The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ

by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Boyarin

“[A] fascinating recasting of the story of Jesus.” —Elliot Wolfson, New York University

In July 2008, a front-page story in the New York Times reported on the discovery of an ancient Hebrew tablet, dating from before the birth of Jesus, which predicted a Messiah who would rise from the dead after three days. Commenting on this startling discovery at the time, noted Talmud scholar Daniel Boyarin argued that “some Christians will find it shocking—a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology.”

Guiding us through a rich tapestry of new discoveries and ancient scriptures, The Jewish Gospels makes the powerful case that our conventional understandings of Jesus and of the origins of Christianity are wrong. In Boyarin’s scrupulously illustrated account, the coming of the Messiah was fully imagined in the ancient Jewish texts. Jesus, moreover, was embraced by many Jews as this person, and his core teachings were not at all a break from Jewish beliefs and teachings. Jesus and his followers, Boyarin shows, were simply Jewish. What came to be known as Christianity came much later, as religious and political leaders sought to impose a new religious orthodoxy that was not present at the time of Jesus’s life.

In the vein of Elaine Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels, here is a brilliant new work that will break open some of our culture’s most cherished assumptions.

“A brilliant and momentous book.” —Karen L. King, Harvard Divinity School

“Raises profound questions . . . This provocative book will change the way we think of the Gospels in their Jewish context.” —John J. Collins, Yale Divinity School

“It’s certainly noteworthy when one of the world’s leading Jewish scholars publishes a book about Jesus . . . Extremely stimulating.” —Daniel C. Peterson, The Deseret News

Genres: Religion, Judaism, Christianity, Theology, Nonfiction, History, Jewish

180 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 20, 2012

About the author

Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. His books include A Radical Jew, Border Lines, and Socrates and the Fat Rabbis. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thesis of this essay is that pre-Nicene Christianity may rightfully be considered within the Jewish tradition, its notions having been present within that community prior to the birth of Jesus. The proofs offered are intertextually midrashic, with much weight given to Daniel 7's description of two divine figures.

What's notably lacking in this study is any consideration of what we know about the earliest community of the followers of Jesus, James and Peter, or of those commonly termed 'Ebionites' ('the poor'), or of the communities associated with Paul. Acts, the Pauline Letters, the 'Clementine Homilies', the works of Josephus--these are not discussed. All the author establishes--and all he might be able to establish in such a short work--is that it is plausible to regard Jesus and his immediate followers as well-rooted in Jewish traditions. This, of course, is hardly news to any serious student of the earliest ekklesia not wed to the conceits of the post-councilar Church.

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christians and Jews have been misreading the Gospels as signaling a definite break between the two religions for centuries. Jews claim that the Gospels advocate heretical ideas about a divine messiah—a bi-theism— alien to Israelite religion; Christians have been reading Jesus as a radical innovator leaving his Jewish context and hostile to Jewish Law. Both readings, Boyarin argues, are wrong. Boyarin helped spread the framework that Christianity was a version of Judaism for its first few centuries, not a new religion--that the ways didn’t “part” so definitively. Here he shows how passages in Daniel, Mark and Enoch explain each other—an Israelite tradition of a divine “Son of Man” and suffering Messiah. Some Jews thought Jesus was that divine Messiah. Going against much received scholarship and tradition, he shows that Jesus’s arguments against the Pharisee in Mark’s Gospel are conservative, defending Torah Law and Kosher practices against the innovating Elders. A category-bending book!

[T J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew. I'm a little bit in love with Daniel Boyarin's mind. I'm not fully recovered from this book yet, and I'd like to hear Boyarin talk about the gospel of Mark. I plan to pick up his book on Paul soon so that I can continue to hear Boyarin's voice. The Jewish Gospels asserts that Jesus of Nazareth was making a clear claim to divinity when he referred to himself as "the son of man." Boyarin explicates Mark passages verse by verse, linking them to Daniel 7 and other apocalyptic texts. He cites texts in Greek and Aramaic, as well as Hebrew. I bought a copy of the apocalyptic Ethiopian Orthodox scriptures Boyarin references, so that when I re-read this book I'll be able to check out his sources from 4 Ezra (2 Esdras). Anyone interested in 1st c. Judaism would find this fascinating.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Review of Daniel Boyarin’s book,
The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ
By Greg Cusack
January 10, 2015

I came across this recent book (published in 2012) by reading James Carroll’s book, Jesus Actually. After reading it I better understand its pivotal importance to Mr. Carroll’s arguments in his own book.
Dr. Boyarin is the Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley and argues, in essence, that the coming of the Messiah was fully imagined and expected in Judaism’s ancient texts, and that the core teachings of Jesus were part of the beliefs of many Jews during the time of Jesus.
Thus, this book builds on many recent scholars who have argued that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish, that his teachings were firmly rooted in his Scriptures (the Hebrew bible), that he shared the belief – common to many in his day – that the kingdom of God was about to begin, and that he never intended to initiate a faith tradition other than that of Judaism, let alone found a church separate from it.
Dr. Boyarin’s writing is fluent, persuasive and not at all harsh or polemical. He is not out to “prove” anyone else “wrong,” rather, his intent is to present his case for his understanding in as clear a manner as possible.
As I mentioned in my review of Carroll’s book, my own understanding of Jesus’ use of the term Son of Man rather than Son of God had previously been that Jesus had clearly not been making any claim to divinity. However, as Carroll and Boyarin argue, he opposite seems to be true.
How can this be so? The central argument for this interpretation lies in key passages from the Book of Daniel where Daniel sees the following:
I was gazing into the visions of the night, when I saw coming on the clouds of heaven, as it were a son of man. He came to the One most venerable and was led into his presence. On him was conferred rule, honor and kingship, and all peoples, nations and languages became his servants. His rule is an everlasting rule which will never pass away, and his kingship will never come to an end.

The “One most venerable” is thought to represent YHWH, while many Jews saw the figure of the Son of Man as a representation of another divine figure, the long-awaited one. Dr. Boyarin argues that Jesus saw it that way, too, and that when he spoke of himself as the son of man Jesus was using language that other Jews would understand in this context.
All of this at a time in my life where I had convinced myself that Jesus had not understood himself to be divine. Back to square one!
For the rest of this review, I will just quote directly from Dr. Boyarin’s book in order that you may hear his own words.

Being religiously Jewish then was a much more complicated affair than it is even now. There were no Rabbis yet, and even the priests in Jerusalem and around the countryside were divided among themselves… Some believed that in order to be a kosher Jew you had to believe in a single divine figure and any other belief was simply idol worship. Others believed that God had a divine deputy or emissary or even son, exalted above all the angels, who functioned as an intermediary between God and the world in creation, revelation, and redemption. Many Jews believed that redemption was going to be effected by a human being, an actual hidden scion of the house of David…who at a certain point would take up the scepter and the sword, defeat Israel’s enemies, and return her to her former glory. Others believed that the redemption was going to be effected by that same divine figure mentioned above and not a human being at all. And still others believed that these two were one and the same, that the Messiah of David would be the divine Redeemer. As I said, a complicated affair. [p. 5]

For quite a number of generations after the coming of Christ, different followers and groups of followers of Jesus held many different theological views and engaged in a great variety of practices with respect to the Jewish law of their ancestors… Many Christians believed that the Son or the Word (Logos) was subordinate to God the Father and even created by him; others believed that while the Son was uncreated and had existed from before the beginning of time, he nonetheless was only of a similar substance to the Father; a third group believed that there was no different at all in substance between the Father and the Son… Until early in the fourth century, all of these different groups and diverse individuals called themselves Christians, and quite a few called themselves both Jews and Christians as well. [Pp. 10-11]

There is also a growing recognition that the Gospels themselves and even the letters of Paul are part and parcel of the religion of the People of Israel in the first century A.D. What is less recognized is to what extent the ideas surrounding what we call Christology, the story of Jesus as the divine-human Messiah, were also part (if not parcel) of Jewish diversity at this time.
The Gospels themselves, when read in the context of other Jewish texts of their times, reveal this very complex diversity and attachment to other variants of “Judaism” at the time. [p. 22]

There are thus two legacies left us by Daniel 7: it is the ultimate source of “Son of Man” terminology for a heavenly Redeemer figure, and it is also the best evidence we have for the continuation of a very ancient binitarian Israelite theology deep into the Second Temple period… the continued vitality of worship of an old God and a young God in Israel… I see it as very much a living part of Israel’s religion both before and long after, explaining both the form of Judaism we call Christianity and also much in non-Christian later Judaism as well. If Daniel is the prophecy, the Gospels are the fulfillment. [p. 52]

If all the Jews – or even a substantial number – expected that the Messiah would be divine as well as human, then the belief in Jesus as God is not the point of departure on which some new religion came into being but simply another variant (and not a deviant one) of Judaism… [p. 53]

I submit that it is possible to understand the Gospel only if both Jesus and the Jews around him held to a high Christology whereby the claim to Messiahship was also a claim to being a divine man. [p. 55]

The reason that many Jews came to believe that Jesus was divine was because they were already expecting that the Messiah/Christ would be a god-man. This expectation was part and parcel of Jewish tradition. The Jews had learned this by careful reading of the Book of Daniel… I want to show that Jesus saw himself as the divine Son of Man, and I will do so by explaining a couple of difficult pages in the second chapter of the Gospel of Mark.
[He then cites Mark 2: 5-11, the curing of the paralytic, which ends with Jesus saying to the many scribes present, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sings are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your pallet and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he said to the paralytic – “I order you: get up, pick up your stretcher and go off home.”]
The Son of Man has authority (obviously delegated by God) to do God’s work of the forgiving of sins on earth. This claim is derived from Daniel 7:14… [Pp. 56-57]

Jews at the same time of Jesus had been waiting for a Messiah who was both human and divine and who was the Son of Man, an idea they derived from the passage from Daniel 7… Jesus for his followers fulfilled the idea of the Christ; the Christ was not invented to explain Jesus’ life and death… Jesus entered into a role that existed prior to his birth, and this is why so many Jews were prepared to accept him as the Christ, as the Messiah, Son of Man.
The single most exciting document for understanding this aspect of the early history of the Christ idea is to be found in a book known as the Similitudes (or Parables) of Enoch. This marvelous text (which seems to have been produced at just about the same time as the earliest of the Gospels) shows that there were other Palestinian Jews who expected a Redeemer known as the Son of Man, who would be a divine figure embodied in an exalted human. Because it is unconnected with the Gospels in any direct way, this text is thus an independent witness to the presence of this religious idea among Palestinian Jews of the time and not only among the Jewish groups within which Jesus was active. [Pp. 72-73]

First of all, we find [in the Book of Enoch] the doctrine of the preexistence of the Son of Ma. He was named even before the universe came into being. Second, the Son of Man will be worshipped on earth… Third, and perhaps most important of all, in v. 10 he is named as the Anointed One, which is precisely the Messiah (Hebrew mashiah) or Christ (Greek Christos). It seems quite clear, therefore, that many of the religious ideas that were held about the Christ who was identified as Jesus were already present in the Judaism from which both the Enoch circle and the circles around Jesus emerged. [p. 80]

The Pharisees were a kind of reform movement within the Jewish people that was centered on Jerusalem and Judaea. The Pharisees sought to convert other Jews to their way of thinking about God and the Torah, a way of thinking that incorporated seeming changes in the written Torah’s practices that were mandated by what the Pharisees called “the tradition of the Elders.” The justification of these reforms in the name of an oral Torah, a tradition passed down by the Elders from Sinai on, would have been experienced by many traditional Jews as a radical change, especially when it involved changing the traditional ways that they and their ancestors had kept the Torah for generations immemorial…. It is quite plausible, therefore, that other Jews, such as the Galilean Jesus, would reject angrily such ideas as an affront to the Torah and as sacrilege.
Jesus’ Judaism was a conservative reaction against some radical innovations in the Law stemming from the Pharisees and Scribes of Jerusalem.
…Far from being a marginalized Jew, Jesus was a leader of one type of Judaism that was being marginalized by another group, the Pharisees, and he was fighting against them as dangerous innovators. This view of Christianity as but a variation within Judaism, and even a highly conservative and traditionalist one, goes to the heart of our description of the relations in the second, third, and fourth centuries between so-called Jewish Christianity and its early rival, the so-called Gentile Christianity that was eventually (after some centuries) to win the day. [Pp. 103-06]

Mark is best read as a Jewish text, even in its most radical Christological moments. Nothing that Mark’s Jesus proposes or argues for or enacts would have been inappropriate for a thoroughly Jewish Messiah, the Son of Man, and what would later be called Christianity is a brilliantly successful – the most brilliantly successful – Jewish apocalyptic and messianic movement. [p. 127]

[Even] The notion of the humiliated and suffering Messiah was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent, and it remained current among Jews well in the future following that – indeed, well into the early modern period… Jews, it seems, had no difficulty whatever in with understanding a Messiah who would vicariously suffer to redeem the world. Once again, what has been allegedly ascribed to Jesus after the fact is, in fact, a piece of entrenched messianic speculation and expectation that was current before Jesus came into the world at all… Let me make clear that I am not claiming that Jesus and his followers contributed nothing new to the story of a suffering and dying Messiah… I am claiming that even this innovation, if indeed they innovated, was entirely within the spirit and hermeneutical method of ancient Judaism, and not a scandalous departure from it. [Pp. 132-34]

Jesus had a very clear sense of his messianic role and fate, and that this role and fate were what had been predicted for the Son of Man in Daniel 7. Jesus first is identified as Messiah by others and then refers to himself as the Son of Man, thus establishing the identity of the Messiah and his ultimate fate as that of the Danielic Son of Man. Jesus is also clearly claiming that identity for himself. [p. 137]

Dr. Boyarin then gives a fascinating reflection upon the moment in Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin when the High Priest confronts him. (See Mark 14: 61-64) The High Priest asks him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus answers very clearly: “’I am,’ said Jesus, ‘and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.’ The high priest tore his robes and said, ‘What need of witnesses have we now? You heard the blasphemy.’”

In this amazing passage, Jesus has admitted to being “the Christ” (the Messiah), has called himself the “Son of the Blessed One” (YHWH), and identified himself with the Son of man found in Daniel who is “seated at the right hand of the Power,” Daniel’s “ancient of days.” Furthermore, in his “I am” the high priest heard, and Dr. Boyarin contends his perception was accurate, that Jesus was deliberately echoing the Holy One’s self-description, “I AM WHO AM.”

Any person seriously interested in Jesus and his place among his people should read this amazing book. Dr. Boyarin’s style of writing is very accessible and not in the least intimidating. And, if you also then take the time to read the relevant passages of Scripture cited by him, you can understand – if not necessarily agree with – his arguments.

A truly eye-opening, and most welcome, book!

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boyarin argues that when Jesus claimed to be a divine being as well as the anointed king, he was saying something other Jews would understand and find normal. From Boyarin's perspective, the difference between Jesus' followers and other Jews was not that he claimed to be the unique Son of God but that most Jews didn't think he was that guy.

I'm not a biblical scholar. I'm a Jew, immersed in the Judaism of the 21st century CE. So, the challenge for me reading this book was to try to imagine myself in the 1st century, before most of what I know as Judaism had taken firm shape.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I had no problem with the idea that Jesus kept kosher (the title of chapter three). It even made sense to me that he might have been aghast at the new ways of keeping kosher that the P'rushim (later called Pharisees by people who couldn't read Hebrew) introduced. These forerunners of the rabbinic movement had the radical idea that all Jews could live in a state of ritual purity--not just the priests--and that ordinary activities like cooking and eating could be made holy. On Boyarin's reading, Jesus was a conservative, saying "Don't add new rules to what the Torah already prescribes." I can't verify his reasons for saying that, but it seems plausible to me, perhaps because to my mind it makes the rabbis look as revolutionary as I think they were.

The idea that there were a lot of different ways of being Jewish at the time, and that Christianity was just one of them for centuries, also makes sense with what history I know.

Given that, there may even have been Jews who think what Boyarin thinks they thought: that the Messiah, son of David, would also be a divine figure. Boyarin uses ingenious readings of Jewish texts that are minor (Daniel) or totally obscure (First Enoch, Fourth Ezra) today, to back up this point.

According to his reading of these texts, "Son of Man" (ben adam, in the Hebrew) actually means a figure shaped like a man who sits on a throne at the right of God and then descends in the clouds to earth, to rule. "Son of God" actually means the divinely chosen ruler, who is a son of God the same way a bar mitzvah is literally a son of the commandment: he's under God's authority. (That is my comparison, not Boyarin's.) At some point, the two became identified.

Boyarin argues that these texts set up the expectation of a divine Messiah, that Jesus said he was that person, and that the Jews who rejected him understood what he was saying--it wasn't an innovation to them--but denied his claim to be The One.

This is completely intriguing, but I am dubious, for several reasons.

1. Boyarin cherry-picks the verses that support his argument.

2. When he comes across verses that seem to contradict his thesis, he writes them off as an editor trying to bring an unruly original text back into line. You can do anything with a text that way!

3. That picture of an orthodox editor implies that the view that the Messiah was NOT a divine figure was always the dominant one. The Christological idea that Boyarin says is "Jewish" may always have been as strange to most Jews as "Jews for Jesus" are to most Jews today.

4. Boyarin gives no evidence that Daniel (which was eventually included in the Jewish canon, or Tanach, but has no role in the liturgy) was widely read at the time. (A stray part of me wonders if Boyarin wants "Daniel" to be important because it's his first name.) Some of the other books he cites are only extant in the literature of the Ethiopian Jews. It may be just my ignorance, but I have no way of knowing whether those books were circulating in first-century Palestine or not--and Boyarin doesn't tell me. So is he making an argument that people in that time and place would find recognizable?

Finally, let's say for the sake of argument that Boyarin is right in every respect. I can understand why that would be important to a historian. But why in the world would it be important to the rest of us?

Judaism and Christianity may have parted ways later and over different issues than we used to think--but they did part. They have been separate religions for at least 1800 years now. Since the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Jews have been persecuted in the name of Christianity. (I hasten to say that there have also been individual Christians who were great friends of Jews, even putting themselves at risk to do so.)

Harking back to a time when followers of Jesus were a recognized but minor Jewish sect does nothing to bring us closer together. Understanding where we are and how we differ today is a more productive path for Jews, Christians, and (I would add) the other children of Abraham, the Muslims, too.

[Jacques Coulardeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

DO SCRATCH THE SURFACE OF THINGS,
NOTHING STARTS FROM SCRATCH

This small book is essential if you want to understand what Judaism and Christianity are all about, and what the connections between the two are.

The first fundamental element is the method. The author takes the gospels, along with other documents, in chronological order of their writing dates, so Mark first and then Matthew and Luke, but not so much John though he was the youngest apostle when Jesus was crucified. But the fundamental element is that he uses the basic methodological principle of Robert Eisenman who is behind the complete methodological re-designing of Biblical studies. Boyarin takes into account all written elements we have from the period going from the first century BCE to the second and third centuries AD. He also founds his work on the Book of Daniel and on some older Biblical prophets, visions, and many apocryphal documents that are not included in the Bible, Old or New Testaments alike.

The second fundamental methodological element is that he does not take words and their standard interpretations, even linguistic common meanings. He takes the words, the phrases, and some passages in a wider approach that was used particularly by Kenneth Burke: a word, a symbol, a phrase, any linguistic element is taken as part of a network of similar elements and the meaning of each one comes from this network, hence from the relationships these elements entertain with one another within the network. This leads the author to find out the meaning of the various crucial elements, and that leads us to understand that many of the supposedly uniquely Christian concepts are in fact in line with older concepts from the Old Testament and
around, hence from the Jewish way of thinking.

I will let you discover the details of what I am going to say now, otherwise, I would have to write the whole book all over again.

The first element the author proves is that in old Jewish documents the Jewish God is not conceived as a single being but as a dual being, one older man and one younger man. In fact, his demonstration which is very clear is based on visions from different Old Testament books, old prophets, visions that can be apocalyptic, having to do with either the end of the world or with the world after this end, the divine world for the saved righteous people. In fact, here the author misses a vast and original duality that he does not quote. In the very first verses of Genesis, “God and his spirit” are floating or flying over the immensity of a completely dark watery place. And these God and his spirit will create the world we know by a long series of cutting up the outside universe into dual elements, even to the point of reducing the luminaries in the sky to the sun and the moon, with a side addendum for the stars, proving that the duality of this world created by God and his spirit is, in fact, a rejection of the basic pagan, non-Jewish, approach with is ternary all over the world in all cultures in existence before the writing of the Old Testament, or nearly all, even Buddhism that has no divine entities.

Judaism is a basically dual but unitary vision of the divine world and of the real world. So yes the couple “father + son” existed in Judaism before Jesus Christ and Christianity, but in fact, if he had taken into account the duality of Genesis he would have reached very easily the Christian Trinity of “father + son + holy spirit” and that is a shortcoming in his approach: he should have explored the Old Testament and other ancient Jewish documents to find this ternary vision, if it exists beyond the bringing together of two binary visions.

The next concept is that of “Son of God” applied to kings of Israel, particularly for example to David. It is the title a king gets when he is anointed with the special “chrism” whose recipe goes back to Moses and has been the object of a debate as for it integrating some cannabis oil or not. When a king is thus anointed, he is the Son of God. But that is not that important except it means the King is a direct representative of God on earth and that gives him the divine power he needs to rule the real world. This “anointed-ness” is the basic linguistic meaning of Messiah (in Aramaic for example) or Christ (in Greek).

Then this ruling side of the king is covered by a first meaning of “Son of Man.” He is responsible for the lasting and sustainable existence of Israel and the People of Israel, responsible for it in front of God himself since he is the Son of God. This meaning is rather superficial for Daniel Boyarin, but the phrase “Son of Man” is a lot more than a title for kings. He is systematically associated to the younger character of apocalyptic visions in which there are two thrones, two characters, an old one generally called “the Head of Days” and a younger “one who looks like a Son of Man.” And that is this meaning that is central for the author. The characteristics of this Son of Man are the following:

“He is divine.
He is in human form.
He may very well be portrayed as a younger-appearing divinity than the Ancient of Days.
He will be enthroned on high.
He is given power and dominion, even sovereignty on earth.” (page 33)

The whole discussion then is to know whether this Son of Man is the Redeemer announced in Jewish documents, the Davidic Messiah, and thus if Jesus is this Messiah, this Son of Man, this Redeemer. The author’s answers yes. Jesus is entirely contained in this definition of the Son of Man in Jewish documents, including the Old Testament. After a discussion of whether the Redeemer or the Messiah have to suffer and even be sacrificed in order to perform his redeeming mission, he concludes that the answer is yes and thus Jesus’ passion is contained in Judaism as a possibility for the Messiah.

This being said, we can see that the old Jewish documents used by Daniel Boyarin enable us to trace a trinity, or ternary vision in the Jewish tradition.

1- The old divinity, abstract, the Head of Days, or the Ancient of days. He represents wisdom and the Father figure.
2- The younger divinity, abstract, the one who looks like a Son of Man. He represents courage in the war, struggle, fight against evil forces. He is the Son and wins in the end by fulfilling his mission.
3- The spirit of God that represents the positive in life, creativity, inspiration, innovation. He can even be seen as the resurrected Jesus

The concept of the redeemer or Messiah being sacrificed, dying in his human flesh to be resuscitated as a divine figure of the Son is also widened into another resuscitation which is in Spirit, hence as the Holy Spirit, the dove that comes down from the sky as the representative of the Spirit of God, since God himself can hardly be seen or named. That’s probably the real innovation of Christianity: Jesus is crucified and dies on the cross to be resuscitated as the Son of God, and as such be enthroned and crowned in heaven; and at the same time as the Holy Spirit, or at least as enabling people to get in touch with God and his Spirit through the virtual resuscitated Jesus, the redeeming Son. Of course, Christians believe Jesus Christ, anointed by his passion and sacrifice, resuscitated three days later, is a real character and one identity of ternary and yet unitary God.

Daniel Boyarin does not discuss this article of faith, because it is an article of faith, but he is clear about the deep and old roots Jesus finds in Jewish Old Testament and other documents, particularly all sorts of apocalyptic documents that he discusses at length.

I will regret that he does not explore the third side of these texts: the fact that God will become one and only one character in Islam that is rooted in Abraham through his son Ishmael. Is there a unitary conception of God in the Old Testament? Maybe simply in the fact that Abraham sends his first son and the Arab slave mother of this son into the desert to die there, and they are saved by God’s intervention according to Islam. The dual vision of God is thus cut up into two unitary visions: the Christian vision keeps the dual and builds the ternary vision of this unity, whereas Islam only keeps this divine unity, this Jewish quasi-sacrifice of one, and only one.

Enjoy the details and do check the numerous references to Jewish documents.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

[Lee Harmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, along comes Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic Culture and Rhetoric at the University of California.

You think Christianity’s unique contribution to Judaism was the introduction of a god-man? Wrong. Could it be the idea of a suffering savior? Wrong again. Maybe that Jesus rejected Jewish dietary laws and Sabbath restrictions, freeing us from the Law? Hardly; Boyarin paints a very Jewish Jesus in his reading of the Gospels, certainly a Jesus who keeps kosher.

Christianity’s one claim to fame may be the insistence that the Messiah had already arrived, but that’s about the extent of its uniqueness. Otherwise, Christianity is a very Jewish offshoot of a Jewish religion. Boyarin draws from texts like the Book of Daniel and 1st Enoch to explain the title Son of Man (which, it turns out, is a much more exalted title than Son of God) and in turn to expose the expectation of many first-century Jews of just such a divine savior.

This is a fascinating, controversial book presenting a very different look at Jesus as one who defended Torah from wayward Judaic sects (the Pharisees), rather than vice versa. I don’t think the arguments are fully developed yet, but certainly Boyarin introduces “reasonable doubt” against traditional scholarship. Let the arguing begin.

[Kelly Head · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyarin, who teaches at UC Berkeley and has written previously on Paul from a Jewish perspective, makes a very compelling case that Jesus saw himself as the embodiment of common Jewish notions of the Messiah/Son of Man contrary to what much of contemporary biblical scholarship has established as a supposed consensus, namely, that much of the "high" Christology of Christianity originated after the death of Jesus in a purely Gentile environment. Using texts like Daniel 7, Isaiah 53, the Similitudes of Enoch, and various portions of the Torah, Boyarin shows that a notion of a divine, suffering, second person of the Godhead fit within the expectations of Jewish theology long before, and long after the birth of Christianity. One of the most interesting chapters is titled Jesus Kept Kosher and argues for an extremely nuanced reading of Mark in which many commentators have assumed that Jesus abrogates the dietary laws. On the contrary, Boyarin demonstrates that Jesus is reacting in a conservative manner to deny the extra burdens of the PURITY laws (not dietary) placed on Jews by Pharisees promoting the Tradition of the Elders, which was considered a type of oral Torah. Without getting in to the technicalities, the details ushered in to make this argument really show why many consider Boyarin the world's leading Talmudic scholar.

[Christopher Iacovetti]

'Jews not infrequently argue that Christianity appro­priated the Hebrew Bible and turned it to its own non-Jewish purposes, thus distorting its meanings. This book challenges this claim in two ways. On one hand, the im­plication of my argument is that Christianity hijacked not only the Old Testament but the New Testament as well by turning that thoroughly Jewish text away from its cultural origins among the Jewish communities of Palestine in the first century and making it an attack on the traditions of the Jews, traditions that, I maintain, it sought to up­hold and not destroy, traditions that give the narrative its richest literary and hermeneutical context. On the other hand, this book challenges the notion that the New Testa­ment itself is an appropriation, or—even better—a misappropriation of the Old. If the interpretations offered here hold water, then the New Testament is much more deeply embedded within Second Temple Jewish life and thought than many have imagined, even—and this I emphasize again—in the very moments that we take to be most characteristically Christian as opposed to Jewish: the notion of a dual godhead with a Father and a Son, the notion of a Redeemer who himself will be both God and man, and the notion that this Redeemer would suffer and die as part of the salvational process. At least some of these ideas, the Father/Son godhead and the suffering savior, have deep roots in the Hebrew Bible as well and may be among some of the most ancient ideas about God and the world that the Israelite people ever held. Many, perhaps even most, New Testament schol­ars today argue that the most striking parts of the Jesus story as told in the Gospels—that he was the Messiah, the Son of Man; that he died and was resurrected; and that he is to be worshipped as God—all stem ex eventu (after the fact) from the earliest followers of Jesus, who developed these ideas in the wake of his death and their experiences of his resurrection appearances. ... As it was recently put to me by an orthodox Jewish scholar of rabbinics, the Gospel story is a complete novelty engendered by the remarkable life and death of the man Jesus of Nazareth. The historian in me rebels at such an account. Taking even the remarkable nature of Jesus—and I have no doubt that he was a remarkable person—as the historical expla­nation for a world-shifting revision of beliefs and practices seems to me hardly plausible. It may have been necessary that Jesus was so extraordinary for such a compelling nar­rative of divine being and function to have developed, but it was hardly sufficient. Even more so, the notion that some kind of experience of the risen Christ preceded and gave rise to the idea that he would rise seems to me so unlikely as to be incredible. ... An alternative account such as I have given here seems much more likely to make historical sense. A people had been for centuries talking about, thinking about, and reading about a new king, a son of David, who would come to redeem them from Seleucid and then Roman oppression, and they had come to think of that king as a second, younger, divine figure on the basis of the Book of Daniel's reflection of that very ancient tradition. So they were persuaded to see in Jesus of Nazareth the one whom they had expected to come: the Messiah, the Christ. A fairly ordinary story of a prophet, a magician, a charismatic teacher is thoroughly transformed when that teacher understands himself—or is understood by others—as this coming one. Details of his life, his prerogatives, his powers, and even his suffering and death before triumph are all developed out of close midrashic reading of the biblical materials and fulfilled in his life and death. The exaltation and resurrection experi­ences of his followers are a product of the narrative, not a cause of it. This is not to deny any creativity on the part of Jesus or his early or later followers, but only to suggest strongly that such creativity is most richly and compellingly read within the Jewish textual and intertextual world, the echo chamber of a Jewish soundscape of the first century' (157-60)

'There is perhaps one feature that constitutes all as members of the Judeo-Christian fam­ily, namely, appealing to the Hebrew Scriptures as revela­tion. Similarly, there was one feature that could be said to be common to all ancient groups that we might want to call (anachronistically) Christian, namely, some form of discipleship to Jesus' (21)

'The single most exciting document for understanding this aspect of the early history of the Christ idea is to be found in a book known as the Similitudes (or Parables) of Enoch. This marvelous text (which seems to have been produced at just about the same time as the earliest of the Gospels) shows that there were other Palestinian Jews who expected a Redeemer known as the Son of Man, who would be a divine figure embodied in an exalted human. Because it is unconnected with the Gospels in any direct way, this text is thus an independent witness to the pres­ence of this religious idea among Palestinian Jews of the time and not only among the Jewish groups within which Jesus was active' (73)

'Two traditions are combined in the Similitudes of Enoch: the preexistent, second God, Redeemer of Daniel, now not only described as the Son of Man but so named, and the exalted seventh antediluvian sage, Enoch, who went up to heaven because he walked with God, and God took him, and he was not. Once this stitch in time has been made, we must read the text as implying that Enoch was from the beginning the Messiah, the Son of Man, hidden from the beginning, then sent to earth in human form, and now exalted once again to his former state. This theological innovation must have taken place before the actual writing of the Similitudes of Enoch in the first century A.D.; it is of major importance for under­ standing the similar development that we can observe in the Christology of the New Testament. Just as the Son of Man in the Similitudes is a preexistent divine figure hold­ ing the dignity of the second divine throne and afforded all the privileges and sovereignty of the one like a son of man in Daniel, so too the preexistent Son of Man who lies behind the Gospels' (90)

'The great innovation of the Gospels is only this: to de­clare that the Son of Man is here already that he walks among us. As opposed to Enoch, who will be in those last days the Messiah Son of Man, Jesus already is. As opposed to the Son of Man flying on the clouds, who is a vision for the future, Jesus has come, declare the Gospels and the believers. The last days are right now, proclaims the Gos­pel. All of the ideas about Christ are old; the new is Jesus. There is nothing in the doctrine of the Christ that is new save the declaration of *this* man as the Son of Man' (101)

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vital read, at least if you consider yourself some form of Christian. Boyarin is a Talmud scholar, and this short book is packed with strong, well-researched insights. He is careful in his arguments, cites his sources, provides caveats, all while remaining very readable. His overarching point is that Jesus must be understood within his context. One hopes that this, at least, is not controversial.

What is truly great about this book, though, is that moving on from this, Boyarin not only fleshes out much of that context, he also provides re-framing of several New Testament passages that are otherwise (and have always been for me, all the way back) somewhat mystifying. This is what truly elevates this book. It's one thing to have a strong, bold re-framing. To then have that re-framing lock several problem passages into more explicable form? Excellent work.

[Edit to add: you can probably skip the Foreword. It's not bad, but it seems to be mostly there to convince Christians that it's okay to read a Talmud scholar. I hope that's not necessary. But if you're someone who does need such reassurance? Well, I guess it's there for you.]

[Gino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. While we may not share all of the same conclusions, this is a persuasive text for seeing how Second Temple Judaism may have understood the Messiah. Worth the read!

[Robert Narojek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly wonderful book, especially for people who are interested in scholarly biblical studies and not in popular science promotion of Christianity. The author, who is an undisputed authority in biblical studies, proves in a very convincing way supported by research that in fact the true interpretation of the Gospels must result only from the Jewish origin of this Jesus whom is described within. Which, as a result, proves that Christianity as such is only a sect (admittedly the largest in history) within Judaism and its traditions ☺

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyarin traces high Christology back to Judaism, blurring the boundary between them. Surely he’s basically right.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyarin, a Jewish rabbi, has written an enlightening book about the historical relationship between Christian and Judaism. His position is that rather than seeing Christianity as a new religion, it makes a lot more sense to see it as "one of the paths that Judaism took," and a path that has its roots in ancient Jewish sources. He points out that for several centuries after Christ, there were a lot of different groups and individuals, some calling themselves "Christians", some "Jews" and even quite a few who thought they were both.

There was a need to sort out what and clarify what these followers believed. Gradually the Christ-followers developed, mainly through various councils, a"checklist" of what constituted the beliefs of Christians, most of which can be found in the Nicaean Creed which was agreed on in the early 4th century.

All of these core beliefs, though, go back to Jewish sources. For example, the idea of God being split into "father" and "son" is found in ancient Jewish myths of a dual deity, an arrangement which has one god responsible for eternal matters, and a second who handles earthly concerns. Not so clear is the connection between them, and here is where the metaphor of a "holy spirit" began to develop. Evidence of this ancient tradition, Boyarin says, can be seen in the Jewish book of Enoch and in the Book of Daniel.

The idea of a resurrected savior figure such as Christ is not a novel idea either. It grows out of Jewish beliefs in a messiah, but the form that messiah would take was varied and even contradictory. While not disputing the beliefs of Christians in a savior and his impact on his followers, he argues that the details of Christ's life, his powers, his teachings, his suffering, death, and triumphant resurrection, only make sense when seen in a context of many and varied Jewish midrashic commentaries. In other words, the New Testament gospels only emerge from an extensive Jewish environment and in that sense can be called "Jewish Gospels."

Reading this book makes it clear that anti-Jewish prejudice, carried on for two millennia, was a tragically stupid mistake, rooted in historical ignorance that insisted that Christianity had little in common with Judaism and that it had completely supplanted their common roots.

[Franz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The arguments in this book by Boyarin, a rabbinic scholar at UC Berkeley, will be shocking to many Christians and Jews, but they may be more easily accepted by readers of Bart Ehrman's and James Tabor's books of the history of Christianity in its first couple of centuries. Boyarin reads the Gospels, especially Mark, as textual evidence for regarding Christianity as originally a minor offshoot of Judaism. The Jesus and his immediate followers were wholeheartedly Jewish. Jesus' teachings were solidly within the Hebrew tradition. Indeed, his teachings adhered to a conservative interpretation of that tradition. The separation into a different religion took a couple of centuries to complete, and Judaism and Christianity were not completely unyoked from each other until the Council of Nicaea.

One of his surprising claims is that Jesus, for example, defended traditional Jewish dietary and purity rules established in the Torah from the radical reforms of the Pharisees. (By the way, current rabbinic Judaism apparently traces its roots to the Pharisees.) Another claim is that the term "the Son of Man" in the Gospels refers to Jesus' divine nature, not his human one. That same term appears in the Hebrew Bible, especially in Daniel, to refer to a young man endowed with divine qualities who stands with the Ancient One, YHVH. Jesus saw himself as fulfilling the Messianic strands in the Hebrew Bible, and thereby appropriated the Son of Man image in Daniel for himself.

Boyarin does not simply grab these and other claims out of the blue. He reads the texts closely and justifies his arguments by teasing out the real meanings of the passages he cites. Whether his interpretation is accurate I am not qualified to say. But his account is provocative and I would not be surprised if his claims have more legitimacy than not.

[Charlene Mathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brief book (200 small pages including index) that examines the literature of second temple Judaism, especially the Books of Daniel, First Enoch and Fourth Ezra, to reconceptualize the meaning of the Son of Man persona and Messiah expectation. All this leads Boyarin to conclude that, "If Daniel is the prophecy the Gospels are the fulfillment" (p.52).
Boyarin exploits his extensive knowledge of Talmud to tease out disguised references to the historical Jesus. I was very interested in his discussion of Isaiah 53, traditionally understood (according to Boyarin) as a song of the Messiah, and not applied to the suffering of kol Israel until recent centuries.
I appreciated the footnotes and sources that provide leads to further study and make the book a good reference text. Despite the brevity of the book, it was to some degree repetitive and made some intuitive leaps or assertions that seemed a stretch to me.

[Marge Prohofsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always thought that Jesus lived his life as a devout Jew. If the only argument is in Mark, that Jesus allowed "any" (unKosher) food to be eaten (which I agree with the Rabbi, the argument seems to be more about purity laws, than about kashrut) then, in my opinion, it still wouldn't make sense for Jesus to break with traditional Judaism over "just" kashrut. You could argue that he had to start somewhere, yet, he doesn't start breaking from Jewish tradition in the gospels and just keep explaining away his differences. That's not what Jesus was about and Rabbi Boyarin uses texts of Daniel and Ezra to point out how in-line with Judaism that Jesus' ideas are. The ideas of "Son of Man", "trinity" and rising "on the third day"; all from Jewish texts. Hats off to Rabbi Boyarin, whether you agree with him, or not, I believe that publicizing our religious similarities (Judaism and Christianity) is important to note.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not impressed by his "brilliancy" at all. Actually, I'm surprised that he thinks he's got something new here at all? I don't know why I even picked this one up. I recommend to read better works by Marvin R Wilson, the legendary David Flusser, Ron Moseley, David H Stern, Elaine Pagels, Brad Young, speaker Ray Van der Laan, ETC. (IF you don't believe me, RVL is on Youtube; Flusser was writing in the 50's and 60s or earlier) who all share enlightenment about the jewishness of Jesus and the jewishness of the early Christian church. This is NOT new information for biblical scholars. Perhaps for Boyarin's readers. His interpretation is pretty short & flimsy. But I appreciated the short part.

[Michale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was tough. I'm no Bible scholar, but I found myself less than convinced by Boyarin that the concepts of apotheosis and theophany were mainstream Jewish ideas at the end of the Second Temple period. His basing so much of his argument on non-canonical books, such as Enoch I and II and Fourth Ezra didn't reassure me in this regard, although I well know that the canon was not codified until quite later, and by those who did not share these approaches. He also draws a direct link between these books and Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7. Perhaps. I found his other books much more approachable.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daniel Boyarin is one of the most original and provocative rabbinic scholars, the author of many valuable books exploring the matrix in which both orthodox Judaism and Christianity arose. He is one of the many scholars who have challenged the assumption that there was, at an early point, a “parting of the ways” between these two movements. In The Jewish Gospels, he sets out to show that the New Testament is “more deeply embedded within Second Temple Jewish life and thought than many have imagined” (pp. 157–8).
This is even true, he contends, in the beliefs about Jesus often termed Christology. In other words, it is not just that Jesus lived and died a Jew, but even the concept of “Christ” was not a foreign element, cobbled together from non-Jewish sources. Boyarin explicitly offers his reconstruction as an alternative narrative of how Christology arose. These motifs—the notion of a dual godhead with father and son, the notion of a Redeemer who himself will be both God and man, and the notion that this Redeemer would suffer and die as part of the process of salvation—are often seen as Christian as opposed to Jewish.
These topics are explored in chapters 1, 2 and 4, using a close reading of Dan 7, the Enoch literature, 4 Ezra, and Isa 53. The results are not controversial in today’s scholarly world. More controversial is the imagined dichotomy behind his thesis: that the group of ideas we think of as Christology were either developed by his followers after his crucifixion, or were present in Jewish thought prior to Jesus. Since, as Boyarin demonstrates, these ideas were there, he concludes that Jesus saw himself in these terms and openly shared his self-understanding with his followers.
Here, I believe, he does not display the same differentiated reading of the gospels and other New Testament texts that he shows with Old Testament, intertestamental, and rabbinic literature. There is ample evidence in the New Testament, to me, of an intermediate possibility, namely, the view that the raw materials for later Christology were indeed available in the first century Jewish world, but coalesced around Jesus after his crucifixion. On this view, as well, it is not necessary to posit the adoption of concepts from the wider, pagan world to explain Christian beliefs about Jesus. On this point, I agree with Boyarin.
Falling outside of this discussion of the sources of Christology is chapter 3, entitled “Jesus Kept Kosher.” Although a separate topic, there are continuities with the other three chapters of the book, and it shares their strengths and weaknesses. In this chapter, he focuses on a conflict between some Pharisees from Jerusalem and Jesus in Mark 7. The traditional reading of this account is that it shows “the total rejection by Mark’s Jesus of Jewish dietary practices, the kosher rules” (p. 103). Boyarin makes the contrary assertion: according to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus kept kosher, which is to say (this is a crucial step in his argument) that he saw himself not as abrogating the Torah but as defending it. He defended it against what he perceived to be threats to it from the Pharisees: “Jesus’ Judaism was a conservative reaction against some radical innovations in the Law stemming from the Pharisees and Scribes of Jerusalem” (p. 105).
Accepting Markan priority, Boyarin views this Gospel as representative of the “earliest” Christians. If Mark were Jewish, “then the beginnings of the Jewish movement can be considered in a very different light” (106). In this view, Jesus was fighting not against Judaism, but within it.
To support his contention, Boyarin points out that the distinction made in Jewish thought between clean/unclean and permitted/not-permitted, with the first pair dealing with the body and other matters, is ignored in scholarly discussion of the passage Only the second category is applied in the question of whether foods are kosher or not. He concedes, though, that animals not kosher are called impure in the Torah (112). When one consults the author’s end notes, one finds the interesting remark that this is a “terminological glitch.” I would submit that, while knowledge of this distinction in rabbinic thought is helpful in interpreting this passage, scholars who fail to can be excused.
Nevertheless, Boyarin succeeds, in my view, in showing that the passage carefully records a debate that is, ironically, the earliest witness to the innovative practice of hand-washing to avoid ritual impurity. To him, this is evidence that the evangelist Mark was Jewish. It may however prove nothing more than that he carefully transmitted traditional material in his possession. Whether this is enough to place the entire passage in the world of the “earliest” Christians, therefore in direct continuity with Jesus and his practices, is another matter. For one thing, the fact that the Pharisees complain to Jesus about what the disciples do, not about what Jesus does (Mark 7:5) suggests a possible diachronic dimension. For another, the evangelist’s detailed explanation of the custom of hand-washing is a certain indication that his implied reader is not Jewish and has no certain knowledge of Jewish customs.
Another way in which Boyarin makes sense of the passage is in pointing out that the nature of Jesus’ explanation to the disciples (verses 18–23) treats the matter of impurity as a parable. What comes out of a person defiles, which Jesus then interprets not as bodily emissions, but as characteristics that come out of the heart.
Boyarin concludes that the editorial comment “he purified all foods” (verse 19) means that Jesus rejected the stringent laws of defiled foods (p. 121). I’m not sure this follows. Following Boyarin’s logic, these foods never were impure, meaning there was nothing for Jesus to do except uphold this. There was no “purifying” for him to do.
Boyarin goes further: “It is highly unlikely that in its original context [just what does he imagine this to be?], Mark was read as meaning that Jesus had abrogated the rules of forbidden and permitted animals” (ibid.). Yet to me, the revisions that the Gospel of Matthew makes to this passage shows that its author was, at the very least, concerned that it could very well be read this way. Even more likely: that he understood the Gospel of Mark to mean this.
For Boyarin, the entire passage makes sense, and Jesus’ saying can be seen within a Jewish spiritual world (p. 124). May well be, but Matthew clearly thought otherwise. He deals with this in endnote 24 (p. 184): “The Matthean text makes explicit that which might be ambiguous in Mark as we’ve read it.” This leads him to question whether Matthew is a “Judaizing" revision of Mark, a “temporizing voice that actually serves to neutralize the authentic Christian message on the Law as represented by Mark and Paul, namely, that Christianity is a whole new religion, an entirely different way of serving God from the way that the Israelites and Jews have understood it?” Once again, he reduces the argument to either/or terms that miss the point. The question is not Law yes or no, but which law (or, which aspects of the law) for whom? Either way, I would agree with his conclusion: “Torah-abiding Jesus folks are not aberrant; they simply are the earliest Church,” but not with the way he reaches it.
Regrettably, this book is not up to the high standard of some of Boyarin’s other books, such as Border Lines or A Radical Jew. In addition to the problems I have mentioned, the text feels padded and repetitive, surprising in such a slim volume. Nevertheless, I feel it is a good read, as reflected in my rating. For those who are still laboring under the impression that Judaism and Christianity early diverged into two discrete religions, or that mainstream views of the nature of God and Christ were the result of Hellenistic syncretism, I would recommend this as a good starting point. But not as the last word.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dans ce court texte (dont je ne vais pas détailler les savantes interprétations), Daniel Boyarin souligne la porosité qui existe entre le christianisme des origines et le judaïsme antique.
Contre l'idée qui voudrait que Saint Paul est tracé une ligne de séparation radical entre judaïsme d'un côté et christianisme d'une part, Boyarin souligne que ce n'est pas avant le Concile de Constatinople donc pas avant le IVème siècle, que les judéo chrétiens sont clairement condamné par l'Eglise. En effet, dans l'Antiquité on ne différencie pas l'ethnie de la religion. D’où la place particulière du judaïsme de nos jours en tant que "ethno-religion" (faute d'un meilleur terme).
Jésus, selon Boyarin, ne cherchait pas à détruire de l'intérieur (la judéité de Jésus étant depuis longtemps admise) le judaïsme ni la Torah. Il cherchait à le réformer.
La "créativité de Jésus" s'explique uniquement dans le contexte du judaïsme palestinien.

[Laurel Starkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gospel was not a Christian Invention but an outgrowth of Jewish Thought

This statement in the epilogue sums up the purpose of the book. Daniel Boyarin makes the argument that Jesus Christ was very a Jewish figure, well within its traditions and expectations. Boyarin paints Christ as a reformer rather than revolutionary figure using examples from the gospels of Matthew and Mark and comparing those examples to Old Testament prophecy. It’s an interesting book but demands the reader have at least an intermediate familiarity with the Bible in order to follow his arguments.

[Garrett Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book left me in a daze. It overturned nearly all of my (what I thought was) fundamental understanding of the Judaism/ Christianity and OT/NT distinctions.

One of the remarkable results of this study is that the author (Jewish) equally calls out Jews and Christians to rethink their relationship to each other.

I also can't help but think that an equivalent study could be written about the Christian/Muslim divide regarding Jesus' status.

Highly recommend to anyone aspiring for historical literacy.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating. Challenged a lot of assumptions I had for what I assumed were fundamental and irreconcilable religious divisions between Christians and Jews, yet Boyardin makes a convincing case for a 2nd Temple Judaism that accepted and anticipated a divine god-man messiah, and a Christian faith that was adamant on keeping kosher for its Jewish members. Gonna need to dig in more on this but I thought it was amazing

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tour de force, with an unbelievably light touch. He changed my mind decisively on things I thought I’d well settled. It’s in some ways a superficial book, clearly written with a non-scholarly audience in mind, and short, so a lot of questions are left unanswered. But it more than accomplishes what it sets out to.

[Sally Mouzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating.
My rating seems low, but it is really 4.5 stars for the content, and 2 stars for the writing (extremely dense, academic writing, which I often had to reread many times.)

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because the jacket summary indicated that the content addressed some questions I have had for a long time. It's a short book (160 pp) which was good in my case as it was heavily footnoted and made for a slow read. I did frequently reference the useful footnotes.

[Jesús]

Boyarin, a Talmud scholar, says that the ideas of the Trinity and the Incarnation were already in the Old Testament: https://youtu.be/YXdJbCgdXj4 by David Wood (Spanish)

[Ian Hodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are attempts in the Christian community to better understand the Hebrew origins of the contents of the New Testament, especially the person of Jesus the Messiah - Yeshua HaMashiach. This has led to a number of books that contain some excellent background material.

In a recent publication, Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, has added to the richness of our understanding of the Gospels. His book has four major chapters:
1. From the Son of God to the Son of Man
2. The Son of Man in First Enoch and Fourth Ezra: Other Jewish Messiahs of the First Century
3. Jesus Kept Kosher
4. The Suffering Christ as a Midrash on Daniel

Each of these chapters is a stand-alone essay on the chosen topic. And Boyarin does not let us down with his insights. As he observes in his introduction, in the first century there were Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah and those who did not mixed together. "Christianity" was thus a family in-fight. Not surprising, since both groups claimed to believe the same Scriptures, the Tanakh. Since there was no New Testament at that time, there were no Scriptures that were exclusive to either group. They were separated by their respective interpretations of the then existing Scriptures. As Boyarin notes, "Many Israelites at the time of Jesus were expecting a Messiah who would be divine and come to earth in the form of a human. Thus the basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesus was born and in which he was first written about in the Gospels of Mark and John."

Now the understanding of many Christians today is that if not Jesus, then at least the Apostle Paul turned people away from the Old Testament in terms of the Torah - instructions - or the Law. And one of the key passages used is a comment in Mark's Gospel, "Thus he declared all foods clean" (v. 18). Boyarin is not worried about the authenticity of these words; he accepts them. Then he provides an explanation of the text based on "some distinctions between different domains of the Torah's law and especially the dietary laws, for there has been much confusion on this score" (Loc. 1614, Kindle edition). IN other words, Boyarin accepts Mark as an authentic Hebrew who has a "as fine and clear understanding of Jewish practice and the Jewish languages, as does his Jesus."

Rather than abolition of the Kosher food requirements, Boyarin sees a confirmation of Old Testament law in these words. This should not be surprising, since Jesus affirmed that "not one jot or tittle" in the law had been abolished. And it is surprising how many Christian commentators are happy to have Jesus' words reinterpreted in order to carry their argument for the abolition of many of the Old Testament laws.

This book is a challenge, then, about the Jewishness of Jesus. Did he really abolish the kosher food requirements? Or did he rather, abolish some misplaced additions to the Torah by the Pharisees about ritual cleansing? Boyarin thus provides a credible alternative to understanding Mark's Gospel that allows the reader to accept what Jesus said about abolition of the law as recorded in Matt 5:17ff, and that also accept the Markian comment is another example of Jesus' constant criticisms of the Scribes and Pharisees for their misinterpretations of the Old Testament.

Elsewhere, Boyarin disagrees with Jewish claims that Christian interpretation of, for example, Isaiah 53, was a later interpretation about the Messiah whereas Jews saw it as referring to the People of Israel. Rather, he concludes, "this commonplace view has to be rejected completely." In Boyarin's view, "the notion of the humiliated and suffering Messiah was not all alien within Judaism before Jesus' advent, and it remained current among Jews well into the future following that - indeed, well into the early modern period."

This is a book that defends the Christian view of the Messiah from a Jewish perspective. And Boyarin does a masterful job of explaining the connection between the Old Testament and the New. If he succeeds in his agenda with the book, it is not to disparage Christianity or Judaism. Rather, it is an attempt to explain common fallacies that have developed by showing the Old and New Testaments are not at odds with one another at all.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book by a Jewish rabbi considers how Second Temple Judaism (roughly the period from the Babylonian exile to the destruction of the temple by Rome) relates to Christianity.

The thesis is that Judaism and Christianity are not starkly opposite systems, that Christianity did not take Judaism and distort it into something other than what it was but that the things that Jesus said weren't alien concepts to the Jewish population at the time. Many of the elements of Christianity were already in place. Isn't this something that many Christians and Jews would already acknowledge? The difference of opinion stems from the fact that one group believes Jesus actually is the Messiah and the other think he was an imposter. Though I am not convinced of everything he seeks to demonstrate in this book, I didn't find anything here nearly as controversial as the back cover copy would seem to suggest.

This book is mainly an examination of some of those nascent elements. An example is the binitarianism ('the Ancient of Days' and 'one like the son of man' duo) found in books like Daniel and 1 Enoch. Another is the dual Messiah belief of communities like the one at Qumran, a first Messiah who suffers (Messiah as high priest) and another who conquers (Messiah as king), something similar to the Christian understanding that this was not two different Messiahs carrying out two different functions but one Messiah carrying out a separate function in two different time periods.

Succinct, readable book that attempts to shed some light on the intertestamental period.