The differences between Judaism and Christianity
I know that you read the Jewish scriptures on a regular basis. You find encouragement and support for your faith in the words of the Jewish prophets.
You express amazement that Jews read these same words and are not convinced to join you in your Christian faith. You have presented those passages which you see as central to the substance of scripture and you were shocked to learn that the Jewish people didn’t see what you saw in those passages.
It may surprise you even further if you were to know the truth. Not only do the Jewish people not see their scriptures as supportive of Christianity, but they cannot figure out how Christians can read the scriptures and fail to be convinced of the truth of Judaism.
Before we get into the question as to which of us is reading scripture correctly, and before any of us assume that the other is stricken by a spiritual blindness, I would like to point out that we are each reading scripture in a different context and with different attitudes. The mind-sets through which we each look at the world, and the contexts within which we see scripture, will naturally affect our readings.
The fact is that neither of us believes that the Jewish scriptures stand alone as the complete and total directive of the Divine. For the Christian, it is the Jewish scripture together with the Christian scripture that can be considered the totality of the message, while for the Jew, it is the living legacy of the Jewish people, of which scripture is only a part, that stands as the complete message. The fact that we each see the Jewish scripture as part of a larger message seriously affects the way we read scripture and ultimately gives us conflicting conclusions.
One way of getting around this problem would be to open a discussion centered on this very issue. In other words, let us try to figure out what is the correct context for Jewish scripture. I hope to present my position on this issue further on in this letter.
For now I propose a different exercise to help us circumvent the issue of context. We can cast our discussion back in time, before the Christian scriptures were authored. At that point in time you can surely agree that the Jewish scriptures were not to be read in the context of the Christian scriptures. I for my part, for the sake of this discussion will try to read Jewish scripture as a Fundamentalist Christian would have me read it – as if it were the only and complete directive from God. According to the Christian, at that point in time this would have been the correct way to read scripture. From the standpoint of the Jew, this would still be reading scripture out of context. Still, I believe that as long as we don’t see the scripture in a Christian context, we will be that much closer to the truth. We will examine our theological differences in the light of the plain reading of the Jewish scriptures.
What are our theological differences? To put it simply, we can narrow it down to four major differences. There are the issues of idolatry, the Law of Moses, atonement, and Messiah. I think it is important that we define these differences before we go on. Our opposing perspectives gives each of us a different way of looking at each of these issues.
Originally posted on: https://yourphariseefriend.wor...
For other parts of this series, read here
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