Friday, January 29, 2021

Understanding the Judaism(s) of Jesus' Day

Most Christians I know are sadly unaware of the literature of the Second Temple period and thus are ignorant of the Judaism(s) of the 1st century CE. I highly recommend Matthias Henze's book, Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus

It is highly readable, concise (just over 200 pages) yet highly effective in communicating the author's message. Henze is a renowned scholar in his own right and thus this book has received recommendations from other world class scholars of ancient Judaism such as John J. Collins, George W. E. Nickelsburg and Loren Stuckenbruck.

Here is an explanatory quote:

"Jesus was deeply immersed in the Jewish world of his time. Most Christian readers of the New Testament today cannot understand that world, because what is described in the Old Testament is not the Judaism of Jesus...By the time of Jesus Judaism had evolved in many significant ways...Old ideas had progressed, new ideas had been introduced, other religious movements and Jewish sects had formed, different kinds of religious institutions had been set up, new literary expressions that we do not find in the [Protestant] Old Testament flourished and many new books had been written. The Jewish world of Jesus was not the religion of the Old Testament, it was the Judaism of first-century Israel." (p. 3–4)






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Introducing My "Skeptics Believe" Website

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