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An innovative introduction to Judaism and the Jewish people for Christian readers
 
In this fascinating and highly original book, Tzvi Novick introduces readers to foundational features of Jewish theology by explaining its similarities to and differences from Christian theology. Novick also leads readers through the major milestones of Christian teaching about Jews and Judaism, devoting particular attention to contemporary teachings and unsettled questions. Each chapter includes helpful recommendations for further reading as well as detailed discussion questions, making the book an outstanding resource for teaching.
 
In the introduction, Novick eloquently conveys why a book like this is needed: “If Christians take themselves to have, in some sense, a common destiny with the Jewish people, then they should understand who these fellow travelers are. . . . If the Church is committed to the notion that God’s covenant with the Jewish people endures, then Jewish responses to God can in principle be an important source of theological insight for Christians themselves.” This is a beautifully written book that contributes richly to interfaith dialogue and understanding.

From the Publisher

What People Are Saying

Excerpt from chapter 1, “Starting Points”

In roughly the first hundred years after Jesus’s ministry, the resolution of two momentous theological conflicts, one after the other, set the terms for the emergence of what would become orthodox or mainstream Christianity. The resolution of the first and earlier conflict, between Christ followers who were “of the circumcision” and those who were not, established the principle— though they could not have put it in these words—that Christianity is different from Judaism, that it is not just a form of Judaism that happens to recognize a person named Jesus as the long-awaited messiah. The resolution of the second and later conflict, between Christian groups that we may reductively call proto-orthodox and Gnostic, affirmed the notion that the God of Christianity is the God of Judaism, and that the Jews’ sacred texts are also sacred to Christians. The church that emerged from these conflicts thus saw Christianity as something new in relation to traditional Judaism, but as belonging to the same story as Judaism. Let us now elaborate on these developments.

Jesus was a Galilean Jew of the early first century CE who preached to Jews and won his first followers among them. He was crucified in Jerusalem as the purported king of the Jews. The earliest circle of Christ followers—the nucleus of the church—was a group of Jews whose beliefs and practices could in no way be distinguished categorically from those of other Jews. But within a few decades after the Easter events, the church came to be a majority-gentile institution, even an overwhelmingly gentile institution. The figure most associated with this development is the latecomer apostle, Paul.

We will have much to say about Paul in the continuation, especially in chapter 5. For now, it suffices to note that his letters, together with the book of Acts, represent an intervention in a great debate among early Christ followers over what gentiles who wished to attach themselves to Christ should do. There was no doubt that they must renounce their gods and worship the one creator God—the God of Israel, the God of Jesus—but some felt that they must do more. Some Christ followers believed that they must become Jewish, that they must convert to Judaism through (in the case of males) circumcision. “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses,” they said, “you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1).

Such a view would have been perfectly natural at the time. If a gentile had committed to worshiping the God of Israel alone, should he not also join the people of Israel? The Christ followers who took this position—Paul calls them “those of the circumcision” (Gal. 2:12)—evidently reasoned, likewise, that Jesus was the christos (Greek for “anointed,” i.e., the king anointed with sacred oil), the prophesied descendant of King David, come to gather in the dispersed Jewish communities and restore the kingdom of Israel, God’s kingdom, in Jerusalem. It stood to reason that a gentile who had subjected himself to the king of the Jews should become Jewish. Again, Jesus preached an imminent final judgment, and a prevalent line of thought among Jews of the time was that non-Jews, the gentiles, would be condemned in this judgment, because of their hostility toward Israel and their wicked ways. The laws that God commanded the Jewish people to follow—observance of the sabbath, the dietary laws, the laws of ritual purity, and so forth—represented, by contrast, the best way of life, a holy way of life. Surely a gentile concerned with surviving God’s judgment should adopt these practices as his own.

Other Christ followers, first among them Paul, disagreed. They believed that gentile Christ worshipers need not and indeed should not convert to Judaism. To do so would be to misunderstand who Jesus was. Jesus was the prophesied Davidic king, yes, but he was not just that. Yes, his coming would soon solve the problem of Israel’s suffering: its subordination to foreign peoples, its exile, its dispersion. But if this was all that Jesus was supposed to do, then he would have done so directly and immediately. If he had not yet done so, and if instead he died on the cross and was resurrected, then his person must be more exalted and his purpose more profound. Gentiles who took on the law out of the assumption that Jesus is chiefly to be conceived as the Jewish messiah were, for Paul, gravely in error.

This latter position became definitive for the future of Christianity. It is because Paul’s position won the day that his letters figure so centrally in the Christian biblical canon. The perspective on Jesus articulated by Paul and his allies would mark Christianity as something different from traditional Judaism. I will call this proposition, that Christianity represents something new in relation to Judaism, the first “bookend,” the first boundary line within which the church would ever after think through its relationship to Judaism.

Author Bio

Tzvi Novick is the Abrams Jewish Thought and Culture Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His publications include An Introduction to the Scriptures of Israel: History and Theology and Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Eerdmans (February 27, 2025)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802884326
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802884329
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 0.7 x 8.9 inches