Description
The Birth of Jesus the Jew
The Birth of Jesus the Jew is a short introduction to how the Jewish literary genre of ‘Midrash’ has shaped the infancy stories in the two canonical Gospels and some apocryphal works. It argues that these important faith testimonies are not ‘history’ in the sense that we tend to understand that term – Jesus, for example, was almost certainly born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem.
The situating of his birth in Bethlehem is a theological, not historical, statement. Similarly, the infamous account of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents never took place. It is a Midrash derived from the account in the ‘Old Testament’ of Pharaoh’s attempt to kill the baby Moses.
When we read these stories through the lens of ‘Jewish eyes’, we are better able to appreciate their meaning both for the Jewish-Christians of the first century and for Christians living now. This slim volume is a contribution to encouraging further Jewish-Christian dialogue against the background of the long shadows cast by the Holocaust.
The Death of Jesus the Jew
Our ‘Gospel truths’ are largely sourced and redacted from the Hebrew Bible. The Death of Jesus the Jew demonstrates how the Passion Narratives have little to do with ‘Gospel truth’ and how these stories, with their anti-Jewish polemic, hosted the unintended seedbed for the racial anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century, which in turn led to the Holocaust.
Judas didn’t betray Jesus with a kiss even if this ‘event’ inspired Caravaggio and many other artists; Judas didn’t hang himself or take 30 pieces of silver and probably died in his bed. Women were almost certainly present at the Last Supper where no one was ordained; Jesus never met Pilate and died a faithful Jew.
While this book makes no claim to originality, it hopes to make established scholarship more accessible to lay people, clergy and teachers.