The Jewish Annotated New Testament

Here's an excerpt of my lecture titled A Critique of the Book The Jewish Annotated New Testament, at Englewood Public Library, Mar. 14, 2012.

Excerpt of A critique of the book The Jewish Annotated New Testament

(Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors)

by Adolfo Borromeo

Over two thousand years ago, an itinerant teacher walked the towns of ancient Israel, preaching a new covenant with God. Although he said he came not to break the Law (the Torah) but to fulfill it, he was undermining the priestly class and threatening Roman authority. When Pilate said to the crowd, “I am innocent of this man’s blood, see to it yourselves,” they cried, “His blood be on us and on our children!” ( Mat 27.24-25 NRSV) This verse from the gospel has been the basis for the condemnation of Jews as “Christ killers” through the ages.

Now Pope Benedict XVI has declared that Jews could not be held responsible for Jesus’ death. The Pope further said that when Matthew said “the Jews”, he meant the mob in Pilate’s courtyard at that time in history, and not the Jewish people in general. (George Conger, Jews as Christ Killers, www.getreligion.org)

The book editors Levine and Brettler say this verse may be referring to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the “children” may be specifically the generation (after Jesus) who experienced that destruction, and not Jews in perpetuity. (The Editors’ Preface, xii)

Amy-Jill Levine, writing from an earlier book, The Historical Jesus in Context, said the historical man from Nazareth cannot be understood fully if he is divorced from his context. The spread of the gospel cannot be comprehended unless one appreciates its adaptation to the cultural expectations of its proselytes.

I find the essay by Michael Fagenblat (The Concept of Neighbor in Jewish and Christian Ethics, pp 540-543) personally moving. He explains the similarity in the concept of neighbor in the parable of the good Samaritan (Lk 10.25-38) to Judaism’s love for the stranger (Lev 19.34; Deut 31.12).

In Leviticus 19.34: The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you. You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. In comparison, I find 1Cor 13.4-8 equally sublime and soaring.

Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful

or arrogant or rude… Love never ends.

And so Jews, Christians, and by extension Muslims, must continue to worship together, whenever possible, in bringing about a world of peace, harmony and religious tolerance.

After all, as N.T. Wright wrote in his book Simply Jesus, God intended to rule the world through human beings. God had laid the foundations. Now he leaves it up to us to live together as brothers or die separately as enemies.

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