesus the Jew?

Recently in an online Christian forum, a couple of people declared Jesus was not a Jew and that he was killed by the Jews.  Now the only time I’ve really ever heard Christ’s ethnicity being questioned, even if it was in a rhetorical sense, was when chapel speakers were trying to push their agenda for Jesus to be black and not white with blonde hair and blue eyes.  (Personally, I have never seen that depiction of Jesus in any church; though I can imagine it in a KKK and neo-Nazi meeting house.)  Other than that most people I’ve come into contact with have generally accepted Christ to be of Jewish descent.  So it was rather baffling to encounter two people were obstinately sure that the Lord was not a Jew.  After a couple of attempts to reason with them, I left them to their own deception.  But it made me wonder, “How many of us take this fact for granted?  Do we know how to back up this claim?”  So that is the purpose of today’s post, to find evidence of Christ’s Jewish background.

Let’s first see if Jesus was ethnically Jewish.  In the first gospel of the Bible, that is the book of Matthew, the very first thing that we read is a genealogy or a list of ancestors and their descendants starting with Abraham and ending with Christ.  While most of the names are unfamiliar to many Christians because we tend to skip over the genealogies in the Old Testament, we can pick few out like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Boaz, and David.  The first three are the great patriarchs and ancestors of the Jewish people.  Judah is the head of an Israelite tribe made up of ethnic Jews.  Boaz and David were both Jews as well.  If Christ descends from them, then it would follow that Jesus was also ethnically Jewish.  Now someone might argue that an ethnic Jew from the Roman territory of Galilee would not have a Greek name like Jesus.  And there is some validity to this argument.  However, it should be pointed out that Jesus is not Greek in origin but a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew name “Yeshua” which we know in English as Joshua meaning “God saves.”  Also the Jewish scriptures at the time were primarily written in Greek, not Hebrew.  Thus Christ’s parents were not giving their child a Greek name, but a Jewish one based on a Greek translation of their Scriptures.

Is there any evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus was Jew?  Well, yes and no.  It isn’t so much that extra-biblical sources explicitly stated that Jesus was a Jew as it is they never seem to question that assumption.  The Talmud references a Yeshua of the 1st century was crucified and was said to be born of a Jewish virgin and carpenter (n.b.: the Talmud does not agree with the virgin birth story).  Josephus calls Jesus a Jewish wise man (n.b.: Josephus didn’t believe Jesus to be the Christ).  And Suetonius records the Emperor Claudius throwing the Jews out of Rome for their heated debates over a man called Christ.  That’s rather odd for the Jews in Rome to do if Jesus was Greek, Trojan, Gallic or Egyptian and had nothing to do with Jews or Judaism.

Okay, so the evidence points toward Jesus being ethnically Jewish.  Was he also an adherent to Judaism?  This is a little more difficult to answer because as Christians we have to assume that Jesus was the Messiah while the Jewish leaders in the New Testament and many Jews today would say that he was not the Messiah.  However there is ample evidence to indicate that he did observe Jewish religious traditions and customs.  He accepted the holiness of the Sabbath, though he declared to be Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:1-11, Matt. 12:8-12).  He recognized the importance of the Shema (Matt. 22:37-38).  He upheld the authority of the Law (Matt. 5:17-20).  He observed the Passover festival, the festival of tents, and Hanukah (Luke 2:41-42, Mark 14:12; John 7:2-10, 10:22-23).  He compared his death to Jewish symbols, the sign of Jonah and the bronze serpent made by Moses (Matt. 16:4, John 3:14-15).  And when he was tempted by Satan and questioned by the Jewish leaders, he relied on Jewish texts (Matt. 4:1-10, 22:23-32, 22:41-45).  Yet there is an absence in the gospels of Christ rejecting the faith of his parents, his neighbors, or of his community leaders.  And we do not see him giving any credence to Gentile philosophies or beliefs.  Even Tradition supports these things.

Therefore we must conclude that Jesus held the Jewish religion in high regards, going even so far as to say that its prophecies were about him (Matt. 26:52-56).  It is then both unlikely to conclude and absurd to say that Jesus was not a Jew.  He could trace his lineage back to an ancient Israelite king, to the head of his tribe, and to the great patriarchs of his people: Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham.  And he faithfully observed and upheld the faith of his people.  He was not a Gentile born in a Jewish society.  He was not some ancient European invention.  He was a Jew.

Okay, so what?  Does this radically change who Jesus was?

No, not really.

Even if you thought of a Jesus as an American who looked like Marvel’s interpretation of Thor, not knowing that he was Jewish didn’t change the fact that he was God incarnate who died for our sins.  Does this mean that his Jewish identity is unimportant?  No, but it isn’t central to the Christian faith.  Remember even the early Church creeds didn’t emphasize Christ’s ethnicity and religious background.  (Granted, I don’t believe very many questioned if Jesus was a Jew back in those days.)  It is more liking buying a chocolate Easter bunny.  You could get the one that is hollow, or you could purchase a solid chocolate bunny.  Both are still bunnies and both are sold during Easter.  But one is solid while the other is hollow.  A non-Jewish Jesus is a hollow bunny and is okay for those new to the faith.  But as believers, we should all be striving to get a more solid picture of who Jesus is.  As the Apostle Paul teaches, we need to move from baby food to solid substances to nourish our soul and part of that is to recognize the Jewish nature and background that made Christ who he is.

Now if you excuse me, I need to see if there’s an early Easter sale for chocolate bunnies.

Rape and the Bible

“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver.  He must marry the girl, for he has violated her.  He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”-Deut. 22:28-29 NIV (emphasis mine)

Perhaps it is just me but today’s society is obsessed with anything and everything to do with sex.  We see it in pop culture as celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga try to upstage each other with the most provocative and shocking outfits (or lack thereof).  We see it in our politics when politicians are caught having affairs or using it to promote healthcare.  And we even have social movements trying to raise awareness and eliminate sex crimes like rape.  Which is what makes the above verses so interesting.  One would think that the God who inspired Matthew to write “Love your neighbor as yourself” and John to say “God is love” wouldn’t be the same God who would command the Israelites to marry rape victims to their rapists.  Yet as Christians we’re not given the choice to pick and choose which parts of Scripture we want to follow and which ones we’ll ignore.  So what should we do with these passages?  What should be our response?

Let’s start with the one above.  What’s the context for these verses?  They’re found in the book of Deuteronomy which is about Moses going over the basics of the Law to the Israelites, the promises they and their parents had made to God, and the promises God has made to them.  At this point in the book, Moses is reviewing sexual offenses involving married couples and virgins.  Like Hammurabi’s Code in ancient Babylon, the text describes the crimes and follows it with the punishment due to the guilty party.  And for the most part this occurs consistently.  The guilty get stoned, throne out of camp, pay fines, make sacrifices, etc.  And the innocent are given restitution.  But here it seems that the rapist gets off easy while the victim is now forced to live the rest of her life with her tormentor.  Sure he has to pay a hefty fine, but what’s money to the person who’s been molested?  Isn’t this proof that the Bible relies too much on ancient culture and customs to be an accurate guide for people?

Before we jump to conclusions, let’s think about the punishment for the rapist.  If he is caught, he must first pay fifty shekels, or 62.5 lbs., of silver.  That’s a lot for that time period and society where much of a person’s wealth depended on certain possessions like livestock.  Even today, depending on how pure the silver is, that much silver could cost up to $20,000.  This is a huge amount of money that could easily bankrupt or put the rapist financially at risk.  And while it is true no amount of money can ever cancel out the harm done, it does actually work in the victim’s favor.

First, consider that marrying the victim to the rapist is actually to protect the woman’s well-being.  In ancient times, families wanted their men to marry virgins.  Perhaps they liked the idea of a sexually innocent girl or believed if the girl had remained a virgin then they knew they were dealing with an upright family.  Whatever the reason, a maiden had a better chance to improve her lot in life than a woman had lost her virginity.  Thus giving the victim to her molester was to guarantee that she wouldn’t have to worry about living without an income and a husband to protect her interests.  Second, understand that the woman’s father had a say in the matter.  Despite criticisms about ancient people and the law codes in the Bible, Israelite fathers were very much like their modern counterparts.  Most loved their families and wanted to protect and seek out their children’s welfare.  And according to Exodus 22:16-17, if the father didn’t want to give up his daughter, she didn’t have to marry the man who wronged her which probably happened quite often with families who could afford to do so.  Also if the rapist proved to be fiscally unable to support a wife, then the father could decide that he could find someone else who could better provide for her.  While this can’t compensate for what was done, it hardly let’s the guilty party get off easy with no regard to the innocent.

Of course this passage isn’t the only one which is used to show that the Bible promotes rape.  Deut. 21:10-14 permits the marrying of a captive woman.  The problem with this passage is that is all it entails.  Rape is never mentioned or implied.  Instead the Law once again provides women legal protection in a cultural society where they had very few rights and privileges.  While it was true that women who were prisoners of war were and are often subjected to humiliating treatment like rape, this passage actually has the Israelite men treat each of these women like one of their own.  They were given time to mourn for their dead and were given all the rights and privileges their Jewish counterparts had in marriage which included the freedom to walk away if the husband didn’t want her afterward.  Plus this was only if the men wanted to marry them.  Any other situation would be considered rape or adultery which were punishable by death.  While not a great situation, it did put the onus on the men to act fairly and honorably toward their female captives.

So it would seem then that the Bible doesn’t promote rape and we’re not seeing two different gods giving polar opposite commands.  Rather, these passages appear to be taken out of their cultural and societal context which shows that they were very beneficial for the women of their day.  But that doesn’t sound quite right.  Why would God give commands based on a person’s finite and subjectively cultural values when he judges mankind’s action on objective and universal values?  Why didn’t he just provide a bill of rights for Israelites and increase the status and social mobility of women?  And that’s a good question and I’m not entirely sure what the answer is.  I guess that God does use the norms that people accustomed to, but I don’t believe that he is bound to them and unable to convey truth through them.  For example, God didn’t abandon Abraham because he had married his half sister Sarah.  God wanted Abraham to learn what it meant to fully trust in the promises of the Lord even if they don’t come in to fruition during his lifetime.  When Paul, inspired by the Spirit, described the roles people had in the Church, he could have declared husbands and wives were equal in authority at home and in society.  But rather he took time to explain how God wanted believing men and women to relate to each other despite what the world around them said.

With this in mind, I think God was trying to tell the Israelites that women shouldn’t be seen as living objects who worked and bore children.  Rather they should be given respect and honor.  A truth which I believe needs to be relearned even in our “enlightened” modern era.