Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism 2020041881, 2020041882, 9781793633422, 9781793633439

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Jewish Church

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Jewish Church A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism

Antoine Lévy op

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Foreword by Mark S. Kinzer

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefeld Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefeld Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Levy, Antoine, 1962– author. Title: Jewish church : a Catholic approach to messianic Judaism / Antoine Levy. Description: Lanham ; Boulder ; New York ; London : Lexington Books, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifers: LCCN 2020041881 (print) | LCCN 2020041882 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793633422 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793633439 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Messianic Judaism. | Jesus Christ—Messiahship. | Jews—Identity. | Catholic Church—Doctrines. | Kinzer, Mark (Mark S.), 1952Classifcation: LCC BR158 L48 2021 (print) | LCC BR158 (ebook) | DDC 261.2/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041881 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041882 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

“Amicus Plato sed . . .” —Aristotle “I saw the Church grow out of my people.” —Edith Stein, Conversation At Night, 1941 “The Torah that a man acquires in this world is foolishness (hevel) in comparison to the Torah of the Messiah.”

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—Midrash Rabbah, Kohelet 11: 8.

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NIHIL OBSTAT: J. Rousse-Lacordaire, o.p. N-J. Sed, o.p.

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IMPRIMI POTEST Paris, September the 20th 2020 N. Tixier, o.p. Provincial Prior

Contents

Foreword by Mark S. Kinzer

ix

Technical Foreword

xiii

Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: The Purpose of a Critical Conversation with Mark Kinzer

1

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I Salvation (From Post-Missionary to Pre-Patristic Messianic Judaism) 15 1. Mystery of the Church and Mystery of Israel according to Recent Magisterium 15 2. Rethinking the Salvation of Israel in the New Testament 30 II Torah 99 1. Origin and Configuration of the Problem 99 2. Combinatory Modes and Theological Issues 105 3. “Continuity Model” versus “Messianic-Torah Model”: What New Testament Halacha for the Jewish Disciples of Jesus? 124 III Ekklesia 183 1. Structure 183 2. Sacramental Life and Hierarchic Organization 206 3. Charisma and Institution: Distinction and Interaction between Apostolic Authority and the Jewish Presence in the Church 235 4. The Shaping of a Living Tradition 250 5. A Jewish Reappropriation of Christian Tradition 296 vii

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6. Ecclesial and Political Situation of a Jewish ekklesia 312 7. The Ecumenical Dimension of a Jewish ekklesia 343 Conclusion: The Wider Fence

377

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Bibliography 385 Name Index

399

Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

405

About the Author

415

Foreword

Any dispute for the sake of Heaven will have enduring value.

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—Pirke Avot

I frst met Fr. Antoine Levy in July 2008. We soon began arguing—and just as soon became friends. As the present volume demonstrates, the argument continues to this day—as does the friendship. Antoine and I are both heirs of a cultural tradition whose founding religious text consists of a maze of tangled arguments. The traditional mode of studying Talmud involves two or more students poring over those arguments and replicating the text’s dialectical dynamic in their dialogue. While Antoine and I have wrestled over the New Testament rather than the Talmud, we have done so in a traditional Talmudic fashion. Each of us has been a chavruta (a study partner) for the other, and I think we are each wiser as a result. Talmudic-style argument strengthens friendship because it occurs within the context of convictions and questions, which are common to both parties. Both Antoine and I have been seized by the beauty, goodness, and truth of the God of Israel revealed in Jesus the Messiah. As a result, we have both centered our lives on love for this God; for the priestly people of Israel into which we were born; and for the multiethnic community of disciples of Jesus, the ekklēsia. But that love for God, Israel, and the ekklēsia takes one form in his life as a Catholic priest and member of a religious order, and quite another in my life as a Messianic Jewish rabbi. Antoine’s mental style demands a spirited interlocutor—a sparring partner whose thought can evoke from him a creative response. I have happily fulflled that role in many settings over the past decade, and once again in the pages that follow. As he states, much of the volume consists of a “critical conversation” with Mark Kinzer. Unlike a “systematic refutation,” a critical ix

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conversation does not require Antoine’s rejection of the foundational elements of my theology. On the contrary, he builds upon many of those elements. Still, as a dialectical thinker, he tends to accentuate the differences between us, or at least to leave unnoted the places where his theological proposal is identical to my own. For example, the following words of Antoine begin by welcoming the bilateral ecclesiology associated with my writings:

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What is at stake here is a model that would truly embrace the insight of bilateral ecclesiology as a “communion-in-the-distinction” or a “communal bi-dimensionality,” forsaking neither the unity of the Church nor the specifc calling of Israel qua Israel within her. I will argue that the renewal of Torah-faithfulness in Yeshua leads to a process of “hermeneutical cross-breeding” between the Christian and rabbinic traditions, a process that shapes the original, irreducible confguration of a Jewish ekklesia within the Ekklesia. On the one hand, one needs to decipher the foundational elements of Christian tradition and Church structure from a Jewish point of view. On the other hand, one needs to interpret the structural elements of Jewish communal prayer life in the Messianic light of Yeshua.

One might infer from his “I will argue” that he and I agree on the words that precede and disagree on those that follow. In fact, I enthusiastically affrm the entire passage as an eloquent summary of my own position. No matter. What is most important in this book is Antoine’s constructive proposal, not his engagement with the thought of Mark Kinzer. And that proposal is clear, creative, and comprehensive. Moreover, it has the virtue of being courageous—at times to the point of audacity—in confronting uncomfortable theological problems and offering even more uncomfortable solutions. This is especially the case in his chapter on “salvation,” where he tackles the diffcult texts from the New Testament concerning Jewish opposition to Jesus and responsibility for his death. He and I differ in how we approach those texts, but I admire his determination to take them seriously and on their own terms. The comprehensive character of his treatment of Jewish life in Jesus takes shape within a well-crafted structure. That structure consists of three in-depth studies organized around key terms: salvation, Torah, and ecclesiology. These topic headings represent three essential questions, which must be asked when considering the relationship between Jesus and the Jewish people. First, how does the saving work of Jesus in his death and resurrection have redemptive impact on the life of individual Jews and the Jewish people as a whole in history? Second, how does Jesus’s saving work affect Israel’s covenantal connection to God, Israel’s distinctive way of life, and Israel’s national

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Foreword

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identity? Third, given Jesus’s saving work and Israel’s enduring covenantal vocation, how does the community of Jesus’s disciples order its life so that both of these realities are honored and visibly expressed? I have here formulated these questions in terms that make sense to me as a Messianic Jewish theologian. What makes Antoine’s response to these questions so intriguing is his theological starting point as a Jewish Catholic (or Catholic Jew). And this is also what makes Antoine’s “critical conversation” with me so lively and productive. As a Catholic theologian, Antoine identifes with the full breadth of the Christian tradition, warts, and all, and takes his place under the authority of those who claim unbroken continuity with that tradition. As a loyal (though unorthodox) Jew, he likewise identifes with the Jewish religious tradition, though he fnds it somewhat more problematic. On the other side of the conversation, my theological starting point locates me among those Messianic Jews who acknowledge the authority of the rabbinic tradition. I am not an Orthodox Jew, but I do attempt to live as a shomer mitzvot—one who observes the commandments of the Torah as most Jews have understood them through the centuries. At the same time, I have spent much of my adult life in dialogue and friendship with Catholics, and I have enormous respect for the full breadth of the Christian tradition—though, as an observant Jew, I also fnd it somewhat problematic. Thus, the critical conversation between Antoine and myself takes place between two people who have the same understanding of what he calls “the fundamental issue at stake”: “The fundamental issue at stake is identical for both types of Jewish disciples of Christ, although they approach it from opposite angles. Each one—the non-fully Catholic Messianic Jew and the non-fully Messianic Catholic Jew—suffers from the absence of an ecclesial character that is manifested in the religious existence of the other.” We each lack something which the other possesses—or is possessed by. And that is why our conversation—or, rather, our relationship—is so important. We need each other. Moreover, we need the other to remain the other. If Antoine left the Catholic Church, he would not be the theological partner I need. If I entered the Catholic Church (in its current form), I would not be the theological partner he needs. And if either of us left our assigned post, our critical conversation could not provide anything of what Israel and the Church both need. Our relationship has borne fruit beyond the theological exchange represented by the current volume. In 2010, we together launched a theological initiative called The Helsinki Consultation on Jewish Continuity in the Body of Christ. That project brought together a dozen or so Jesus-believing Jewish scholars from diverse ecclesial communities—Messianic Jewish, Catholic, Russian Orthodox, and Protestant. In lively sessions of dialogue and debate, we came to understand, respect, and love one another, and to fashion a

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theological framework that could support a broad ecumenical fellowship of Jewish disciples of Jesus. In 2018, the Helsinki Consultation invited to Dallas a group of more than forty Jewish believers in Jesus from diverse backgrounds, who together agreed to form that ecumenical fellowship. A charter for this new body was adopted in December 2019, and thus was established Yachad BeYeshua (Together in Jesus): A Global Fellowship of Jewish Disciples of Jesus. The practical fruit arising from our partnership encourages me to believe that the dispute between Antoine and me is truly for the sake of Heaven. It also gives me hope that it will have enduring value. May our critical conversation, of which this book is only part, bring blessing to Israel and the Church, and honor to the divine Name.

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Mark S. Kinzer Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Technical Foreword

There is no such a thing as a Jewish Church. The usefulness of writing books about non-existing entities and purely hypothetical constructs does not strike one as obvious. Still, the twentieth century witnessed great fgures that have repeatedly affrmed their identity as Jewish Christians such as Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, 1891–1942), Jean-Marie (Aron) Card. Lustiger (1926–2007) in the Catholic Church, and F. Alexander Men (1935–1990) in the Orthodox Church. A few books have envisaged the establishment of a Jewish entity within the Church such as Lev Gillet’s Communion in the Messiah and Elias Friedman’s Jewish Identity.1 Historical Christian denominations have known associations of faithful of Jewish origin such as the Hebrew Christian alliance founded in 1866 and the still thriving “Hebrew Catholics” founded in 1979. However, the real game-changer was the emergence of the Jewish Messianic Movement in the 1970s. For the frst time since perhaps the community of disciples led by James, the “brother of Jesus,” in Jerusalem, a group of disciples of Christ referred to their Jewish identity as an integral part of their faith and suffcient common ground to form a distinct corporate body. Since the 1970s, the movement has widely expanded from the United States, its primary location, to Russia, Israel, South America, and Europe. In 2005, Mark Kinzer, a Messianic Jewish theologian, published Post-missionary Messianic Judaism: Redefning Christian Engagement with the Jewish People. This book envisioned the nature of a global or universal Church that would count a Jewish corporate entity as one of its two constitutive parts on a par with the “Gentile Church.” Since then Kinzer has developed his vision in a number of publications. The present book is both an echo and a critical response to the thought of Kinzer from a theologian who conceives the universal Church along the lines of Catholic teaching. Good ideas are the engine of progress. Bad ideas generate disasters xiii

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whenever people endeavor to translate them into reality. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to debate about ideas, trying to distinguish the good ones from the bad ones before we come to regret the new realities the latter are likely to bring about. NOTE 1. Communion in the Messiah (London: Lutterworth, 1942); Jewish Identity (New York: The Miriam Press, 1987).

NOTE ON QUOTATIONS FROM THE HOLY SCRIPTURES In the present book, I will be extensively quoting passages from the Old Testament (Tanakh) as well as from the New Testament. I will rely on two translations established by Jewish scholars:

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TANAKH ‫תנ״ך‬, A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the the Traditional Hebrew Text (1985) Philadelphia-Jerusalem: the Jewish Publication Society. The Jewish Annotated New Testament, A-J. Levine & M.Z. Brettler (2011), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The only exceptions are passages from books such as Wisdom that were not retained in the Jewish Canon but are included in that of the Catholic Church. No judgment regarding the philological accuracy or the literary quality of these translations compared to others is involved in this decision. Besides obvious considerations of stylistic homogeneity, I assumed that when dealing with the Jewish roots and dimensions of faith in Jesus, quoting from translations that could not be suspected of tilting the original texts toward either Christianity or traditional Church doctrine would provide readers with an additional criterion to assess the fairness of my interpretations. NOTE ON REFERENCES TO MARK KINZER’S WORKS Mark Kinzer is a systematic thinker. I have dealt with his works accordingly, taking them as a coherent whole. Had his views substantially changed on one point or another, he would have taken care to mention such an ­evolution. As far as I am acquainted with his writings, this has not occurred. I will therefore refer to works of different periods as if they were displaying

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various aspects of a continuously homogeneous theological insight. I am confdent he will correct my interpretation of his thinking wherever he deems it necessary. The list of Kinzer’s works to which I refer in the course of the book appears here (in alphabetical order), followed by the abbreviations of the titles (if any). “Finding our Way through Nicaea: The Deity of Yeshua, Bilateral ecclesiology, and redemptive encounter with the Living God” Kesher 24 (2010) Israel’s Messiah and the People of God, Grand Rapids: Wipf and Stock (2011). →Israel’s Messiah Jerusalem Crucifed, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise, Eugene, OR: Cascade Book (2018). →Jerusalem Crucified “Messianic Jewish Community: Standing and Serving as a Priestly Remnant” Kesher 28 (Summer/Fall 2014).

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Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press (2005). →PMJ Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church, Eugene, OR: Cascade Book (2015). →SHOM “Searching her own mystery together: A response to Roch Kereszty,” Communio 42 (Fall 2015). →“A response to Roch Kereszty”

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Acknowledgments

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Diana Kaley, my dear friend, to whose marathonic dedication this book owes its existence. Tamar Dunbar, Leah Hananel, and David Moss for their judicious and supportive comments.

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Introduction The Purpose of a Critical Conversation with Mark Kinzer

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MESSIANIC JUDAISM: THEOLOGICAL LEGITIMACY Unlike Buddha, Jesus Christ claims that he is the true Messiah that Jews had been waiting for since the time of the founder of their nation. “Before Abraham was I was.”1 This is a central claim of the whole New Testament: Christ is the destination to which the whole historical journey of the Jewish nation, from the time of the Patriarchs to that of the Maccabees, was to lead. Of course, Messianic Jews do not question the notion that non-Jews or Gentiles are equally called to become disciples of Christ. But they would argue that the Revelation of Jesus Christ is incomprehensible without referring to an essential distinction between the people of Israel and those from the nations. By frmly anchoring the human genealogy of Christ in the destiny of Israel,2 by repeatedly ascribing to Christ the intention of reaching out to the children of Israel in contrast to Gentiles,3 and by heavily emphasizing that the title of King of the Jews stood engraved on the Cross on which he was destined to be hung,4 the Gospels clearly point to something more than an accidental and passing connection between Christ and the Jewish nation. There is a bond sealed in God’s all-effcient desire to meet, through his Incarnation, the immemorial and active expectation of Israel, a bond that is destined to endure. In this sense, it is fair to say that, from a standard Christian point of view, Messianic Judaism is not only a theological possibility—it is a theological necessity stemming from the very nature of Christ’s revelation.

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Introduction

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MESSIANIC JUDAISM: AN INSTITUTIONAL FACT Most denizens of the Western Hemisphere are familiar with the sight of cows; less so with that of Komodo dragons. But it is not necessary to bump into one representative of this exotic species—not always the most fortunate of hazards, so I am told—to be confdent that Komodo dragons exist. This assumption is based on a reasonable amount of witnesses, documentaries, and studies related to these peculiar and seemingly archaic animals. In addition, if Komodo dragons exist, this seems to imply that they can be. Likewise, even those of us who have never bumped into a living Messianic Jew—never an uninteresting experience, I may tell you—have few reasons to question the existence of the exotic movement to which they belong. Here also, one can rely on an abundance of living witnesses and studies related to a type of religious persuasion that is both fairly new and reminiscent of a bygone era. Born in the United States in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, this movement rapidly expanded to Eastern Europe, South America, Western Europe, and, last but certainly not least, Israel. It has organized itself in congregations and federations of congregations. It has produced theological literature and doctrinal statements. Messianic Judaism exists—therefore it can be. Of course, there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that Jews might come to believe in Jesus both as God incarnated and as Man put to death to redeem humankind. This was the case of the frst generation of disciples of Christ, all the apostles included. In subsequent generations, there has always been a small percentage of Jews who joined the collective body formed by the disciples of Christ. But Messianic Jews do not present themselves as Jews who have become Christians. In fact, they dismiss the very name of Christians as being associated with historical forms of anti-Judaism. Rather than Jews who have become Christians, they would describe themselves as disciples of Christ that remain Jews. Jewish and Christian identities are no longer seen as mutually exclusive because they are no longer exclusively identifed with two different sets of religious beliefs. Being a Jew is an ethnic fact before— and independently of—the adoption of a defnite system of religious beliefs and practices. From a religiously Orthodox Jewish point of view, a Jew who is born a Jew remains a Jews regardless of whether he or she chooses to become a Buddhist, an atheist or to abide by the religion of his parents. From the same perspective—which is equally shared by Orthodox and Messianic Jews although with opposed value judgments—a Jew is still “technically” a Jew when he or she believes in Jesus Christ as God and Saviour. But there is more to this.

Introduction

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THE ECCLESIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF MESSIANIC JUDAISM

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Messianic Judaism exists. And yet, from another point of view, there is still no evidence that it can be. After all, mirages exist—the perception of water on a road under a blazing sun is real—but what they suggest to us—the existence of a pond of water on the road—is a deception. A few elements indicate that the constitution of Messianic Judaism as an independent religious movement could well be some sort of ecclesiological mirage. A movement that cannot exist without betraying its founding principle should indeed be regarded as a mirage of this kind. As an autonomous movement based on the structural distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Yeshua, Messianic Judaism is confronted with the choice between two and only two organizational modes. Either it excludes non-Jewish members (a), or it includes them (b). (a) Excluding non-Jews—this goes against the notion that the calling of Christ is equally addressed to Jews and non-Jews, a central claim of the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s epistles.5 Messianic Judaism cannot choose this option without either becoming a sectarian heresy in open confict with the very writings it holds as sacred (a1) or else implicitly acknowledging that, as such, it falls short of the fullness of the Church founded in and by Christ, with the consequence that there is no reason why it should exist as an independent movement (a2).6 (b) On the other hand, if Messianic Judaism decides to include non-Jews, it is no longer true that it exists in order to embody the Jewish dimension of Christ’s Ekklesia—given its claim that this Jewish dimension is not only a matter of culture or religious ideals but ideals that this aspect cannot be dissociated from the concreteness of a people; namely, Am Israel, the Jewish people. From a structural or qualitative point of view, a Messianic movement that would operate according to this organizational mode could not be distinguished from any standard Christian Church, as they are all in principle open to welcoming Jewish converts in their midst.7 One could be tempted to argue that a mixed solution (c) is conceivable; namely, to establish a boundary between Jews and non-Jews within these congregations themselves. Still, provided the founding principle of Messianic congregations is the manifestation of Jewish identity as pertaining to the core of faith in Jesus, how could this boundary avoid being articulated in terms of a pre-eminence given to the Jewish members in contrast to non-Jewish members?8 This situation is fraught with the same issues as option (a). A religious

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movement that goes against the equal calling of Jews and non-Jews to follow Christ falls ipso facto into the category of sectarian heresies. One is naturally led to wonder how it is that a theological necessity would appear to be a practical impossibility. I can think of one and only one way out of the dilemma.

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BILATERAL ECCLESIOLOGY AND CATHOLICITY If there is no coherent way in which Messianic Judaism could exist as an independent religious movement, it is because, according to its essence, Messianic Judaism is not meant to be an independent religious movement. I consider granting room to the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish disciples of Christ so as to exclude any type of hierarchy or discrimination between them, to be a theological necessity. But this requires conceiving Messianic Judaism as being part of a wider ecclesial entity—an entity in which Messianic Judaism would feature the Jewish dimension in contrast to its non-Jewish dimension. If the founding principle of Messianic Judaism is true, then Messianic Judaism needs to exist in connection with an ecclesial Gentile vis-à-vis to receive an adequate form of existence. Distinctionwithout-separation—a notion that can be better expressed with the single word of communion—rests on the existence of a broader entity that would encompass the two distinct subsets of Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Jesus as divine Messiah. This corresponds to the proposal of a “bilateral ecclesiology” developed by the distinguished Messianic theologian Mark Kinzer. In various publications, Kinzer has described the Ekklesia, the universal and living Body of Jesus Christ as fundamentally constituted by the communion of two distinct realities, the Jewish one (Ecclesia ex circumcisione) and the non-Jewish one (Ecclesia ex gentibus).9 That this wider Ekklesia should be called Catholic in the most genuine sense of the word fnds support in the thought of Cardinal J-M. Lustiger: The Church appears as “catholic” . . . meaning “according to the whole.” She is “according to the whole” because she is composed of both Jews and pagans. In order to remain “Catholic” in the original sense—that is, “according to the whole”—recognizes, in a single gift of God’s grace, both the Ecclesia ex circumcisione (the Church born form circumcision) and Ecclesia ex gentibus (the Church born from the pagan nations).10

Introduction

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THE MISSING CATHOLIC DIMENSION OF MESSIANIC JUDAISM AND THE MISSING MESSIANIC DIMENSION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH According to its current denominational reality, the Catholic Church fails to display the fullness of her true catholicity or universality. But this distance between what an ecclesial entity is in its current state when it is reduced to its denominational reality, and what it is in truth, according to its unique calling, also applies to the Jewish Messianic movement. If Messianic Jews are Jews who, while accepting Christ as Messiah of Israel, do not see why they should dissociate themselves from the Jewish nation and its tradition, then a Catholic such as J-M. Card. Lustiger or an Orthodox such as Prot. Alexander Men are no less genuinely Messianic Jews than the current members of Messianic congregations (especially so, I would argue, whenever these members do not appear to be Jews themselves). Both Card. Lustiger and Prot. Men upheld the central claim of Messianic Judaism: Jews who become disciples of Christ remain Jews and should be entitled to live their bond with the Jewish tradition in the communities of faith to which they belong together with their nonJewish brothers and sisters.11 A Messianic Jew in the denominational sense of the term is a member of a movement that will not fnd its fully Catholic realization as long as this movement subsists independently from the wider Church. A Catholic Jew—or a (Christian-) Orthodox Jew for that matter—is a member of a Church that is still far from her fully Messianic accomplishment because its Jewish component is still insuffciently manifested. The fundamental issue at stake is identical for both types of Jewish disciples of Christ, although they approach it from opposite angles. Each one— the non-fully Catholic Messianic Jew and the non-fully Messianic Catholic Jew—suffers from the absence of an ecclesial character that is manifested in the religious existence of the other. Jewish Catholics can look at the way Messianic Jews preserve their ties to Jewish tradition with envy. But they will never agree to join a movement that they fnd ecclesiologically defcient because it lacks the sense of universality that is present in the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Messianic Jews can understand the theological necessity of a unique ecclesial entity gathering all the disciples of Christ, Gentiles, and Jews, on an equal footing, but, for that matter, they will never agree to sacrifce the living bond that they experience, through Jewish practice, with the nation of Israel and its tradition.

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Introduction

THE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE AND PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT BOOK

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The Catholic Church needs Messianic Judaism to recover the fullness of her Catholicity. At the same time, Messianic Judaism needs to develop a viable sense of Catholicity to become a part of a truly apostolic Church. The fundamental issue one must wrestle with can, therefore, be formulated in the following manner: How should we conceive this wider entity, this Catholic Church in the full theological sense of the term so that a distinctive Jewish or authentically Messianic presence might constitute an integral dimension of her being? The writings of Mark Kinzer can be considered as an attempt to answer this question. The purpose of the present book should be understood likewise. It aims to bring forth an answer that is radically different from Kinzer’s to the question formulated earlier. At the same time, the former shares a number of conclusions—or rather starting-points—with the latter. This is actually the condition for a fair discussion, as Plato’s dialogues most eminently show. One needs to agree about some principle in order to deny the validity of some consequences that may be derived from it. Meanwhile, as critical as one might be of someone else’s claims, it is always with the intention of achieving some degree of common understanding that one chooses to engage with them. That a serious discussion touching on issues of ecclesiology can actually take place should be seen as a good sign when it comes to Messianic Judaism. It means that this religious movement is more than a sectarian illusion, a theological fantasy or a venture into eschatological escapism—it is an ecclesiological possibility the consistency of which can and needs to be tested through critical discussion. EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES AND COMMON GROUND Of course, no discussion of that kind rolls in an empty, mathematical space— religious or denominational preconceptions will always defne its coordinates. Historically, the Messianic movement is an offshoot of the Protestant world. It is fair to assume that a Messianic Jewish theologian such as Mark Kinzer is indebted to this legacy, just as I, being a member of the Catholic Church, cannot help drawing on the tradition of my faith-community in this process of refection.12 This is about much more than involuntary infuences. As we discuss the same issues, our episteme (understanding of what makes our statements valid) differs; we do not play by the same rules as it were. Catholic theologians operate within the doctrinal parameters defned by the

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Introduction

7

Magisterium of the Catholic Church. While they might point to weaknesses or inconsistencies in the Magisterium, they judge according to what they perceive—rightly or wrongly—to be the deepest truth of the Magisterium they have embraced in sincere faith. It is diffcult to claim that the Messianic movement possesses the equivalent of a Magisterium. A great variety of theological positions are represented in a religious movement that was never formally part of the Jewish rabbinic world and is no longer institutionally bound to one of the numerous confessions of faith that characterize the Reformation. Due to an apparent lack of need, there is little refection on the criteria of a “Messianic Jewish orthodoxy” within the movement. Rather than referring problematic opinions to a series of established common statements, statements of faith are issued by a majority of leaders when necessity requires it. They refect a global and terminologically fuid “Nicene” consensus.13 Of course, Kinzer’s argumentation would not be heard and echoed on the Catholic side if he did not demonstrate a broad understanding of the Catholic doctrinal tradition—as well as true respect for it. Nonetheless Kinzer’s point of view on the Catholic tradition is that of a Messianic theologian. He develops his refection in accordance with the doctrinal tenets—or the lack of them—of the movement to which he belongs. My point of view on the Messianic reality is that of a Catholic theologian that draws on the Magisterium of his Church as from an immensely rich but also doctrinally compelling treasure trove. More fundamentally, Kinzer’s model of the wider Ekklesia, the universal Body of Christ that encompasses both a Jewish ekklesia and a Gentile ekklesia, retains an absolute validity whether one considers that the Catholic Church is a likely candidate to give actual existence to this model some day or not. My starting point is that the Catholic Church in her current form of existence provides the basis to conceive a theologically and ecclesiologically relevant model of such a wider Ekklesia. This difference of perspectives gives all its meaning to the present discussion: I am convinced that the Catholic point of view has something to say about the Messianic reality, just as Kinzer believes that the Catholic Church has something to learn from the Messianic point of view. Paradoxically, the very fact that we differ on a series of issues indicates that our two perspectives share the same horizon of understanding. One cannot disagree with somebody who is not receptive to one’s point of view. The challenge of a discussion is to identify principles that are shared by the partners notwithstanding their initial difference of perspective, so as to convey arguments that are relevant and equally constraining for all of the partners. This logical common ground indicates that the discussion partners share the same theoretical goal. Ultimately, what Kinzer and I are looking for is the one reality that is integral to our common faith in Yeshua; namely, the ecclesial reality that refects the intention of Christ when he founded the Church on the

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Introduction

apostles, a reality that originates in God’s eternal and supremely wise decree. This common horizon precedes the conversation, endures throughout it and remains unexhausted by it. The difference between a critical conversation and a systematic refutation is a difference of purpose and aim. Specifc ideas can be perceived as dangerous. One engages with them on behalf of those whom they could infuence. A systematic refutation has no goal beyond the annihilation of someone else’s convictions. Meanwhile, a critical discussion is interested in discarding ideas that seem inadequate only to the extent that this action could lead to formulating more adequate ones. One partner engages with the other in the hope that their conversation will carry them both a step closer to the truth. In no manner do I consider Kinzer’s ideas as pernicious. On the contrary, I believe they are a precious contribution to a refection on Messianic and Catholic types of ecclesiology. They offer a most needed basis to refne them further. Accordingly, I do not refect on the confguration of a Jewish ekklesia in order to “bar the road” to Kinzer’s ideas. I criticize Kinzer’s ideas in order to refect on the confguration of a Jewish ekklesia. Criticism is merely a means to understand what a Jewish ekklesia should look like in an authentically Catholic ecclesial Body. Since there are other ways to achieve this goal, I will appeal to such criticism only whenever I believe it is necessary or fnd it stimulating. In the course of this book, the inquiry into the positive features of an authentically Catholic Jewish ekklesia will therefore always take precedence over considerations regarding questionable aspects of Kinzer’s ecclesiological conceptions.

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ISSUES OF TERMINOLOGY The content of the present endeavor—sketching out the theoretical contours of a still purely virtual Church structure—compels us to introduce new concepts, slightly modify old ones or simply confrm the meaning of current terms. To prevent misunderstandings, key notions I will be referring to in the course of the book should be the object of defnitions that are as unambiguous as possible. • Messianic Jew: From this point on, my use of the term will go beyond its strict denominational meaning if not specifed otherwise. I take Messianic Jew to designate a person of Jewish ancestry who does not only acknowledge Jesus Christ as the true Messiah of Israel but claims that such a faith, far from being a reason to dissociate him/herself from the ongoing tradition of the Jewish nation, is rather a reason to preserve his or her connection with it. In sum, a Messianic Jew is a Jewish disciple of Yeshua who has

Introduction

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come to realize the spiritual and ecclesiological signifcance of his/her Jewish identity. In this framework, speaking of a fully Messianic Jew being the member of a fully Catholic Church involves no contradiction whatsoever. • Ekklesia: The term designates the Church of Christ as she subsists in the Catholic Church (see Lumen Gentium {8). This is the Church that Christ established and ordains to be fully manifested to the world at the end of times. • ekklesia (small “e”): The term designates a corporate body within the Ekklesia (ekklesia of the Jewish disciples/ the ekklesia of Gentile faithful). • The Church (without qualifcation): The term refers to the tradition of the undivided Church as it came out of the Ecumenical Councils of the frst millennium and continues to constitute a “deposit of faith” common to all the visibly divided parts of Christ’s body. • Catholic Church: The term designates the Ekklesia considered from the point of view of the concrete institutional and doctrinal body presided over by the Bishop of Rome that developed in the course of centuries until the present day.

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CONTENT AND SCOPE OF THE BOOK As I pointed out earlier, the issue discussed in this book is not whether a Jewish ekklesia should exist within the Ekklesia or a truly universal Church. Here I fnd myself in perfect agreement with Mark Kinzer: the answer to this question is a resolute “Yes.” The issue I want to raise in this book bears on how such a Jewish ekklesia should exist within the Ekklesia. The answer of Kinzer to this question has the merit of being easy to grasp: the Jewish ekklesia should be conceived on the basis of rabbinic tradition and the mandatory religious observances that it determines out of its unique authority. I radically differ on this point. I believe that Kinzer’s model would lead Jewish disciples of Yeshua, whatever be their denominational affliations—or the lack thereof—on the wrong path should they strive to create an ecclesial entity of their own. In the present book, I endeavor to show that the merely superfcial consistency of this model rests on a fundamental omission, an omission that relates to the reality to which the Church—any church or ecclesial body—owes her existence and purpose; that is, the reality of salvation. Nowhere in the writings of Kinzer does the notion of salvation, a notion anchored in the mystery of Yeshua’s life, death and resurrection, appear to play an instrumental role in the theoretical construction of his “bilateral ecclesiology.” But how could one claim to characterize the nature and physiognomy of a Jewish ekklesia without frst understanding in what manner the Jewish nation, Israel qua Israel, is the object of Yeshua’s

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10

Introduction

deed of salvation? The Church is the vehicle of Christ’s salvation; the task of conveying Yeshua’s salvation defnes the purpose of every element that relates to her being and ministry. After almost 2,000 years of Christianity, we have an idea of the manner in which all the nations of the earth partake of Yeshua’s salvation. But in what way does salvation apply to Israel qua Israel, so that the global Church, the Church of those who are redeemed in Yeshua, should be constituted of two fundamental “sides” or “dimensions,” the ecclesia ex gentibus, the ekklesia of the nations, and the ecclesia ex circumcisione, the Jewish ekklesia? What is it that, in the relation of Israel qua Israel to Yeshua’s salvation, makes it both so specifc and so essential that Jews should be endowed with an ecclesial body of their own, distinct from the entity formed of all the other ecclesial bodies? Why is it both so fundamental and necessary that Jews should gather in a specifc ecclesial body in order to partake of Christ’s salvation? The opinion that has prevailed throughout almost two millennia of Christendom is that Christ had forever abolished the religious foundations of the distinction between Jews and nonJews. On what theological grounds should one reexamine this opinion and possibly revoke it? In the present book, I do not merely want to demonstrate that an adequate concept of the salvation of Israel qua Israel does away with a notion of Jewish ekklesia indebted to the rabbinic notion of religious observance. I intend to show how this concept helps us to sketch out the true and living confguration of such a Jewish ekklesia, a confguration that cannot be identifed with any existing ecclesial model. In many ways, this implies a rethinking of the theology and practice of the wider Ekklesia that is here identifed with the Catholic Church. The book is divided into three parts. In the frst (“Salvation”), I will argue that, far from eventually excluding the Jewish nation from God’s design of salvation, the confict of Yeshua with “the Jews,” ending with their involvement in his death, is key to conceiving the manner of the collective salvation of Israel qua Israel and, accordingly, to understanding the way in which the mystery of Israel is integral to the mystery of the Church. It is in Yeshua’s salvation that the destiny of Am Israel (the nation of Israel) communicates with the destiny of all those who have recognized Yeshua as Messiah of Israel. At the same time, the relation of Am Israel to Yeshua’s salvation is distinct from that of all other nations. To bring this complex relationship to light, I will examine the passages of the New Testament where the salvation of Israel is foreseen as well as those where it seems this very salvation seems to be denied to Am Israel. I will try to show how, from the texts that anticipate the coming of Yeshua to the apostolic kerygma to the Jews via the Passion narratives, a consistent, albeit subtle, pattern of thinking regarding the salvation of Israel takes shape almost silently.

Introduction

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In the second part of the book (“Torah”), I will critically examine the different models according to which an ecclesial body composed of Jewish disciples should relate to rabbinic tradition. I will particularly focus on Kinzer’s understanding of mitzvot (rabbinic observances) as mandatory for the Jewish disciples of Yeshua. Discussing passages from the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul and the Gospels, I will dismiss the characterization of Yeshua and his immediate disciples as observant in the rabbinic sense of the term. I will argue that referring to the grace that stems from Yeshua’s salvation as the defning feature of a Messianic approach to Torah faithfulness does not end up “gentilizing” Jewish disciples, but on the contrary, contributes to strengthening the distinctive nature of their discipleship as Jews. In the third part of the book (“Ekklesia”), I will endeavor to show how the unique calling of Israel qua Israel in Yeshua provides the founding principle of a concrete and consistent picture of a Jewish ekklesia within the global Ekklesia. What is at stake here is a model that would truly embrace the insight of bilateral ecclesiology as a “communion-in-the-distinction” or a “communal bi-dimensionality,” forsaking neither the unity of the Church nor the specifc calling of Israel qua Israel within her. I will argue that the renewal of Torah-faithfulness in Yeshua leads to a process of “hermeneutical cross-breeding” between the Christian and rabbinic traditions, a process that shapes the original, irreducible confguration of a Jewish ekklesia within the Ekklesia. On the one hand, one needs to decipher the foundational elements of Christian tradition and Church structure from a Jewish point of view. On the other hand, one needs to interpret the structural elements of Jewish communal prayer life in the Messianic light of Yeshua. Finally, I will try to contemplate the situation of such an original entity within the global Ekklesia in relationship to three external entities: the wider Jewish religious world, the State of Israel, and other Christian bodies that do not acknowledge the global Ekklesia. NOTES 1. John 8:58. 2. Matt 1:1-18 ; Luke 3:23–38. 3. Matt 10:6; 15:24. 4. John 19:19-20. 5. Acts 15; Rom 15:17–18. 6. The impossibility of justifying the exclusion of Gentiles on theological grounds combined with the empirical necessity of perpetuating the Jewish character of Messianic congregations can lead to the type of awkward situation described by Stan Telchin: “Mac [name given by the author to a real person] told me of an interview he had done some weeks before with a ‘Messianic rabbi.’ The interview went

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12

Introduction

well while the rabbi explained how wonderful his congregation was. Then Mac told me that the rabbi addressed the Gentiles in his audience. ‘You are welcome to visit us so that you can experience our joy,’ said the rabbi. ‘But please don’t stay. We don’t want to dilute our congregation.’ ” Messianic Judaism Is Not Christianity: A Loving Call to Unity (Michigan: Baker Publishing Group, 2004), 33. 7. This is actually the case of most Messianic congregations outside Israel, especially in the United States. If the distinguishing feature of a Messianic congregation merely rests on its emphasis on elements from the Jewish tradition, there is no reason to deny to its Gentile members who embrace them the right to be called “Messianic Jews.” This can lead to slightly surrealistic situations where Gentiles see themselves as more Jewish than genuine Jews. Telchin tells about a conversation he had with “Lisa” (not her real name), the Gentile wife of a Jew and a member of a Messianic congregation: “Lisa turned to me and said, ‘Stan would you mind if I asked you a question?’—‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘What is it?’—‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘why aren’t you a member of a Messianic congregation? Why are you allowing the Church to “Gentilize” you?’ At that, I could not help myself and burst into laughter. How was I, a Jew whose parents were both Jewish, going to be ‘Gentilized’ by the Church?” Messianic Judaism is not Christianity, 33. The fact that ethnic Jews often constitute the majority in Messianic congregations located in Israel should be ascribed to the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. It has nothing to do with a distinctive organisational mode of these Messianic congregations. 8. Some tend to think by analogy with the so-called Gentile “God-fearers” who associated themselves with local synagogues during the second Temple period. Still, the status of God-fearers but underscored the pre-eminence of Jewish identity in these congregations as most of them were seeking conversion or at least considering conversion as an ideal. 9. This Latin terminology is borrowed from an ancient mosaic affxed on the walls of the Santa Sabina Basilica in Rome. The two sources of the one Church are allegorically featured as two virgins holding their respective scriptural authorities in their hands. 10. The Promise (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 125. 11. Card. Lustiger’s claim that he had remained a Jew while becoming a Catholic has been a bone of contention with the Jewish world. Nonetheless, Lustiger never retracted his claim. On the contrary, he asked a Kaddish to be recited on his grave and had the following declaration hung on a pillar of his Cathedra: “I was born a Jew. I received the name of my paternal grandfather Aaron. Christian by faith and by Baptism, I remained a Jew, as did the Apostles.” As for Prot. Men, he gave the following answer to a journalist asking what he thought of the accusation of “dvoeverie” (“double-faith”) leveled at those Jews who, after joining the Orthodox Church, would continue to celebrate the traditional Jewish festivals and hold fast to several Jewish observances (mitzvot): “Where is the contradiction? Every Christian nation has its own particular festivals in addition to the religious ones. Why should Jewish Christians not consider Hanukah, the commemoration of the victory of the Maccabees, as such a festival? Let it be mentioned that the Russian Orthodox Church does celebrate the memory of the Maccabean martyrs (August 14th according to the

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Introduction

13

New Calendar). At a time when Jews still constituted the majority in the Church, a number of Christians thought that conversion to Judaism was a condition to becoming baptised. This led to the decision by the Church Council of 51 AD according to which Jewish observances (circumcision, Shabbat, etc.) would not be imposed to Gentiles but would still have authority for Jewish Christians. These decisions have never been cancelled.” “Jews in the USSR—Samizdat-interview by А.Shoikhet,” Vestnik Russkovo Khristianskovo Dvijenia 117 (1976) < http:​/​/kro​​tov​.i​​nfo​/l​​ibrar​​y​/13_​​m​/m​ye​​ n​/000​​37> (translation mine). 12. Kinzer tells about his long and substantial exposure to the Catholic world in c.2 of SHOM, “A Stranger in a Strange (Yet Familiar) Land,” 25–39. The land is familiar but being a stranger in it as a member of the Messianic Movement, he inherits an ecclesiology and a religious culture that have their historical roots in the Protestant Reformation. 13. The Council of Nicea (325) defned faith in a Trinity of divine Persons that are substantially One God. R. Harvey observes that the Messianic movement never offcially formulated a Creed of its own, see Mapping Messianic Jewish Theology: A Constructive Approach (U.K.- Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2009), 287. He notes that leaders of the movement have often manifested a distaste for the Greek terminology that the Ecumenical Councils of the frst millennium applied to the defnitions of faith, Mapping Messianic Jewish Theology, 100. Still, the very fact that Messianic Jews do not see the need to refer to a Creed that would be distinct from that of Nicea should be seen as an implicit admission that the Nicene Creed remains the cornerstone of doctrinal orthodoxy: if Yeshua is God and if Yeshua is distinct from God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, then one must distinguish three divine persons within the same divine nature, lest one would need to renounce Monotheism. While heavily criticizing the supersessionist agenda of the Council of Nicea (rejection of the Jewish calendar), Kinzer has highlighted the continuity between Jewish tradition and the doctrinal content of the Creed: “the Creed upheld a commitment to an authentic encounter with the living God who acts in a revelatory and redemptive manner within the world. It maintained the Jewish and biblical witness to the qualitative difference between the transcendent Creator and that which is created, the particular personal character of the Creator as the God of Israel, and the reality of this God’s activity within the created order. It affrmed that God can be known and encountered in the person of Yeshua the Messiah. The Nicene Creed does this as an expansion of a Pauline confession of faith, which was itself an expansion of the Shema. In this way, it implicitly points us back to the basics of Jewish monotheism and presents Yeshua as the one who realizes in this world the revelatory and redemptive purposes of Hashem, God of Israel and Creator of all,” “Finding our Way Through Nicaea: The Deity of Yeshua, Bilateral Ecclesiology, and Redemptive Encounter with the Living God,” Kesher 24 (2010), 29–52.

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Chapter I

Salvation (From Post-Missionary to Pre-Patristic Messianic Judaism)

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1. MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH AND MYSTERY OF ISRAEL ACCORDING TO RECENT MAGISTERIUM In our daily life, we speak of mystery when we are facing a problem that seems devoid of an obvious solution. However, the great theologians of the past did not go in search of solutions to mysteries; rather they contemplated the mysteries of their faith when they were in search of solutions. In the Christian tradition, mystery designates the essence of a reality that does not belong to the order that rules our daily lives. It refers to a reality that is intimately connected to the One who created the world, so that it is not itself encompassed by the created order. Even if it subsists in the very midst of our world, a mystery in a theological sense evades the criteria of a logic derived from the latter. This does not mean that such a mystery is wholly out of reach of the human mind because the human mind has, from its very nature, the capacity to look beyond the created order: “in his image and likeness He created him” (Gen 1:27). What it means is that the reality we are exploring can only reveal itself to us partially and gradually, as its immediate and total understanding would require the fnite creatures that we are to be endowed with the infnite intellectual faculty that belongs to God only—a blatant contradictio in terminis (self-contradiction).1 Such is the mystery of the Church, this divine-human reality founded by a divine-human being. Such is the mystery of Israel, this ethnè transformed once and for all into an elected nation by the grace of God. The Declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council linked these two mysteries together in its §4: “As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.”2 15

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This short affrmation is so far from being a rhetorical consideration that it provided the title to Kinzer’s substantial, albeit critical, study of Nostra Aetate: Searching Her Own Mystery. Kinzer’s book is an attempt at showing what the ecclesiological implications of Nostra Aetate are when one seriously takes into account the living bond between the Catholic Church and the ongoing tradition of Israel. As Kinzer observes, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has repeatedly underscored the theological relevance of the statement found in Nostra Aetate §4. In the 1974 Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate, one reads: “The problem of Jewish-Christian relations concerns the Church as such since it is when ‘pondering her own mystery’ that she encounters the mystery of Israel.”3 Among other references, Kinzer also mentions John-Paul II’s address during his visit to Rome’s synagogue in 1986; Judaism and the life of the Jewish people are to some extent “intrinsic” to the mystery of the Church.4 In other words, what contributes to unfolding the mystery that is the Church, according to the recommendation of Nostra Aetate §4, is the effort to understand to what precise extent, in what exact way the mystery of Israel is intrinsic to it.

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1.1. The “Intrinsic” versus “Extrinsic” Character of Israel in Relation to the Church While showing great appreciation for these recent doctrinal developments, Kinzer does not bypass the supersessionist elements that are still present in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Nostra Aetate §4 characterizes the Church as “the new people of God,” whose advent the people of the Old Testament was merely destined to prepare and “foreshadow.” Kinzer shows how this line of thinking is taken up and further developed in Lumen Gentium. Vatican II’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.”5 Of course, Nostra Aetate recalls what the Church owes to the journey of the people of Israel from the time of the Patriarchs. With the apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, it acknowledges that Israel’s gifts—“the glory, the Covenants, the law and the prophets” (Rom 9:4)—are irrevocable and the Church is grafted on the heritage of Israel as the “wild shoots” on the “root” of the wellcultivated olive-tree (Rom 11). But all these considerations are related to the origins of the Church, and there seems to remain an insuperable gap between this distant past and the ongoing life of the Church. One could speak of two types of discontinuity that are here combined. The frst has to do with a structural difference between the two notions of people that are articulated with each other; the second with a theological incompatibility between the sets of religious beliefs that underpin the existence of the two corporate entities.

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When one refers to the Jewish people, one has in mind a concrete ethnic entity that results both from the faith of the Patriarchs and the powerful grace of God. Meanwhile the principle that guarantees the unity of the “new people of God” that is the Church rests on religious faith exclusively, in contrast to a specifc ethnic affliation. Nostra Aetate sees this discontinuity in a positive light: through faith, the spiritual legacy that used to be confned within the ethnic boundaries of the people of Israel becomes the treasure of a “new people” that knows of no national limit or racial privilege. This structural discontinuity preserves some ongoing connection between the “old people” and the “new one”: the wild shoots of the olive tree continue to be nourished by their root (see Rom 11). However, I agree with Kinzer when he claims that this “comm​unica​tion-​throu​gh-a-​struc​tural​-disc​ontin​uity”​is not suffcient to justify the notion of an “intrinsic” relationship between the mystery of the Church and the people of Israel.”6 If it is not so, it is because the structurally “positive” discontinuity we just mentioned has, in the tradition of the Church, crystallized with a religiously negative one. “Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation nor did the Jews in large number, accept the Gospel” (Nostra Aetate §4): Israel as an ethnic entity fnds itself separated from the “new people of God” due to its refusal to accept the faith on which the Church as a corporate entity is established. This is why Nostra Aetate as well as Lumen Gentium view the entity formed by the people of Israel as a reality extrinsic to the Church. Notwithstanding its unique proximity to Christian faith, the set of beliefs associated with the people of Israel that is currently called Judaism, falls into the category of non-Christian religions, together with Islam, Buddhism, and so on. I would refrain from minimizing the theological importance of the dismissal of Christ as it is pointed out in Nostra Aetate. Even if it is not the case that all Jews adhere to the set of beliefs and practices that goes under the name of Judaism—far from it!—the fact is that the Jewish nation owes its enduring existence—at least partly—to this dismissal. During the frst centuries of the Christian era, the discipline of the Church rapidly became incompatible with the preservation of a distinct Jewish identity among the faithful of Jewish origin. Thus, remaining outside the Church or dismissing Christ has for a long time been the only way in which Jews could de facto preserve their Jewish identity. Up to the present day, it is commonly through the dismissal of Yeshua’s Messiahship that someone born Jewish affrms his or her membership in a people whose own religion does not recognize Yeshua’s Messiahship. Accordingly, even if a Jew does not practice Judaism, he or she is considered a Jew to the extent to which he or she shares with Judaism the rejection of Yeshua’s Messiahship. The question is therefore still pending: in what manner should we say that the people of Israel remain intrinsically connected with the mystery of the

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Church when the very criterion of belonging to this people seems to be the rejection of the very belief on which the Church is established? 1.2. Ontological Connection of Israel to Her Messiah The answer that Kinzer, relying on the thinking of Jean-Marie Card. Lustiger, brings forth deserves serious attention. In Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the modern world,” one reads the following statement: “by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man.”7 Lustiger, in a volume entitled On Christians and Jews—a collection of speeches and interviews—applies to the whole Jewish nation the consideration of Gaudium et Spes on the union of Christ with every human being: “In a certain way—I repeat, in a certain way—the Jewish people are a part of [Yeshua]. In their particularity, the Jewish people carry the heart of the revelation. And in a certain way, they also bear the image of the Messiah, of Christ.”8 Lustiger implies the existence of a specifc relation of Christ to his people according to the fesh, or rather that of his people to him, that is independent of the faith—or lack of it—of the private individuals who form Israel collectively. Aligning himself with Lustiger’s theologoumenon (theological opinion), Kinzer writes:

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Those [Jews] who do not receive the good news are put in an anomalous and precarious situation—yet Jesus remains their sovereign and head, whether they acknowledge the fact or not. He was born ‘the King of the Jews’ (Matt 2:2), he was crucifed under the same title (Matt 27:11, 29, 37), and he will bear it for all eternity. Thus, for Jews, participation in the life of the people points them toward membership in the Body of their appointed messianic king.9

True, presenting Jews as unconsciously partaking of Christ, whether they want it or not, can be perceived as humanly disrespectful as well as theologically dishonest. If faith is a decision that cannot be imposed on any individual or group, is not God bound to respect the outcome of the freedom that He has originally granted to human beings lest He disavows His actions and the perfection of His creation? However, this is not about the faith of Jews in God. The relation that Lustiger and Kinzer have in mind is not humanly subjective. It is of an ontological order as it is supposedly engraved in the very being of a Jew. Rather than the faith of Jews in God, one could characterize it as a manifestation of the faith of God Himself in Israel, a faith based on the eternal calling of Israel to become Israel in and through its Messiah. This relation is sealed in the concreteness of Jewish fesh, the bio-ethnic dimension that is common to the Jewish nation and its Messiah. At the same time, it is not simply a relation

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according to the fesh, like the one that automatically unites an individual to another individual when they both belong to the same nation. It is the relation of the whole nation of Israel to one specifc individual born out of this nation. The ontological relation Lustiger and Kinzer bring forth does not simply derive from the Incarnation or the fact that God became man. It has to do with the fact that this particular man was the Messiah that the whole nation of Israel was waiting for. From this point of view, it is indeed analogical to the ontological relation of the whole world to the Messiah mentioned in Gaudium et Spes: Just as every human carries the “image” of the God who became man in order to redeem humankind in his or her innermost, every Jew carries the image of the One who became man in order for Israel to welcome her Messiah in his or her innermost being. No other nation than Israel “carries the heart of the revelation” as Lustiger writes. If Yeshua, as Kinzer reminds his readers, is called the “King of Jews” in the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, it is because he is the one destined to fully reveal the heart of the revelation carried by Israel throughout the generations. In actual fact, Yeshua himself is the heart of this revelation as this heart is salvation made Man. By assuming Jewish fesh, the Word of God unites himself with Israel. In this manner, Jews fnd themselves united with Yeshua as to their King by virtue of the salvation that he carries with him or rather that he is. Yeshua is declared “King of the Jews” (John 19:3) at the very moment when, on the Cross, he earns the salvation of the whole world. The question, however, is whether this ontological relation is suffcient to justify the notion of an ongoing connection between the Church and the people of Israel. Even if all the image of the Redeemer is said to dwell within every human being, not all human beings are said to be part of a reality “intrinsic” to the Church. Everything depends here on each individual’s response to God or acceptance of this ontological relation. Those who deliberately turn away from it cannot be said to be united with the Church. If Israel as a nation turns away from the one whom the Church acknowledges as her true Messiah, how could she be characterized as a reality “intrinsic” to the Church? From the point of view that has become traditional in the Catholic Church, the reason of Israel’s exclusion from salvation lies in her rejection of a Messiah that she should have welcomed as part of her own identity, purpose, and mission. We need to remember that the Catholic Church has, since the time of the Fathers, construed Jewish existence after Christ as the very token of deprivation from salvation. 1.3. The Shift of the Church’s Traditional Stance on Jewish Existence after the Messiah That the fundamental relationship between Israel and her Messiah, on the recognition of whom the whole Church rests, should be the core of the

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Chapter I

intrinsic and therefore permanent connection between the “people of the Old Covenant” and the “new people of God” according to Nostra Aetate’s terminology is an entirely novel insight in the tradition of the Catholic Church. Not that the richness of the connections between, on the one hand, the Revelation of Christ and the tradition of the Church, and, on the other, the predominantly rabbinic tradition of Israel after the destruction of the second Temple, went wholly unnoticed during two millennia. But in the eyes of the Catholic Church’s offcial teaching or Magisterium, made manifest in various ways during this long history (authority of ecumenical and regional Councils, writings of the Fathers of the Church, decisions of the Church’s hierarchy, etc.), these correspondences appeared to have little weight when considering the discontinuity of faith between the two religious communities. No ongoing connection between the Church and Israel was conceivable from the moment Israel had supposedly turned away from the Messiah that defned the faith of the Church. In point of fact, when it came to the relationship between the Church and the people of Israel after Christ, the traditional view of the Church was that the two entities were mutually exclusive. One fnds in the tradition of the Church repeated statements proclaiming that their insuperable opposition was the most evident manifestation of God’s providential wisdom. What Nostra Aetate describes in positive terms, that is, the structural discontinuity between the nation of Israel as an ethnic reality and the Church as a spiritual people, the Fathers had thematized as indicating a radical rupture between the old entity and the new one. Due to its ethnic dimension, Israel used to be characterized as “fesh” or “letter” by contrast to the “Spirit” that provided the Church with her living organizational principle. Meanwhile, due to the religious or dogmatic discontinuity between the two entities, this “letter” was said to be incapable of “reading” the Spirit that was paradoxically the unique source and sole purpose of its existence: “The Israel, however, about which the Apostle says: ‘Behold Israel according to the fesh,’ we know to be the carnal Israel; but the Jews do not grasp this meaning and as a result they prove themselves indisputably carnal.”10 In this manner, the very survival of the Jewish people after Christ was construed as a most eminent sign of its rejection by God. Since the time of Augustine, the contrast between on the one hand the Jews’ current condition of geographical dispersion and social oppression and, on the other hand, Israel’s glorious past, was systematically alleged as a proof a contrario of the truth of Christianity.11 Pope Pius XI’s very attempt at dismissing the theological justifcations of Nazi anti-Semitism in Mit Brennender Sorge, his encyclical of 1937, is still heavily indebted to what had become a commonplace of Catholic apologetics:

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Side by side with innumerable touches of greatness and nobleness, [the Books of the Old Testament] also record the story of the chosen people, bearers of the Revelation and the Promise, repeatedly straying from God and turning to the world. Eyes not blinded by prejudice or passion will see in this prevarication, as reported by the Biblical history, the luminous splendour of the divine light revealing the saving plan which fnally triumphs over every fault and sin. It is precisely in the twilight of this background that one perceives the striking perspective of the divine tutorship of salvation, as it warns, admonishes, strikes, raises and beautifes its elect. Nothing but ignorance and pride could blind one to the treasures hoarded in the Old Testament.12

In this framework, the almost integrally Jewish setting that characterized the frst community of disciples of Christ was understood as a purely transitory state.13 The saying of Paul that there were no longer Jews or Greeks in the Church meant in practice that the Church was destined to be a quintessentially nonJewish entity since the only ones that remained to be designated as such were the descendants of those who had rejected Christ and clung to the persuasion of their rebellious fathers. Consequently, the Church has during almost two millennia implicitly upheld the idea that the salvation that Christ came to communicate to the world was, according to God’s eternal design of wisdom, destined to everybody but to his own people, the Jews. True, Christ had to offer it to his own frst. But these had to refuse it in order for it to spread to non-Jews, according to Paul’s saying: “through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous” (Rom 11:11). This paradox of God’s soteriological cruelty toward the people He used to consider as His own did not bother Christian theologians until very recently. It was simply obvious that the pearl of the Church’s existence made it worth selling the living feld on which it had been found. At frst glance, the considerations of Nostra Aetate regarding the “new people of God” foreshadowed by the “people of the Old Testament” seem to ft this traditional understanding of God’s providential design. However, Nostra Aetate §4 unambiguously abandons the long-lasting notion that God rejected the “people of the Old Testament”: “Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.” A document recently published on the occasion of the ffty-year anniversary of Nostra Aetate tries to plough a narrow furrow between the Church’s non-negotiable claim that faith in Christ is the medium of universal salvation and a renewed understanding of God’s design of salvation that would grant positive value to the ongoing existence of the Jewish nation after Christ. In “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,” a refection issued by the

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Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in December 2015, one can read at §23:

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The Church does not replace the people of God of Israel, since as the community founded on Christ it represents in him the fulflment of the promises made to Israel. This does not mean that Israel, not having achieved such a fulflment, can no longer be considered to be the people of God.14

In the eyes of the authors of the document, faithfulness to the word of God, as it is expressed in the Scriptures that Jews call Torah, is the reason why Israel can still be considered as “the people of God” even as it falls short of the fulfllment of God’s Revelation in Messiah. The “intrinsic” connection between Israel and the Church becomes manifest here. Indeed, according to Christian theology, the word of God preserved in Torah is nothing other than an emanation from the Word of God who took fesh in Jesus Christ. Thus, one reads in §26: “Christians affrm that Jesus Christ can be considered as ‘the living Torah of God’. Torah and Christ are the Word of God, his revelation for us human beings as testimony of his boundless love.” The repeated affrmation that Judaism and Christianity do “not constitute two parallel ways to salvation” (§35) since Christ is the unique source of universal salvation leads the authors of the document to a position that could be characterized as a “second-best option” for the Jewish nation. They claim that the Jewish nation, though falling short of the fullness to which only faith in Christ can give access, is still rendered participant in Christ’s salvation through its faithfulness to Torah. This affrmation is said to hold even if it does not seem possible to give a theological explanation of this state of affairs: “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery” (§35). Where Nostra Aetate simply denied that Jews were condemned and accursed due to their unbelief, the 2015 document goes a step further by declaring that Jews are rendered “participants of Christ’s salvation” on behalf of Christ’s and Torah’s mutual indwelling. As “theologically unquestionable” as the authors of the document characterize this claim, it is ground-breaking seen against the background of an almost bi-millennial Christian tradition. Of course, the statement is not equivalent to affrming that Jews are fully saved through the study and observance of Torah. This would de facto “constitute two parallel ways to salvation.” At any rate, the hypothesis of “salvation through Torah” would have to be argued against the multiple denials of Paul regarding the salvifc character of Torah-observance (e.g., Rom 7:13–14). In fact what makes the mystery of “participation in salvation” of Jews “incomprehensible” is that Torah-observance per se seems incapable of bringing

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about salvation. While Paul does not deny the transcendent origin of Torah, he still rejects the salvifc character of Torah considered per se. Accordingly, the reason for Israel’s participation in Christ’s salvation cannot simply be put on the count of Torah’s transcendent origin in the Word of God. In spite of its limitations, one can claim that the recent developments of the Magisterium regarding the mystery of Israel shed light on its “intrinsic connection” with the Church. This connection is anchored in the invisible reality of salvation. The nation upon which their Messiah and King has left his imprint participates somehow in the reality of his salvation as its members continue to be faithful to the Covenant of Israel with God. This remains true even as they do not acknowledge Yeshua as Messiah. No theologically satisfactory explanation comes to justify this conviction. It is described as an “unfathomable divine mystery” in the passage cited earlier. Without delving further into this mystery, I want to show now in what manner this evolution of the Magisterium renders a refection on a Jewish ekklesia necessary.

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1.4 The Church as Communion between Jews and Gentiles and the Issue of Israel’s Collective Salvation Since the First Covenant is a Covenant between God and Israel as a nation, one cannot acknowledge the irrevocability of this Covenant—even after the establishment of the new and defnitive Covenant sealed in Christ for the salvation of the world—without granting theological signifcance to the corporate identity of Israel. Of course, if the Church is, as the authors of the 2015 Vatican document claim, the “fulflment of the promises made to Israel,” then Israel, while still being the people of God, remains at a distance from her “fulfllment” as long as she turns away from Yeshua, thereby separating herself from the “New People of God” that is the Church. However, the notion that the corporate identity of Israel preserves theological signifcance within the New Covenant raises the issue of the ecclesiological status of those Jews who are no longer separated from the Church as they come to acknowledge Yeshua as Messiah of Israel. What should be the concrete forms taken by the Church provided ethnic affliation to Israel preserves its value within the New People of God? The authors of the 2015 document seem to show awareness of the distinctive position of these Jews as a consequence of their irreversible bond with God sealed in the First Covenant. In §43, the document speaks of the Church as being an entity that is according to its essence constituted of Jews and nonJews: “It remains a qualitative defnition of the Church of the New Covenant that it consists of Jews and Gentiles.” Of course, one can read this sentence in the neutral key that has always been practiced in the Church, as if to say: “The Church is open to Jews as

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she is to non-Jews.” But in the absence of a stable structure that would secure the continuity of a living Jewish identity within the Church, it is diffcult to see how membership in the Church could not be equivalent to its short-term disintegration. Due to intermarriage combined with the ban on Judaizing habits, the descendants of Jewish converts will be cleansed of the last traces of Jewish identity in the span of two or three generations. One is therefore allowed to ask what the “fulflment of the promises made to Israel,” the joyful recognition of her Messiah by Israel, is about if it does not entail the disintegration of Jewish life and identity. If the latter was to be the case, Jews, who have acquired some historical experience when it comes to threats of national annihilation, might think twice before embracing such a “fulfllment.” There is however another, less standard, reading of this statement. The term “qualitative defnition” would point toward some structural characteristic or mark of the Church featuring the necessity of a distinctive Jewish presence within her next to that of brothers and sisters coming from Gentility. Of course, quantitatively speaking, the number of Jewish members of the Church has always been negligible, at least after the frst generations of disciples. But if the existence in the Church of a quantitatively insignifcant proportion of Jews manifests the essence of the Church in a qualitative manner, this implies that the Church of Christ is called to welcome a structural distinction between Jewish and Gentile disciples of Yeshua. Such an understanding of the nature of the Church sets in question the policy that has traditionally been implemented toward the Jewish faithful in the Catholic Church. One cannot obliterate the fact that if Jewish Catholics have always been so few, it is because no “qualitative” principle would guarantee the ongoing existence of the nation of Israel in the Church—at least not until this day. Paradoxically, what explains the small but fairly constant amount of Jewish members the Church is not a defnite and stable structure of transmission but an irregular stream of conversions. Actually, the very use of the term “conversion” when envisaging the standard procedure of integration of Jews into the Church betrays the problem associated with claiming that the Church “consists of Jews and Gentiles” according to her essence. For more than 1,500 years, Jews have been the only individuals that were asked to renounce the greatest part of their natural commitment to the people that had given them birth in order to become members of the Church. This policy was based on the assumption that, after the advent of Christ, the social and cultural existence of the Jewish nation hinged on religious tenets incompatible with Christian faith. Still, characterizing the communion between Jews and Gentiles as pertaining to the nature of the Church qualifes such an assumption. Indeed, to what extent is the incompatibility between the forms associated with Jewish tradition and Christian faith not itself a result of the suppression of all types of genuinely Jewish expressions within the Church?

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Instead of ascribing the dismissal of such Jewish expressions within the Church to Jewish “unbelief,” should one not rather claim that the identifcation between Jews and unbelief stems from the systematic eradication of these Jewish expressions within the Body of Christ? This supposition seems to go against an insight that has played a crucial role in the Church’s self-understanding from the times of the Fathers; namely, the idea, mentioned earlier, that the living Spirit that constitutes the Church and organizes her into a living Body excludes the type of bio-ethnic distinction without which no Jewish nation or Jewish life is conceivable. The Fathers and their followers could point to the declaration of Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Clearly, the notion that Jews had been rejected by God, due to their own rejection of the Messiah, eliminated the problem at its core: Why bother refecting on the bio-ethnic distinction between Jews and Gentiles as a positive mark of the Church when God had rejected Jews as a bio-ethnic entity—or when the coming of the Messiah to the Jews had induced the dismissal of Jews as God’s chosen people? Conversely, the denial by Vatican Council II of the Jews’ divine rejection as a bio-ethnic entity and the gradually surfacing notion that Israel qua Israel remained the chosen people in spite of her own rejection of Yeshua, bring up the issue of the legitimate presence of this bio-ethnic entity in the Church. To what extent can one ascribe to Christ himself the will to save Israel as a bio-ethnic entity, so that Israel qua Israel, coexisting with the Gentiles, might become a structural feature of his Church? Here the issue eliminated by the Fathers comes back with a vengeance: What about the opposition of “the Jews” to Yeshua’s salvation? If the salvation of Israel in Christ is integral to God’s providential design, why is the resistance of Israel to it—a resistance that eventually led to the death of Christ—so much emphasized in the Gospels that one could characterize it as their only continuous plot? This is not a matter of logical contradiction. A person can do good things to someone else who, in return, does bad things to him or her. But this is defnitely a matter of meaning and coherence. What to think of a work of salvation that brings to the fore the resistance to salvation of the very object of this salvation—Israel qua Israel? How can one conceive a work of salvation, opus salutis, that ends up alienating those who are saved from the ordinary means of this salvation that is the Church? So if one wants to adhere to the notion that bio-ethnic Israel is a structural feature of the Church, one needs to challenge the idea that the opposition of Israel qua Israel to her salvation is incompatible with the fact of her corporate salvation in Yeshua. A consideration that has still to be established from the point of view of Catholic theology.

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Until now the approach of the Magisterium to this opposition has been by and large of a moral nature. The nation as a nation should not be held responsible for the death of her Messiah. By refusing to put the blame of Christ’s crucifxion on the whole people of Israel, Nostra Aetate §4 offcially broke with an enduring legacy of Christian anti-Semitism that, among other tragedies, had facilitated the advent of Hitler’s “fnal solution”: “the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” And yet, whatever be the truth of this statement from a moral standpoint, its effect has been the disintegration of the theological signifcance of Israel as a corporate entity in relation to Yeshua. One does not dare to speak of the involvement of the whole nation in the rejection and death of Yeshua, lest one will be labeled as anti-Semitic. However this shift to a lenient view on Jewish responsibility for the death of Christ only renders the questions raised by the reading of the Gospels more acute: If Jews carry no moral responsibility for his death, how is one to explain the obvious emphasis of the Gospels on the corporate involvement of the nation of Israel in this death? What is the theological meaning of the tension between Yeshua and Am Israel in the Gospel if one does not read the divine rejection of Israel in it? As long as these questions remain unanswered one will be tempted to suspect that the Catholic Church’s recent denials of Israel’s rejection by God are less dictated by a concern for truth than by the desire to leave defnitively behind the disastrous consequences of this theologoumenon on the course of European history. But no act of authority, ecclesial or other, will ever change a pious wish into a reality. The inability to justify the abandonment of a hermeneutical tradition that goes back to the Fathers will necessarily instill doubts in the mind of the faithful regarding either the trustfulness of Scriptures or those who claim to be their legitimate interpreters. As relevant as the moral approach to the antagonism between Jews and Yeshua might be, it is not the only one. After all, salvation is not a matter of morals. As one considers to what extent the corporate opposition of Jews to Yeshua constitutes an irreducible obstacle to the corporate salvation of the Jewish nation in Yeshua, one would do well to envisage the very opposite hypothesis; namely, to what extent does the corporate opposition of the Jewish nation to Yeshua not constitute the very instrument or manner of Israel’s salvation in Yeshua? At the very least, this conjecture is not a priori impossible. I fnd here an echo of one of the most central but also most mysterious themes of the New Testament: Christ had to suffer (Luke 24:25–26; 46; Acts 3:18; 17:2–3, etc.). Christ had to suffer at the hands of Israel in order to redeem Israel. Seen from the point of view of Israel, it means that Israel had to oppose Yeshua to

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receive her salvation from him. Of course, one needs to receive salvation in order to be saved. But salvation does not need to be received in order to be given. It is not because I decline to receive a gift that this gift is not given to me. I will not be able to enjoy the gift as long as I decline to receive it, but this does not affect the nature or existence of the gift. If this conjecture were to be validated through a serious reconsideration of key passages from the New Testament, it would certainly open new perspectives regarding the nature of the Church. Until this day, Catholic theology has always dismissed the idea that the presence of Jews in the Church as a distinct bio-ethnic entity could correspond to the intention of her divine founder. This position would necessarily have to change should Yeshua’s all-powerful intention to save Israel qua Israel, together with the rest of humankind, be established. Just as the universal structure of the Church refects Christ’s intention to save all humanity, one would need to consider the establishment of a specifc structure of the Church destined to refect the intention of Yeshua to save Israel as Am segula, a nation that is unique among all nations. What I want to show now is that Messianic ecclesiology faces the exact same issue as soon as it endeavors to defne itself in relation to the apostolic Church or the Church founded by Christ, as Mark Kinzer does in his various works. Not that Messianic theologians experience the same diffculty as their Catholic peers when it comes to conceiving the bio-ethnic presence of Jews as integral to the Church of Christ. The fact is that the whole Messianic movement rests on this conviction. But the lack of refection of Messianic theologians regarding the specifc character of Israel’s salvation in Yeshua affects their ecclesiology as fundamentally as it affects Catholic ecclesiology. I will argue that this defciency applies to Kinzer’s bilateral ecclesiology in the frst place.

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1.5. The Paradox of a Bio-ethnic Salvation and the Theological Foundation of the Messianic Jewish Movement In general, the most conspicuous sign of a Messianic Jewish congregation is the absence of the Sign. The reluctance of these congregations to adopt the Cross as a religious symbol is understandable. Historically, it is under the sign of the Cross that numberless anti-Jewish persecutions were carried out. The traumas associated with Medieval crusades and nineteenth-century pogroms are deep-seated in Israel’s collective memory. Rejecting the symbol of the Cross indicates both a distance vis-à-vis the legacy of historical Christianity and a desire to partake of the Jewish one. At the same time, hardly any Messianic Jew, simple faithful and theologians alike, would deny that the work of salvation that Yeshua-ha-Meshiah accomplished has everything to do with the giving of his life on the instrument of torture that Romans

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used to call a crux. The theological reversal of this instrument of hatred into a demonstration of God’s power of salvation is not an invention of the Fathers; it is integral to the Scriptures that Messianic Jews hold for sacred: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19–20). There are reasons to believe that the absence of the quintessential token of adhesion to the truth that Yeshua embodied, the omission of the universal and most enduring sign of Christian identity, cannot be reduced to a concession of Messianic Judaism to Jewish liturgical sensitivity. The glaring absence of this material sign goes with an even more striking absence of theological refection on what it manifests. If the sign of the Cross has been so eagerly and repeatedly associated with the persecutions that intersperse almost two millennia of Christianity, it is because it reminded good Christians of the role of Jews in the crucifxion of their Lord and God. And through the crucifxion, the sign refers to all the manifestations of hostility toward Christ that the Gospels ascribe to various representatives from the Jewish nation, a tension that builds up through the narrative of the Gospels and fnally comes to a head with the fatal sentence. This renders the absence of a Messianic theological refection on this tension almost unbearably paradoxical. As a denominational movement, Messianic Judaism is all about the joy of Jews discovering or rediscovering in Jesus “their” Messiah—the Jewish Messiah, the Messiah of the Jews. The problem is that this Messiah is confessed on the basis of narratives that seem to constantly and most tragically undermine the alliance between this Messiah and his people. Even if the Messiah is a living person and even if faith is a living relationship to this divine Person, this relationship stems from a story that has been put down in writing. Faith as a personal relationship derives from an individual’s positive answer to the kerygma, the announcement of Yeshua’s death and resurrection that is itself anchored in the narrative of the Gospels. A Jew cannot start singing “Hosanna to the son of David,” identifying with the crowds that welcomed him in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and not remember that these very crowds with whom he identifes, contributed to putting to death a few days later the one he holds for Messiah. How will Messianic Judaism ever demonstrate that it is entitled to be what it claims to be; namely, the joyful welcoming by Jews of the Messiah sent to them, if it continuously shies away from refecting on the Jewish rejection of the same Messiah at the time of his coming? This is about much more than theological consistency. What is at stake here is the nature as well as the inner life of Messianic Judaism as a movement. If, on the one hand, the death of Yeshua on a Cross is the cause of salvation and if, on the other hand, there is a degree of national Jewish responsibility for

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this innocent death, to what extent does the Messianic lack of refection on this responsibility not obscure the insight that lies at the heart of the Church; namely, that from the death of Christ springs a new supernatural reality—the reality of his salvation? On this insight, the Church is built. The rituals of the Church derive from this new reality that plunges in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection as they are supposed to convey its regenerating energy to the faithful in a way or another. As much as one would like, one cannot dissociate the joy of Yeshua’s salvation from the tragedy of the Cross. Ignoring this metaphysical reality in order to “brush Jewish responsibility under the carpet” cannot but remove Yeshua’s salvation from the very center of the Church. The question therefore stands: What remains of an organic body of disciples of Yeshua that would not relate the joy of salvation to the manner of his death; namely, the killing of an innocent that to some degree resulted from the criminal involvement of Israel qua Israel? I fnd this question particularly acute when considering Kinzer’s attempt to conceive a Jewish apostolic Ekklesia on the basis of the Messianic Jewish movement. The one common denominator to all the communities of disciples that call themselves a Church (this is not the case of Messianic congregations, at least offcially) is the acknowledgment of Yeshua’s salvation as their cornerstone. The manifestation of a desire to see the Church of Christ—the Church according to the fullness of her universality—welcome a corporate Jewish presence in her midst makes it necessary to examine in what manner this corporate Jewish presence would partake of Yeshua’s salvation as her central Mystery. As we will see in the course of the book, Kinzer underscores the importance of the rabbinic tradition (celebration of festivals according to the Halacha, mitzvot) for the members of the Jewish ekklesia. This constitutes a common feature to these faithful and a religious Jewish world that does not acknowledge Yeshua’s salvation. Of course, the very project of a Jewish ekklesia implies that a number of Jews have faith in Yeshua. But one can have faith in Yeshua in many ways. One may confess Jesus as a great master of wisdom or a prophet. However, to become member of any church, one should confess Yeshua as Saviour. In addition, in order to become a member of the Church understood as the corporate apostolic reality that professed its faith at the Council of Nicea (325), one is expected to believe that this Saviour is “the only-begotten Son of God,” “very God of very God” who is “of one substance with the Father.” If it is through this specifc faith that one accesses salvation as the new reality that springs from the death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah, how much of this reality is supposed to concretely shape the life of an ekklesia whose customs and rituals are said to follow those of the synagogue? Can the Jewish ekklesia be part of the apostolic Ekklesia if no original form of life derives from faith in Yeshua’s salvation?

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This aspect never comes out clearly in Kinzer’s characterization of the “Jewish side” of the global Ekklesia, as I will show later in the book. I surmise that Kinzer’s inability to take the measure of the collective grace that stems from the Passion and the Resurrection of Yeshua derives from the widely spread diffculty to face the issue of Jewish responsibility related to the crucifxion. But no adequate picture of the Church of Christ, of the Ekklesia in the full sense of the term, can arise without such an awareness since this grace defnes the very life of the Ekklesia. This, in my opinion, is the Ur Problem of Kinzer’s ecclesiology: that is, the most fundamental issue affecting its theoretical premises. I will come back to it as the present argument proceeds. In sum, Messianic theology cannot possibly conceive the inner character of a Jewish ekklesia without understanding in what manner this ekklesia is rooted in Yeshua’s salvation. This character hangs upon the connection between Yeshua’s salvation and Jews as a people. If it is true, as Messianic theology claims, that this people as such has an ecclesiological signifcance, being collectively the object of Yeshua’s salvation, then one must address the “elephant in the room” and tackle the very issue that is so seldom addressed in Messianic settings; namely, why is it so that the relationship between Jews and Yeshua is so often depicted in negative terms in the Gospels?

2. RETHINKING THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

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2.1. The Salvation of Israel qua Israel: Going beyond the Fathers’ Understanding of the Gospel At this point, we see how the theological issues of Israel beyond the Church and Israel within the Church both relate to the issue of Christ’s salvation of Israel. If Messianic Judaism is called to exist as a dimension integral to a fully realized Catholic Church—or to constitute a fully apostolic Jewish ekklesia within the Church of Christ—it is because Christ’s salvation is not only meant for Jews as individuals (each one being defned by a unique sum of psychological and physical features just like all other individuals on earth) but for Jews qua Jews; that is, members of a people originally blessed by God as such and endowed with its own life and tradition. This implies that Christ’s salvation, at it is manifested in Scriptures, somehow encompasses the nation that is therein depicted as rejecting it, a nation whose collective existence/survival is connected with the dismissal of this salvation. The traditional Christian view is that salvation is destined to all the nations of the earth except Jews because Jews are the only ones that have turned away from it as

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a nation. What I suggest is that salvation is given to the Jews as a nation, frst of all nations and once and for all, even if and when they turn away from it. If Israel is destined to exist within the Church as a Jewish ekklesia, then Israel beyond the Church, as an entity that defnes itself through the dismissal of Christ’s salvation, must in some way be the object of Christ’s salvation. But how? In what way? As was just said, one must come to terms with Jewish collective responsibility for the rejection of Yeshua in order to envisage the possibility of collective salvation of the Jewish nation in Yeshua. One must, therefore, take up an issue that neither the Catholic Magisterium nor Messianic Jewish theology are eager to consider. Catholic theologians, just as a majority of their nonCatholic colleagues, loathe referring to a notion—Jewish collective responsibility for the death of Christ—that lies at the source of traditional Christian anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, the same notion seems incompatible with the very tenet of Messianic Judaism—the election of Israel in Yeshua, so that it is currently ignored or reduced to insignifcance by Messianic Jewish theologians. Both attitudes proceed from a logical premise that remains to be examined; namely, the identifcation between lethal Jewish hostility to Yeshua and the casting of the Jewish nation out of God’s salvifc design in Yeshua. Since this identifcation goes back to the Fathers of the Church, assessing whether it is correct requires a reading of the texts that goes beyond the Patristic layer of interpretation. This is much more diffcult than it seems. The Fathers of the Church are not called so by coincidence. They did not only provide the Church with an understanding of the Gospel. Their explanation of the Gospels provided the Church with the primary understanding of herself. Their commentaries forged the self-awareness of the Church as the goal of the whole sacred history told in Scriptures. The Fathers connected the very possibility of the emergence of the Church as a new, pristine reality with the dismissal of the much older entity, Israel, that used to think of itself as the object of God’s eternal love while it was merely the embodiment of a transitory stage between Adam and Christ. For the Fathers, the Gospels were the very place where this dismissal was depicted, a dismissal that all the other writings of the New Testament would explain and illustrate, each in its own manner. Certainly, the writings of the New Testament the Fathers commented upon pertained to settings that were totally different from theirs. These were almost integrally the product of a culture that saw itself both as heir and part of the tradition of Israel. The authors of the New Testament moved within this Jewish cultural and religious space even if the place they occupied was far from being acknowledged in other sectors of the same space. One needs, therefore, to ask whether the emphasis of the Fathers on the Church as the new reality created by God at the end of history and as the end of history did

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not bar them from deciphering the message conveyed by the Gospels regarding the old entity, Israel, in which they saw nothing but obsolescence. The problem is that the cultural memory of contemporary Christians is so much indebted, knowingly or not, to a foreign hermeneutical framework, a framework that goes back to the Fathers of the Church (the so-called replacement theory), that developing an understanding of the New Testament texts that would be independent of this hermeneutical framework is next to impossible In other words, if we do not see what we are looking for—the manifestation of a salvation destined to Israel qua Israel—in the New Testament writings, this might be due to the fact that the very eyeglasses—the Patristic layer of interpretation—that we mechanically, out of an ancestral tradition, put on our noses in order to understand these texts, hide the very object of our inquiry from our sight. Of course, exegetes can endeavor to show that there are other ways to read specifc writings in the corpus of the New Testament than through the grid of the “replacement theory” of the Fathers. But in order to avoid repeatedly falling back on the “replacement” type of interpretation, individual studies of isolated texts are not enough. One would need to have a global exegesis of all the texts that would be the object of a massive consensus, just as it used to be the case for the replacement theory, the coherence of which would challenge and eventually prevail over that of the replacement theory. While this rival explanation does not yet exist, one can test the coherence of the Fathers’ hermeneutical framework by examining to what extent it manages to successfully account for critical passages regarding the salvation—or lack of it—of Israel. In other words, I suggest taking a closer look at the discrepancies between the text of the Gospels and their commentaries by the Fathers. This critical stance toward the Fathers of the Church is not meant to deny the prodigious wealth of spiritual and theological insights conveyed in their writings. But the issue of the salvation of Israel qua Israel, for the reasons just provided, appears to be one of the aspects of the Fathers’ theological and spiritual legacy that, in my opinion, needs to be thoroughly revisited. Regarding the salvation of Israel, the reading of the Fathers could be epitomized by one single sentence from John’s Prologue: “He came to what was his own (τὰ ἴδια), and his own people (οἱ ἴδιοι) did not accept him” (John 1:11). This is more than a statement about historical facts. The verse from the Prologue is about the destiny of Israel according to God’s providential design. But what is this destiny according to John? I would link the question raised by the verse with all the allegedly “anti-Jewish” passages of the New Testament. To authors who, if they were not all Jews—which remains to be established— were all deeply indebted to the Jewish culture of their time, reporting the multifarious tension between Yeshua and “his own people,” according to John’s expression, must have been doing history and theology inseparably. After all, one of the two main protagonists in the story was the nation that until then had

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been the carrier of God’s Promise as well as God’s Presence. The very fact that these authors show no sign of theological embarrassment while depicting the growing estrangement between Jesus and those whom John’s Gospel elsewhere calls “the Jews” seems to indicate that they had a clear understanding of the manner in which this tragic drama was part of God’s providential design. Still, if one discards the absurd hypothesis of some general, instinctive, and incomprehensible “Jewish self-hatred” among the frst generations of disciples of Christ, this manner remains as veiled to us as it was clear to them. The real diffculty is that one cannot speak of a unilaterally negative portrayal of Jews in the Gospels. In many passages, the salvation that Christ brings about is presented as concerning Israel in the frst place. Those passages do not only state that Christ came with the goal of saving his people as if his intention might not have succeeded. They seem to imply that the coming of Christ did save his people. As I consider a few examples, I do not mean to imply that the existence of passages that speak in favor of Israel’s salvation in Yeshua a priori excludes that of other passages that, in the Gospels or elsewhere in the New Testament, would explicitly or implicitly deny such salvation. What I suggest is that such a diversity constrains us to think. While the theological insights of one author may differ from another within the same canonical corpus, and while no author of the New Testament is bound to demonstrate perfect conceptual coherence, the issue of Israel’s destiny was so central to all of them that these authors could hardly have left it open to a multiplicity of mutually exclusive interpretations. The very fact that they did not attempt to develop a harmonious explanation that would have reconciled seemingly opposite statements or passages is the sign that, for them, a deep theological coherence ran through this diversity, a coherence that is no longer obvious to us but that we are challenged to rediscover. In order to do this, I will frst examine the passages that speak about the salvation of Israel. Should we take them at face value? How do they make sense when they are read in the dark light of the events related to the Passion of Yeshua? 2.2. Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc Dimittis: Dealing with the Announcement of Israel’s Salvation In the hymn of praise that comes out of the lips of Mary, the mother of Jesus, upon her meeting with her cousin Elisabeth, what the Latin liturgy calls the Magnifcat, there is no mention of non-Jews: He has helped his servant Israel (ἀντελάβετο Ἰσραὴλ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ), in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1:54–55)

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On this point, the so-called Benedictus, the hymn in which Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, praises God’s wonders after recovering his ability to speak, echoes the Magnifcat:

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Blessed be the Lord God of Israel (κύριος ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ), for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them (ἐποίησεν λύτρωσιν τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ) . . . And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins (τοῦ δοῦναι γνῶσιν σωτηρίας τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ ἐν ἀφέσει ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν). (Luke 1:68:76–77)

There is no doubt that the people who will “know” or experience “salvation” (v.77) is the same people—that of “the God of Israel”—that is proclaimed blessed earlier (v.68), since this knowledge-experience gives out the reason why it is called blessed. The same logic applies to the message in which the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and reveals him the divine nature of Mary’s offshoot: “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ) from their sins” (Matt 1:21). If the people that is mentioned is not the concrete people of Israel, to whom Jesus belonged by birth, the very intent of the angel to give to Mary a reason that she would understand for the name becomes pointless. Meanwhile, in the Nunc Dimittis, the canticle that Simeon utters at the sight of Mary holding her babe in the Temple of Jerusalem, the way Israel partakes of salvation is carefully distinguished from that of “the nations,” τὰ ἔθνη (Greek) or goyim (Hebrew), that is, the non-Jews: for my eyes have seen your salvation (τὸ σωτήριόν σου), which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples (πάντων τῶν λαῶν), a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel (φῶς εἰς ἀποκάλυψιν ἐθνῶν καὶ δόξαν λαοῦ σου Ἰσραήλ). (Luke 2:30–32)

Why bother distinguishing Israel from the rest of the nations, if not because this lifts all possible doubts about the fact that Israel as an ethnic entity is somehow included in Christ’s salvation?

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It is not diffcult to show that the Fathers’ reading of such passages, ingenious though it is at times, remains utterly problematic. One line of interpretation refers to the Jewish origin of Jesus and the legacy of the Old Covenant. Origen (+254)—–if not a Father of the Church, then doubtlessly one of their main sources of inspiration—comments on the verses from the Benedictus in the following manner: “He brought redemption to his people, and raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David because Christ was born of the seed of David according to the fesh.”15 Origen’s acknowledgment of a salvation destined to the people of Israel on behalf of the Jewish dimension of God’s incarnation is unambiguous. Still, in a number of other passages, Origen voices the position that will become commonplace in Patristic literature: Gentiles inherited salvation after Jews spurned it. Commenting on Lev 21:13 and observing that the words “from his race” are absent from the Hebrew textual tradition, Origen writes: “The presence of God was taken from them, the adoption of sons was taken from them and was transferred to the Church of Christ. Therefore, they have not written that they are ‘from the race’ of Christ, just as they are not worthy to be [of it].”16 Besides postponing the salvation of Israel to the end of times—a line of thinking Origen is familiar with17—the only possible way to justify the victorious proclamation of the Benedictus is to reduce this salvation to the Jews who embraced faith and became the frst members of the Church. Commenting the frst verses of c.3 in the Gospel of Luke, Origen writes: “If salvation were to be proclaimed only to those of the Gentiles who were destined to believe, and if Israel were to be totally excluded, it would have been enough to say, ‘In the ffteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea.’ But, since many from Judea and Galilee were destined to believe, these kingdoms [Trachonitis, Iturea, Abilene…] too were put in the heading.”18 Still, these “many” are called to become part of a new people by virtue of faith; they have ipso facto relinquished “the people of Israel who have been cast down from on high.”19 The reason why the Benedictus appears to evoke an imminent and collective salvation of Israel remains therefore mysterious. Commenting the Magnifcat, Cyril of Alexandria (+444) also refers to the ethnic origin of Christ: “In another sense Christ is the glory of Israel, for He came of them according to the fesh, though He be ‘God over all, and blessed for evermore.’ ”20 However, claiming that Christ is the “glory of Israel” is not equivalent to claiming that Christ saves Israel. While Christ is the savior, he might be called the “glory of Israel” in regard to his deed of salvation in favor of all the nations except Israel. In point of fact, the salvation Cyril has in mind does not concern Israel as a concrete people. As soon as Cyril’s comments

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focus on salvation, there is a leap to a metaphorical, deeply theologized level of meaning. “His people” is now understood as the new people who will put their faith in Jesus when the time comes, in contrast to the “old people” of Israel.21 The following comment on the same verse comes right after the equivalence that Cyril draws between “and sent the rich away empty” (1:53), and the Jews having refused to draw near humbly to the Incarnate One, [the Jews] were sent empty away, carrying nothing with them, neither faith nor knowledge, nor the hope of blessings. For verily they became both outcasts from the earthly Jerusalem, and aliens from the glorious life that is to be revealed, because they received not the Prince of Life, but even crucifed the Lord of Glory, and abandoned the fountain of living water, and set at naught the bread that came down from heaven.22

If so, why is it said at the following verse (1:54) that God “has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy”? Because here the term “Israel,” according to Cyril, is no longer referred to the Jewish nation:

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He hath taken hold of Israel—not of the Israel according to the fesh, and who prides himself on the bare name, but of him who is so after the Spirit, and according to the true meaning of the appellation—even such as look unto God, and believe in Him, and obtain through the Son the adoption of sons, according to the Word that was spoken, and the promise made to the prophets and patriarchs of old.23

If Israel is still thought to mean Israel, it is in a very restrictive way, as applying to the small remnant of those from the people who decided to follow Christ and were for that matter persecuted by those who are repeatedly called “the Jews” in John’s Gospel. Hence, the following comment of Cyril on the Nunc Dimittis: Christ therefore became the Gentiles’ light for revelation: but also for the glory of Israel. For even granting that some of them proved insolent, and disobedient, and with minds void of understanding, yet is there a remnant saved, and admitted unto glory through Christ. And the frst fruits of these were the divine disciples, the brightness of whose renown lightens the whole world.24

Here, the Fathers appear to treat an important rule of Christian hermeneutics—a rule that they have themselves formulated and consistently applied elsewhere—lightly. The allegorical level (“Spiritual Israel”) should not substitute itself to the literal one (“Old Testament Israel”) but rather unfold

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another, deeper, layer of meaning that complements the literal sense. As Augustine observes, “For what else is it than superlative impudence for one to interpret in his own favour any allegorical statements, unless he has also plain testimonies, by the light of which the obscure meaning of the former may be made manifest.”25 The truth is that the passages quoted earlier deal with the realization of the prophetical promises made to the nation of Israel in ancient times. The Nunc Dimittis echoes here the Book of Isaiah: And now saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, and that Israel be gathered unto Him—for I am honourable in the eyes of the LORD, and my God has become my strength—Yea, He saith: ‘It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the offspring of Israel; I will also give thee for a light of the nations, that My salvation may be unto the end of the earth. (Isa 49:5–6)

Throughout Scriptures, “His [God’s] people” is almost a technical expression that designates the nation of Israel in contrast to the other peoples or “the nations.” Here are a few examples:

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• “And the LORD repented of the evil which He said He would do unto His people) (ποιῆσαι τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ/ ‫( ”) ַלע ֲׂ֥שֹות ְל ַעּמֹֽו‬Exod 32:14). • “And when Hezekiah and the princes came and saw the heaps, they blessed the LORD, and His people Israel (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ Ισραηλ/ 2(“ )‫ו ֵ ְ֖את ע ַּ֥מֹו יִׂש ְָראֵ ֽל‬ Chr 31:8). • “[Noemi] Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the feld of Moab; for she had heard in the feld of Moab how that the LORD had remembered His people (ἐπέσκεπται κύριος τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ/ ‫ )ּכִ ֽי־פ ַ ָ֤קד י ְהוָה֙ אֶת־ע ַּ֔מֹו‬in giving them bread” (Ruth 1:6). Even in the Epistle to the Romans, Paul uses the term with this precise meaning: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ)? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ὃν προέγνω)” (Rom 11:1). The joy of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon comes from the fact that God has decided to realize his promise and save the whole nation of Israel. The message of angel(s) would hardly have had the same effect, had they known that it reserved salvation for a few elect while the rest of the nation was meant to fall away from the favor of God.26 The idea that by “salvation” of Israel, what the angelic message truly implied was rather its almost complete rejection

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leaves us with the perplexing picture of a deceitful God. Actually, that deceit would not only concern these fgures of the New Testament; it would affect the whole narrative of the Old Testament. The way God fulflls his repeated promises of salvation to “His people” would be nothing but a cruel delusion. True, most Christians are accustomed to such a general perspective on sacred history. They see the expectation of Israel going crescendo through the Old Testament and reaching their climax with the advent of Jesus Christ—only to be wrecked as the narrative of the Gospels unfolds. Eventually, these promises are realized in the Church that arises out of the ashes of Messianic Jewish hopes. But this merely means that most Christians are accustomed to living without giving much thought to the manner in which this overall scheme sets in question the faithfulness of God to Himself. The literal meaning of these passages is so conspicuous that the Fathers developed a third line of interpretation that is more in tune with it. It is worth mentioning the rather fantastic explanation that John Chrysostom gives of Matt 1:21. According to him, the angel was simply ignorant of God’s salvifc design in Christ as Paul expounds it in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). Indeed, right after this proclamation, Paul characterizes the purpose of the mystery destined to be revealed as “so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10). Accordingly, Chrysostom assumes that, if the angel spoke in this manner to Mary, it is because he did not yet know what was to be later revealed “through the Church”: What then is this? Did not Angels know it? No, nothing of it; for if Principalities knew it not, much less could Angels ever have known it. What then? Did not even Archangels know it? No, nor even they. But whence were they going to know it? Who was to reveal it? When we were taught it, then were they also by us. For hear what the Angel saith to Joseph; “Thou shalt call His Name Jesus, for it is He that shall save His people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). Paul himself was sent to the Gentiles while the other apostles to those of the Circumcision. So that the more marvellous and astonishing commission was given, saith he, “to me, who am less than the least.”27

The very idea that God would not entrust to his angel the true meaning of the event he was supposed to announce to Mary witnesses the diffculty of reconciling the unambiguous literal sense of the angelic message—the salvation of Israel—with the apparent story of the Gospels—the failure of Israel to

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welcome its salvation. According to Chrysostom, God is sincerely misleading Mary due to the angel’s ignorance of the real meaning of the message he conveys, and this has the consequence of ascribing guile to the Sender of the divine message. True, Chrysostom sees this guile as tending toward the achievement of a most wondrous goal; namely, the establishment of a Church that would be formed of a new people, uniting Gentiles together with a remnant from the Circumcision. That, instead of being saved, the greatest part of the people of Israel should be sacrifced on the altar of such a magnifcent design was manifestly not a major concern for Chrysostom. Be that as it may, there remains something endlessly troubling with the notion of a cunning God that, after repeatedly promising salvation to the people of Israel, eventually offers it to an entity that would thrive on the spiritual and material ruin of the same people. Of course, it can be argued that God was not deceitful since salvation in Jesus Christ was really offered to the nation of Israel. In this case the words of the angel could have a temporary and limited value as they are conditioned by the acceptance of Christ’s salvation by Israel.28 Chrysostom adopts this line of interpretation in his commentary to the Letter to the Hebrews as he draws a parallel between Matt 1:21 and Heb 2:17. Why does Paul affrm that Christ became a fully human high priest so as “to make a sacrifce of atonement for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17)? As he provides an answer to this question, Chrysostom refers to Matt 1:21: Since [Jews], Chrysostom writes, wished for something great, and to have an advantage over the [converts] from the Gentiles, he shows that they have an advantage in this while he did not hurt those from the Gentiles at all. In what respect now is this? Because of them is the salvation, because He took hold of them frst, because from that race He assumed fesh. . . . Hereby he both gives honor to the Patriarch, and shows also what “the seed of Abraham” is. He reminds them of the promise made to him, saying, “To thee and to thy seed will I give this land” (Gen 13:15); showing by the very least thing, the nearness [of the relationship] in that they were ‘all of one.’ But that nearness was not great: [so] he comes back to this, and thenceforward dwells upon the dispensation which was after the fesh, and says, Even the mere willing to become a man was a proof of great care and love; but now it is not this alone, but there are also the undying benefts which are bestowed on us through Him, for, he says, “to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” Why said he not, of the world, instead of “the people”? for He bare away the sins of all. Because thus far his discourse was concerning them [the Hebrews]. Since the Angel also said to Joseph, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people” (Matt 1:21). For this too ought to have taken place frst, and for this purpose He came, to save them and then through them the rest, although the contrary came to pass.29

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The frst intention of God was to save Gentiles through Jews after they welcome the Good News conveyed by Christ—hence the words of the angel to Mary in Matt 1:21 and the statement from the Epistle to the Hebrews (2:17). But the contrary came to pass: the Jews did not welcome the Good News, and they had to be converted through the agency of a new people mostly composed of Gentiles. Once again, the fact that plan B has the damnation of the greatest part of Israel for a consequence is not an issue for Chrysostom. After all, the “nearness” of Israel to God was not that “great.” What matters is that, when entrusting His angel with a message of salvation for His people Israel, God did not really lie to Joseph—although He did not tell the whole truth. The problem with this line of interpretation is no longer that God is a liar; it is rather that God is pictured as someone our contemporaries would call a “looser.” Why did God need a plan B (the salvation of a few from Israel through Gentile Believers)? Why did the Almighty rather not fnd a way to implement plan A (the salvation of Gentiles through a believing Israel)? It sounds as if God had become entangled in His own debt with Israel: “Because of them is the salvation, because He took hold of them frst, because from that race He assumed fesh.” God had to try, even if He knew beforehand that his good intentions would be resisted by His hard-necked people. But such an exegesis challenges Scriptures as well as theological commonsense: The Messiah did not come because of the promises that God had made to Israel; it is the promises to Israel that were made on account of the coming of the Messiah. Why make these promises in the frst place if God knew beforehand that they would become an obstacle to the salvifc mission of His Messiah? If God is truly all-mighty and knows the faws of human free decisions before their consequences materialize, one must assume, together with Paul and the unanimity of the Fathers, that already before being set in motion, His original plan encompassed the unbelief of a majority of Jews as they were about to be confronted with their true Messiah. But in this case why does the announcement of this original plan to Mary, Zechariah, Joseph, and Simeon not contain any hint about the misfortune that would befall Israel? Why does it instead focus on the Incarnation as the source of Israel’s blessedness? Obviously the Fathers of the Church struggled to make sense of the wording of the messages of salvation addressed to Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and Simeon, all of which seem to point to the nation of Israel as its immediate, if not exclusive, object. If one rules out the frst line of Patristic interpretation that is clearly irrelevant to the case (salvation “from Israel” and not “for Israel”), the only possibility of avoiding the theological impasse of the third line (God really wanted to save Israel but failed to do so) is to opt for the second (what is intended is the salvation of “Israel according to the Spirit”— the Church—and not “according to the fesh”). But how could one retain an interpretation that obliterates the obvious literal meaning of the passage in question?

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Blaming the authors of the New Testament writings for failing to provide a coherent theological framework on such a quintessential issue as the salvation of Israel should be a last-resort decision.30 One ought frst to be certain that no other way of making sense of these texts is conceivable. The reason why the Fathers found it so diffcult to cope with the literal meaning of these passages is obvious. They worked on the premise that the end of the Gospel—the passion and crucifxion of Jesus—was incompatible with the salvation of Israel announced at its beginning due to the fateful role played by Jews in these tragic events. The question is whether this premise can be revisited. The Fathers read the episodes that relate to Israel’s rejection of its Messiah in the joyful light of the salvation announced to Israel at the beginning of the Gospel. But what would happen if one reversed this hermeneutical grid? Could one read the dramatic events of the Passion in the light of Israel’s salvation? At frst sight, the challenge seems to be insuperable. Is not this rejection the very opposite of the welcoming of salvation through faith? The question is, therefore, if and especially how it is conceivable that God would save the nation of Israel through the very rejection of God’s Messiah by this nation. In order to formulate an answer we will need to take a closer look at the core of the Christian drama: the death of Israel’s Messiah on a Cross and the manner in which the event relates to the Jewish nation according to the Gospels. I will focus on the two passages or elements to which the Fathers of the Church mainly refer when they point to the rejection of Israel as a theological evidence gleaned from the letter of the Gospels: Matt 27:25 (“His blood be on us”) and John 18:38–19:1 (the “Jews” requesting that Christ be crucifed).31 As I proceed, I will put into question Kinzer’s interpretation of these passages as partaking of a concerted effort to “water down” their theological content. 2.3. Matthew’s Blood 2.3.1. A Nation’s “Self-curse” The passage of the Gospel of Matthew that is parallel to John 18:38–19:1; namely, the moment when Pilate asks the people gathered in the Praetorium, whether they would like him to release Jesus instead of Barabbas, the robber, contains an original insert that is found nowhere else in the Gospels: The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” All of them said, “Let him be crucifed!” Then he asked, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the

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more, “Let him be crucifed!” So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” So he released Barabbas for them; and after fogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucifed. (Matt 27:21–26)

The theology of the rejection of Israel as well as the tradition of Christian anti-Semitism to which it gave rise, fnd one of their main sources in Matthew’s insert. Saint Jerome voices the position that will become common among Church Fathers when he reads in this verse the manifestation of God’s intention to exclude Jews from all the nations destined to salvation: “This imprecation upon the Jews continues until the present day. The Lord’s blood will not be removed from them. This is why it says through Isaiah: ‘If you wash your hands before me, I will not listen; for your hands are full of blood.’ The Jews have left the best heritage to their children, saying: ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children.’ ”32 In one of his letters, Augustine makes clear that only conversion to Christ can avoid damnation to those who participated in his execution:

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This is the setting for the passage you posed for explanation: ‘As concerning the Gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake.’ Now, the price of our redemption is the Blood of Christ, who could manifestly not be killed except by His enemies. . . . And even of those enemies who crucifed the Lord, several were converted and stood forth as elect, but they became elect only when they were converted.33

If the Jews are excluded and condemned, it is precisely because they assumed full responsibility for the killing of Christ when all the people exclaimed: “His blood be upon us.” As St. John Chrysostom writes, this exclamation takes away all responsibility from the Romans: For as though [Jews] were afraid lest they should seem to fall short at all in the crime, having killed the prophets with their own hands, but this man with the sentence of a judge, so they do in every deed; and make it the work of their own hands, and condemn and sentence both among themselves and before Pilate, saying, “His blood be on us and on our children,” and insult Him, and do despite unto Him themselves, binding Him, leading Him away, and render themselves authors of the spiteful acts done by the soldiers, and nail Him to the cross, and revile Him, and spit at Him, and deride Him. For Pilate contributed nothing in this matter, but they themselves did everything, becoming accusers, and judges, and executioners, and all.34

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The later Church tradition did not stray much from this general idea. Let me quote Bossuet, a bishop of the seventeenth century who enjoys the reputation of being France’s greatest Catholic orator: “ ‘His blood be upon us and our children.’ So will it be, you accursed race! Your wish will be superabundantly fulflled. This blood will pursue you down to your last children, until the day when the Lord, growing weary of avenging Himself, will recall your pathetic remains.”35 In the Commentary on Matthew written by Richard C. H. Lenski, the German American Lutheran exegete, a commentary published after World War II, one can still read:

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Something demoniacal possesses these Jews. As far as the blood with which Pilate dreads to stain his hands is concerned—these Jews make light of it. They offer to take it completely off the governor’s hands and to load it upon themselves. That implies that they assume all the guilt, that they make themselves liable for any punishment that may follow, that they will face God’s justice and will suffer his wrath. And to this sacrilegious declaration they add even their children, all future generations of Jews. Why did these Jews have to challenge God’s justice in so horrible a way? Why did they not keep still and let Pilate indulge in his little performance with the water? Was the devil riding them so completely that they cared not what damnation they called down on themselves?36

Even more recently, an exegete as little suspect of anti-Semitism as Daniel Marguerat could write in a terse and often quoted sentence: “By this cry, Israel has wiped itself out of the history of salvation!”37 There is little doubt the authors of NA §4 had precisely Matthew’s insert in mind when they wrote that “what happened in [Christ’s] passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” But how are we then to read this passage in a way that discards the traditional anti-Jewish interpretation of it? Kinzer suggests a few alternative readings of Matthew’s insert: The verse could be understood to refer merely to the Jews of Jerusalem, and ‘our children’ could be taken to mean only one generation, the generation that experienced the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Or the crowd could be seen as intending a more global self-imprecation, but that intent could be seen as nullifed by God’s mercy. Or the words of the crowd could be seen not as an effective self-imposed curse but instead as a mere “formula for ratifying a judicial sentence.”38

Does that mean that these alternative readings are more convincing than— or at least equally convincing as—the traditional one? Kinzer concedes that the latter “cannot be defnitively refuted on exegetical grounds alone.”39

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But what if the other options do not stand the least scrutiny? One can well identify the Jews of Matthew with the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But why only here? Why are Jews understood to simply mean Jews only whenever the content of these passages refects positively on the Jewish nation? Does dismissing this identifcation whenever scripture is less favorable to the Jews prove anything more than eagerness to avoid the question? True, one can also limit the relevance of Matthew’s insert to the generation that experienced the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. But why omit the fact that this destruction meant for the Jewish nation the beginning of a bi-millennial exile that in some respect continues until this day? Is this omission not destined to silence the prophetical resonance that inevitably arises from this verse? Certainly, one may claim that God has nullifed this attempt at selfimprecation. But this only confrms that Matthew deliberately focused his narrative on a declaration that, from his point of view, had fatal implications for the Jewish nation. And what was his purpose when he inserted it without any restrictive clause if he thought that God would eventually “nullify” it? Finally, it is diffcult to see how the ratifcation of a judicial sentence could eliminate the notion of an “effective self-imposed curse” since it implies a direct and collective Jewish involvement in the process that led to the death of Israel’s Messiah. The truth is that the only reason that would incline a reader to adopt these alternative interpretations is a reluctance to uphold the traditional one. But personal reluctance to consider a hypothesis, even deriving from the most morally praiseworthy intentions, is hardly a proof that this hypothesis is irrelevant. Of course, one can point to ethical reasons when honest exegetical analysis stumbles on a variety of equally plausible hypotheses. This has been argued by exegetes such as Charles H. Cosgrove and David Rensberger to whom Kinzer refers.40 But ethical reasons cannot excuse a scholar from dismissing hypotheses that are more plausible than others. There is no denying that “living after the Holocaust, we know more vividly than in any previous generation what the traditional interpretation of Matthew 27:25 can lead to.”41 But neither from a logical nor from a scientifc point of view does this statement allow us to endorse Kinzer’s conclusion: “Therefore, we know on ethical grounds that it must be false.”42 Non sequitur: that some criminals might draw a justifcation of their evil deeds from texts that some good people hold in high esteem does not entail that their reading of these texts is false. It is equally possible that good people are misled when they read these texts differently.43 Legitimate theoretical doubt can be the ground for proposing the most ethical explanation possible. But ethical considerations can never serve as a ground to exclude theoretically valid interpretations. We never “know” facts “on ethical grounds.” On such grounds, we can only

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judge that they are morally good or wrong. And sometimes we are forced to admit that a fact that we know for true is morally wrong even when we are not inclined to do so. Actually, unbiased analysis of the insert shows that neutralizing its theological intent is a somewhat futile endeavor. In this verse, for the frst and also the last time in the whole Passion narrative, Matthew does not speak about the crowd, ὄχλος, or the crowds, ὄχλοι. The subject becomes λαóς: the people or the nation. According to its original formulation, the expression is even more eloquent: πᾶς ὁ λαóς, “the whole nation.” In an overwhelming number of passages of the Old Testament, this expression designates Israel as a community or a nation.44 It is used as a haunting leitmotiv in Deut 27:9–26, a chapter that describes how the Jews, on the point of crossing the Jordan and entering the Land are summoned by Moses to freely, unanimously, and solemnly choose the Torah: And Moses and the priests the Levites spoke unto all Israel, παντὶ Ισραηλ, ‫ ּכָל־יִׂש ְָר ֵ ֖אל‬saying: “Keep silence, and hear, O Israel; this day thou art become a people unto the LORD thy God. ‫ַיהו֖ה אֱֹלהֶ ֽיָך׃‬ ָ ‫֣ית ְל ָ֔עם ל‬ ֽ ָ ‫ׁשמַע֙ יִׂש ְָר ֵ֔אל ַהּיֹ֤ום ַהּזֶה֙ נִ ְה ֵי‬ ְ γέγονας εἰς λαὸν κυρίῳ τῷ θεῷ σου, Thou shalt therefore hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and do His commandments and His statutes, which I command thee this day.” And Moses charged the people the same day, saying: ““These shall stand upon mount Gerizim to bless the people, when ye are passed over the Jordan: Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Joseph, and Benjamin; and these shall stand upon mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. And the Levites shall speak, and say unto all the men of Israel ‫ָל־א֥יׁש יִׂש ְָר ֵ ֖אל‬ ִ ‫אֶל־ּכ‬ παντὶ Ισραηλ with a loud voice: Cursed be the man that maketh a graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and setteth it up in secret. And all the people shall answer ‫כָל־ה ָָע֛ם‬ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς and say: Amen. πᾶς ὁ λαὸς, “the whole nation” is an expression that comes back eleven times in the eleven verses that summarize the content of Israel’s Torah.

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I do not think it is a coincidence if Matthew uses the same expression to describe another choice which, as tragic as it is this time, is as free, unanimous, and solemn as the one made by the sons and daughters of Israel on the point of inheriting the Land. Arguing with a number of scholars that Matthew cannot designate Israel as an entity because they were Jews among Jesus’s disciples makes as little sense as claiming that John cannot have in mind the people of Israel when he writes that Christ “came to his own” and that his own “did not receive him” (John 1:11). Is John not a Jew? Does he not add in the same passage “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God?” Obviously, for John, the fact that some among “his own” did receive Yeshua as disciples does not exclude the fact that Yeshua’s “own” did not receive him as a people.45 The theological message of Matthew’s insert is unquestionably clear: the whole Jewish nation takes responsibility for the death of Israel’s Messiah. Christian tradition built on this message to claim that the Jewish nation was henceforth enemy to Christ, a teaching which certainly provides the mental background to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany. The desire of the Catholic Magisterium to distance itself from such teaching is understandable. Still, Messianic theology cannot satisfy itself with a simple denial. As we saw earlier, from a Messianic point of view, it is vitally important to establish that the Jewish nation can positively rely on the favor of Israel’s Messiah, even after what happened almost 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. Otherwise the very attempt of disciples of Yeshua to establish a distinct ecclesial movement on behalf of Israel’s election would prove to be pointless. The question, therefore, reads as follows: Is there a way to accept the negative message of the passage and simultaneously dismiss the traditional inference according to which this message implies the cancellation of the life-saving Covenant between the Messiah of Israel and Israel as a nation? In my opinion there is. One needs to distinguish two layers of meaning, each justifed in its own right: the conscious and deliberate attitude of the people is the frst one; the prophetical inspiration that unconsciously pervades this attitude is the second. I will argue that this second level of meaning, far from pointing to the cancellation of Israel’s Covenant with God, tells about its renewal. 2.3.2. Matthean Double-entendre Francesco Vattioni is probably the frst who did not only point to the importance of the Old Testament allusions in this verse but argued, albeit in a very

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succinct manner, that these allusions were bound to completely reverse its traditional interpretation.46 Other contributions followed on the same line.47 I will briefy state a few elements that play in favor of such fundamental reconsideration. The frst one is the parallel with Exod 24. I already referred to the moment when Israel is summoned by Moses to pledge allegiance to Torah before crossing the Jordan and entering the Land. The whole episode comes to its conclusion with the following verses in Exod 24: “Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of the Lord and all the rules; and all the people [πᾶς ὁ λαὸς once again] answered with one voice, saying, ‘All the things that the Lord has commanded we will do’.” (Exod 24:3). On the following day, Moses solemnly seals the Covenant between the people of Israel and their God:

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[Moses] designated some young men among the Israelites, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrifced bulls as offerings of well-being to the LORD. Moses took one part of the blood and put it in basins, and the other part of the blood he dashed against the altar. Then he took the record of the Covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will faithfully do!” Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people (‫ ) ַוּיִז ְ֖ר ֹק עַל־ה ָ ָ֑עם‬and said, “This is the blood of the Covenant (‫)דֽם־ ַהּב ְִרי ֙ת‬, ַ that the LORD now makes with you concerning all these commands.” (Exod 24:5–8)

Here, the blood poured out on the λαóς is not a blood of condemnation for their disobedience. On the contrary, it is the Covenant-blood that is the token of their future obedience. The heart of the parallel between the death of Christ and this Covenantblood is fairly obvious. It is summed up in one word: sin. Being unable to abide by the words of the Torah, the people that are heading toward spiritual death must make sacrifcial atonement for their sins, so as to be ­reestablished in God’s Covenant of life. This logic could not be more clearly and forcefully expressed than in Lev 17: “For the life of the fesh is in the blood (‫)נפֶׁש ַה ָּבׂש ָ֘ר ּב ָ ַּ֣דם‬, ֣ ֶ and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your lives upon the altar; it is the blood, as life, that effects expiation ‫( ”)־הַּדָ ֥ם ֖הּוא ּבַּנֶ ֥פֶׁש יְכַּפֵ ֽר‬Lev 17:11). It is through the pouring of blood that a Covenant sealed by blood keeps its positive power instead of being changed into a witness of God’s condemnation. We read about the atoning value of sacrifces of animals even before the existence of a Temple in Jerusalem. The book of Deuteronomy tells about the sacrifce that the children of Israel must carry out to purify the Land when

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somebody is found killed and the perpetrators are unknown. The heifer that will be sacrifced on that occasion will ward off the punishment that would otherwise fall on the people:

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Then all the elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi. And they shall make this declaration: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Absolve, O LORD, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.” (Deut 21:6–8)48

As is well-known, the Book of Leviticus describes at length the variety of sacrifces associated with the Temple of Jerusalem. The blood of animals is poured in the various sacred areas of the Temple to atone for the sins of Israel. Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’s Passion seems to allude to two Temple sacrifcial rituals in particular. One is that of the red heifer, a sacrifce offered in the case of minor deflements like contacts with a corpse (see Num 9); the other is that of the scapegoat on Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of sacrifce celebrated once a year to purify the Shrine of the Temple, defled by the serious and intentional sins of Israel’s children (Lev 16). Just as Christ dies outside the city, the red heifer is sacrifced outside its walls and the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement is sent far away from the city. Although Matthew skips the detail of the branch of hyssop—an important element of the sacrifce of the red heifer (Num 19:6) that John symbolically recalls in his own narrative of the Passion (19:29)—he does not omit the scarlet robe, which likens Christ to the red heifer (27:28). Meanwhile the releasing of Barabbas and the condemnation of Jesus points to the divine selection of the goat that, out of the two brought to the Great Priest, will be sacrifced on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:7). Besides, there is one particular in the ritual of the scapegoat that has probably been decisive for Matthew’s understanding of his Lord’s Passion. In Leviticus we read: Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities (‫ׂש֙א ַהּשׂ ִָע֥יר עָלָ ֛יו אֶת־ּכָל־עֲֹונ ָ ֹ֖תם‬ ָ ָ‫ ) ְונ‬to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. (Lev 16:21–22)

In other words, the double-entendre in Matt 27:25 is about the forgiveness of sins. The blood that is poured upon the heads of the children of Israel

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can be understood as a self-condemnation, but it can also be understood as divine forgiveness of their sins. This is actually the message of the one text of the New Testament, which is, according to Church tradition, specifcally addressed to Jews, the Epistle to the Hebrews: “For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifes those who have been defled so that their fesh is purifed” (Heb 9: 13). It is not a coincidence that the wish that Christ’s blood be poured on the heads of the children of Israel evokes the gesture of Moses sprinkling blood on the whole people of Israel, παντὶ Ισραηλ. For the author of the Epistle, the shedding of the blood of Christ implies the advent of a New Covenant with the nation of Moses:

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For this reason he is the mediator of a new Covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the frst Covenant. Where a Will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a Will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Hence not even the frst Covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment had been told to all the people by Moses in accordance with the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the Covenant that God has ordained for you.’ And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purifed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Heb 9: 17–22)

What is at stake is the reenactment of God’s fundamental Covenant with Israel. It takes the form of a new Covenant because the mode of the Covenant sealed in the blood of Christ is no longer the same as that sealed by the blood of calves at the time of Moses. This echoes the words of the Lord to his disciples at the Last Supper: “for this is my blood of the Covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν τὸ αἷμά μου, τὸ τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης, τὸ περὶ πολλῶν ἐκχυνόμενον εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν” (Matt 26:28). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews contemplates here a radical transformation of the mediating function of the Temple at the very heart of Moses’s law: And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifces that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered

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for all time a single sacrifce for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctifed.” (Heb 10:11–14)

There is a double-entendre in 27:25—and yet the two layers of meaning seem to exclude each other: How could the blood of guilt be at the same time the blood of salvation? One needs to take a closer look at the inseparably logical and theological consistency of this double-entendre.

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2.3.3. The Blood of the Innocent In The Death of Jesus in Matthew, Innocent Blood and the End of Exile, a recent and from many points of view seminal study on Matthew 27:25, Catherine Sider Hamilton identifes aspects that directly touch on the issue in question.49.Her starting point is the tension between what she calls the “extramuros” reading of the verse—exegetes see the redactor as culturally alienated from the Jewish nation—–and the “intra-muros” reading—scholars see the redactor as fully part of the Jewish nation, sharing its culture and its vital interests.50 Whereas the “extra-muros” reading holds to the traditionally negative interpretation of the verse, identifying blood with self-condemnation, scholars supportive of the “intra-muros” reading have developed, among other lines of interpretation, the “ironic” understanding of the verse that emphasizes the salvifc and covenantal element involved in the shedding of blood. As Sider Hamilton observes, this optimistic reading has been criticized as poorly refecting the ominous and tragic context in which the sentence is uttered.51 She sets herself the goal of resolving the tension between the two readings by appealing to the “interpretative context with which the narrative interacts,” mostly on the basis of intertestamental and early rabbinic literature.52 Examining texts such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the writings of pseudo-Philo and the different versions of the Life of the prophet Zechariah, she claims to discover a recurring sequence between the pollution of the Land caused by the shedding of innocent blood and a purifcation associated with a radical new departure. She discusses a fundamental alternation between on the one hand, the necessity of punishment and exile, and on the other hand, mercy and the end of exile. In 1 Enoch, the Noahic food, out of which a new creation will emerge, both destroys the old world and purifes the guilt associated with the “blood poured out upon the earth” that cries “to the gates of heaven” since the time of Abel (Gen 6:1; Enoch 9:1–2). In the various legends surrounding the killing of the prophet Zechariah, the mass

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slaughtering of Jews ordered by the Babylonian general Nabuzaradan is presented as a punishment inspired by God for shedding the blood of the innocent prophet—a punishment that will not end before the conversion of the general himself, fnally “appeasing the blood” through his own act of repentance.53 At the same time, prophetic literature (Isa 60:18,21; Ezek 36:33–35) describes the deportation to Babylon in terms of a new beginning for Israel, spiritually purifed through these terrible trials. With this literary tradition in mind, it is not diffcult to highlight the essential connection between the cry of Matt 27:25 and the successive devastation of Jerusalem: the whole nation freely embraces the fate of those who pollute the Land by shedding the blood of the innocent. Matthew’s Gospel itself relates the death of Jesus to this recurring sequence:

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Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will fog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. (Matt 23:35–38)

The manner in which the same event—the death of Christ—realizes the salvation of the whole nation, justifying the “ironic” reading of Matt 27:25 without rejecting the traditional one, is expressed with less logical clarity in Sider Hamilton’s book. Just as I do here, the author suggests that the death of Jesus is the moment when the words of the angel to Joseph regarding the salvation of Israel (Matt 1:21) come to completion.54 Interestingly, she interprets the remark that tombs were open and that holy ones were raised from the dead following Christ’s death (Matt 27:52–53) as a proleptic fgure of Israel’s salvation, along the lines of the prophet Ezekiel: “I am going to open your tombs and bring you forth out of your tombs, O my people; and I will bring you back into the land of Israel” (37:12, LXX).55 Sider Hamilton seems to imply that the literary sequence she derived from intertestamental literature allows for the automatic identifcation of devastation and purifcation, exile, and redemption: “destruction in the Zechariah legends, food in the Cain/blood-food/judgement traditions, does mean purgation. In the logic

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of innocent blood, it is the same land that is at issue both for devastation and for renewal.”56 True, what is devastated and renewed—Jerusalem/Israel in the Zechariah legends, the world in the Cain/blood-food/judgment traditions—is identical. This does not mean, however, that the action that defles and the one that purifes are one and the same: the killing of the prophet is not what appeases the blood but what requires appeasement; the shedding of Abel’s blood is not the food that purifes the crime of Cain and its sequels. Punishment can lead to a new beginning after the suffering it necessarily brings about. But redemption and crime are not identical; they are exact opposites. The problem with Matthew 27:25 is that the very statement that speaks about the responsibility of the nation for a crime seems to simultaneously speak about the redemption of the nation, as if the very same action—the killing of Christ—was both polluting and purifying the land, both sending the nation to destruction and opening the path toward its redemption. The contradiction cannot be resolved as long as the two opposite terms— pollution and purifcation, punishment and redemption—are conceived as designating one and the same reality. However, one and the same reality can have different consequences, some of them positive while others are negative. The killing of Christ is one reality that is both a human crime and, according to the tradition of the Church, the manner in which God has determined to save the world. Why should this reality be prevented from affecting one and the same subject—the nation of Israel—in two different ways, one negative and one positive? A crime deserves to be punished but one can endure punishment from a material point of view while being forgiven or set free in a spiritual sense. One thing is to endure persecution at the hands of men, another is to be the object of God’s anger and rejection. Otherwise, Christ would not have given to his disciples the following stern piece of advice: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28). If this distinction is consistent and applicable to the case under consideration—the killing of Christ—the two readings of Matt 27:25 become compatible. The frst level of meaning partakes of the conscious, deliberate attitude of Israel, speaking as one corporate subject: Israel takes responsibility for the death of Christ and accepts whatever negative requital such involvement might cause in the future. The second level of meaning is prophetical: God is speaking through the crowd, giving to its words another dimension, concealed to those who utter them, a dimension that relates to the salvation accomplished on their behalf by Yeshua. For those who will recognize that it is through this homicidal death that salvation is brought to them, the blood

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of punishment will change into blood of redemption, as in the fnal prophecy of Joel over Israel: “Thus I will treat as innocent their blood Which I have not treated as innocent; And the LORD shall dwell in Zion” (Joel 4:21)

The next question is more theological than logical: How is it conceivable that those who are responsible for the killing of an innocent are spiritually saved by the one who died because of them? To what extent is it possible to accept that a homicidal nation is rewarded with salvation by its victim? Before taking a closer look at this question, let us examine the second passage that is traditionally referred to when discussing the rejection of Israel by God, a passage covering ch.18 and 19 of John’s Gospel. 2.4. John’s Jews 2.4.1. Deicide and Hermeneutical Strategies

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John’s redactional insistence on the notion of Jewish nation at the most strategic moments of the Passion narratives—when the issue is about taking responsibility for the death of Jesus—is most striking. Here are the central passages in question (emphasis is mine): • [Pilatus] asked him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I fnd no case against him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” They shouted in reply, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a bandit. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him fogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I fnd no case against him.” (John 18:38–19:1) • So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!” When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I fnd no case against him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” (John 19:5–7)

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• Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” (John 19:14–15) Commenting these passages, Chrysostom writes: “Of their own will they subjected themselves to punishment; therefore also God gave them up, because they were the frst to cast themselves out from His providence and superintendence; and since with one voice they rejected His sovereignty, He allowed them to fall by their own suffrages.”57 The accusation of deicide leveled at the Jewish nation fnds its source here. The notion that “the Jews” crucifed Jesus and therefore in some way “killed God” is the logical conclusion that derives from them being depicted in the Gospel of John as freely choosing to have Jesus crucifed instead of Barabbas while Pilatus declares that he fnds no fault in him (John 19:4). This leads Chrysostom to depict the surviving Jewish nation in rather harsh terms: “If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucifed the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons?”58 Although the charge of deicide already appears in the Peri Pascha tractate, written around 167 CE and attributed to Melito of Sardis, it does not become a common theme among the Fathers before Chrysostom, in whose writings it plays a central role.59 It would be tedious to go over commentaries that almost unanimously see in these passages the root of the rejection of Israel by God. I will rather focus on modern attempts to interpret the same passages in a less anti-Jewish key, especially in the writings of Kinzer. To explain why a Jewish writer like John identifes “the Jews” with Christ’s opponents, as if the group of Jesus’s followers were not Jews themselves, modern exegetes have brought up a number of hypotheses. The one that is most frequently referred to states that the author of the Gospel projected a much later historical confguration onto the events associated with the life of Christ. It is a confguration in which “the Jews” as an identifable religious group would have committed themselves to fghting those from the Jewish nation and Gentility that went under the name of “Christians.”60 However, a historical explanation is not a theological justifcation. Whatever be the situation and ulterior motives of the author of these passages, the fact remains that they seem to ascribe an objectively blameful action to the Jewish nation as a whole. It is this attitude that is diffcult to reconcile with the notion that New Testament writings are free from anti-Judaism.

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Dealing with these passages, Kinzer adopts what he calls a “canonical theological approach,” discarding the “historical reconstruction” that characterizes modern critical exegesis. He does acknowledge the fact that John seems inclined to indiscriminately designate the party opposed to Jesus, with the chief priest at its head, as “Jews”:

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John differs from the synoptic Gospels on one crucial point. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the authorities hostile to Yeshua are called “the chief priests,” or “the chief priests, scribes, and elders,” or “the scribes and Pharisees.” In John these authorities are often called simply ‘the Jews’ (John 1:19, 24; 2:18–20; 5:10, 15–16, 18; 7:1; 7:13; 11:8; 18:14; 18:31; 18:36; 19:31; 19:38; 20:19). This leads to some rather odd-sounding statements in which (Jewish) Yeshua-believers are constrained by their “fear of the Jews” (John 7:13; 19:38; 20:19), or where Yeshua tells Pilate why his (Jewish) followers do not fght to prevent his being “handed over to the Jews” (John 18:36). The impression conveyed to the reader by such usage is that Yeshua and his followers are not themselves Jews, and that those who are rightly called Jews are Yeshua’s enemies. For this reason, some accuse John of being anti-Jewish.61

To counter this impression, Kinzer suggests connecting these passages to other passages of the Gospel that deal with the Jewish nation, so as to interpret their meaning in the context of Jesus’ overall “teaching” on Jews in the Gospel. It is certainly not diffcult to fnd passages of John’s Gospel where Jewish identity is seen in a favorable light. Kinzer mentions the episode of Jesus with the Samaritan woman (“salvation is from the Jews,” 4:22), the proclamation of Jesus by John the Baptist (Jesus must be “revealed to Israel,” 1:31), the praise of Nathanael by Jesus as an “Israelite in whom there is no deceit” (1:47) as well as the repeated emphasis of Jesus as “king of Israel” (1:49) and “king of the Jews” (18:33–35, 19:14–16, 19–22).62 From these passages, one may indeed infer that the attitude of John toward Jewish identity was generally positive. But the issue related to the “Jews” that persecute Jesus and his disciples is not about the value of Israel in the eyes of God—it is about the manner in which Jewish actions conform with such value. Is not the Torah flled with God’s denunciations regarding the ways in which his people fall far below the dignity that He granted them? The whole drama of Israel, as related in the Tanakh (the Jewish canonical Scriptures that correspond to the Christian notion of “Old Testament”), revolves around the diffculties of the nation and its representatives to respond to God’s enduring calling. Accordingly, the notion that Jewish identity is of great value increases rather than diminishes the guilt of those

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who turned against the Messiah of Israel.63 From this point of view, the conclusions of Kinzer’s canonical-theological analysis hardly manage to justify John’s negative emphasis on those he calls “the Jews” in the Passion narratives. But Kinzer does not only appeal to what John wrote concerning Jews; he also argues from what he did not write about them: “The book fails to tell us about the fate of the vast multitudes who have not rejected Yeshua but who have also not explicitly embraced him. We should therefore be reluctant to assume that John’s soteriology implies a divine rejection of the Jewish people.”64 There is wisdom in the old recommendation that argumenta ex silentio (conclusions derived from something that is not said) should be handled with care. Indeed, the real question is why the book fails to tell about these “vast multitudes who have not rejected Yeshua.” Nothing would have been easier for the author of the Gospel than to invoke their existence, especially in the light of the positive passages listed by Kinzer. Does this silence rather not confrm a deliberate intention to associate the whole Jewish nation to what the chief priests and the crowd said and did on that day? Once again, since the whole Messianic movement rests on the celebration of the Covenant between Jesus and his people, the question that Messianic theology must face reads: Why is it that, in so many places, and especially in the most crucial ones, the Gospels put so much emphasis on the failure of the Jewish nation to adhere to the Covenant with Jesus? Kinzer writes that “from context it is evident that this term in John generally means ‘the Jewish authorities.’  ”65 But if the Jewish nation is such a positive reality in the eyes of John, why not do as the other authors of the Gospels and refer these words and actions to the leaders of the people? Why not offer at least a glimmer of hope in the future of the nation to whom the revelation of Jesus was destined, according to the words that John himself ascribes to John the Baptist? So many unanswered questions. Kinzer fails to mention one passage of John’s Gospel that, I would suggest, sheds some light on its dramatic emphasis regarding the involvement of Jews as a nation in the death of Christ. It is on this passage that I want to dwell at this point. 2.4.2. Caiaphas’s Double Entendre In John’s narrative, this discussion among the members of the Sanhedrin, the highest religious instance of the Jewish nation under the Claudian Emperors, provides the immediate background of the events related to Christ’s passion and death. It is there that the decision to have Jesus eliminated is defnitively made. In this process, the opinion proffered by Caiaphas comes out as a determining factor. Here is the passage in question:

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Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. (John 11:45–53)

Here, unlike the case of Matt 27:25, the author himself suggests that the same utterance has two layers of meaning. But just as in Matt 27:25—at least according to our interpretation—the frst layer corresponds to the deliberate intention of its human author; the second is prophetic, resulting from an inspiration of God that goes far beyond the awareness of the human agent. The second layer does not exclude the frst but endows the same words with a vastly different dimension of meaning. I would argue that there is more here than a double-entendre. I will endeavor to show that a theologically crucial triple-entendre is involved in the words of Caiaphas. For the Fathers the literal meaning of Caiaphas’s words does not appear to raise particular diffculties of interpretation. This is about a very human political calculation that addresses the concerns voiced by the priests and the Pharisees. As Augustine writes, “they were afraid of losing temporal possessions and gave no thought to eternal life, and so they lost each . . . . They feared this—that if all would believe in Christ, no one would remain who would defend the city and temple of God against the Romans; for they thought that the teaching of Christ was against the temple itself and against the laws of their fathers.”66 Should Jesus become a rallying fgure for the Jewish population living under Roman rule, he would be considered as a political threat by Roman authorities. Nipping the brewing rebellion in the bud with the most violent military means would be the most likely outcome of this confguration.67 But this would put an end to Jewish resistance to Roman political rule and, by the same token, wreck the authority of its representatives. In his response, Caiaphas addresses the pusillanimity of his peers (“You know nothing!”), claiming that by eliminating Jesus, the Jewish nation over whose life and destiny the Sanhedrin had the duty to preside, will be preserved.68

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To some extent, the second level of meaning, the prophetic one, does not raise any particular diffculty of interpretation either. The whole Christian tradition has read here the announcement of Christ’s redeeming death. Origen writes: Indeed, is he who says, ‘It is expedient for us,’ which was part of his prophecy, telling the truth or lying? For if he is telling the truth, then Caiaphas and those who struggled against Jesus in the council are saved, since Jesus died for the people, and they obtain that which is expedient. But if it is absurd to declare that Caiaphas and those in the council against Jesus are saved, and that they obtained that which was expedient when Jesus died, it is clear that it was not the Holy Spirit which inspired these words to be spoken, for the Holy Spirit does not lie.69

However when it comes to defning the object of Christ’s salvation in Caiaphas’s unwitting prophecy, the Fathers tend to interpret the text in a metaphorical key and lose sight of its letter. The same passage from Origen’s commentary continues in the following way:

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But the one who wishes that which inspires to be speaking the truth even in this—I mean when he declares, “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people”—will understand the words, “it is expedient for us,” in a deeper sense because of the statement about the goal. He will make use of the words, “that by the grace of God (or, apart from God) he might taste death for all,” and he will give attention to the words, “for all,” and to the words, “apart from God for all.”70

“For all . . . .” The prophecy itself mentioned only “the nation”: “Jesus was about to die for the nation ἵνα εἷς ἄνθρωπος ἀποθάνῃ ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαοῦ καὶ μὴ ὅλον τὸ ἔθνος ἀπόληται.” True, the author widens the scope of the prophecy by adding a personal gloss: “and not for the nation only, οὐχ ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἔθνους μόνον, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” Still, the very fact that the author feels the need to widen the original perspective of the prophecy implies that it concerned the nation—Israel—in the frst place. According to interpreters inclined to equate the death of Christ with the rejection of Israel, the prophetic dimension of Caiaphas’s statement considered in itself, independently of the gloss, could hardly have made sense. How could the death of Christ be a source of redemption for Israel, the deicide nation? This is the reason why the comments of the Fathers usually jump to the gloss without giving much attention to its object—Caiaphas’s

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original statement. A passage from a homily of John Chrysostom offers a typical example of such hermeneutical strategy:

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While the vineyard stood, all things went on; but when they had slain the Heir, no longer so, but they perished. And God having taken it from the Jews, as a glorious garment from an unproftable son, gave it to right-minded servants of the Gentiles, leaving the others desolate and naked. It was, moreover, no small thing that even an enemy should prophesy this. This might draw over others also. For in respect of His will, matters fell out contrariwise, since, when He died, the faithful were on this account delivered from the punishment to come. What means, “That He might gather together those near and those afar off” He made them one Body. The dweller in Rome deems the Indians a member of himself. What is equal to this “gathering together?” And the Head of all is Christ.71

According to Chrysostom, the gloss does not only widen the perspective of Caiaphas’s statement; it reverses its plain meaning. The salvation of the nation through the death of Christ should be understood as its rejection since the gloss points to an entirely new regime of alliance with God; namely, a universality, a “gathering together” with Christ as Head, that is incompatible with the regime of the old synagogue. Accordingly, Caiaphas, “the enemy,” was mistaken as “matters fell contrariwise” to what he said. However since the real source of his prophetic statement about the salvation of Israel is God, Chrysostom is not far from ascribing this mistake to God Himself. What leads to this conclusion is Chrysostom’s implicit transformation of the meaning of the gloss. Where it envisages the future unity of the “nation” with all the “scattered children of God,” Chrysostom sees the dissolution of the nation into a new Body that potentially encompasses the whole of humanity. Augustine does not go as far as denying that Caiaphas’s prophecy applies to the Jewish nation, but, just as Chrysostom, he limits its relevance to those Jews from the nation who are destined to join Gentiles to form the Church of Christ: “[Caiaphas] clearly calls children of God not only the Hebrew race, but men of all other races who were not yet among the faithful, not yet baptised. How can he also call them sons of God except on the view of their predestination, in which respect also the Apostle says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4)? That very gathering together in one would have made them children of God. And by the phrase ‘in one’ he would not have signifed any corporeal place, since of a similar calling of the Gentiles the Prophet made this prophecy, ‘They shall adore Him, every man from his own place; all the islands of the Gentiles’ (Soph 2:11), but ‘gathered together in one’ refers to the one spirit and one body of which the head is Christ (Col 1:18; Eph 1:22).

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Such a gathering together is the building of the temple of God; such a gathering together is not accomplished by carnal birth, but by spiritual rebirth.”72

Yet “not only” for the nation does not mean without the nation or in a Body where the notion of Israel as a nation is no longer valid. The main problem remains unsolved: Why does Caiaphas’ prophecy speak of the “whole nation”? As far as I have been able to investigate, the great majority of modern commentators either fail to see the problem or deal with it in the hardly satisfactory manner of Augustine.73 The few that single it out either discard it as insignifcant or refrain from suggesting a solution.74 At the same time, many commentators signal that John’s choice of words to designate the Jewish nation is far from fortuitous. Lenski observes: Note the correct contrast between εἶς ἄνθρωπος, “one man,” and ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαοῦ, ‘for the beneft of the people’ (the great mass), λαός being often used for “the chosen people.” On the other hand, “that the whole nation perish not” has τὸ ἔθνος, that they lose not their national standing, yet preserving the idea of a great mass over against “one man’’ by ὅλον, “the whole nation.”75

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Understood religiously, Israel is λαός, the people of God, in contrast to the nations of the earth, τὰ ἔθνη.76 But Israel is also a nation, ἔθνος, not necessarily in the sense of an independent political state, but as a people that need to care about the material conditions of its own existence and survival just as any other nation of the earth.77 Besides, if one follows Gerard L Borchert, there is hardly any doubt that Caiaphas’s statement, once read as a prophecy, was meant to convey the idea of a redemptive action: That statement in 11:50—it was an advantage (sumpherein, “better”) for one man to die “on behalf of” (hyper, NIV “for”) “the people”—is flled with sacrifcial meaning. The term hyper is frequently associated with a substitutionary or replacement view of the atonement. In the Old Testament the devotees and priests would place their hands on the sacrifcial animals or scapegoat in identifcation (cf. Lev 16:7–10, 20–22), and thus the animals would carry the weight of sin and guilt on behalf of (for) the worshipers.78

Another scholar draws a parallel between the sentence of Caiaphas and Jesus’s self-proclamation as the “good shepherd” (John 10:11): The good shepherd lays down his life—a deliberate and willing action, whose voluntary nature will be emphasised by a threefold repetition of the thought

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in vv. 15, 17, 18. “Noble actions are those which we do for the sake of others and not ourselves’ (Theon, Prosgymnasmata 9.25) and the deaths of Athenian soldiers were considered noble because they benefted their city and the rest of Greece and ‘they gave their lives for the sake of [ὑπέρ] the freedom of the Greeks” (Hyperides, Funeral Speech 9, 16). Similarly, the Maccabean martyrs are said to have died nobly because their deaths were suffered on behalf of their kindred or the nation and in order to save them (cf. e.g. 1 Macc 6:44; 9:10; 13:4; 2 Macc 8:21; 4 Macc 17:10, 20–2). Here the shepherd dies nobly “for the sake of” or “on behalf of” (ὑπέρ) the sheep. The same preposition is used of Jesus’ death in 6:51 and 11:50–2 and has sacrifcial connotations.79

That which commentators since the time of the Fathers fnd diffcult to understand is not related to some lack of clarity affecting the prophetic reading of Caiaphas’s statement. It is the very transparency of this prophetic reading that creates the problem as it does not seem to make theological sense. Indeed, this reading suggests that a collective involvement of the Jewish nation in the killing of the Messiah of Israel is inspired by the divine design of bringing salvation over the whole nation of Israel. But how could a real crime, implying the deliberate decision to punish an innocent with death on the part of a group of human beings, be the occasion or even the cause of a salvation resulting in the divine forgiveness of these murderers’ sins? I will examine the essence of this theological paradox in the next chapter. At this point, I would merely like to emphasize that, taken at its face value, the prophetic reading of Caiaphas’s statement would solve another massive problem; namely, that of the alleged anti-Semitism of John’s Gospel. If John’s Jews are those on behalf of whom Christ is offered as a sacrifce of redemption, or in other words, if they are the ones who unconsciously offer the sacrifce on their own behalf—possibly through the priests who represent them as the immediate agents of this sacrifce—they need to be collectively involved—involved as a nation, λαός—in this sacrifce. Collective blame does not indicate God’s anger at the Jewish nation; rather, it signals their collective redemption. Modern exegetical theories suggesting a retrospective portrayal of some fercely anti-Christian Jewish community would lose their relevance, the problem they endeavored to answer—the unilaterally negative picture of Jews in John’s Gospel—ceasing de facto to exist. This solution is similar to our interpretation of Matt 27:25. The same notion operates on two levels that, though distinct and associated with opposite values, are meant to be combined. On a conscious, human level, the nation commits a crime as “the Jews” are responsible for the death of the innocent prophet. In this sense, they deserve punishment. Jesus’s oracles on the destruction of the Temple and the tribulations to come in the Gospel of John (13:1–23, see equally 2:13) echo Matthew’s dramatic picture of what

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awaits Israel (c.23 and 24). But on a second level, that of God’s providential design and transcendent action, John’s “Jews” are the unconscious instruments of their own redemption, as their crime appears to be the sacrifce that brings about the redemption of Israel. In this manner, the crowd’s cry in Matt 27:25 would simply be the translation into words of what is described as effectively taking place in John c.18 and c.19; that is, a crucifxion that has a hidden redemptive value for the nation. Provided this conjecture bears scrutiny, the need to explain why the Evangelist is describing Jews in such an utterly sinister manner would disappear. Without crime, there is no redemption. Our inquiry into the prophetic reading of Caiaphas’s statement is not yet complete. I would distinguish a third level in the words of Caiaphas, a level that I consider to be pivotal whenever refecting on the destiny of Israel from a theological point of view.

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2.4.3. A Third-Level Reading of Caiaphas’s Prophetic Statement Understood according to its most conscious and obvious intention, that is as a trivial political calculation, the “national life” that in Caiaphas’s statement derives from the death of Jesus, consists of avoiding the short-term prospect of being crushed by the Roman military. We saw that, deciphered as a prophecy that goes beyond the intention of the one who utters it, the same causal connection applies to the transcendent realm of God’s salvifc economy: by virtue of Christ’s death, Israel avoids a divine judgment of condemnation. But “national life” can also have a third meaning that pertains to the preservation, the “persistence in being” (conatus), to use Spinoza’s terminology, of a specifc people facing diffcult or dangerous situations. Claiming that this type of survival is somehow connected with the death of Jesus certainly goes beyond the intention of the speaker, frst because the nature of this connection is totally unclear from a human point of view, second because no human being can guarantee the long-term survival of a nation—this pertains exclusively to God’s Providence. This understanding of the effects of Christ’s death on Am Israel is distinct from the spiritual dimension of salvation as it touches on the material and political conditions of this nation’s existence; and yet it has to do with divine inspiration and not human intentionality. The question reads: Why should the material and political survival of the Jewish nation somehow depend on the death of Christ, as if Yeshua had also given his life in order to ensure it? Is there a reason why, in addition to granting salvation to those who sought his death, Jesus would also, through this very death, guarantee the survival of those who, as a nation, would enduringly deny his Messiahship? I believe that this third level of meaning is a logical consequence of the two previous ones. The literal and intentional meaning implies the rejection

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of Yeshua’s Messiahship. As an impostor and troublemaker, Yeshua can be handed over to the Romans without damage to the nation. Caiaphas’s statement simply rules out the amorality of such a decision. Meanwhile the spiritual and prophetic reading of Caiaphas’s statement speaks about a salvation that takes place at the very heart of this absence of faith on the part of the nation. The result is a rooting of the nation’s life in Christ’s salvifc deed that remains hidden to the nation itself. From the fact that Christ gives his life for the sake of a people that does not receive his Messiahship, establishing a hidden bond of salvation with it, the continued existence of this nation becomes endowed with a value that is independent of the subjective faith in Christ of its members. Christ gave his life so that Am Israel would not disintegrate even as it is precipitated into a life of exile among the nations. To the extent in which it is the unbelief of the Jewish nation that preserves the unity of the nation in exile, one could even claim that this unbelief itself is one of the ways in which the destiny of Israel appears to be bound with the sacrifce of Christ. In a confguration where belief in Christ’s Messiahship would entail the disintegration of the nation, as in a Church devoid of understanding for the transcendent dimension of Jewish collective existence, the distance of the Jewish nation from the Church on the grounds of Jewish “unbelief” appears to be a paradoxical outcome of the salvation of the Jewish nation in Christ. While Christ, through his death, binds himself with Am Israel in an irreversible albeit hidden manner, he dies to his nation on a visible level, being wiped out of its memory and system of belief in order for the nation to continue existing throughout the dire trials of its exile. As we saw earlier, the Fathers of the Church fnd it diffcult to explain why Caiaphas speaks of the “whole nation” being preserved by virtue of Christ’s death. They tend to replace the nation with the few individuals of Jewish descent who will join the great ingathering of the “scattered children of God,” an ingathering that they identify with the Church as a new reality that obliterates the synagogue. What I suggest here is the exact opposite: it is the whole nation, a nation that does not join the Church due to its rejection of Yeshua’s Messiahship, which is preserved through the sacrifce of Yeshua. This does not mean that such rejection is a good thing in itself; only that it is so in relation to the preservation of a nation that has, willingly or not, a connection to salvation by virtue of Christ’s death on its behalf. The fact is that the rejection of Yeshua’s Messiahship, as consubstantial to the life of the Jewish nation as it might appear after almost 2000 years of exile, does not belong to the essence of the nation born of Abraham and led out of Egypt by Moses. It is a providential means, a means through that Israel is saved in Yeshua and perseveres in her material existence after Yeshua. As such, this rejection has a temporary function. A nation that is not consubstantially opposed to some reality can cease to be opposed to this reality.

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These considerations bring us back to the gloss inserted by the writer reporting Caiaphas’s prophecy. If the nation is destined to become one with all the “dispersed children of God” and if this ingathering cannot be a reality different from the Church, how is the death of Christ supposed to determine the preservation of a nation hostile to the Church? I suggest that the gloss needs to be understood from an eschatological perspective. It is not said that the process of “gathering into one the dispersed children of God” should start with the nation of Israel. The radical opening of the nation to all the “dispersed children of God” on the grounds of some miraculous commonality of faith would inevitably result in the disintegration of the nation as a bio-ethnic entity within this greater whole. Why keep a distinction between Jews and Gentiles when both share an identical faith and identical sacramental practices?80 Rather, the fact that the gloss does not envisage this process as chronological but as a fnal or teleological sequence (“for the nation” although not “for the nation only”) seems to imply that the visible unity between the nation and the “dispersed children of God” that are being gathered into one is postponed to the ultimate stage of human times. The goal is this unity within the greater whole, but it will not be achieved if the nation as a bio-ethnic entity disappears in the process since it is frstly for this nation that this ingathering takes place. Consequently the nation will be last to join the gathering of the dispersed children, as it implies both the illumination of the nation, discovering its true Messiah, and a radically new awareness within the Church regarding the unique status of Israel. Whereas the calling of Israel is incomplete as long as the nation will not embrace consciously and willingly the salvation that was granted to its members, the calling of the Church will not be fulflled until she makes room for Israel as a corporate entity. On this point, I believe my views and those of Kinzer converge in a signifcant manner. In his Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism, Kinzer shows that since an early stage in the history of the Church, embracing the message of salvation in Yeshua brought with it the denial of the nation’s divine right to persist in being: “[The message about Yeshua that came to Jews in the second century] spoke of how Israel’s Covenant and way of life had been annulled in the Messiah, and it claimed that Jewish identity and practice were of no value or even prohibited. Any Jew who was loyal to the Covenant would conclude that such a message could not possibly come from the God of Israel. To reject such a purported Messiah would be an act of fdelity to God rather than infdelity!”81 The Fathers did not doubt that the enduring existence of Israel as a corporate entity was in itself a protestation of fdelity to the God of Israel. What they claimed is that this fdelity was blind, unable to see that true fdelity lay with rejecting their obsolete habits and rallying to the new people of the true

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Messiah. In contrast to the Fathers and in agreement with Kinzer, I believe that the fdelity of Jews to the God of Israel that was part of their mission of continuing to exist as His people and manifested itself as a refusal to join the Church, should be understood as an effect of Divine Providence. In this manner, Israel was meant to be preserved as a distinct collective entity among the nations of the earth. What I would argue against Kinzer is that the anti-Judaism associated with the rise of supersessionist thinking in the Church (the new regime of the Church defnitively obliterates that of the synagogue) is merely a side-effect of a more fundamental problem; namely, the swift disintegration of Jewish identity as such in the early Church as a result of an assimilation process identifed with the very making of the Church, the “gathering of all the children of God into one.” Supersessionism is the outcome of a somehow mechanical—demographically unavoidable—Gentilization of the Church. There has always been one and only one Jewish nation, and it found itself outside the Church after having taken the side as a nation of those who wished to eliminate Yeshua. In my opinion, this fundamental Jewish “no” to Yeshua and his message, a “no” that is prior to the rejection of a supersessionist Church, is the means through which God has preserved a nation that, according to my understanding of Caiaphas’s prophecy, was redeemed at the price of Christ’s blood. As Kinzer fnely argues, if the rallying of the Jewish nation to Yeshua’s message of salvation is a condition for the Second Coming (see Luke 13:34 and Acts 3:19–21), Jews had to be preserved as the people of the Covenant after “turning away” from the Good News (see Acts 28:28–29): “Are they no longer participants in the Covenant? If that were the case, then all their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc., would be no more nor other than Gentiles. But if that is true, who are the people whose repentance and returning fulfls the necessary and suffcient condition for the sending of the Messiah? And who are the people who will receive the kingdom that God will restore to Israel? If those who will ultimately fulfl the conditional prophecy of Luke 13 and Acts 3:19–21 are the descendants of untold generations of Jews who have not believed in Jesus, then those generations have successfully preserved and transmitted Israel’s covenantal identity. After all, those who ‘repent’ and ‘return’ must themselves already be Israel in order for their repentance and returning to have eschatological signifcance.”82

I with many others believe that the Messianic movement is the portent of the eschatological reunion between the nation and the “dispersed children of God.” This is why there is hardly a more urgent task than preparing the Church to welcome Israel qua Israel as an inalienable part of her truth and fullness.

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With this goal in mind, we need to delve into the heart of the mystery of the nation’s redemption in Yeshua. Any sound concept of a Jewish ekklesia should proceed from there as from its ultimate source.

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2.4.4. Isaiah 53 (and 52) As mentioned earlier, the notion of Israel’s collective salvation through the death of Christ seems to stumble on an almost unbearable paradox: How could criminals—the nation as responsible for the death of the Innocent—be rewarded with salvation? I will not argue that a crime should be rewarded instead of being punished. The question has to do with the nature of the punishment. Since the time of the Fathers of the Church, the tendency of the Christian world has been to merge the punishment of exile with the rejection of Israel or the cancellation of its Covenant with God. What I suggest is that exile as a punishment can go together with collective salvation or the renewal in Christ of Israel’s Covenant with God. One could object that the punishment of Israel for her crime is not a suffcient reason to reward Israel with salvation. In my opinion, this just shows the extent of one’s misunderstanding touching the nature of the most decisive event in the history of humanity. True, salvation cannot be the reward for killing the innocent. But salvation may take place through the killing of the innocent. This is the logic of a sacrifce of substitution like the sacrifce on Yom Kippur. The one who offers a sacrifce by killing innocent animals is not supposed to be innocent himself. On the contrary, a priest offers the sacrifce on behalf of a sinful people of whom he is part, in the hope that this sacrifce will purify these people from their sins. The logic of substitutional sacrifce is just the opposite of that of reward: it speaks of human beings that need to be purifed of the consequences of their evil actions, not of human beings that need to be rewarded on behalf of their good deeds. If the death of Christ on a Cross has a meaning instead of being a sheer absurdity, it is because this is about the sacrifce of the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous—on behalf of those who deserved death rather than life eternal. There has never been a more luminous comment regarding the death of Yeshua than the one provided by the famous verses 4 and 5 from the Book of Isaiah c.53: “Surely our diseases he did bear, and our pains he carried; whereas we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afficted. But he was wounded because of our transgressions, he was crushed because of our iniquities: the chastisement of our welfare was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed.” The metaphorical reading of these verses is so embedded in Christian tradition that few Gentile Christians are still aware that this reading is indeed

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metaphorical. As it is Christ in his Passion that the faithful fnd portrayed in Isaiah’s Servant, they identify with the “we” who speak in the passage. They interpret the “rebellions” that wound and the “guilt” that crushes Isaiah’s servant as pointing to the multiple sins they and their fellow human beings have committed throughout the world and its ages. Does John the Baptist not proclaim that Christ is the “lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29)? Yet those who are missing from this metaphorical reading are the ones who effectively led the suffering servant to his death, striking and smiting him on the way. According to this reading, these are “the others”; that is, the Jews. The “we” of Gentile faithful does not include “them.” In this manner, Gentile faithful spontaneously imagine that it is merely on their behalf, to heal their sins (= not the sin of those who effectively killed Jesus) that Christ died on the Cross. Going back to the letter of Isaiah’s verses, there is no indication that the “we” on behalf of whom the servant suffers is different from the “we” who actually make this servant suffer. Automatically, “good Christians” read “on behalf of our transgressions/iniquities” where “because of our transgressions/ iniquities” stands written. They read a fnal/“substitutional” dimension into a strictly causal connection. While a spiritual reading of the verse is possible, it remains spiritual. In the context in question the meaning of the preposition ‫( מִן‬abbreviated form ‫ )מ‍־‬in ‫ׁש ֵ֔ענּו‬ ָ ‫ ִמ ְּפ‬, “our transgressions” and in ‫ ֵמעֲֹונ ֵ ֹ֑תינו‬, “our iniquities” is doubtlessly causal. The translator(s) working on the Greek version of the passage (LXX) had no qualms when rendering the preposition ‫ מִן‬with διά and not ὑπέρ. Accordingly, the literal meaning of Isaiah 53:5a suggests that “our transgressions/iniquities” are the causal factors of the Servant’s suffering. Of course, salvation can be defned as the forgiveness of sins. In this sense, the Servant suffers as a substitutional victim for the sins of Israel: “he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due (53:8( ”)‫שׁע ַע ֖ ִ ּמי נֶ ֥גַע לָ ֽמֹו‬ ַ ‫“ ) ִמ ּ֥ ֶפ‬and their iniquities he did bear” (‫( ) ַועֲֹונ ָ ֹ֖תם ה֥ ּוא יִסְבּ ֹֽל‬53:11). But at the same time, the suffering of the Servant is caused by the iniquity of this people. Israel’s sin is both the ultimate purpose of the Servant’s suffering—it is “through his stripes that we were healed”— and the causal reason that explains his suffering—“he was crushed because of our iniquities.” This ambiguity is easily resolved when one refers to the sacrifcial economy of Kippur: the victim takes in, through the violence that it endures, the sin that had accumulated in the ones that offer the sacrifce. It is through a visible and external release of evil, “attaching itself” to a specifc sacrifcial victim, that the victim’s death purifes the hearts of those who offer the sacrifce from the invisible and interior evil that “attached itself” to them because

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of their sin. In this case, sin as external violence is a causal factor of suffering and death, but at the same time, it is the purpose of suffering and death as that which will eventually be healed through suffering and death. Seen from this perspective, that salvation might be the boundlessly benefcial outcome of an action that is evil considered per se—not only a benefce for people who have had no part in this evil deed but also and mainly for the people who perpetrated it—makes perfect theological sense. Although Kinzer minimizes the theological dimension of the Jewish involvement in the death of Yeshua, he does draw the attention of his readers to the salvifc dimension of Jesus’s crucifxion. Relying on the works of Nicholas T. Wright, he emphasizes that this death is what brings about the end of exile and the restoration of Israel.83 While Kinzer does not “spiritualize” Israel as Wright does, taking it to designate Jews as a concrete nation, he follows Wright in highlighting the connection between the Gospels’ Passion narratives and Isaiah c.52. This connection with the chapter that immediately precedes that of the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah is most interesting when seen from the perspective that I presented previously. The fact is that c.52 tells about the salvation of Israel: Awake, awake, O Zion! Clothe yourself in splendor; Put on your robes of majesty, Jerusalem, holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean Shall never enter you again. Arise, shake off the dust, Sit [on your throne], Jerusalem! Loose the bonds from your neck, O captive one, Fair Zion! For thus said the LORD: You were sold for no price, And shall be redeemed without money (‫)וְֹל֥ א ב ֶ ְ֖כסֶף תִ ּגָּאֵ ֽלּו‬. . . . How welcome on the mountain Are the footsteps of the herald Announcing happiness, Heralding good fortune, Announcing victory (‫ְׁשּועה‬ ְ ‫) ַמ‬ ֑ ָ ‫ש ִ ׁ֣מי ַע י‬ Telling Zion, “Your God is King!” (‫)א ֹמֵ ֥ר ְלצִּי֖ ֹון מָלַ ְ֥ך אֱֹלהָ ֽי ְִך‬ Hark! Your watchmen raise their voices, As one they shout for joy;

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For every eye shall behold The LORD’s return to Zion. Raise a shout together, O ruins of Jerusalem! For the LORD will comfort His people, Will redeem Jerusalem ( ‫שׁלִ ָֽם‬ ָ ‫ַמו גָ ַ ּ֖אל י ְרּו‬ ֹּ ֔ ‫) ִ ּכֽי־נ ַ ִ֤חם י ְהוָה֙ ע‬. The LORD will bare His holy arm In the sight of all the nations, And the very ends of earth shall see The victory of our God (‫ְׁשּוע֥ת אֱֹלהֵ ֽינּו‬ ַ ‫)ו ְָרא ּ֙ו ָכּל־ַא ְפסֵי־ ָ֔א ֶרץ ֵ ֖את י‬ . . . Indeed, My servant shall prosper Be exalted and raised to great heights (‫שא ְוג ַ ָ֖בּה‬ ּׂ ָ ֛ ִ‫ש ּ֖ ִכיל ַעב ְ֑דִ ּי י ָ֧רּום ְונ‬ ׂ ְ ַ ‫) ִה ּ֥נֵה י‬ Just as the many were appalled at him— So marred was his appearance, unlike that of man, His form, beyond human semblance— Just so he shall startle many nations. Kings shall be silenced because of him, For they shall see what has not been told them, Shall behold what they never have heard. (Isa 52:1-2, 7–10, 13–15)

As paradoxical as it might seem, the association between the victorysalvation (‫ְׁשּועה‬ ֑ ָ ‫ )י‬of Zion and the abasement of the servant of God is inscribed in the text itself:

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So marred was his appearance, unlike that of man, His form, beyond human semblance— Just so he shall startle many nations. (Isa 52:14)

Just as Isaiah prophesies that God will be called king of Zion on the day of his salvation (52:7), Yeshua is called King of the Jews on the day of his Passion (Matt 27:11, Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3 and John 18:33). Just as Isaiah foresees that the Servant will “be exalted and raised to great heights” (52:13), Jesus on the day of his death be “lifted up” (John 3:14, 8:28, 12:32) and “glorifed” (13:31–32; 14:13; 17:1, 4; 21:19). According to Kinzer, these passages of John’s Gospel also refer to Isa 49:3: “And [the Lord] said to me: ‘You are My servant, Israel in whom I glory’.” In this manner, Kinzer can conclude: “In both Isaiah 49 and 52–53, the servant is simultaneously a corporate fgure and an individual, the people of Israel and its representative. This fts well with John’s Israel-Christology, which acclaims Jesus as the ‘king of Israel’ who will ‘die for the nation’ ” (11:48–52).84

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With Kinzer, I believe that the witness of Scriptures is unequivocal: the death of Yeshua is what delivers the restoration or salvation of Israel qua Israel. What Kinzer fails to clarify in my opinion is the reason why it is so. How can it be that the restoration of Israel stems from the lethal tension between Yeshua and “the Jews”? And how can it be that, far from being followed by an era of blessedness for Israel, it resulted in almost 2,000 years of exile and persecutions? What I will present now is how Kinzer’s reluctance to refect on the “Jewish-negative” aspect of the Gospels as part of the mystery of Yeshua’ salvation, prevents him from contemplating the specifcity of the Jewish path toward this very salvation—and therefore from defning the true foundations of a Jewish ecclesia within the one apostolic Ekklesia. 2.5. The Path of Israel toward Salvation

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2.5.1. Giving and Receiving Salvation: Rom.9-11 To what extent can one claim that the death of Christ has a redeeming value for the Jewish nation? Surely Christ’s salvation is addressed to individuals, as it implies the determination of a most personal freedom, in contrast to national entities. True, before Christ’s advent, sacred history is all about Israel as a national entity. The Torah tells about the actions of individuals, but always to the extent in which they refect or impact the spiritual destiny of Israel as a nation. Could it be the case that the advent of Christ put an end to this divine dispensation? I fnd it remarkable that while traditional Christian theology does not envisage the possibility of the national salvation of Israel in Christ, it nonetheless develops abundant considerations regarding the national disasters that struck Israel because of Christ: the destruction of the Temple, the dispersion of the people on the surface of the globe, and so on. It is as if, since the time of Christ, Israel was still the object of a divine dispensation, albeit a reversed one: national doom and distance from God succeeded national favor and intimacy with God.85 In this negative manner, Israel’s national existence continues to have theological relevance even after Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. But if the Jewish nation qua nation can be punished due to unbelief that led to the death of the Messiah, why can it not be as such bound up with Yeshua’s salvation through the same death? Or is it because Israel is punished that it cannot be the object of Yeshua’s salvation at the same time? One thing is to give, another is to receive. One cannot be said to possess a gift until one receives what is given. Israel qua Israel is given salvation in Christ, but a majority of Jews did and still do not want to receive it. That the apostle Paul experienced this non-reception as a personal as well as a national tragedy is evident from his Epistle to the Romans: “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the fesh!” (Rom 9:3).

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Israel has stumbled over the corner stone due to her absence of faith (Rom 9:30–33). Instead of receiving her salvation, she has hardened her heart:

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What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a sluggish spirit, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day /Deut 29:3; Isa 29:10/ (Rom 11:8).

The idea that “unbelieving” Israel had been rejected led theologians to view the forms of Jewish worship after Christ as dead and deadly.86 Still, in the same epistle, Paul categorically denies that Israel’s lack of faith cancelled her election: “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew . . . . As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (11: 2; 28–19). For that matter, does it mean that “unbelieving” Israel has no part in the salvation that Christ realized on her behalf? First, Paul does not teach that Yeshua did not save Israel; he teaches that Israel failed to obtain her salvation (Rom 11:7). One cannot fail to obtain that which does not exist. One may claim that the basis on which Israel’s Covenant with God was established, making of Israel a nation unique among all nations, was renewed quintessentially. The Torah achieved its goal and fullness. However, Israel as a nation failed to receive a fullness that can only be received through faith. This does not mean that the nation was cast away from the salvation that was given to it. A subjective refusal on the part of the recipient does not entail that the gift is not ontologically present in the recipient, so as to have the recipient unwittingly and imperfectly partaking of the gift. To use an analogy, the gift of Salvation dwells in any baptized individual. However, Christians who received Baptism without faith or proper intentions, or who decide to live a life that is morally incompatible with the holy promises that the sacrament contains, are unable to experience Christ’s salvation. This point comes out clearly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, the person baptised is confgured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation.”87 Although the unrepentant baptized sinner is purifed from mortal sin through Baptism, he or she is prevented from experiencing how this grace of justifcation translates into theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) and other spiritual effects.88 Certainly “unbelieving” Israel cannot be said to partake of Christ’s salvation in the sense in which baptized Christians do, as Baptism implies an act

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of faith (ritually performed by parents whenever the candidate is a newborn infant). But she cannot either be said to be left with nothing, as Gentiles who ignore the Good News or turn away from it are. This is also a point that Paul emphasizes in c.9 to 11 of his Epistle to the Romans: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the Covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the fesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever” (Rom 9:4). All these gifts are intrinsically ordained to the Messiah’s work of Salvation. They were so proactively until the advent of the Messiah. Could we not argue that they are so retroactively since the Covenant with Israel was renewed in Yeshua? It is one thing to live in the expectation of Salvation; it is another thing to live after the realization of what was expected. As Aquinas argues, if the work of Salvation is not an empty word, if its fulfllment does bring about the cancellation of the ancient guilt continuously associated with human sins, it means that the rituals of the Temple could not produce the same effect. They would only remove external uncleanliness, claims Aquinas. Still, the Salvation to come was already dispensing some of its effects, as forgiveness of sins could be obtained through the faith of Israel that these rituals embodied in an external manner.89 Now that the Salvation of Israel is objectively achieved, although not subjectively received by her, it does not seem unreasonable to claim that this Salvation dispenses its power in a similar manner throughout the generations of children of Israel born after it. As Israel preserves the legacy of Moses’s Torah by observing the Mitzvot, she is united to Yeshua’s Salvation by virtue of the intrinsic nature of her faith. Before the advent of Israel’s Messiah, the Temple was standing but without the fulfllment that comes from the one and eternal sacrifce of God’s only Son. After the advent of Israel’s Messiah, the Temple is no more, but the prayer of Israel partakes of the Messianic light that arises from the one and eternal fulfllment of all the sacrifces of the Temple in Yeshua.90 I would interpret the ancient and not uncontroversial Talmudic and midrashic saying according to which the Messiah of Israel was “born on the day when the Temple was destroyed” in this key.91 In one of the aggadot to which this saying gave birth, the prophet Elijah is portrayed lamenting the fate of Israel on the day the Temple was destroyed. He shouts out to the people working in the felds: “The Holy One, blessed be He, is wroth with His world and wants to destroy His house and to exile His children among the nations of the world, and you occupy yourselves with transitory matters?” But he hears a Bat-Kol (a voice from Heaven): “Let them be, for already their Savior has been born.” He goes to Bethlehem, the place indicated by the Bat-Kol, and fnds the child with his mother there:

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He went and found a woman who was seated at the door of her house, and her son, soiled with blood, was lying in front of her. He said to her: “My daughter, did you give birth to a son?” She said: “Yes” He said to her: ‘Why is he soiled with blood?’ She said: “A great evil! For on the day on which he was born the Temple was destroyed.” He said to her: “My daughter! Rise and take him up, for a great salvation will come to you through him.”92

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In the midst of destruction and exile, a new light begins to shine over Israel. It is the light of the Messiah that brings Salvation to his people. This means that the memory of the Temple that is central to the whole system of Torah observances should not simply be understood as a longing for what used to be before the destruction of the Temple. Pervaded with Messianic light, the memory of the Temple is oriented toward a future era of Redemption that will embrace the past in a totally new, unheard-of mode. But the path toward the day of the full revelation of the one who, since the destruction of the Temple, mysteriously dwells in the midst of his people, is a long and diffcult one, The aggadah continues in the following manner: Five years later [Elijah] said: “Let me go and see the Savior of Israel, whether he is growing up to look like kings or to look like ministering angels.” He went and found the woman standing at the door of her house. He said to her: “My daughter, how is that boy?” She said to him: “Rabbi, did I not tell you that his luck was bad? On the day on which he was born the Temple was destroyed. And although he had feet, he did not walk; he had ears, but did not hear; he had eyes, but did not see; he had a mouth, but did not speak; but was lying there like a stone. Then a wind bore down upon him from the four corners of the world and blew him into the great sea.” Elijah rent his clothes and tore his hair and cried and said: “Woe, lost is the salvation of Israel!” A heavenly voice was heard and said: “Elijah, it is not as you think, but for four hundred years he will dwell in the great sea, and eighty years in the smoke ascent of the Sons of Korah, and eighty years in the gates of Rome, and the rest of the years he will wander in all the great countries until the end.”93

“Lying there like a stone.” The Messiah is in the midst of his people although no one is able to notice his presence: “although he had feet, he did not walk; he had ears, but did not hear; he had eyes, but did not see; he had a mouth, but did not speak.” Just as this aggadah, a number of other legends on the same theme locate the Messiah at “the gates of Rome.”94 He is sometimes portrayed as a beggar. The following well-known passage tells about the conversation that is said to have taken place between him and R. Joshua Levi, who went to visit him on the recommendation of the prophet Elijah:

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When Joshua reached the Messiah, he greeted him: “shalom to you, my Master.” “shalom to you, son of Levi,” replied the Messiah, “when will my Master Come ?” “Today,” was the reply. When Joshua met Elijah once more, the prophet asked him “What did he tell you?” He said “‘shalom to you, son of Levi.” “This means that he assured you and your father a share of the world to come.” “Yes, but he lied to me when he said that he will come today.” “No,” rejoined Elijah, “what he did was to quote Psalms (‘Today if you would but hearken to His [God’s] voice.’).”95

Today will take some time. 2.5.2. The Cross and the Historical Destiny of Israel In Jerusalem Crucifed, Kinzer also points to the death and resurrection of Yeshua as to the origin of a hidden spiritual renewal of Israel qua Israel beyond the reception of this mystery by a few in Israel. However, in order to explain this mystery, he somehow identifes the suffering of Yeshua on the Cross with the punishment of Israel qua Israel, embodied by the destruction of the Temple and the great dispersion of Israel:

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“In his resurrection as the frst-fruits of Israel’s eschatological rebirth, Jesus the Messiah establishes an unbreakable bond with the Jewish people as a whole. Those Jews who fail to acknowledge his sovereignty are not thereby released from his hold. In his death on the cross, Jesus anticipates and bears in himself the punishment that will fall on Jerusalem forty years later. In this way, he transforms that event, rendering it not only a punishment for the rebellion of past generations but also a purifying fre capable of producing spiritual renewal.”96

I do not believe that such an explanation is consistent: In what sense would Yeshua be said to “carry” the burden of dispersion and exile on the Cross given that Israel has had to carry this burden all the same? There is no redeeming exchange here. The sacrifced lamb does not eliminate the punishment incurred by those who offer the sacrifce—and if it does not eliminate their punishment by taking it upon itself, how could it, in turn, achieve the spiritual renewal of those who offer the sacrifce? In addition, this explanation reverses the order of cause and consequence continuously emphasized by Christian tradition: Am Israel is not punished because of its involvement in the death of Yeshua; instead Yeshua dies because of the punishment of Israel (that will take place anyway). But then why is Israel punished in the frst place? Because the nation was unfaithful to the Torah? Yet how could such faithfulness be required of Am Israel if Yeshua precisely gave his life so that Am Israel might become truly faithful to the Torah?

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I am convinced that Yeshua invisibly accompanied Am Israel through all the sufferings of exile. The one and only adequate theological paradigm to which the Shoah can be referred is the death of Yeshua on the Cross (for the same reason Marc Chagall repeatedly painted the crucifxion whenever portraying scenes of pogroms). But that Yeshua was united with suffering Am Israel through his own suffering, and vice-versa, implies precisely that his suffering did not take away the sufferings of Am Israel in exile. Yeshua’s death on the Cross had a redeeming effect on Israel qua Israel, but not on the level of the dire physical realities of exile. It touched the invisible and integrally spiritual core of Israel’s relation to God.97 It is on the basis of this connection that “unbelieving Israel” can be said to partake of a mystery of salvation that, although destined to her, she did not receive, with the consequence of being barred from experiencing the radical regeneration this mystery brings with itself. It is also because of this intrinsic connection that the Apostle professes the frm hope that “unbelieving Israel” will, at the end of times, come to receive the salvation she has been rejecting for so long: “I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, πᾶς Ἰσραὴλ σωθήσεται” (11:25–26). Paul calls “remnant of Israel” the way in which God’s design will come to completion:

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Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant (λεῖμμα), chosen by grace. (11:2–5)

It is through the remnant that what is left of Israel will access the salvation of God and it is also through this remnant that Israel will prosper in a radically new manner: And the survivors of the House of Judah that have escaped shall regenerate its stock below and produce boughs above. For a remnant shall come forth from Jerusalem (‫שׁא ִֵ֔רית‬ ְ ‫ש ׁ֨לִ ַם֙ תֵ ֵּצ֣א‬ ָ ‫)מִירּו‬, Survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts Shall bring this to pass. (2 Kgs 19:30–31; see also Isa 37:31–32)

The members of the Jewish nation that have received salvation and joined the living Body of the Messiah are the remnant Paul has in mind. If these

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Jews mysteriously, against all odds, carry the hope of the entire nation, this means that they are not destined to dissolve within the Body of Yeshua. With Kinzer, I believe that as much as Jews and Gentiles are destined to live in communion within the Ekklesia since they access a salvation that is one and the same reality for both, there is a specifcally Jewish way of accessing this salvation and living according to it. It is in this manner that the legitimacy of a Jewish ekklesia within the Ekklesia is rooted. But what is this manner exactly? I claim that the kerygma, the frst announcement of the Good News addressed to a Jewish audience refects the Jewish way of receiving salvation. 2.5.3. Peter’s Kerygma to the Jews of Jerusalem: Responsibility, Ignorance, and Repentance According to the Acts of the Apostles, Peter addressed a Jewish audience on three occasions after Pentecost. The frst happens on the very day of Pentecost. This is remarkable because the gift of the Spirit features the departure from the First Testament’s “Israel-only-perspective”: All [the apostles] were flled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” (Acts 2:2–8)

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What is “amazing and perplexing” is the universality of the gift. But this universality is still merely linguistic. Clearly, this is not a mixed crowd of Jews and Pagans. The “devout men” that hear the apostles speak in their own tongues are all pilgrims from the Jewish diaspora, even if there are fresh converts among them: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power. Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia. (Acts 2:9–11)

Thus, the meaning of Pentecost is not only that the Revelation of Jesus Christ will reach out to all the nations of the earth, but that this Revelation will propagate from Jerusalem through the medium of the Jewish diaspora. Here is the glory of Israel radiating to the whole world that one fnds

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prophesized in the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis. It is in this context that Peter turns to the “normative” Jews, those who are neither pilgrims from the near diaspora (Galilea) or from far away: Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” (Acts 2: 14–18)

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The “men of Judaea” and “all those who live in Jerusalem” have not only been the witnesses of Yeshua’s preaching—this is also the case of so many other Jews outside Jerusalem. What characterizes these men that somehow collectively epitomize the whole Jewish world is that they are the ones who took part in the events leading to the death of Yeshua. From this point of view, the explanation that Peter provides regarding the outpouring of the Spirit deserves our undivided attention. It contains the heart of Peter’s kerygma to these “normative Jews”: Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confdently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, “He was not abandoned to Hades nor did his fesh experience corruption.” This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies you footstool.” Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucifed. (Acts 2:29–36)

Peter is announcing to the men of Israel that Jesus is their long-awaited Messiah, the defnitive king of Judah whose day was foreseen by David and whose spiritual reign was established through the grace of his resurrection from the dead. Salvation has come to Israel—this is an ontological fact sealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, a fact of which the outpouring of the Spirit is the manifestation. What Peter’s kerygma points out is that there is no other way in which the men of Israel can receive the salvation destined to

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them since the origin but through the acknowledgment of the death of Christ as the result of their collective sin: the Messiah of Israel is “this Jesus whom you crucifed” (Acts 2:36). And if this collective recognition is so important, it is because the corporate sin of the House of Israel is the doorway to a repentance without which salvation cannot be effectively received: Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” (Acts 2:37–39)

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The last sentence (“For the promise . . . calls to him”) is reminiscent of Caiaphas’s prophecy as expounded by John: Christ will die “not for the nation only, but also to gather together into one the scattered children of God” (John 11:51–52). While it also concerns those who are “far away,” salvation is destined to the collective nation of Israel in the frst place as it is frst addressed to the very men who contributed to the death of the Saviour. In this manner, the very element that should bring about the punishment of Israel—her collective responsibility in the death of Yeshua—becomes, through repentance, a collective doorway to the salvation that springs forth from this death. The second speech of Peter to the men of Israel occurs after the miraculous healing of the crippled man sitting by the “beautiful gate” (Acts 3:1–12). The random crowd of curious people that, after rushing to the scene, hear what Peter has to say is anything but a selected audience of scholars and leaders. Peter is witnessing to the people of Israel, ὁ λαός, as such: When Peter saw it, he addressed the people (ἀπεκρίνατο πρὸς τὸν λαόν), You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorifed his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. (Acts 3:12–16)

The emphasis of Peter on the collective involvement of the people of Israel in Christ’s death is all the more striking in that it immediately follows the reference to the promise made to Abraham and the patriarchs in favor of

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the nation. Reminding his kinsmen of what they did with Jesus, Peter is both precise in his description and powerful in his formulations—“you killed the Author of life.” But if Peter does not hesitate to confront the people of Israel in this manner, it is because this collective responsibility cannot be equated with fully intentional action, neither of the crowd nor or of its leaders, as the true identity of the one they had killed evaded their grasp: “And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance (κατὰ ἄγνοιαν ἐπράξατε), as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:17). We fnd here the same structure as in the frst speech: the proclamation of Christ’s victory is followed by the appeal to the recognition of Israel’s sin which is itself followed by an appeal to repentance. But here the process of repentance becomes all-important, as it is presented as the reason why God had predestined Israel to act in this manner with its Messiah:

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In this way God fulflled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets. (Acts 3:18–21)

Peter implies that the repentance of the whole Israel is the condition for the coming of the Messiah that will coincide with the end of times. As Peter is arrested for causing so much disturbance with his considerations on the resurrection of Jesus, he is given the opportunity to address a strictly Jewish audience for the third time. However this time it is composed of the governing elite of the people of Israel, “their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family” (Acts 4:5–6). Again Peter confronts his audience with their responsibility—not separating this responsibility from that of the whole people of Israel—in the death of Jesus, and again this stern reminder is immediately followed by the proclamation of Jesus’s salvation: Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel (πᾶσιν ὑμῖν καὶ παντὶ τῷ λαῷ Ἰσραήλ), that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucifed, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:8–12)

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In this context, the “we” could not be understood differently than “we, Jews.” Even if the apostles had no part in the process that led to the death of Jesus, they are saved through this death just as the rest of the Jewish nation. Reminding the elders that they are the frst to bear the responsibility for the death of Messiah and simultaneously including them into the “we” that embraces all Israel as called to salvation in this very Messiah can only have one meaning: Peter is trying to bring the elders to repentance. There was no need to stress this point explicitly with elders and rulers that were highly educated in Torah, probably also because Peter was aware that it was unlikely they would respond positively to his invitation. All of Peter’s addresses to Jewish audiences have the same basic structure that links the announcement of Yeshua’s salvation with an emphasis on collective responsibility and collective repentance. Peter’s kerygma clearly distinguishes between the salvation of Israel a parte Dei, the ontological fact connected with the sacrifce of Christ on the Cross—by killing Christ the elders and the men of Jerusalem fulflled the Promise made to Abraham without knowing it—from the reception of this salvation a parte hominum— now the elders and the men of Israel should repent in order to enter into the possession of the Messianic heritage destined to them by God.

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2.5.4. Paul’s Kerygma to the Jews of Antioch: The Fault and the Glory Paul’s kerygma in Antioch conveys the same fundamental message as Peter’s kerygma to the Jews of Jerusalem: God has overturned the criminal intent of the Jews so as to accomplish the salvation of Israel and defnitively reestablish David’s throne. The manner in which Paul delivers this message is, however, substantially different from that of Peter. I believe the situation of Jews in the far-away diaspora largely accounts for this difference. For one thing, they are probably less Torah-educated than the Jews of Jerusalem so that some extra-pedagogy is needed. For another, they are not directly involved in the events that led to the death of Jesus. It is worth shortly examining the way in which Paul seizes here an opportunity to insert the Good News of salvation into a larger historical-theological framework. Indeed, what is at stake is the reception of this Good News by all the coming generations of Israel throughout the world that will have had nothing to do with the actions of those Jews who were materially involved in the death of Yeshua. Addressing the audience gathered in the synagogue of Antioch on Shabbat (Acts 13:16–41), Paul launches into a narrative that summarily embraces the whole story of the nation: the “choice of the ancestors” that goes back to Abraham brings the nation to sojourn in Egypt (v.17); the liberation from Egypt leads to the peregrinations in the desert and to the establishment of

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Israel in the Promised Land (v.17–20); fnally the organization of society brings the institution of prophets and kings (v.20–21). This retelling seems to come to an abrupt end with the story of David (v.21–22). From David, Paul makes a big leap over the rest of Israel’s history in order to contemplate the advent of Jesus Christ: “Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus (ἤγαγεν τῷ Ἰσραὴλ σωτῆρα Ἰησοῦν), as he promised” (v.23). Paul’s retelling is shaped like a musical crescendo. The kingship of David is the moment when the light of Israel, that has been steadily growing since the time of the Patriarchs through the arduous historical experience of the nation, reaches maximal intensity: “Then they asked for a king; and God gave them Saul, son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years. When he had removed him, he made David their king. In his testimony about him he said, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will carry out all my wishes.’ ” (Acts 21:22) In David, the whole descendance of Abraham is glorifed. But Paul points out that this crescendo extends beyond David. God has given a descendant to David who appears to be the savior of Israel. However the very term of savior, at least in the way Paul uses it, implies something else than a mere increase of glory. If Yeshua is the one that saves Israel from her sins, this cannot take place without repentance on the part of Israel. It is by walking the path of repentance that Israel must come to meet the one that comes to meet Israel to forgive her sins. This is why Paul adds that “before his coming John had already proclaimed a Baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel” (v.24). Yet the repentance preached by Paul was only a prefguration of the repentance through which Israel was meant to welcome her real Saviour (see v.25). In actual fact, the manner in which this was due to happen is so unexpected and so diffcult to accept from a Jewish point of view that Paul feels the need to emphasize that the realization of this divine act of salvation is truly destined to Jews in the frst place: “My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family, and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent (ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος τῆς σωτηρίας ταύτης ἐξαπεστάλη)” (v.27). At this point, Paul tells his audience about the death of this Savior at the hands of the Jews of Jerusalem. He does so in terms that are similar to Peter’s—although the execution witnesses a collective criminal intent as it resulted in the condemnation of an innocent, those who are responsible for this death are entitled to forgiveness because they were not aware of what they were doing; that is, putting to death the one who through his very death was to deliver the salvation of Israel: “Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulflled those words by condemning him. Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. But God raised him from the dead” (Acts 27–30).

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Paul claims that this terrible deed that begs for repentance is precisely the manner that God has chosen to fulfll his promise to Abraham: “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulflled for us, their children, by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’ ” (Acts 32–33). To prove his point, Paul goes back to the theme of the glory of David, showing how the resurrection of Yeshua from the dead realizes the Messianic reign of which that of David was only the prefguration: As to his raising him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, “I will give you the holy promises made to David.” Therefore, he has also said in another psalm, “You will not let your Holy One experience corruption.” For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, died, was laid beside his ancestors, and experienced corruption; but he whom God raised up experienced no corruption. (Acts 34–37)

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According to most commentators, the promise of these “holy things (τὰ ὅσια Δαυὶδ τὰ πιστά)” is a reference to the promise made to David that had hitherto remained unfulflled: “Your house and your kingship shall ever be secure before you; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam 7:16). This is about the glory of Israel eventually illuminating all the nations of the earth. It is not a coincidence if James, the “brother” of Jesus and leader of the frst community of Jerusalem, points to the same Davidic restoration when he welcomes the frst Gentiles in the Church: My brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God frst looked favourably on the gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written, “After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—even all the gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.” (Acts 15:14–18)98

In this highly paradoxical manner, the cosmic glory of Israel arises from the killing of an innocent for which the Jews of Jerusalem, the heart of the nation, have to take responsibility. But it is precisely faith in this mysterious, bewildering design that Paul requires from the Jews of Antioch for them to receive salvation and contemplate the glory of Israel: “Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39).

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The repentance of Israel for her sins preached by John in the days of Yeshua’s lifetime is now inextricably tied up with the awareness of Jewish responsibility for Yeshua’s death. Paul is only too conscious that such Good News will stir up opposition on the part of his audience: “Beware, therefore, that what the prophets said does not happen to you: ‘Look, you scoffers! Be amazed and perish for in your days I am doing a work, a work that you will never believe, even if someone tells you’ ” (Acts 13:41). In point of fact, the enthusiasm of Paul’ audience (Acts 13: 42–23) is shortlived, and the preaching of Paul to the Jews of Antioch ends in failure. When the Jews see “the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord” (v.44), they feel “jealous” (v.45). They start vilifying a faith that at its core, because of the stumbling of Israel, implies the widening to non-Jews of a message destined to Jews. They no longer consider the argument of Paul according to which this stumbling is precisely the manner that God chose so that the glory of Israel could be restored and propagated to all nations. Paul and Barnabas react sharply to these rebukes: “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken frst to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have set you to be a light for the gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’ ” (Acts 13:46–47). The disciples apply to themselves the words addressed to the Servant from the Book of Isaiah (49:6). Just as the Servant, they will bring the light of Israel to the nations, vindicating the prophecy of the old Simeon who contemplated in the light of Christ “revealed to the nations” the refection of the “glory of Israel” (Luke 2:30–32). However, because of their unbelief, the Jews of Antioch fnd themselves separated from the salvation that was destined to them as to all Israel. It is an enduring paradox that the majority in Israel still ignore the manner in which the nations of the earth beneft from the light that originates from her. Yet the failure of Paul’s kerygma can teach us a lot when it comes to understanding how Israel could fnally receive her salvation. 2.5.5. The Distinctive Features of the Apostolic Kerygma to the Jews Different though they are, Peter’s and Paul’s announcements of Yeshua’s salvation present several features in common. Brought together, I believe they provide a distinct characterization of the “Jewish path” toward salvation. a) The renewal of Israel’s covenantal bond in Yeshua has precedence over its extension to Gentiles. Chronologically, the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea are the frst to whom the Good News is preached (Acts 2:14). This is not a coincidence as the words

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of Paul to the Jews of Antioch give us to understand: “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken frst to you, ὑμῖν ἦν ἀναγκαῖον πρῶτον λαληθῆναι τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ” (13:47). Salvation concerns Israel in the frst place; this is inherent to God’s design as manifested in Yeshua. To the Canaanite woman, Jesus is declared: “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). b) Yeshua’s salvation stems from the Torah and is bound up with it. Both apostles announce the message from within the Jewish religious tradition. In Yeshua, the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” is glorifed (Acts 3:13), being the ultimate reason of God’s choice of Israel’s ancestors (Acts 13:17) and the fulfllment of Abraham’s promise (Acts 13:32–33). He is the realization of the Messianic hope embodied in David (Acts 2:29–36; 13:3437), who is himself the transient apex of the whole history of Israel since the liberation from Israel (Acts 13:18–22). The advent of Yeshua was foretold by the prophets (Acts 3:18–21). This retelling of the story and calling of Israel is of course completely irrelevant when the kerygma is addressed to Gentiles. On the contrary, the whole thrust of this kerygma is to convince Gentiles that they need to accept a wisdom that comes from without their culture, a God that they have never known, their sins having turned them away from their aspiration to know the truth and live by it (Acts 14:15–18, 17:18–31; 1 Thess 1:9, see also Rom 1:18–32).

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c) The path of Israel goes through both a personal and collective acknowledgement of her complicity in the death of her Messiah. The people of Jerusalem united with their elders and rulers had Yeshua unjustly put to death as he had done nothing wrong (Acts 2:36; 3:13–15; 4:8–12; 13:27–30). But they acted through ignorance (Acts 3:17; 13:27–30). They were prevented from seeing that the one whom they contributed to put to death was the true Messiah of Israel and that their involvement in his death was the manner in which God had determined that this Messiah would deliver the salvation of Israel. His Resurrection is the manifestation of this victorious design (Acts 2:29–36; 13:30–37). Indeed, the sacrifce of Yeshua is the doorway by which Israel can receive her salvation through faith and repentance of her sins (Acts 2:37–39; 13:39). It is very likely that Peter’s and Paul’s common emphasis on the fact that the sin of Israel—responsibility for an innocent’s death—is due to ignorance is a reference to the category of sin described in Lev 15:24–26: If [sin] was done unwittingly, through the inadvertence of the community (‫שׁגָגָה‬ ְ ‫ש ָ ׂ֣תה ִל‬ ְ ‫) ָהעֵדָ ה֮ נֶ ֶע‬, the whole community shall present one bull of the herd as a

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burnt offering of pleasing odor to the LORD, with its proper meal offering and libation, and one he-goat as a sin offering. The priest shall make expiation for the whole Israelite community and they shall be forgiven; for it was an error, and for their error they have brought their offering, an offering by fre to the LORD and their sin offering before the LORD. The whole Israelite community and the stranger residing among them shall be forgiven, for it happened to the entire people through error (see equally Lev 4:13–14, 5:1–15).

The sacrifce of the Lamb of God purifes Klal Israel from a sin—the killing of an innocent man—that was the external and somehow accidental manifestation of an inner sinful condition. If the apostolic kerygma to the Gentiles equally proclaims the purifcation of sins that faith in Yeshua accompanied with repentance provides, this repentance has nothing to do with responsibility for the death of Yeshua. The sin of Gentiles pertains to idolatry and immorality—to their ignorance of a God they do not know rather than to their rejection of a God they should know (Acts 17:29–30; Rom 1:18–32). d) The salvation of Gentiles manifests the light of Israel. Yeshua is the glory of the Patriarchs of Israel (Acts 3:12); the unending Messianic light that David foresaw (Acts 13:34–37). By embracing in Yeshua the restoration of Israel, Gentiles acquire the wisdom they have always longed for though never truly possessed (Acts 15:14–18). As Yeshua declares to the Samaritan woman, “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22).

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e) By rejecting the kerygma, Israel turns away from her own glory, leaving it in the hands of Gentiles. While Peter’s kerygma seems to achieve little success among elders and rulers (Acts 4:8–12, see Acts 4:13–21), the negative reception of Paul’s preaching in the synagogue of Antioch leads him to “turn to the gentiles” (Acts 13:37). This is no longer about the welcoming of Gentiles as Gentiles in the nascent Ekklesia (Acts 15). It is already about the rise of Gentility within the Church and its prevalence over the original Jewish component. From this point of view, supersessionism is not a Gentile ideological invention that starts to take shape in the second century. It is caused by the dismissal of the Good News by the vast majority of Jews, at the behest of their elders and rulers, leading to the rarefaction of the Jewish component of the Church, a trend that is already manifest during the frst generations of Christians (see also Acts 7:51–60; 9:22–23, 17:1–15, 18:5–6, 27–28; 21:27–32; 22:12–22; 24:9, 27; 25:1–9; 26:1–21; 28:23–28). This process echoes Yeshua’s prophecy in Matt 21:43: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and

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given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”99 What is fawed with supersessionism is not the fact that the nation from whom salvation comes has transmitted it to a new people in whom the original Jewish element could not but disintegrate in the short-term. It is the theologoumenon according to which the self-dismissal of bio-ethnic Israel is irreversible as if Israel had been forever excluded from salvation. It is the idea that the Church as new Israel established on faith as a spiritual reality once and for all superseded the obsolete bio-ethnic self-understanding of old Israel. The truth is that not only Israel as a bio-ethnic reality remains bound up with salvation, but she will come to be saved in her entirety (Rom 11:25–26) because she is as a bio-ethnic entity an integral part of the fully realized Ekklesia. In conclusion, when it comes to receiving salvation it is clear from the apostolic kerygma that Israel as a bio-ethnic entity has a specifc calling, fundamentally distinct from the Gentile one. It is a calling that has precedence, is rooted in Torah, is paramount to the constitution of the Ekklesia and is characterized by a spiritual path of its own: collective repentance for the condemnation and death of the true Messiah of Israel. The apostolic kerygma shows that for Jews and Gentiles alike there can be no other path to receive salvation than that of repentance. But “formally,” to use scholastic terminology, the object of Jewish repentance is not identical with that of Gentile repentance: while the sin of Gentiles has to do with unwitting ignorance and immorality, the sin of Jews has to do with the condemnation of the innocent in spite of their knowledge of the Law. As Paul teaches in his Epistle to the Romans: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom 11:32). For both Jews and Gentiles, welcoming a salvation that is anchored in the sacrifce of Christ on a Cross does not go without some sort of ethnic-cultural humiliation. But this humiliation is not identical for Jews and Gentiles. As Paul writes in 1 Cor 1:23, the message of “the crucifed Christ” (“we proclaim, ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν—this is the essence of the kerygma”) is “foolishness,” μωρία, to the Greeks, as it is about a God suffering and dying at the hands of men like a slave and a felon. But to the Jews, this message is a “stumbling block,” σκάνδαλον, to Jews because it brings about the memory of the participation of the whole people of Israel, the elders together with the crowds, in this death. This “stumbling block” is a reference to Ps 118:22, the very verse that Peter quotes in his third kerygma to the Jews of Jerusalem: “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel (πᾶσιν ὑμῖν καὶ παντὶ τῷ λαῷ Ἰσραήλ), that this man is standing before you in good health

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by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucifed, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you (ὁ λίθος, ὁ ἐξουθενηθεὶς ὑφʼ ὑμῶν), the builders; it has become the cornerstone.” There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:8–12)100

The same reality—the Son of God dying on a Cross—is the source of salvation for Jews and Gentiles. As it gives birth to a new people, gathered in the Ekklesia, it is the foundation of the communion between Jews and Gentiles. But this communion rests on two distinct paths that derive from the bio-ethnic difference between Jews and Gentiles. As one endeavors to conceive the confguration of what could become a Jewish ekklesia within the Ekklesia, an organic entity representing the Jewish bio-ethnic component of the Church, one has no other choice than to contemplate the specifc path toward the salvation of these Jews that Paul calls “the remnant.” As I mentioned before, the belittling of Jewish collective responsibility for the death of Yeshua stems from the most excellent intentions as it aims to undermine what has been the traditional source of Christian anti-Semitism. That mainstream Catholic theologians would be satisfed with the statement contained in Nostra Aetate §4 is perfectly understandable. They do not try to develop an understanding of the specifc confguration of a Jewish ekklesia. But such is not the case of Mark Kinzer. To reiterate, I consider his failure to see that Jewish collective responsibility is the doorway to Jewish collective salvation, and therefore the key to fathoming how a Jewish ekklesia happens to be anchored in the salvation of Christ as the Ur-problem of his “bilateral ecclesiology.”101 What I intend to do now is to show how an understanding of the essential connection between the sacrifce of Yeshua and the Jewish path toward salvation brings a fundamental corrective to Kinzer’s understanding of what a Jewish ekklesia should be. In this manner, we will fnd ourselves a step closer to answering the question that provides the present inquiry with its very raison d’être: How should we conceive the Catholic Church in the full theological sense of the term, so that a distinctive Jewish or authentically Messianic Jewish presence might constitute an integral dimension of her being? NOTES 1. As Augustine writes, “if you understand, it is not God!,” Serm. 117, 5, Patrologia Latina (later PL), Vol. 38 (Paris: Didot, 1844–1864), coll. 673. 2. “Nostra Aetate, Declaration of the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian religions proclaimed by his holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28,” 1965, http:​/​/www​​ .vati​​can​.v​​a​/arc​​hive/​​hist_​​counc​​ils​/i​​i​_vat​​ican_​​counc​​il​/do​​cumen​​ts​/va​​t​-ii_​​decl_​​19651​​​ 028​_n​​ostra​​-aeta​​te​_en​.

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3. See Johannes Willebrands, Church and Jewish people: New Considerations (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992), 211–219, quoted in SHOM, 5. http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​ .v​​a​/rom​​an​_cu​​ria​/p​​ontif​​i cal_​​counc​​ils​/c​​hrstu​​ni​/re​​latio​​ns​-je​​ws​-do​​cs​/rc​​_pc​_c​​hrstu​​ni​_do​​ c​​_197​​41201​​_nost​​ra​-ae​​tate_​​en. 4. John Paul II, Pope. Spiritual Pilgrimage (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 63, quoted in Searching Her Own Mystery, 6. 5. http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/arc​​hive/​​hist_​​counc​​ils​/i​​i​_vat​​ican_​​counc​​il​/do​​cumen​​ts​/ va​​t​-ii_​​const​​_1964​​​1121_​​lumen​​-gent​​ium​_e​​n, see SHOM, 43–45. 6. SHOM, c.3, especially 45–47. 7. § 22,​  http​:/​/ww​​w​.vat​​ican.​​va​/ar​​chive​​/hist​​_coun​​cils/​​ii​_va​​tican​​_coun​​cil​/d​​ocume​​ nts​/v​​at​-ii​​_cons​​t​_196​​512​07​​_gaud​​ium​-e​​t​-spe​​s​_en.​ 8. On Christians and Jews (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2010), 66, quoted in SHOM, 52. 9. SHOM, 52–53. Very remarkably, Matthew’s Gospel proclaims Jesus’s Messiahship over the people of Israel at the moment when it describes the dismissal of this title in the harshest terms by the Jewish authorities. 10. Augustine of Hippo. In Answer to the Jews, 7:9 in Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955), 402–403. We replaced “natural” with “carnal” in the translation. Besides considerations of political correctness, there is no reason to water down the Latin original: “et eo ipsos se carnales esse convincunt.” Justin Martyr is probably one of the frst apologists to formulate the theme on which Augustine expands upon: “because of your wickedness, God has withheld from you the ability to discern the wisdom of His Scriptures,” Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew (later Dialogue Trypho), c. 55, in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 222. 11. “Despite all, the Jews who refused to believe that He was destined to die and to rise from the dead slew Him and were ravaged by the Romans worse than before, torn from their fatherland where foreigners were already lording it over them, and scattered over the whole earth—for they are now everywhere. And it is their own Scriptures that bear witness that it is not we who are the inventors of the prophecies touching Christ,” Augustine, The City of God, Books XVII–XXII (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 164. 12. §15, http:​/​/w2.​​vatic​​an​.va​​/cont​​ent​/p​​ius​-x​​i​/en/​​encyc​​lical​​s​/doc​​ument​​s​/hf_​​p​-xi_​​ enc​_1​​40319​​37​​_mi​​t​-bre​​nnend​​er​-so​​rge. 13. Regarding the duration of the devotional precepts of the Old Law after the Passion, Thomas Aquinas favors the opinion of Augustine over that of Jerome. According to Jerome, the apostles were only pretending when, after the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, they continued to frequent the Temple and implement rites such as circumcision “lest, to wit, they should scandalize the Jews and hinder their conversion.” Augustine, however, envisages a transitory period, between the Passion and the proclamation of the Gospels to the Gentiles, when the practice of the Old Law was “dead,” in the sense that it was no longer a path to salvation, but not “deadly,” in the sense that it was still not sinful for disciples of Christ to practice it. This was to indicate the difference of status between the religion of the Jews and the beliefs

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of Pagans: “For heathenish ceremonial was rejected as absolutely unlawful, and as prohibited by God for all time; whereas the legal ceremonial ceased as being fulflled through Christ’s Passion, being instituted by God as a fgure of Christ,” Summa Theologiae (later ST), IaIIae, q.103, a.4, ad 1 (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1927), 237. 14. “http​:/​/ww​​w​.vat​​ican.​​va​/ro​​man​_c​​uria/​​ponti​​fcal​​_coun​​cils/​​chrst​​uni​/r​​elati​​ons​ -j​​ews​-d​​ocs​/r​​c​_pc_​​chrst​​uni​_d​​oc​_20​​15121​​0​_eb​r​​aismo​​-nost​​ra​-ae​​tate_​​en​.ht​​ml” http// www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/rom​​an​_cu​​ria​/p​​ontif​​i cal_​​counc​​ils​/c​​hrstu​​ni​/re​​latio​​ns​-je​​ws​-do​​cs​/rc​​_pc​ _c​​hrstu​​ni​_do​​c​_201​​51210​​_ebr​a​​ismo-​​nostr​​a​-aet​​ate​_e​​n​.htm​​l. 15. Origen, Homilies on Luke and Fragments on Luke (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 40. 16. Homilies on Leviticus 1–16, 12.5 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 228. 17. Jews will come back to faith when the “time of the Gentiles” will be fulflled, see Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 16.26; 17.5, Vol. 10.1–10.2, Origenes Werke (Leipzig: Teubner, 1935–1937); cast out of the camp as a leprous for a limited period of time in Homilies on the Book of Numbers, in Patrologia Graeca (later PG) Vol.12 (Paris: Didot, 1857–1866), Col. 611b. 18. Homilies on Luke and Fragments on Luke, 88–89. 19. Homilies on Luke and Fragments on Luke, 92–93. 20. A Commentary upon the Gospel according to S. Luke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859), 26. 21. In his Golden Chain (Catena Aurea), a systematic gathering of the opinions of the Fathers of the Church commenting on the Gospel, Aquinas mentions Basil the Great (+379), Bede the Venerable (+735) and Theophylact (+1107) as in favour of this interpretation of the verse, Catena Aurea, Vol. 3 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), 48. 22. A Commentary upon the Gospel according to S. Luke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859), 3. 23. Ibid, 4. 24. Ibid, 26. Aquinas reports a commentary of Gregory of Nyssa (+394) along the same line, Catena Aurea, Vol. 3, 87. Bede proposes a more literal interpretation of the verse but is obliged to delay the salvation of Israel until the end of human history: “And well is the enlightening of the Gentiles put before the glory of Israel, because when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then shall Israel be safe,” ibid. But how come is the birth of Jesus supposed to bring about the salvation of the people of Israel if Israel has to wait until the end of all times for it to take place? 25. Letter 93, 8, The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine with a Sketch of His Life and Work (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 391. Aquinas refers to this letter of Augustine when he underscores the importance of the literal sense in his Sum of Theology: “All the senses are founded on one—the literal—from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory,” ST Ia, q.1, a.10, ad 1. 26. We see modern exegesis struggling with the same type of diffculties. N.-T. Wright has endorsed Mark A. Powell’s suggestion that the entirety of Matthew’s

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Gospel should be read in the light of Matt 1:21. Wright appears to cling to the literal meaning of the passage when he claims that “Matthew presupposes a telling of the Jewish story according to which Israel has failed, has ended in exile, and needs a new exodus,” The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1992), 390. But the Israel in which the promise of the angel will be fulflled is not, according to Wright, the one according to the fesh but the “new Israel” that Christ recapitulates in himself and that is corporately embodied in the Church. If the only Jews meant to be saved are the few who will, at one stage or another, became followers of Christ, they are not “Israel according to the fesh.” Not only individuals do not make up for a whole nation, but these specifc individuals are those who objectively severed their ties with the nation by adhering to a movement no longer bound to a specifc ethnicity. This is why Powell and Wright share a traditional form of supersessionism. Powell is totally explicit on this point: “For Matthew, the church has superseded Israel as the eschatological people of God and the church’s primary task as the eschatological people of God is to produce the fruits of the kingdom that God desires,” see God with Us: A Pastoral Theology of Matthew’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 17. 27. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and Epistle to the Hebrews (later Hom. St. John), Vol. 14 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1889), 390. 28. Chrysologus (+450) and Remigius (+908) uphold the more traditional view that “his people” designates only those who will believe in Christ, and therefore only a handful from the people of Israel, Catena Aurea, Vol. 1 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), 51. 29. Chrysostom, Hom. St. John, 388–390. 30. Robert Tannehill is among the exegetes that would rather evoke a tragic failure than metaphorically interpret the salvation of Israel announced in the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. Contrasting the bitter exclamation of Paul at the end of the Book of Acts (28:8: “Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen”) with the Magnifcat and the Benedictus, he squarely admits that “God’s promise in Scripture, which the narrator presented to us as a key to understanding God’s purpose in history, has not been fulflled,” The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts. A Literary Interpretation. Volume One: The Gospel According to Luke (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1986), 41. As Kinzer observes, “without denying the tragic element in the story, it is highly unlikely that Luke thinks the promises to Israel in his infancy narrative have been—or can be—defnitively thwarted. To see God’s dealings with Israel as ultimately tragic would mean that God’s dealings with Jesus result in failure,” Jerusalem Crucifed, 32–33. The failure of an all-mighty God is an insoluble logical paradox, especially when it affects His most crucial endeavour: saving mankind through his Son. 31. When Origen argues that the marriage contract between God and the Jewish nation was revoked because something “shameful (ἀσχήμων)” was found in the Jewish nation (with reference to Deut 24:1), he brings forth these two precise passages: “What could be more shameful than shouting all together: ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him Crucify him!!’ (John 19:6 and 15)? And how could there be nothing shameful in the cry: ‘His blood be upon our heads!’ (Matt 27:25)?

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This is why, God taking just vengeance, Jerusalem was besieged by armies and she became a wasteland,” Commentary on Matthew in PL 13, coll. 1236b (translation mine). 32. Commentary on Matthew, Vol. 117 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 313. See also Tertullian, An answer to the Jews 8.17-18 Vol. 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 1363–1364. 33. Letter 149 in Letters (131–164), Vol. 20 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 254–255. 34. Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Vol. 10 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 512–516. 35. Bossuet, Oeuvres, Vol. 2 ( Paris: Didot, 1841), 628 (translation mine). 36. Richard C. H Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 1096–1097. 37. Le Jugement dans l’Évangile de Matthieu (Geneva : Labor et Fides, 1995), 376. 38. PMJ, 37. Kinzer is quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church where it states that the cry of the crowd refected a “formula for ratifying a judicial sentence,” see Catechism of the Catholic Church (later CCC) (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 597. This observation concurs with a number of exegetical studies. However, the question here is whether this juridical dimension of the Jewish outcry constitutes an alternative interpretation to that of an “effective self-imposed curse.” Indeed, if I declare myself ready to incur whatever legal—divinely legal in this situation—punishment might follow from my responsibility in the death of an individual human being, am I not cursing myself in the case this human being turns out to be innocent? Arguing that it is not so would be tantamount to denying that G-d is a just Judge rewarding good deeds and punishing evil ones such as putting an innocent man to death. G-d might well refrain from punishing children for the misdeeds of their parents, as the Catechism claims in the case of Jesus’s death, but that does not prevent the outcry of the ones present at the scene from having the character of a self-curse. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid, 36–37. 41. Ibid, 38. 42. Ibid. 43. The masterminds of ISIS and Al-Qaida advocate many passages from the Quran as sources of inspiration for deeds that have been internationally condemned. The fact that a great number of Muslim scholars disagree with their reading of the Quran is not per se a proof that these passages cannot be read in this manner. 44. In a book the content of which I will discuss at a later point, Catherine. Sider Hamilton’s analysis of the expression in the Tanakh corroborates ours, see The Death of Jesus in Matthew, Innocent Blood and the End of Exile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 185–187. She adds interesting observations on the story of Susanne in the book of Daniel where “the whole people, πᾶς ὁ λαóς “is challenged to take responsibility for ‘the blood of an innocent,’ ” 104–112. For further confrmation of the very intentional use of the term πᾶς ὁ λαóς in Matthew, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “AntiSemitism and the Cry of ‘All the People,’ ” Theological Studies 26 (1965), 667–671. 45. For examples of such an argumentation see in situ William D. Davies & Dale C Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint

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Matthew (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 591–592; Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 413–414. 46. ”Il sangue dell’alleanza (Es.24,8)” in Sangue e Antropologia Biblica II (Rome: Pia Unione Preziosissimo Sangue, 1981), 497–513. 47. See for instance Frederick A. Niedner, “Rereading Matthew on Jerusalem and Judaism,” Biblical Theology Bulletin, 19 no. 2 (1989), 43–47; Timothy B. Cargal, “His Blood Be upon us and upon Our Children? A Matthean Double-entendre,” New Testament Studies 37 (1991), 101–112; Giulio Michelini, Il sangue dell’alleanza e la salvezza dei peccatori, una nuova lettura di Matteo 26:27 (Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2010). 48. See Num 35:33 regarding the purifcation of the land that was defled through the shedding of innocent blood. 49. See infra footnote 44. 50. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 5–13. 51. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 10. 52. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 14. 53. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 155. 54. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 206–208. 55. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 208–209. 56. Sider Hamilton, The Death of Jesus, 207. 57. Chrysostom, Hom. St. John, 315. 58. Discourses against Judaizing Christians, Hom.1, III (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979), 11. 59. Sander L. Gilman & Steven T. Katz, Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis (New York: NYU Press, 1993), 47. 60. See James Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY; London, UK: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003; frst published in 1967). Raymond Brown had already formulated a similar hypothesis in his Gospel According to John I-XII, Anchor Bible Series, Vol. 29 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). 61. PMJ, 143 62. See 145–147. 63. Stephen Motyer’s plea for a “new start” in conceiving the salvation of Israel in the 4th Gospel also basically tries to relativize the apparent anti-Judaism of the Passion narratives by interpreting them against the background of other, more philoSemitic, passages of the same Gospel. The argument is, therefore, liable to the same objections, “The Fourth Gospel and the Salvation of Israel: An Appeal for a New Start” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 83–100. 64. PMJ, 148. 65. PMJ, 36. 66. Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 258.

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67. Chrysostom insists on the hypocrisy of the members of the Sanhedrin who knew that Christ was by no means preaching rebellion against the Romans, Hom. St. John, 239. 68. Aquinas quotes Origen: “So insignifcant a thing as the life of one man may surely be made a sacrifce for the safety of the state” (t. xxx. c. 12: reference unclear), Catena Aurea, Vol. 4 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1845), 389–390. In his own commentary on the Gospel of John, Aquinas interprets Caiaphas’s exclamation as a display of knowledge of the Law (with reference to Deut 13:1), rather than as the brutal manifestation of his own moral lawlessness, Commentary on the Gospel of John: Chapters 1–21 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2010), 254. 69. Commentary on the Gospel according to John Books 13–32 (later Com. John) (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 324. 70. Chrysostom, Com. John, 324. 71. Chrysostom, Hom. St. John, 41. 72. Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1984), 423. 73. Some of them are even siding with Origen. This is the case of Kenneth Gangel: “The arrogant Caiaphas made a prophecy far beyond his own understanding when he described the death of Jesus as an event in which one would die for many, particularly for the entire nation of Israel. We call this substitutionary (or vicarious) atonement. But Israel alone was not and is not the benefciary. Jesus is our substitute as he is for all people. Unwittingly and in the providence of God, the high priest became a channel of divine revelation. Substitutionary atonement would reach beyond the Jewish nation to the ‘other sheep’ of John 10 (Rom 9–11),” John, Vol. 4 (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 222. It is also the case of R. C.H. Lenski: “Here John brings in what lies in λαός as used by Caiaphas, the idea of a sacred Covenant people; but John again expands the term, as he necessarily must, to include all God’s chosen people in the grand new Covenant, gathered from among all nations and people,” The interpretation of St. John’s gospel, 831. R. Brown seems to hold similar supersessionist views: “Caiaphas was right; the death of Jesus would save the nation from destruction. Yet Caiaphas could not suspect that Jesus would die, not in place of Israel but on behalf of the true Israel” The Gospel according to John (I–XII) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 442. 74. Andrew T. Lincoln has the merit of singling out the diffculty, even if he does not attempt to solve it: “Unlike the notion of ‘the children of God’, the term for ‘nation,’ ἔθνος, is not spiritualized here or in its usage in 18:35. It is the Jewish nation that is in view. It is signifcant that in this Gospel, which has hostile references to ‘the Jews’ and is alleged to refect anti-Judaism, Jesus’ death and its benefts are depicted as for the nation of Israel,” The Gospel according to Saint John (London: Continuum, 2005), 330–331. The way Brown argues in favor of discarding Caiaphas’s “for the nation” as a redactional insert deserves some comment: “This is omitted by some early Latin patristic evidence, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and some Ethiopic witnesses. Normally this would not be suffcient basis for putting it in brackets, but the redemptive theology that the phrase seems to imply does seem strange on the lips of Caiaphas,” The Gospel according to John (I–XII), 440. Contrary to sound epistemology, the very point that one struggles to account for (“the redemptive theology

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that the phrase seems to imply does seem strange on the lips of Caiaphas”) becomes a determining reason to dismiss its factual existence as insignifcant (let us put these few words “in brackets” as a redactional insert). One simply eliminates the issue that does not ft into the conventional theological framework. But how could this comment not refect a deliberate theological intention when, as Brown himself observes, it is repeated later on in the same book? Indeed, when Caiaphas is listed among the Jewish authorities to which Jesus is taken after being arrested, John adds the following indication: “Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people” (18:14). It is no coincidence in my opinion that John places this reminder at the onset of the Passion narrative. I actually believe that it is a key to one of its most essential dimensions. 75. The interpretation of St. John’s gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 827. 76. Origen refers to this distinction when he suggests that Caiaphas’s prophecy (ἵνα εἷς ἄνθρωπος ἀποθάνῃ ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαοῦ καὶ μὴ ὅλον τὸ ἔθνος ἀπόληται) embraces Gentiles together with Jews: “And consider if you can take the name ‘people’ in reference to those of the circumcision, and the name ‘nation’ in reference to the rest (Καὶ ἐπίστησον εἰ δύνασαι τὸ μὲν ὄνομα τοῦ «λαοῦ» λαβεῖν εἰς τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς, τὸ δὲ τοῦ«ἔθνους» εἰς τοὺς λοιπούς),” Com. John, 327. 77. Imploring God to show Himself to him, so that the people of Israel will know what distinguishes them from all the other nations, Moses speaks in the following way: “Now therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found grace in Thy sight, show me now Thy ways, that I may know Thee, to the end that I may fnd grace in Thy sight; and consider that this nation is Thy people.', ὅτι λαός σου τὸ ἔθνος τὸ μέγα τοῦτο, ‫”ּכ֥י ַעּמְָך֖ הַּג֥ ֹוי ַה ֶּז ֽה‬ ִ (Exod 33:13). 78. John 1–11 (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 363–367. 79. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John, 296–297. 80. The fate of the early Church, originally constituted by a majority of Jewish disciples, witnesses this rapid dissolution of the Jewish element after the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) that opened the doors to Gentile believers. The only reason why the nation subsists unto these days is due to the fact that a majority of Jews did not join the early Church, turning away from the Good News. 81. PMJ, 224. 82. Jerusalem Crucifed, 158. 83. See Jerusalem Crucifed, 3–7. 84. Jerusalem Crucifed, 105. 85. That the dispersion (banishment/Galut) of Israel came as a punishment for its sins is not only a Christian idea. It is the basic framework of Israel’s refection on the disastrous events associated with the destruction of the Temple as witnessed in the Talmud and rabbinic literature. The comparison between the post-70 AD exile and the banishment of Adam from Paradise due to his transgression goes back as far as the third century, see Pesikta De-Rav Kahana (Abbahu) 119b, Pesikta de Rav Kahana (Jewish Publications of America, 2002), 367–368; Genesis Rabbah 19:9 (Abbahu), Midrash Rabbah (London: The Soncino Press, 1961), 155–156. Saadia Gaon, the prominent tenth-century rabbi and philosopher, builds his theory of the

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purifying, atoning dimension of Galut on this basis, Beliefs and Opinions, treatise 8 (Yale University Press, 1942). Remarkably, it seems that the concept of Galut itself is a term of rabbinic law forged in reference to the feeing of a murderer to a city of refuge after committing an unintentional murder, see Sifre, Num.160, https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​ aria.​​org​/S​​ifrei​​_Bami​​dbar.​​158​​?l​​ang​=b​​i. 86. According to Aquinas, the fulfllment of the law through the sacrifce of Christ makes the practice of the yet unfulflled Law not only superfuous but sinful as it implies suspicion regarding the reality of this fulfllment, ST IaIIae, qu.103, a.4. This understanding is clearly supersessionist: the Church was destined to replace Israel and her worship, an event that took place through the disobedience of Israel. In his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Aquinas explains away Paul’s statement regarding the non-rejection of Israel in 11:2 by inserting a “totaliter” (entirely): “Dicit ergo primo: dico, ad haec inquirendo, numquid Deus repulit, totaliter, populum suum?” (“[Paul] frst says: ‘I say’—this is what he asks about—‘did God totally reject his people?’  ”), Super Rom., cap. 11 l. 1 http:// www​.corpusthomisticum​.org​/cro05. In this manner, Aquinas can argue that the only Jews that God did not reject are those who joined the Church, thus forsaking the customs of their Fathers. Regrettably I am unable to agree with Matthew A. Tapie’s “optimistic” interpretation of Aquinas’s Commentary on the Romans, claiming that the Dominican theologian acknowledges the value of Jewish worship after the death of Christ. Tapie argues that, commenting on the irrevocable gifts of Israel in Romans 9:4, Aquinas characterizes an observance like the circumcision as conveying a “present spiritual beneft” for Jews who continue to practice it: “this is the only place in his work where he employs the phrase ‘fgure of present spiritual beneft’ (fgura praesentis spiritualis benefcii) to refer to these rites and this novelty seems to indicate something important,” Aquinas on Israel and the Church: The Question of Supersessionism in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), 104–105. I believe Tapie is misconstruing the meaning of “praesens” here. In the passage in question, Aquinas explicitly writes that, of all the gifts that are listed by Paul, the only beneft of Jewish identity that remains valid after the death of Christ is that of “adoption” (Jews are still “the children of God”): “primo ponit spiritualia benefcia, quorum unum respicit praesens; et quantum ad hoc dicit quorum est adoptio fliorum Dei,” Super Rom., cap. 9 l.1. By contrast to the ongoing beneft of adoption, “the Covenant,” “the giving of the Law” and “the worship” are called “fgure of present spiritual beneft” (“deinde ponit alia benefcia fguralia, quorum tria sunt fgura praesentis spiritualis benefcia”) because these three fguratively foreshadow the spiritual benefts that Christians (and not Jews) presently enjoy by virtue of the sacraments of the New Covenant. There is nothing in the passage that would contradict Aquinas’s view according to which the practice of circumcision, just as other Jewish customs, is a mortal sin, see ST IaIIae. q.103, a.4, Sed contra. 87. CCC §1272, 324. 88. See CCC §1266, 321–322. 89. According to Aquinas, Israel’s ancient worship already had a salvifc effect not by virtue of the rituals themselves that could only clean external impurities, but

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by virtue of the Messianic hope that they contained: “it was possible at the time of the Law, for the minds of the faithful, to be united by faith to Christ incarnate and crucifed; so that they were justifed by faith in Christ: of which faith the observance of these ceremonies was a sort of profession, inasmuch as they foreshadowed Christ,” ST IaIIae, q.103, a.2, co. This union of the faithful with Christ was not subjective or intentional as Christ had not appeared yet; it was unintentional or objective as deriving from the structure of the ancient sacraments of Israel. At the same time, this salvifc effect or this participation in Christ’s salvation through the sacrifces of the Temple was distinct from the reception of salvation itself, a reception that is subordinated to an intentional act of faith: “[the sacrifces of the Temple] had no power of cleansing from uncleanness of the soul, i.e., from the uncleanness of sin. The reason of this was that at no time could there be expiation from sin, except through Christ, Who taketh away the sins of the world (John 1:29). And since the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion had not yet really taken place, those ceremonies of the Old Law could not really contain in themselves a power fowing from Christ already incarnate and crucifed, such as the sacraments of the New Law contain,” ibid. What I am arguing here is that such an unintentional participation in the salvifc effects of Christ’s sacrifce (distinct from the reception of salvation itself but derived from the act of salvation) is taking place through Jewish observance after the death of Christ, not proleptically as used to be the case before but somehow retroactively. 90. In Rom 3:3–4, Paul writes: “What if some [Jews] were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!” Here, Tapie is correct when he underscores the “optimistic” dimension of Aquinas commentary. As Tapie shows, the Dominican theologian strengthens and illustrates Paul’s claim: “ ‘[God’s] faithfulness would be nullifed, if it happened that the Jews had no advantage, just because some have not believed.’ Aquinas goes on, ‘For God promised to multiply that people and make it great,’ and then cites Gen 22:16: ‘I will multiply your descendants.’ God’s faithfulness cannot be nullifed, explains Aquinas, because ‘it is unftting for God’s faithfulness to be nullifed on account of men’s belief.’ ” Aquinas on Israel and the Church, 98. But while Jews are still the sons of the Covenant, it is through and in Christ’s sacrifce that, according to Aquinas, the faithfulness of God to the rituals and sacraments of this Covenant mainly comes to light. I would argue that the faithfulness of God to Israel extends to the Jewish customs and observances that are heirs to these rituals and sacraments. 91. In the course of the disputation of Barcelona (1263), Nachmanides, a great Rabbi and philosopher, is said to have declared: “Truly, I do not believe that the Messiah was born on the day of the destruction [of the Second Temple]. This aggadah—either it is not true or it bears another explanation having to do with the mysteries of the Sages,” in Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 116. 92. B’Reshit Rabbati (C. Albeck-Jerusalem, 1940), 130–131 quoted in Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts (Michigan: Wayne University Press, 1979), 125–126. 93. Ibid.

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94. A Catholic believer might take pride in the idea that one should look for the Messiah of Israel in Rome. But he or she could well meditate a passage from another aggadah where Zerubabel, the governor of Judeah under the Sassanides, fnds himself supernaturally transported to a great city that he mistakenly takes to be Babylon: “As soon as he got there, the voice told him to turn around. As he did so, a hand touched him and he saw before him a ragged man, covered with wounds. The frst question Zerubabel put to him was: ‘What place is this ?’ ” “This is great Rome,” was the reply and the man then added: “I am the Messiah of the Lord and I am imprisoned here until the Appointed Time,” quoted in Abraham Berger, “Captive at the Gate of Rome: The Story of a Messianic Motif,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 44 (1977), 1–17. 95. see Ps 95: 7, see Sanhedrin 98a, quoted in Berger, “Captive at the Gate of Rome,” 4. 96. Jerusalem Crucifed, 238. 97. Even if invoking some sort of “invisible and collective Baptism of Israel” does not make either scriptural or theological sense, the traditional Catholic understanding of Baptism provides an analogy to conceive how, in the destiny of Israel, the punishment of exile can coexist with a participation in Messianic salvation. This understanding draws a distinction between reatus culpae, guilt, and reatus poenae or punishment. By dint of the sacrifce of Christ on the cross, Baptism cleanses the disciples of Jesus from the guilt of Adam’s transgression while the unfortunate effects of this transgression—a general inclination to sin—remain. When baptized faithful sin, as a consequence of this remaining inclination, they can be punished by God but the guilt that they carried in their innermost due to the transgression of Adam has forever been wiped away through the merits of Christ’s sacrifce, forever engraved in their being by the seal of Baptism, see Aquinas, ST III, q.69, a. 2 and 3; Council of Trent, can.30, 840, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (St. Louis MO; London: Herder Books, 1955), 261. Similarly, one could claim that the sacrifce of Christ destroyed the collective reatus culpae of Israel but did not prevent the reatus poenae associated with Israel’s sins from displaying its disastrous consequences throughout almost two millennia of exile. I will argue that, by virtue of her messianic hope, “unbelieving Israel” somehow benefts from the destruction of the reatus culpae that Yeshua accomplished on behalf of all Israel (although not only Israel). 98. That the “rebuilding of David’s hut” is just another way of designating the recovery of Israel’s glory is clear from the prophecy contained in the Book of Amos to which James refers: “In that day, I will set up again the fallen booth of David: I will mend its breaches and set up its ruins anew. I will build it frm as in the days of old . . . . I will restore My people Israel. They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine; They shall till gardens and eat their fruits. And I will plant them upon their soil, Nevermore to be uprooted From the soil I have given them” (Amos 9:11, 14–15). 99. As Kinzer, relying on recent scholarship, argues (see PMJ, 106), those from whom the kingdom of God will be taken away are the chief priests. But those to

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whom it will be given cannot refer to a new leadership because these are designated as a people or a nation (ἔθνος). 100. It is Peter himself who identifes the stumbling block of Psalm 118 with the “rock for stumbling” in Isa 8:14: To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner (λίθος ὃν ἀπεδοκίμασαν οἱ οἰκοδομοῦντες, οὗτος ἐγενήθη εἰς κεφαλὴν γωνίας) and “a stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall ( λίθος προσκόμματος καὶ πέτρα σκανδάλου),” 1 Pet 2:7–8. 101. It might be said that, even if associated with the reality of salvation, the accusation of collective responsibility for the death of Christ leveled at Jews, is too much reminiscent of traditional Christian anti-semitism—indisputably one of the sources of Nazi anti-Jewish fury—to be acceptable. This objection is perfectly valid in my opinion. Any accusation of the kind should be frmly rejected. In this, I am in full agreement with NA {4: “Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.” But this is not what I am arguing here. Accusing or presenting the Jewish nation in this light is one thing; acknowledging the Jewish nation’s ‫ׁשג ָָג֖ה‬ ְ ‫ֵחטְא ִּב‬ (sin by ignorance, see Lev 4:22) as a member of this nation is a completely different one. Admitting one’s own sins before God, what is called repentance, pertains to the dignity of a human being and to his/her most intimate freedom. At any rate, from the point of view of the Catholic Magisterium itself, the Jewish nation is not the only segment of humankind to have a responsibility for the death of Yeshua: “In this guilt we must judge that all those are involved who fall frequently into sins; for, as our sins impelled Christ our Lord to undergo the death of the cross, most certainly those who wallow in sins and iniquities, as far as depends on them crucify to themselves again the Son of God, and put him to an open shame,” Catechism of Trent, 1, 5, 11 (London: George Routledge and Co., 1852), 55–56 (emphasis is mine). Neither is the Jewish nation the segment of humanity that bears the greatest responsibility for it: “In us such guilt may indeed seem even deeper than it was in the Jews, inasmuch as, according to the apostle, had they known it, they would never have crucifed the Lord of Glory; whereas we both profess to know him, and yet, denying him by our works, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him,” ibid, 56 (emphasis is mine). What I am arguing that Yeshua’s salvation displays its effects in a different manner among Jews than among non-Jews due to the involvement of the Jewish nation qua nation in his death. In other words, the path of the Jewish nation toward Yeshua’s salvation is distinct from the path of the nations toward this salvation; and this consideration is fundamental when it comes to conceiving a Jewish ekklesia within the global Ekklesia.

Chapter II

Torah

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1. ORIGIN AND CONFIGURATION OF THE PROBLEM When one refects on the existence of Israel as a nation throughout 2,000 years of exile, one can hardly avoid referring to the notion of Torah. Rabbinic Judaism forged an understanding of Torah, the revealed Wisdom of God, that provided legitimacy for itself as a self-contained system of interpretation. The tradition of rabbinic Judaism became the oral Torah (Torah-she-be-al-pe) in contrast, but also as a necessary complement, to the Written Torah (Torahshe-bi-ktav). The ongoing work of Jewish sages commenting on the content of the Torah scrolls, generation after generation, is supposed to be the gradual unfolding of a revealed wisdom as ancient as the one to which Moses gave a written form. At the same time, this Oral Torah is understood as distinct from Written Torah to the extent in which the former conveys all the clues necessary to put the latter into practice. In this manner, while Oral Torah draws its authority from the Written Torah, there is no correct interpretation of Written Torah without Oral Torah. One needs to combine the two authorities to go back to the one source from which both derive, namely, the integrality of the Wisdom originally communicated to Moses. This renewed concept of Torah developed by rabbinic Judaism became the core of Jewish existence throughout its 2,000 years of exile, granting unity and identity to the Jews scattered over the surface of the earth. Since the existence of Jews as a nation is closely connected to the rabbinic notion of Torah, how could the Church acknowledge the collective Jewish identity of those from Israel who come to Christ without making rabbinic Torah tradition somehow hers? This operation is much less simple than it might seem. One of the basic assumptions of rabbinic Judaism is that Christ is not the true Messiah and therefore that the whole teaching of the Church is wrong. From the time when 99

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Christianity and Judaism parted ways institutionally, grosso modo during the frst and second centuries AD, the two religious traditions have each been developing complex systems of conduct aimed at shaping the lives of their faithful according to the will of God.1 Those systems were viewed as mutually exclusive: while the sages that taught Halacha (Jewish law of conduct) blissfully ignored Christian morals, considering them to be the emanation of idolatrous beliefs destined to Gentiles, teachers of Christian morals saw Jewish Halacha as the anachronic offshoot of an old revelation that had been entirely superseded by a novel and much better one. When a number of Jews come to the conviction that Christ is actually the Messiah of Israel, so that his teachings need to be followed, how could their new conviction—what currently goes under the name of faith—not affect patterns of thinking and behaving inherited from a tradition established on totally opposite and mutually exclusive grounds? It is diffcult to see how Jews could “discover” Jesus if this “discovery” did not carry with it any change in ways of thinking and behaving that do not derive from it. But how does this discovery affect these traditional ways of thinking and behaving? To what extent? According to what criteria? As intricate as the issue of an adequate interaction between Jewish Torah and the tradition of the Church is, it clearly contains the answer to the fundamental questions discussed here: How should we conceive the Catholic Church in the full theological sense of the term, so that a distinctive Jewish or authentically Messianic Jewish presence might constitute an integral dimension of her being? To fnd the answer that we seek, I will approach this issue by a process of elimination, frst getting rid of theological avenues that, in my opinion, lead nowhere.

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1.1. The “Torah-Negative” Option Halacha—“way of walking”—is a concept closely connected to the rabbinic notion of Torah. The main goal of the oral Torah, as written down in the treatises of the Talmud and compiled in various works, is to derive Halacha from written Torah. Halacha circumscribes a Jewish biosphere based on the observance of mitzvot, the divine “injunctions” that are derived from the Torah received by Moses on Mount Sinai. Whether or not to borrow from this Jewish Halacha—or rather to what extent—is probably the most divisive issue in the Messianic Jewish movement. As with the different streams of normative Judaism (Reformed, Conservative, Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox, etc.), the profle of a Messianic congregation is usually characterized in terms of its attitude toward traditional Jewish Halacha. As Richard Harvey showed, a whole spectrum of mutually exclusive positions coexist in the current Messianic movement, ranging from “Torah-negative” views close to classical reformed

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doctrine to a “Torah-positive” understanding that hardly differs from Orthodox Judaism when it comes to religious practice. I would argue that if the issue of Jewish Halacha is so divisive, it is because it is also the most crucial as it regards the very possibility of a Messianic Jewish movement. This becomes clear when one examines the “Torah-negative” position, which infames the Pauline contrast between the grace of Christ’s Gospel and the heavy yoke of Moses’s law. Regardless of whether this position is ultimately true or not—at this point, I will not discuss the validity of their identifcation between Paul’s nomos and Jewish Halacha—the fact remains that the mere supposition that it is true prevents any endeavor to formulate a legitimate Messianic Jewish lifestyle. Since the Jewish Halacha includes such basic prescriptions as circumcision or the observance of Shabbat, the refusal to borrow anything from this Halacha implies that nothing in their lifestyle will distinguish Jewish disciples of Christ from their non-Jewish brothers and sisters. Profane or “religiously neutralized” elements from Jewish culture and folklore (“Yiddishkeit” as some Messianic believers call this genre), involvement in the secular life of the State of Israel as a Jewish State, might be suffcient to keep a sense of identity alive but they are certainly not enough to justify the existence of a distinctive religious entity. If Messianic Judaism is entitled to exist as a religious movement irreducible to any existing Christian denomination, it is because it strives to promote a specifcally Jewish type of religious biosphere. True, instead of referring to Jewish Halacha, some Messianic Jews call the practice of circumcision or the observance of Shabbat parts of a “biblical” lifestyle. But to follow these observances, Jewish disciples of Christ will be naturally led to borrow prayers and rituals (e.g., lighting of the candle and blessing over the bread on Shabbat; and rituals for circumcision) that have evolved within Jewish tradition while they are not mentioned in the Written Torah. In fact, these liturgical elements have been developed by the Jewish tradition because particulars regarding the actual implementation of mitzvot could not be found in the Written Torah—they were either not explicitly mentioned or the course of history had made them impossible to reproduce. The importance Kinzer gives to rabbinic tradition owes a great deal to such considerations: “Is the written Torah suffcient for instructing the Jewish people in how to live as individuals, families, and local communities? While it is certainly foundational and indispensable, it is not suffcient. The Torah requires a living tradition of interpretation and application if it is to be practised in daily life.”2 Kinzer argues that the need for Oral Torah is not merely an accident of history. To some extent it can be ascribed to a providential decree engraved in the Written Torah itself. Kinzer traces the origin of a rabbinic tradition of interpretation back to Moses’s decision to establish judges regarding the

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quarrels occurring in the midst of the nation (Deut 1:16–17). The fact is that, without this constantly evolving but also miraculously enduring tradition, contemporary Judaism would be devoid of the means to relate its current existence to the principles that should shape them according to Moses’s Torah. Kinzer quotes Peter Ochs in this regard:

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There is, in one sense, no other Judaism for Jews than that which comes by way of rabbinic Judaism, or the Judaism of Mishnah, Talmud, synagogue, prayer book, and Torah study that emerged after, in spite of, and in response to the loss of the Second Temple. All of the new Judaisms that have appeared since have appeared from out of and in terms of this rabbinic Judaism.3

Indeed, how could a 2,000-year-old textual corpus of commandments and laws anticipate the problems arising with their practical implementation as a consequence of a continuously changing historical scene? The endlessly numerous and variegated situations in which Jews are supposed to observe mitzvot are the driving engine of Talmudic literature and ongoing study. Of course, Jewish disciples of Jesus who are determined to avoid all points of convergence with traditional Jewish Halacha may always develop their own Halacha regarding circumcision and Shabbat—I am not even considering the complex culinary rules associated with Kashrut—and call it “biblical.” But the mere fact of ignoring a bi-millennial Jewish tradition is not enough to make one’s interpretation more “biblical.” Does not one face the same challenges that arise from a distance between the present circumstances and the letter of the mitzvot contained in the Bible? Besides, the most fundamental problem with creating a new Judeo-Christian sect on the basis of an idiosyncratic “biblical” Halacha, a “Messianic Karaism” of sorts, is its de facto denial of the ongoing Covenant between God and Israel.4 Such artifcial creation implies that there is nothing providential in the bi-millennial survival of the Jewish nation, that is, that God is for nothing in the gradual development of a genuine Jewish tradition after the destruction of the second Temple. But Messianic Judaism itself, as long as it rests on the claim that all existing Jews are called to acknowledge Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel, would be unthinkable without rabbinic tradition as it is this tradition that has ensured the continuity of the Jewish nation throughout an almost bi-millennial period of exile. A Torah-negative Jew is a contradictio in terminis, a self-contradictory statement, because the Jewish identity that we know, the one out of which Messianic Judaism came to be, the one that, in its Messianic form, is currently striving toward recognition and adequate theological self-understanding cannot itself be conceived independently of the rabbinic tradition that has shaped it. Such “biblical” Messianic Judaism is Messianic Judaism trying to get rid of its Jewish dimension and therefore hastening toward self-cancellation.

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Conversely, being Torah-positive is a condition for Messianic Judaism simply to be. But this raises a number of fundamental issues.

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1.2. The Theological Challenge of TorahPositive Messianic Judaism The thought that Jewish believers in Yeshua might want to borrow elements from Jewish Halacha unsettles an almost 2,000-year-old Christian consensus according to which Paul’s teaching on the freedom of the Gospel had defnitively freed the children of God from the harsh requirements of Moses’s law. It therefore obliges Messianic Judaism to provide a theological rationale for the integration of Jewish Halacha—or elements of it—into the spiritual journey associated with faith in Yeshua. As I just said, Jewish existence conceived according to its corporate manifestation is tied up with the notion of Torah. Moreover, as have I argued earlier, I believe that this corporate existence partakes of the salvation of Israel that proceeds from the sacrifce of Yeshua on the Cross (see I, 2.5.1.). But if a Torah-positive attitude implies some form of Halacha-integration, what meaning and function does Halacha keep or acquire for Jews that have positively received the salvation of Israel through faith in Yeshua and repentance? Since Halacha has developed beyond the limits of the Christian world—and widely independently of it—does it not become obsolete as soon as a Jew becomes fully participant in Christ’s salvation? If the gift of salvation is more than a word, it refers to the effective divine power that Scriptures ascribe to the Holy Spirit and that Catholic tradition calls sanctifying grace. Growing in this grace, letting it display its spiritual fruits in abundance by shaping one’s existence according to the moral teaching of the Church is, from a Catholic perspective, the work of a lifetime, involving all the spiritual and moral resources of those who believe. One does not need Halacha to become holy in this sense. Jews that along the centuries have for one reason or another decided to become members of historical Christian denominations, such as the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant Churches, have de facto accepted to abandon all the prescriptions associated with traditional Jewish Halacha. Now, some of them have become holy people and even saints in the Catholic “canonical” sense of the term. It would be a mistake, however, to infer from this fact that Halacha loses meaning and relevance when a Jew becomes a disciple of Jesus. Indeed, what makes Halacha lose its meaning and relevance is the presupposition of a purely individual or personal existential horizon. The truth is that Halacha cannot be separated from the corporate existence of Israel. God is glorifed through the observance of Halacha, and the glory of God is a holy people, goy kadosh. Halacha is about the glorifcation of God in his people Israel as a nation. Jews know that the

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role of Israel in this world is to be a witness to the true God. They hold that they contribute to completing this God’s given mission to Israel every time they carry out a mitzvah. In this sense, each mitzvah is a celebration of the Covenant between God and Israel. The love of God for Israel grants to the performance of mitzvot its horizon of experience and meaning. To be sure, the Church is also about the glorifcation of God in the people of whom she is constituted. But without the people of Israel in the midst of the Church, there is no way in which the glorifcation of God in the Church could include His glorifcation in and through Israel. Hence the question: If it is the will of God to be glorifed through Israel eventually coming to the acknowledgment of her Messiah, could the traditional rationale for Jewish Halacha retain its validity within the Church, as the nation of Israel takes its place midst all the nations that have already embraced their salvation in Yeshua? That the “Covenant that God made with his people Israel endures and is never invalidated” is not only the conviction on which the Messianic movement is established; this is the manner in which the current offcial teaching of the Catholic Church on this matter is voiced (see “The Gifts of God,” §39). This teaching acknowledges that the ongoing existence of the Jewish people is an instrument of the providential design of God, to the extent that it is bearing “the treasure of its election in fragile vessels” (ibid. §22). Historically, the “fragile vessels” that have ensured the survival of the Jewish nation as a united whole can be identifed with traditional Jewish halacha—the “fence” erected by the rabbis to protect the Torah of Israel—regardless of the extent in which individual Jews have put this Halacha into practice. If, on the one hand, Halacha warrants the possibility for Jews to witness the ongoing validity of the frst Covenant and if, on the other, the Church according to her essence “consists of Jews and Gentiles” (ibid. §43), why should Jews that are members of the Church be prevented from practicing Halacha? Admittedly, this practice in the context of Yeshua-believing communities can no longer have the same meaning as in the setting of traditional Judaism. The line that a mitzvah draws between Jewish and non-Jewish members of the Church may no longer defne the border between legitimate and idolatrous worship. There is no intrinsic reason why Gentile believers should be less “orthodox” (“having the right faith”) than Jewish believers. But I would argue that the function of separating between Jews as true believers and non-Jews as idolaters is accidental to the nature of Jewish Halacha. That Halacha specifcally and extensively deals with idolatry (avoda zara) no more defnes the nature of Halacha than the fact that it deals with illegally acquired property. Practicing Halacha does not mean that those who do not practice it are ipso facto idolaters. That there is a specifcally Gentile way of being faithful to the one true God is a possibility anchored in the Written Torah of Israel and

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the rabbinic tradition. What is essential to Halacha is the distinction between Jews and non-Jews that derives from the specifc Covenant between God and the nation of Israel. From this point of view, the very possibility of Halacha being practiced in a setting of religious unity, mutual respect, and fraternity between Jews and non-Jews would truly unfold its most intrinsic meaning: the pure, unique, non-discriminating and unimpeached celebration of the Covenant between God and Israel. Meanwhile, on a collective as well as on a personal level, there is a priori no reason why the grace that stems from the death and resurrection of Christ should be incompatible with Halacha practice. On the contrary, could not this grace inspire the practice? Conversely, could halachic practice not become one of the ordinary means through which Jewish believers grow to the point of maximal conformity with the gift of Yeshua’s salvation? Still, this implies a full compatibility de jure between the teaching of Jesus that is inseparable from the gift of salvation and the teaching of the rabbinic tradition. But can one unambiguously claim that such compatibility exists? The only way of fnding answers to these questions is to refect on the concrete attempts to bring together faith in Yeshua and traditional Jewish Halacha. If one does not shun the fundamental issues to which such attempts give rise, one will necessarily be led to a better understanding of where the will of God stands in this—provided there is such a will.

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2. COMBINATORY MODES AND THEOLOGICAL ISSUES Most existing Messianic congregations have a “Torah-positive” attitude, which means that they integrate elements from Jewish Halacha into their worship and ideal lifestyle. But one encounters the utmost diversity when it comes to the concrete manner in which these elements are integrated. To take the easiest of all examples, the signifcance of “keeping Shabbat” is emphasized in the overwhelming majority of these congregations. But does the holiness of Shabbat imply a ban on driving, a limited walking area, a refusal to use elevators and ovens, and so forth? Here policies differ from one congregation to the other, and even from one member of a congregation to the other. Endeavors to formulate a common Messianic Halacha are very recent and have but an advisory status. However, whenever instead of focusing on the elements that are combined, one considers the modes according to which they are combined, one encounters much less variety. I see only two possibilities here. I would call the frst the “parallel model” and the second the “continuity model.” I will deal extensively with the second one after shortly explaining why I fnd the frst one to lack theological consistency.

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2.1. The “Parallel Model” According to what principle or criterion should those who acknowledge the supreme authority of Yeshua, as it is refected in the writings of the New Testament, welcome and apply the precepts formulated by rabbis and Jewish wise men that deny such authority? At the least, this principle or criterion should not be the fruit of some subjective fantasy. If Yeshua-believers adopt patterns of conduct that they assume to be pleasing to God because they correspond to His will, they should be able to express why they assume this is the case—something which is surely not the case if it is contradicted by the writings that, according to them, manifest His will. I call “parallel model” a way of combining the two authorities, that of Jesus and of the rabbis, that envisage them as a priori heterogeneous, implying they are not only possibly complementary, but also potentially or actually conficting. According to this model, the commandments that derive from the authority of Jesus must be quintessentially different from that of the rabbis. Otherwise there would be no point in ascribing to him and him only divine authority. In this framework, the passages of the Gospel where Jesus criticizes—and seems to transgress deliberately—the precepts taught by the Pharisees are central. Put together, these passages, often interwoven with episodes related to miraculous healings that deal with Shabbat observance, wearing of phylacteries, fasting, washing of the hands before meals and food habits, form a substantial part of the Gospels’ narratives. One cannot dismiss the identifcation between the teaching of the Pharisees and that of the later rabbinic tradition as anachronic and ill-founded. Even if these teachings are different according to their wording and specifc content, their ambition to fashion the spiritual existence of Jews by means of mitzvot derived from Moses’s Torah is strikingly similar. If one interprets the attitude of Jesus toward the Pharisees as a full dismissal of their Torah-observant lifestyle, there is no reason why Jesus’s disciples should act differently when it comes to observing the numerous mitzvot associated with later rabbinic tradition. In this confguration, how could a Messianic Jew submit to rabbinic authority without forfeiting the authority of the one he believes to be the Messiah of Israel? One is not forced to accept this radical hypothesis. One possibility is to limit Jesus’s rejection of the Pharisees’ teaching to the specifc matters dealt with in these passages, so as to leave a space open to the multitude of precepts that cannot be identifed with the objects of Jesus’s explicit criticism. In this manner, the observance of Jesus’s original teachings on matters of morals, spiritual life as well as the rituals performed on his authority (Baptism, sharing of his body and blood under the species of bread and wine, imposition of hands, etc.) will be complemented by the observance of selected precepts taken from traditional Jewish Halacha.

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This solves only one part of the problem though. When one considers rabbinic tradition, one comes across a number of teachings and precepts that are more or less explicitly conceived and formulated to safeguard Jews from the infuence of Christians and mainly Jewish believers in Jesus (e.g., recitation of the twelfth blessing of the Amidah week-day prayer or Birkat-ha-Minim). As a result, in order not to publicly forfeit their faith in Yeshua, Messianic Jewish believers that cling to the “parallel model” will not only have to select the rabbinic precepts that cannot fall under the criticism of Jesus; they will also need to purge rabbinic tradition from all the practical consequences that stem from its dismissal of Yeshua’s messiahship. In spite of these restrictions, one may assume that some practical middle-ground, half-way between Jesus’s condemnation of defnite rabbinic observances and the rabbis’ anti-Messianic Jewish beliefs, is possible. But this does not mean that the principle or criterion that would enable a theologically consistent combination between the two sources of observances is equally viable. I would argue that it is impossible to single out such a criterion. From a Messianic point of view, there can be no doubt that, although they do not agree with the limits, content and scope of divine revelation, both rabbinic tradition and Church teaching, draw on such Revelation as they endeavor to characterize lifestyles that conform with it. Each tradition claims to be invested with supreme authority when they legislate on these matters. Each strives for maximal coherence in the framework that it acknowledges as its own. What happens then when, in order to defne the principles of one’s conduct, one appeals to the “gray area” where the two traditions do not explicitly contradict each other, so as to add a number of mitzvot to patterns of behavior inspired by the teaching of Jesus? While selecting a mitzvah from the rabbinic tradition on matters where there is no explicit teaching of Jesus, one cannot be said to obey rabbinic authority since the prime reason of this selection is not what rabbinic authority has said but what Jesus has not said. As a result, one is neither under Jesus’s authority (one deals with what he has not spoken about) nor under rabbinic authority (Jesus is still acknowledged as the supreme authority when one observes a mitzvah and rejects some other mitzvah). The truth is that Messianic believers select rabbinic mitzvot out of their own authority—which is inexistent as long as it applies to divine decrees. Such religious lifestyle will be entirely of their own subjective making. Surely, they will be able to point to the divine origin of the elements that shape their lifestyle. But in their endeavor to bring together aspects of the two parallel traditions, they will simultaneously step out of both traditions’ respective frameworks of coherence, depriving themselves of the possibility of justifying their lifestyle in a theologically consistent manner. They will be unable to establish that their idiosyncratic religious lifestyle corresponds

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better than others to the will of God as manifested in what either rabbinic tradition or Church tradition hold for divine revelation. This being said, the “parallel model” is not the only one that can give rise to a combination between the two sources of authority. Let us now turn to what I call the “continuity model” and discuss its theological consistency.

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2.2. The Continuity Model No Messianic Jew would deny that the authority of Jesus, Messiah of Israel, occupies a position far above that of the rabbinic tradition. If Jesus is the incarnation of God’s eternal Word as the Prologue of John’s Gospel depicts him, he is, according to his divine nature, the eternal Truth from which all true human wisdom, including that which is present in the Jewish tradition, proceeds. This truth is totally impervious to human error and falsehood including any that may possibly be conveyed by Jewish tradition. But what if the Word of God had from all eternity determined that his Jewish disciples on earth should follow rabbinic Halacha? What if rabbinic Halacha contained for the Jewish disciples of Jesus a path to the true worship of Israel’s Messiah? The diffculty of trying to combine two heterogeneous and potentially confictual sources of authority would disappear—the two sources would merge into one seamless body of religious authority. But how can that be? The confict between Jesus and the Jewish establishment is not a theological claim; it is a scriptural fact. Still, the interpretation of this confict in terms of a wholesale rejection of rabbinic authority is a theological assumption that one might not wish to make. But even if this were arguable, is it plausible that the purpose of the divine Word’s incarnation, human life, death, and Resurrection was to uphold a way of life defned by Jews who believe nothing of this divine mission? I fnd a vibrant theological rationale in support of this apparent paradox in Kinzer’s writings. To explore the matter further we need to understand its logic and analyze its structure. In a passage of an article written in response to Roch Kereszty, a Catholic theologian, Kinzer summarizes one of the main arguments of Searching for Her Own Mystery as follows: The presence of the resurrected Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the midst of Jewish life imparts a sacramental character to its most cherished pillars—Torah, mitzvot, Shabbat, the land of Israel, and the Jewish people itself. It is the christologically imparted sacramental character of mitzvot that Jewish disciples of Jesus explicitly and consciously acknowledge when they undertake observance of the Torah. Thus, for Messianic Jews Torah observance becomes more than a means of expressing gratitude to God, and also more than a means of preserving the Jewish people; it becomes a graciously bestowed means of communing with the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.5

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Rabbinic Judaism has inherited the ancient dispositions regarding the rights and duties associated with God’s Covenant with Israel. According to Kinzer, the Incarnation of the Word did change something regarding these dispositions. But what it changed seems to have more to do with their invisible content than to their visible form. These dispositions received a sacramental character, that is, they became the means through which Jews who practice them are endowed with Christ’s grace. As they observe rabbinic mitzvot, Messianic Jews enter in a relationship of intimate communion with the Trinity. To use traditional Catholic terminology, one would speak of the grace of salvation itself that conforms us to Christ, gratia gratum faciens, being channeled by rabbinic mitzvot (by contrast to transitory motions of the Holy Spirit like the charism of prophecy that even evil persons—Balaam the sorcerer in the Book of Numbers, for instance—can partake of). We will need to investigate further what justifes this claim about the “sacramentalization” of Israel’s rabbinic Torah by virtue of the Word’s incarnation. What is clear is that, for Kinzer, this “sacramentalization” corresponds to the fulfllment of the law mentioned in Matt 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfl.” Accordingly, that Jewish disciples of Yeshua acknowledge the sacramental character imparted to Israel’s Torah would simply witness to the fact that the inner truth of this Torah has, through Yeshua, come to full manifestation—for those who have eyes to see, naturally. Christ changes something fundamental but at the same time this change is nothing more than the unfolding of a mystery that was present in the Covenant of Israel since its inception. It is not a modifcation of the previous Revelation but a shift in the understanding of this Revelation. According to this framework, one could conceive the relation between Jesus’s teaching and traditional Halacha on the model of the relation between, on the one hand, Reformed, Conservative or Orthodox Judaism and, on the other, Halacha. These branches of Judaism are not drawing on an external source of revelation when they interpret what Halacha means to them or what they retain from it as valid. Their interpretation comes from ideas and concepts that emerged from inside the Jewish world, and they rest on the acknowledgment of Moses’s Torah as the only normative content of God’s revelation. At the same time, what, according to Kinzer, justifes the adoption of Halacha by Jewish disciples of Jesus is that its roots plunge far deeper than the dogmatic universe of the rabbinic tradition; they stem from a Torah whose ultimate source is in the eternal Word of God, the same Word who, having espoused human fesh, was able to bring its inner truth to light and actuality. Assuredly the fact that the divine source of Torah becomes the object of human interpretation in the rabbinic tradition carries with it an element of relativity. But when a Jewish disciple is convinced that he must anchor

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his religious practice in Torah, he has no other choice than to embrace this rabbinic tradition: “Is the written Torah suffcient for instructing the Jewish people in how to live as individuals, families, and local communities? While it is certainly foundational and indispensable, it is not suffcient. The Torah requires a living tradition of interpretation and application if it is to be practised in daily life.”6 Since from an early stage, the Church has dismissed the unique calling of Israel as being obsolete after Christ, a Jewish disciple desirous to express his faithfulness to the Torah of Israel has no other “living tradition of interpretation and application” to turn to than the rabbinic one. By adopting such a Torah-observant lifestyle, Jewish disciples would contribute to the Catholicity of the Church, if what is implied by Catholicity here is the qualitative ingathering of Jews and Gentiles in the same living body. This reconnection with a distant past—the Church of the Jerusalem Council—is also the clearest picture of what is to come at the end of times:

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Jewish religious life must have a sacramental dimension that manifests the hidden presence of Jesus and prophetically anticipates its eschatological consummation in him. Jewish disciples of Jesus who live an observant Jewish life would in this way bear witness both to the messianic signifcance of the genealogical people of God and to the sacramental fullness of the radically “catholic” Body of Christ (i.e., the Body of Christ inclusive of genealogical-Israel).7

In this manner Kinzer’s model completely reverses the traditional Christian attitude toward rabbinic Halacha. Instead of viewing the revelation of Christ as freeing Jewish believers from Halacha, identifed with Pauline Law in its most negative understanding, Kinzer claims that Christ’s teaching should lead these disciples to take up the joyful burden of Jewish Halacha. Accordingly, Kinzer emphasizes the duty of Torah-observance for Jewish disciples of Yeshua. He makes his view on the subject very clear in the article where he engages with Kereszty: As I see it, the primary issue is whether Israel’s enduring Covenant entails any objective corporate responsibilities rooted in the Torah—a sacred document whose telos centres on the Messiah (Rom 10:4) but also includes the defnition and preservation of the Jewish people as a distinct community (Rom 9:4–5). Kereszty rightly attributes this preservation to “Adonai’s faithful love,” but Torah observance has functioned historically as far more than a token of gratitude for this divine act: in reality, it has been the most effective instrument which Adonai has employed to accomplish that end. Are the Jewish people as a whole not summoned to cooperate with the divine purpose by wielding the tools that God has provided for the realisation of that purpose?8

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Torah-observance is the way Jews cooperate in a divine design that includes their preservation as a nation, something to which Paul ascribes paramount value as we pointed out earlier:

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For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the fesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the Covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the fesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. (Rom 9:3–5)

One thing, however, is to consider that Torah-observance is a vector of grace; another thing is to claim that failure to observe Torah is a sin that separates believers from Christ’s salvation. Are driving to a nearby forest on Shabbat or treating oneself to a cheese-burger sins worthy of divine punishment in the case of Jewish disciples of Yeshua? In what sense does Kinzer speak about a “duty” of Jewish believers to be Torah-observant? In his response to Kereszty, Kinzer draws a parallel between this duty and the vocation to priesthood or religious life in the Catholic tradition. While the practice of the Ten Commandments is required of all Christians, not all followers of Christ are called to become priests or enter a religious Order. In this sense, the Catholic tradition distinguishes between moral precepts and the socalled evangelical counsels from which religious life derives in the Church.9 Although such a calling is not a universal obligation, it implies some degree of moral obligation for the one who receives it: “It may be possible for such a person to evade his or her vocation without committing sin, but the choice to answer the call is more than a commendable self-initiated act of devotion; to embrace a vocation is to offer a grace-empowered response to a divine call.”10 One can go as far as to talk about sinfulness when one forsakes a religious vocation after having solemnly embraced it: “Even in such cases the circumstances may render the person guiltless, but the act of turning away from a previously accepted call is of greater gravity than never answering the call in the frst place.”11 Likewise, there are different callings among believers in Yeshua. Whereas the Gentile ones do not fnd themselves under the duty of Torah-observance, Jewish disciples belong to the people of Israel led by Moses who solemnly accepted the Torah in their name and the name of their descendants (Exod 24:7; Deut 27). Covenantal responsibility is about the moral obligation to observe the Torah that is incumbent on every Jew coming into the world. From this point of view, neglecting Torah-observance ought to be regarded as sin even in the case of Messianic Jews, with all the reservations that have to do with what Catholic tradition calls “invincible ignorance”: “For example,

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Jewish legal and moral tradition recognises that those Jews who have been raised without any experience of Jewish practice lack personal culpability for their adult failure to observe those components of the Torah which apply only to Jews.”12 The fact that one theory seems to solve issues that other theories failed to solve is no proof that it is valid. It might itself be fraught with other critical issues. There is no doubt Mark Kinzer is the most articulate and eloquent advocate of a change of paradigm from what I call “heterogeneous parallelism” to “homogeneous continuity.” But is this new paradigm sustainable? In the pages that follow I will address two issues that arise from the continuity model. The frst has to do with the possibility of merging Christ’s revelation with rabbinic tradition. The second deals with the notion of Torahobservance duty for Jewish believers in Yeshua.

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2.3. Preexisting Harmony between the Teaching of Jesus and Rabbinic Tradition? As I just said, Kinzer claims that to Jewish believers in Yeshua, Torahobservance in the rabbinic sense of the term is a channel of sanctifying grace. This seems to imply that regarding Jewish disciples, the purpose and scope of the Incarnation are fulflled whenever these disciples lead a life of Torahobservant Jews in the rabbinic sense of the term. Conversely, if this is not the intended consequence, that is, if there remains something of this purpose and scope that a Torah-observant lifestyle does not fulfll, one is entitled to wonder whether the smooth merging of faith in Yeshua and rabbinic observance sketched out by Kinzer amounts to much more than mere wishful thinking. I want to address these questions on the basis of a concrete illustration that Kinzer brings up in Searching for her Own Mystery. Here Kinzer envisages the Amidah (standing) prayer or “Shmoneh esreh” (the “Eighteen blessings”), a central element of Synagogue daily liturgy, in conjunction with the Shabbat-eve meal, the heart of Jewish weekly “domestic” liturgy.13 Taken together, these elements are evocative of the ancient Temple’s rituals in Jerusalem. Kinzer singles out the three essential dimensions that these elements refect: the “transfer of the gift” (expression of contrition or gratitude on the part of Israel in return for the love of God for Israel), the festive meal, and communal prayer—the same three dimensions that characterize the Eucharist, the sacrament Christ asked his disciples to celebrate in his memory during the Last Supper (Matt 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, 1 Cor 10). Drawing mostly on the works of L. Bouyer, Kinzer shows that the development of these prayer traditions in the Jewish world after the destruction of the Temple has been parallel to that of the Eucharistic liturgy in the Christian world, the latter emerging in the context of the former and being

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thoroughly infuenced by it. As a result, one can point to a manifold, organic connection between the Amidah and the Eucharistic liturgy (the hour of the offering, the direction of prayer, the standing positions of the celebrants, etc.). In the same way, Eucharistic celebrations are strongly reminiscent of the traditional rituals associated with Jewish “domestic” liturgy. Kinzer emphasizes that the logic of these convergences goes deeper than a series of historical infuences; it has to do with some fundamental identity of purpose and sacramental function originating in the former rituals of the Temple and connecting the notion of sacrifce with that of eschatological banquet. There is no other way to understand this living connection than by referring to Christ, the victim that was sacrifced in order to usher those who believe into the eschatological reality of his Messianic kingdom. Christ is the heavenly Presence that comes down to mysteriously dwell within the Eucharistic celebration of the Church as well as in the prayer of the Synagogue. This Presence becomes the source of a spiritual communication between the two traditions that remains widely unnoticed by those who profess to observe them. True, the Church has the advantage over the Synagogue in being able to name and identify this Presence. But on the other hand, due to the absence of the mediation of Israel and the gradual loss of references to her Jewish origins, the Church cannot claim to exhaust the Mystery that she celebrates in the Eucharist. Without being aware of it, the Synagogue can be said to complete what is still missing in the Eucharistic celebration of the Church: The risen Jesus remains in the midst of his family according to the fesh, and just as the daily recitation of the Amidah by observant Jews has an organic connection to the eucharistic prayer, so the holy banquets of observant Jews have an organic connection to the Eucharistic feast. In these meals, the Jewish people encounter Jesus in a hidden form and gain a foretaste of the table-fellowship of the messianic kingdom. Such celebrations also provide a tangible and earthly sign of the joy of that kingdom which the Church’s Eucharist on its own can no longer display in fullness. When observant Jews celebrate the sacred meals of Israel, they are in a certain sense participating in and fulflling the eucharistic banquet of the Church.14

But what about Messianic Jews? What about those who, according to Kinzer, should draw the grace that Christ wants to lavish upon his disciples from the rabbinic forms of worship? In some way, these will be more fortunate than “standard” Christians and their Jewish peers. While being able to identify the Presence of Christ, unlike “standard Jews,” they will have access to the Jewish fulfllment that “standard Christians” ignore. Kinzer includes himself in this fortunate lot when he writes:

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When we pray the Amidah, our union with the heavenly high priest shapes and energises our prayer and moves from the realm of hidden reality to that of acknowledged truth. When we sit at the Sabbath or Passover table we know and celebrate the fact that the risen Messiah sits with us as our host, much as he did with his disciples in the forty days between Easter and Pentecost. (Acts 1:4)15

From an ecclesiological perspective, Messianic Jews appear here to play a decisive role when it comes to realizing the truly “Catholic” nature of the Church:

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In this way we, Jewish disciples of Jesus, consciously realize the ‘catholic’ dimension of the eucharistic community, in which the multi-national Body of Christ centers on the people of Israel; in this way, we also manifest the eschatological dimension of the Jewish people, which will only come to fruition when Israel unambiguously attains its goal as part of the Body of its king.16

While I fnd a lot of merit in Kinzer’s argument, I would question the symmetry it establishes between the Amidah and the Eucharistic liturgy. There is an essential distinction between the very object or purpose of a celebration and the manner in which this object or purpose is manifested through such a celebration. Liturgical references to the mystery of Israel (the domestic setting, the orientation toward Jerusalem, etc.) have to do with the manner in which the Church celebrates the Eucharist. Meanwhile, the Eucharistic itself is, according to its essence, the sacramental re-enactment of Christ’s death and resurrection. It is about celebrating the presence of the risen Christ among his disciples as the source of a new life, gained at the price of Yeshua’s death and communicated in the “sharing of the bread.” The episode of Emmaus is highly symbolic in that regard: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:30–31). If Christ dead and risen is really the connection between the two traditions of prayer, the tradition that understands the mystery that it celebrates, no matter how poorly and defciently it celebrates it, cannot be placed on a par with a tradition that consciously ignores what it celebrates, no matter how magnifcently and adequately it celebrates it. Christ died so that his disciples might live by recognizing him as risen from the dead in the Eucharist. He died to fll the emptiness of a Temple destined to be deprived of its daily sacrifces with the experiential awareness of his defnitive sacrifce. The advantage of a tradition that inherited this knowledge over a tradition that dismisses it pertains to the very necessity of Christ’s Incarnation. Indeed, it is integral to a sacramental reality that no human tradition of interpretation based on the Torah of Moses could have produced by itself.

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One can lament on the fact that the manner in which this sacramental reality is celebrated does not suffciently manifest the intrinsic connection of this reality with the mystery of Israel. But a defciency of this kind cannot be equaled to the defciency of a celebration that, although being flled with references to the mystery of Israel, falls short of explicitly celebrating the very object and purpose of the Eucharist; that is, the mystery of Christ’s salvation. This asymmetry is of consequence regarding the consistency of the “continuity model.” It implies that if the Jewish disciples of Yeshua can recognize the presence of the risen Christ and experience the grace of Christ during the Amidah prayer or a Shabbat dinner ritual, it is because they can refer to liturgical contexts where this presence and grace are explicitly celebrated—in non-rabbinic contexts. The mystery of Christ’s salvation includes the mystery of Israel, but the rabbinic tradition of Israel does not include the mystery of Christ’s salvation, at least when it comes to the explicit content of its celebration. One is therefore entitled to ask if the real cause of the Messianic “recognition” or anamnesis of Christ’s presence during a standard synagogue liturgy stems from this liturgy itself or from a religious habitus that is entirely foreign to the rabbinic tradition. To illustrate this point, I want to refect on the encounter between Christian faith and a religious tradition that has historically nothing to do with it. Henri Le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda, +1973) was a Benedictine monk who never forsook his Christian identity and religious calling after putting on the Brahmanic garb and conforming his religious practice to the highest spiritual ideals of Hinduism. Indeed, it is at the very heart of Advaita, the ascetic path leading to spiritual realization, that Le Saux claimed to come to the experiential understanding of Christ’s “theandric” consciousness: “The knowledge (vidya̅) of Christ is identical with what the Upanishads call divine knowledge (brahmavidya̅) . . . . It comprises the whole of God’s self-manifestation in time, and is one with his eternal self-manifestation.”17 It may be that Le Saux distorted Hinduism to make it compatible with Christianity—this would question the authenticity of a religious experience that, according to Le Saux, was the direct fruit of a tradition foreign to the mode of thinking that characterizes Christianity. But it may not necessarily be so. In Nostra Aetate §2, we read that the great religious traditions of humanity, even those that are not related to the Abrahamic revelation, “refect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.” If this position is legitimate, we should not be surprised to discover the presence of the risen Christ in non-Christian traditions, no matter how far they explicitly stand from Christian faith, since Christ is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Christ is the full manifestation of the Truth that enlightens all men, but our understanding of this fullness is limited. Learning from what other

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great religious traditions have perceived of this Truth that enlightened them without revealing its ultimate nature can help us to better understand the fullness of the same Truth that was revealed to us in Christ. In this sense, there is at least a theological possibility that the experience of Le Saux, receiving enlightenment regarding his own Christian faith from his full engagement with a non-Christian spiritual tradition, is authentic. This does not mean, however, that such an authentic experience would be conceivable without previous knowledge of Christian faith and tradition. It is this previous knowledge that enabled Le Saux to perceive the implications of Brahmanic wisdom for the understanding of Christianity; it is this knowledge that made him discover the presence of Christ at the core of Advaita. Le Saux was fully aware of this. To the extent that living faith in Christ was his point of connection with the spiritual tradition of Hinduism, all the elements that were incompatible with this connection—the type of polytheism cultivated by common Hindus, for instance—were left out of his encounter with the tradition of Advaita. Because of such self-awareness of his Christian identity, Le Saux never drew on the authenticity of his “christological” encounter with Hinduism to claim that this great religious tradition could as such be a means chosen by God to reveal Himself on a par with normative Christian tradition. That the presence of Christ can be experienced at the core of Advaita does not entail that one needs to embrace Advaita in order to become a disciple of Christ. The same cannot be said of the teachings included in the New Testament writings: no discipleship of Christ is conceivable without personal adhesion to these teachings. Likewise, I would argue that the authenticity of one’s own “christological” encounter with the rabbinic tradition does not prove that embracing rabbinic tradition is the normative—“ordinary” in Catholic terminology—way God wants Jewish believers to practice their faith in Christ, divine Word, and true Messiah of Israel. True, rabbinic tradition stands much closer to Christ’s revelation than Hinduism as it partakes of the same root in God’s revelation to Israel through the Patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets. But the fact that one can undergo a similar “christological” experience by practicing a religious tradition that is much farther away, genealogically speaking, from Christ’s revelation, shows that such experience offers no proof that the religious tradition it is associated with was established by God as a providential means to convey the revelation of his salvation in Christ. Indeed, the opposite claim— rabbinic tradition is a providential channel of Christ’s salvation—would be very strange as there is a furry of elements in the rabbinic tradition that are explicitly dismissive of Christ’s revelation.18 The prayer of the Amidah itself, the one that Kinzer brings up as an intuitive setting for this christological experience, is not exempt from such elements. It is well-known that the Birkat-ha-Minim, the nineteenth “blessing” added to the “Eighteen” at an

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early stage of the rabbinic tradition, is a manner of curse directed at heretics that most probably targeted Jewish Christians (“minim” or “species” of Jews in conjunction with Notzrim” or “Nazareans”): “For the apostates let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days. Let the noẓerim and the minim be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.”19 In this way, Messianic Jews that would recite the Amidah with the “intention” (kavana) given to it by standard Judaism have a good possibility of ending up cursing themselves. After showing that the “continuity model” leads to hardly satisfying consequences, I would like to examine the consistency of its principles. That all Jews are bound to follow rabbinic Halacha, lest they sin, because Halacha is the embodiment of the Torah received by all-Israel, is the most basic tenet of traditional Jewish orthodoxy.20 The question reads: Is the rationale for such obligation still valid in the case of Messianic Jews? Is the obligation that binds standard Orthodox Jews equally binding for Messianic Jews?

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2.4. The Logic of Religious Vows and the Nature of Messianic Torah-Obligation As we saw, Kinzer draws a parallel between religious vows and the moral duty of Torah-observance in the case of Messianic Jews. He uses a notion familiar to the Catholic tradition to explain the nature of a bond that has no equivalent in the Catholic world. If a Messianic Jew remains a Jew as a disciple of Christ, he inherits the same obligation regarding Torah-observance as any other Jew, which, in turn, means that the sin he commits by neglecting this obligation is as serious as that of a normative Jew. While I fnd Kinzer’s comparison with religious vows relevant, I believe it can hardly lead to the conclusions that Kinzer derives from it. When did Israel take the vow that allegedly obliges every Jew to be Torahobservant under penalty of sin? One can go as far back as Moses’s exposition of the Law before Israel crosses the Jordan and enters the Promised Land. There, Moses solemnly declares: “I make this Covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the LORD our God and with those who are not with us here this day” (Deut 29:13–14). When Moses speaks about those “who are not with us here, today,” his words may be interpreted as referring to all the future generations of Jews that would hear about the Covenant made with God at that place and time. One can speak of a vow. But to what extent am I morally bound to observe a vow that I have not taken myself? One of my ancestors may well, by way of

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thanksgiving, have made a solemn oath to God that he and his descendants will go on some pilgrimage once a year. I can feel indebted to this oath because I am fond of the ancestor who made it. But I am in no way morally obliged under penalty of sin to uphold it since an oath that I have not personally made cannot morally constrain me. If I do not particularly cherish the memory of this ancestor, I will simply shrug my shoulders and forget about it without any guilty conscience. Things become different if I freely commit myself to implementing what is merely the will of my ancestor. Then his vow becomes my vow, so that I am morally at fault if I do not observe it. In the same manner, the proclamation of the Law by Moses before the crossing of the Jordan did not put any moral obligation to respect it on any Israelite, neither those who were “standing here” or those who “were not here” with him. It pertains to the very nature of a Covenant that it is the result of the encounter between two free, unimpeded and thoroughly informed wills. Accordingly, it is only after the crossing of the Jordan, when the people freely proclaim their allegiance to the law that Jews begin to be accountable for transgressing it:

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After you have crossed the Jordan, the following shall stand on Mount Gerizim when the blessing for the people is spoken: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And for the curse, the following shall stand on Mount Ebal: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. The Levites shall then proclaim in a loud voice to all the people of Israel: Cursed be anyone who makes a sculptured or molten image, abhorred by the LORD, a craftsman’s handiwork, and sets it up in secret.—And all the people shall respond, Amen. (Deut 27:12–15)

One may well claim that the same logic applies to each successive generation of Jews born after the crossing of the Jordan. Each generation is called to repeat the gesture of their ancestors and make the free, unconstrained choice of upholding the Torah according to the wish of Moses. In normative Judaism, the solemn and public Bar Mitzvah ritual ensures that every male child does this, so as to be held fully accountable for his transgressions afterward (see also the more recent analogous ritual for girls, Bat Mitzvah). A vow that is prior to the free acceptance of Torah-observance cannot provide a moral justifcation for this acceptance since it is this free acceptance that has the status of a vow. It does not mean that no morality is involved in the decision to accept Torah-observance. Torah draws a path toward moral goodness. One cannot reject moral goodness without being morally wrong. This is why, according to normative Judaism, the Bar Mitzvah ritual takes place at the age of thirteen, when boys are supposed to reach the age of mature moral conscience and responsibility (and girls at the age of 12!).

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Could one then argue that, just as in the case of normative Jews, Messianic Jews have the duty to observe halacha because Halacha is about what is morally good? Things start to get interesting here. 2.5. The Morality of Rabbinic TorahObservance for Messianic Jews Faith in Christ is not exactly devoid of moral principles. Just as Jewish ­Halacha, it draws a path toward moral goodness. One cannot become a follower of Jesus without adopting moral ideals that are usually considered to be fairly demanding. Does not Jesus himself ask from his disciples to show themselves superior to those who, in his time, appeared to be the most preeminent experts on moral matters? “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20). In the Gospel of Matthew, this statement of Jesus is followed by a list of moral injunctions—the so-called Sermon on the Mount—that he presents as new and radical teaching compared to standard interpretations of Moses’s Torah:

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You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool,” you will be liable to the hell of fre. (Matt 5:21–22)

Church tradition sees here the fundamental tenets of Christian morality. When Aquinas formulates his concept of “New Law,” in contrast to the Old Law of Moses, it is to the Sermon on the Mount that he mainly refers.21 It is not that the Sermon on the Mount contradicts the Law of Moses. As Aquinas argues, the New Law encompasses the moral dimension of Moses’s Law. Still, the Sermon is certainly a most radical interpretation of the law Moses promulgated. The killing of one’s neighbor extends to insults; adultery encompasses lustful looks (v.29); giving a letter of dismissal to one’s wife upon divorcing her becomes an almost unconditional commitment to keep her (v.32–33); the condemnation of the breaking of oaths is referred to the condemnation of “sacred oaths” in general (v.33–35), and so on. “But I say to you, ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν.” While Jesus does not contradict the Law of Moses according to its content, he implies that the content of his own teaching regarding This Law has not been uncovered by any of its previous interpreters. This includes Moses himself as becomes clear in a later passage of the same Gospel:

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[The Pharisees] said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certifcate of dismissal and to divorce her?” He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery. (Matt 19:7–9)

ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν: only the greatest interpreter of the Law of God could draw similar teachings from it. Conversely, similar teachings could only be guaranteed by the greatest interpreter of God’s law. Supposing Messianic Jews had the possibility of embracing an interpretation of Moses’s Law that is both morally more demanding and more authoritative than any human tradition of interpretation of that Law—for what reason would they turn to an interpretation of the Law that is less authoritative and morally less demanding—as traditional Jewish Halacha is from their point of view? If on the one hand, Messianic Jews feel bound to a nation built on the observance of the Law of Moses and, on the other hand, the moral ­teaching of Christ is in perfect continuity with the Law of Moses, why would their decision to embrace the teaching of Christ not be understood as the expression of their attachment to the Law of Moses and the nation associated with it? As Benedict XVI writes, “To imitate [Jesus], to follow him in discipleship, is therefore to keep the Torah, which has been fulflled in him once and for all.”22 There is no doubt that the New Law builds on the legacy of Israel. The problem is that this legacy is construed by Christian tradition in purely universalistic terms or terms that eliminate the national singularity—‫עם‬ ‫— סגולה‬of Israel. According to Aquinas, the moral precepts contained as a refection of divine law in the Torah are to be heeded by all human beings indiscriminately, while the Torah’s ceremonial laws were only given for a limited period to the nation of Israel specifcally. It is diffcult to claim that this position deviates from the writings of the New Testament. Contrary to Moses before the crossing of the Jordan, Jesus speaking on the Mount does not address Klal Israel (the assembly of Israel) but his disciples. There is nothing in these teachings themselves that refers to the religious rituals and customs that are supposed to distinguish the nation of Israel from all other nations. If being a disciple, that is, having faith in Jesus, is the only condition for being among those to whom the Sermon is directed, then nothing can prevent a Gentile disciple from embracing this teaching. Jesus’s interpretation of the Law is not only radical, it is also universal. Thanks to Jesus’s interpretation, the Law of Moses becomes a legacy for all nations; it is a common ground for Jews and Gentiles. The absolute centrality of this moral common ground, where Jews and Gentiles stand on an equal footing as they are both challenged to pursue moral perfection in the light of Christ, is one of the main

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themes of Paul’s teaching in his epistles. Paul repeatedly contrasts the importance of this common ground from the point of view of salvation, with the mitzvot associated with the national understanding of Torah-observance: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). Paul’s statement, just as similar ones contained in this or other epistles (1 Cor 7:19, Gal 6:15, Col 3:11), might not necessarily mean that circumcision has no value, but there is no way one can deny that it emphasizes the absolute value in terms of salvation of a reality; namely, active faith in Christ, displayed through works of charity, that pertains neither to circumcision nor uncircumcision. Kinzer’s case for the place of Halacha within the Ekklesia often gives the impression that the whole onus of morality lies on Messianic Jews who cling to the sophisticated complexity of Torah-observance while their Gentile brothers can be satisfed with observing the few basic precepts associated with the Noahide law (no idol-worship, no murder, no stealing, etc.).23 The truth is that there is no comparison between the broadness of Noahide Laws and the stringency of Christ’s moral teaching, a teaching that obligates Jewish and Gentile disciples alike. One of the consequences of Christ’s teaching is that Israel according to the fesh is no longer the unique possessor of a superior moral compass. But is the only raison d’être of Israel according to the fesh to serve as a superior moral compass? To understand the manner in which Messianic Jews are supposed to relate to the rabbinic tradition, we need to contemplate the fundamental nature of Israel’s call to Torah-observance.

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2.6. Covenantal Responsibility and Faith in Yeshua A free choice is not an arbitrary decision between two equally valuable alternatives—pace Buridan’s ass—but it is a choice based on a reason, since reason, far from constraining judgment, is itself a consequence of judgment. At Mount Nebal, the tribes of Israel freely chose to abide by Moses’s Torah because they saw that such was the will of God over Israel and understood that there could not be any higher reason to obey a command than the fact that it came from the Creator of the Universe. God chose Israel as a people to glorify Him through Torah, so that Israel considered it as a privilege to stand under the obligation of Torah. Torah-obligation is not the reason but the consequence of the unconditioned decision of Israel to embrace God’s will. Each Jew is free to embrace this obligation but the reason for embracing it lies in his or her decision to join a concrete, bio-ethnic people collectively dedicated to glorifying God. One cannot belong to this bio-ethnic people and escape giving one’s free answer to the personal question associated with

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Torah-observance. This includes those Jews who, as a result of their faith in Yeshua, have recognized in the Church the living and spiritual Body of Yeshua. Indeed, if Yeshua has revealed himself to them as the true Messiah of Israel, how could their newly found faith lead to the disintegration of Israel, the collective and concrete bio-ethnic body to which God has specially assigned the task of glorifying Him? Messianic Jews are no less called to observe the Torah than non-Messianic Jews. The claim that the ontological calling of Jews to enter into the Covenant between God and Israel has not been revoked by the establishment of a new Covenant in Christ is integral to the very notion of Messianic Judaism. However this does not necessarily mean that Messianic Jewish and Jewish non-Messianic understanding of the manner in which the Torah should be observed are identical. What characterizes the Jewish notion of Torah is the inseparability between the moral dimension and the practical observances that are given to Israel specifcally. Moral values that have universal relevance are meant to shape Jewish existence through the accomplishment of mitzvot that distinguish Israel from all other nations. The distinction developed by Christian tradition between, on the one hand, a dimension of the Torah (the Ten Commandments grosso modo) that was deemed universal and therefore a constitutive part of Christ’s teaching and, on the other, precepts that were specifc to Israel and therefore obsolete (the so-called ceremonial observances), had the unfortunate consequence of barring the path toward a discipleship of Yeshua that would be anchored in this Jewish concept of Torah. The only religious body that relies on the original notion of Torah is to be found outside Christianity; it is the rabbinic tradition. Without it the Jewish understanding of Torah would have been irreversibly lost. The whole thrust of rabbinic tradition was to provide a way in which Jews might still observe Moses’s Torah at a time when the institutions to which this Torah referred (Temple, priesthood, sacrifces, etc.) were no longer extant. In this manner, it simply preserved the possibility for Israel to be Israel. As a partner of God’s Covenant, Israel is a nation whose laws are not civil but religious and whose religion has not a purely spiritual character but also a legal one. Torah is a religion of legal observances because legal observances have a religious nature. Rabbinic tradition’s claim to have inherited the binding authority of Moses’s Torah comes from the fact that no other institution took upon itself to ensure the transmission of the Jewish notion of Torah after the destruction of the Temple. The implicit premise of this claim is that the human, rabbinic interpretation of Moses’s Torah is endowed with the divine authority of Moses’s Torah to the extent that the former faithfully formulates the intention of the latter.24 It goes without saying that, when it dismisses the trustworthiness of Yeshua’s revelation, rabbinic tradition presents itself as the only

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interpretation of the Torah endowed with the authority of Moses. But can this last claim be received by Jews that do not share the reservations of rabbinic tradition regarding the trustworthiness of Yeshua’s revelation? As they heed God’s call to embrace the Torah of Israel freely, Messianic Jews cannot but turn to the tradition that has transmitted this Torah from one generation to the next. And yet at the same time, they cannot grant to the rabbinic interpretation of the Torah the same character of supreme authority as non-Messianic Jews. I just mentioned the reason for this state-of-affairs: for them, there is no greater or more legitimate interpreter of Moses’s Torah than Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel. True, neither Yeshua nor his immediate disciples produced an organic body of interpretation of Moses’s Torah that would compete with rabbinic tradition. The question, however, is whether the teachings of Yeshua as they are refected in the writings of his disciples enable Messianic Jews to rely on a superior authority than the rabbinic one when it comes to the reception of the Torah through the rabbinic tradition. To use a style of parable cultivated both by Yeshua and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, one can think of a king who, after having promulgated the laws of his kingdom, decided to go on a journey far away, leaving the interpretation of these laws in the hands of his counselors. In the absence of the king, common people would have to rely on the interpretation that the counselors gave to the intention that the sovereign had at the time when he promulgated the laws of the kingdom. The situation would change, however, from the moment the king returned to his kingdom. Not that the king would necessarily have to cancel the former laws and decree new ones, but he would certainly be acknowledged as the ultimate authority when it came to determining which interpretation of his own laws was correct and which was not. While the counselors’ continuous work of interpretation would preserve its great value, since laws are useless without the legal precedents that manifest their true meaning, common citizens would nevertheless cease to consider the opinion of the counselors as the supreme authority on these matters; they would naturally resume obeying their one and true king whenever a discussion regarding the interpretation of laws arose. As a number of Jews confess Yeshua as the true Messiah of Israel after almost 2,000 years of exile, they are in the situation of common citizens welcoming their king back from a very, very long journey. Certainly, there was never a moment during these 2,000 years when the teachings of Yeshua were not available or when multitudes would not have acclaimed him as Messiah of Israel and King of the universe. Still, at no point of history has there been a possibility like the one we are contemplating now; namely, that Jews might discover in the teachings of Yeshua a doorway to Torah-observance, and in his Church an openness to welcome them as full representatives of the people of Israel.

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Therefore, I would argue against Kinzer that it does not behove Jewish disciples of Yeshua to take their cue from rabbinic authority when it comes to living according to Torah—what I called the “continuity model.” I would advocate the exact opposite view: when it comes to living according to the Torah, Jewish disciples of Yeshua who acknowledge rabbinic authority should take their cue from the teachings of Yeshua. To present the current argument in a very synthetic manner, I would frst point out that we have successively considered three models of interaction between rabbinic teachings and the teaching of Yeshua: a) The two authorities are incompatible (“Torah-negative model”). b) The two authorities must be considered on the same footing (“parallel model”). c) Rabbinic authority should be the ordinary channel of Yeshua discipleship (“continuity model”). Here I would propose a fourth model according to which rabbinic tradition should be interpreted in the light of Yeshua. I would call it “Messianic-Torah model.” To establish the relevance of this fourth model, I want to take a closer look at the scriptural basis of Kinzer’s “continuity model.” I want to show that the faws of Kinzer’s analysis of key-passages of the New Testament, especially when it comes to the fgures of Jesus and Paul, necessarily lead to considering the “Messianic-Torah model” as the only alternative reading possible.

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3. “CONTINUITY MODEL” VERSUS “MESSIANICTORAH MODEL”: WHAT NEW TESTAMENT HALACHA FOR THE JEWISH DISCIPLES OF JESUS? According to the “continuity model,” what binds Messianic Jews to halacha is Israel’s covenantal responsibility. If this bond holds fast, it is because it remains unchallenged by the Messianic faith of these Jews. The underlying logic can be put into syllogistic form: a- Halacha has its source in the Torah destined to Jews and revealed by Moses b- Jesus used to abide by Moses’s Torah. c- Therefore a Jewish follower of Jesus must abide by Halacha. Kinzer quotes the theologian H.H. Hendrix in a closely related context: If Christians trust in God’s blessing upon Jewish walking in accord with Israel’s Torah and if this halachic “walking” can be considered salvifc only when

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related to the fundamental Christian belief that every salvation is the salvation of Jesus Christ, then saying that Jesus Christ is the living Torah can be understood as denoting such mediation. Then that which for Jews is salvifc—life according to the Torah, trust in God’s Word, faith in God’s promise—would be in contact with Jesus Christ and would be taken up in him in a way that confrms, reaffrms, or reinforces, since Jesus Christ is obedient to the Torah and fulfls it. Whoever obeys the Torah as a Jew and strives toward the goal “to be an incarnation of the Torah,” walks on his or her way in a manner that, because of Jesus Christ’s link with the Torah, Christians believe to be salvifc communion with Christ as the Torah incarnate.25

The minor premise of the syllogism expounded in point (b) should not go unexamined. What does one mean by stating that Jesus was “obedient to the Torah”? If the teaching and behavior of Jesus witness Torah-observance merely in the sense in which the Jews of his time were called Torahobservant, how could Jesus be the Messiah of Israel? Indeed, what purpose would his coming into the world have, had it only been for the sake of “confrming, reaffrming, or reinforcing” the manner in which the “good Jews” of his time used to practice the teachings of Moses’s Torah? Is not the Messiah of Israel supposed to be the bearer of a revelation in terms of doctrine and behavior that no one else could ever hope to deliver? As the sages of Israel declare: “The Torah that a man acquires in this world is foolishness (hevel) in comparison to the Torah of the Messiah.”26 As I said earlier, the revelation that is supposed to come through the Messiah of Israel cannot contradict the revelation that came through Moses; both revelations must be intimately connected as far as they emanate from one and the same God and are addressed to one and the same people of Israel. But if Yeshua is the Messiah of Israel, one cannot account for this connection by claiming that the teaching of Yeshua derives from the Torah of Moses as a logical inference derives from premises that are necessarily more comprehensive. What meaning could there be in the coming of a God-sent Messiah if the content of his teaching was to be found necessarily more limited than the teaching previously received by Israel? Certainly, Christ can be described as “Torah incarnate,” the living fulfllment of the Torah revealed to Moses, the only perfect Halacha or “walking” that is in accordance with God’s will. But if it is so, it is because the Torah that Jesus manifests in words and deeds is the preexisting and eternal model from which the Torah of Moses was drawn: “Then the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet ffty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am’ ” (John 8:57–58). Jesus succeeds in realizing a perfect embodiment of Moses’s Torah, in shaping a personal halacha that no ordinary human being could ever

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reproduce or even conceive of on the basis of the written Torah. This is because he does not try to conform himself with this written Torah but directly draws from the unwritten and living Torah that happens to be the source of Moses’s Torah: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known, ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός, ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο” (John 1:18). No one is closer to the Father’s heart than the eternal Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:1–4). “Jesus Christ’s link with the Torah” is that he is, as God’s Word, the eternal origin of Moses’s Torah. The one that comes after manifests himself as the principle of what came before. It is only after having developed some familiarity with the conclusion that Israel comes to know the logically more comprehensive premise from which this conclusion had originally been drawn. Accordingly, there is no reason to believe that Yeshua’s teaching and salvifc work are only about “confrming” or “reinforcing” what those who have either never heard of him or else dismiss his messiahship believe Moses’s Torah to mean. Even if these interpretations of Moses’s Torah have emerged after the Revelation associated with Yeshua, they still draw on a source that is logically less comprehensive than this Revelation. In this manner, it is much more likely that receiving Jesus’s teaching and salvifc work will lead Jewish disciples to introduce additions or corrections to these human interpretations of Moses’s Torah. In one word, what will occur is an essential transformation of these interpretations. To be sure, the notion that the disciples of Yeshua should be Torahobservant because Yeshua was himself Torah-observant raises some theoretical diffculties. But what about the testimony of the texts themselves? Can the ideal fgure of a Torah-observant Jewish disciple of Yeshua be found in the writings of the New Testament? Kinzer’s proposal of a bilateral ecclesiology refers to the frst community of followers of Christ, that of Jerusalem with James as its leading fgure, as a community mostly composed of Torah-observant Jewish disciples. In this sense, giving room to a Jewish ekklesia within the Church would amount to reestablishing the most original communal pattern of life among the disciples of Yeshua. Should it bear scrutiny, this communal pattern would indicate that Torah-observance is a consistent aspect of the revelation associated with Yeshua since the community of Jerusalem is the most immediate fruit of apostolic teaching, which itself is the immediate fruit of Yeshua’s teaching. I will follow the same logical movement backward, going from the fruit to its origin, as I examine Kinzer’s treatment of New Testament texts. The

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discussion regarding James’s community will bring me to consider the teachings of Paul, which will ultimately lead me to discuss the interpretation of Yeshua’s controversies with the Jewish authorities of his time. 3.1. Contemplating the First Messianic Jewish Community—What Torah-Observance? Kinzer’s claim that the acknowledgment of Halacha’s binding authority is not only a way for Messianic Jews to recover a sense of their Jewish identity but also an essential feature of the truly Catholic Church or Ekklesia rests on the conjecture that such was the primeval structure of the apostolic Church as it appears from the Book of Acts:

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As faithful Jews, members of the Jerusalem congregation observe the Sabbath (Acts 1:12), gather for worship on the holiday of Pentecost (Acts 2:1), and pray at the times ordained by Jewish custom (Acts 3:1). They include among their ranks many priests and Pharisees (Acts 6:7; 15:5). They are a community “zealous for the Torah” (Acts 21:20). They attend the temple (Acts 2:46; 3:1) and meet in its courts (Acts 5:12; 5:42), and the people of the city hold them in high regard (Acts 2:47; 5:13).27

Since the Mother Church receives authority over the whole Messianic Jewish diaspora, the community of Jerusalem plays a vital and structural role in the apostolic Church: “Luke conceives of the Jewish Christian element in the church as the centre and kernel of the church . . . . Thus the role of the Jerusalem congregation in Acts supports our thesis that the New Testament teaches a bilateral ecclesiology in solidarity with Israel .”28 It is clear from the episode of the Council of Jerusalem that James is endowed with a preeminent authority within the apostolic group and that this authority is exercised to maintain the group’s inner cohesion. Indeed, the opinion of James weighs crucially on the decision not to impose the burden of the Law on Gentiles, as pleaded by Peter (Acts 15:1–21). Accordingly, if it is the case that James’s community had an obligation to Torah-observance, this obligation should have affected all Messianic Jews by virtue of the apostolic authority de facto bestowed on James. But is there any element that would accredit the idea that James, not content with allowing the members of his community to simply carry on with Torah-observance, considered Torahobservance as an obligation stemming from the teaching of Yeshua, at least in the case of his Jewish disciples? Such an attitude on the part of James would have transformed an accidental and idiosyncratic confguration (“one of the frst and largest communities of the frst apostolic Church was constituted by Jews from Jerusalem”) into an ontological property of the Church—a “mark”

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in traditional Catholic terminology—as being integral to the teaching of Yeshua (“all Messianic Jews should be Torah-observant”). I agree with Kinzer that allowing Gentiles not to observe the precepts of the Torah destined to Jews, as the Council of Jerusalem decided, implies a contrario that Messianic Jews were allowed to do so.29 The question, however, is: Did James go further than merely allowing Jewish disciples to practice Torah and actually held that they had the duty to be Torah-observant? I believe a few historical considerations are relevant here. First, fulflling the obligations of Torah did not imply for the Jews of the time of Jesus that they would behave in conformity with a constituted body of interpretation of Moses’s Law. As is well-known, the corpus of Jewish Halacha is the fruit of a posterior, lengthy, and to some extent still ongoing elaboration. Most Jews living in the second Temple period would rely on the Levitical clergy when it came to the interpretation of ritual laws. Likewise, they would conform themselves with the decisions of “rabbinic” courts, with substantial representation from the Pharisees, when it came to the juridical interpretation of Torah. But most domestic and ritual customs did not refer to a body of teaching that could be formally distinguished from the written Torah. For the common—‘am ha’aretz or the Jews that did not belong to any specifc religious sect—these customs were the straightforward application of what stood written therein. In the absence of a normative body of rules governing the sphere of daily life, they enjoyed a large degree of freedom on matters that were not ruled by national customs.30 True, established and most of the time elitist groups, such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, or even Zealots, developed their own lines of interpretation regarding the teachings of Moses. Common people would defne the physiognomy of each group and subgroups within these movements according to the divergences between these interpretations. Undoubtedly, the disciples of Jesus initially formed an additional group in the midst of this already colorful variety. It had a teaching of its own regarding the identity of the Messiah. It had developed specifc rituals, such as Baptism and the Eucharistic meal that, similar as they might have been to some Jewish religious customs, were original in their form and content. Finally, last but not least, it had an organization of its own, entirely distinct from the priestly and rabbinic institutions common to the Jewish world: apostles, elders, presbyters, deacons, teachers, and so forth.31 Certainly, these distinctive features did not prevent the members of this group, like the members of rival Jewish groups and sects, from frequenting the Temple and performing customs and rituals in common with the wider Jewish community of the time.32 But the manner of their Jewish practice seems to have been very different from that of those who, within the nation, preached the obligation to obey not only the commandments of written Torah, but the precepts derived

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from written Torah through its self-proclaimed oral interpreters. These were the Pharisees. That the primitive community of Jewish disciples in Jerusalem counted a signifcant group that was closely connected to the Pharisees is well-attested in the Book of Acts and the other writings of the New Testament. This connection is explicitly stated in Acts 15:5. Conversing with Paul, James and the elders of the Jerusalem community speak of “thousands of Jews” who are “all zealous for the law, πάντες ζηλωταὶ τοῦ νόμου ὑπάρχουσιν“ (Acts 21:20).33 These and no others are the ones who suspect Paul of persuading other Jewish disciples to “forsake Moses,” and telling them “not to circumcise their children or observe the customs” (Acts 21:21). They are probably the same ones that Paul blames for trying to force Gentiles to adopt Jewish customs like circumcision in order to become members of the Church (Acts 15:1–5; Gal 2:3, 14; 5:2–12; 6:12–15).34 As much as James identifed with the nation of Israel, there is no sign that he identifed with this group of zealots. On the contrary, in the passage just quoted (Acts 21:20), the choice of the verb ὑπάρχω in the wording of James and the elders seems to indicate that these inherited a situation on which they had little infuence: the zealots were “already there.”35 Unlike the zealots, James and the elders do not suspect Paul. Rather, they advise him to take a Nazirite vow, so that the zealots will believe in his good intentions.36 There is at least a sense of ideological distance between the heads of the Jerusalem community and the group of zealots, something that goes together with the understanding and trust that they display toward Paul. Moreover, the very notion that Paul would entice Jewish members to “forsake Moses” implies that there was no formal precept made to Jewish believers to follow him at the time. Paul would have been immediately rejected as being estranged from the communion of the Church had he openly tried to convince the other Jewish disciples to discard some offcial teaching proclaimed by the “saints” in Jerusalem. Common sense dictates that no explicit requirement about Torahobservance was needed in a situation where Jews would naturally keep common Torah-observances. The need to solemnly reaffrm the importance of Torah-observance could have found justifcation in the setting of a thoroughly dejudaized Church, in contexts where Jewish followers of Christ were systematically neglecting it—or tempted to do so—such as the one that developed from the Constantinian era onward. But what was the need for such a solemn reaffrmation in the context of the original community of Yeshuafollowers, a community that had experienced no historical discontinuity with a way of life thoroughly shaped by Torah-observance? What such a situation would have required is rather forbidding the practice of common Torahobservances, had it been the will of the heads of the community—which was obviously not the case.

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Rather than convincing disciples of Jesus to cultivate Torah-observance that they were already observing, the heads and prophets of the Church of Jerusalem would naturally endeavor to teach their faithful how to make room for the teaching of Yeshua in a Jewish environment. In a confguration where each religious group—Pharisees, Essenes, and so forth—would explicitly develop specifc teachings in accordance with their original religious inspirations, what was expected from the heads of the Messianic community was to harmonize the new doctrine associated with the confession of Yeshua’s messiahship with common Torah-observances. It is simply impossible to imagine that the acknowledgment of Yeshua as Messiah of Israel would not have had consequences on the manner in which Jewish believers were to practice traditional Torah-observances. It is most likely that the reason for the mutual estrangement between on the one hand, James and the elders of the community, and, on the other, the Jewish zealots within the community was due to the fact that the Messianic understanding of Torah-observance developed by the former was perceived as increasingly at odds with the narrow, nonMessianic, exclusively Torah-based concept of halachic obligation advocated by the latter. This initial, intra-Jewish tension within the Jerusalem community was destined to shape the whole Church as the rejection of the zealots’ position came to be understood as an essential condition for the communion between Jewish and Gentile disciples within one organic body of faith. To confrm these views, I want to turn to the writings of Paul. The theme of Jewish practice is central to the thinking of Paul, and we know for a fact that Paul was in communion with the “saints” in Jerusalem. On the basis of Pauline scholarship, many have argued that traditional Torah-observance had been put aside by the Jerusalem community. Kinzer does the exact opposite. He argues from the writings of Paul that the Jerusalem community considered traditional Torah-observance as mandatory: “One can make a solid case for the view that Paul saw Jewish practice as an obligation rather than an option for Jews.”37 Does such a claim stand scrutiny? 3.2. Paul 3.2.1. General Relevance of the “New Perspective on Paul” Crucial to Kinzer’s “bilateral ecclesiology” is the conviction that James’s Jerusalem community was unable to consider itself as independent from the rest of the Church. As Jewish as the Jerusalem community was, it was in relationship with all the other communities of faithful throughout the oikumene, including those mostly composed of Gentiles. The Church is simultaneously, albeit distinctly, ex circumcisione and ex Gentibus, hence her “bilateral” nature. Here, the teaching of Paul comes up as a pivotal element of this theoretical construction. As his writings make it suffciently clear, Paul could

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not separate his ministry to the Gentiles from the formulation of a global ecclesiology that would encompass both Jewish and Gentile believers in one theoretically harmonious and concretely viable entity. The Book of Acts and Paul’s epistles both bear witness to the fact that the teaching of Paul was— certainly not without diffculties and tensions—received by the community of Jerusalem. Paul himself calls Peter, John and James the “apostles” (Gal 1:19; 2:8) and “pillars” of the Church (Gal 2:9). Accordingly, if Paul’s doctrine was to be seen as implying the obligation made to all Messianic Jews to follow Torah-observance, one could ascribe apostolic authority to this specifc teaching. But is it the case? In the Book of Acts, a number of elements stress the sense that Paul had of his Jewish identity: he circumcises Timothy, the son born to a Jewish mother and a Gentile father (16:3); on his way to Syria, he spontaneously takes a vow according to the Jewish custom (18:18); acting on the suggestion of James and the elders in Jerusalem, he accepts to take another vow (21:17–26); he explicitly speaks of himself as a Jew (21:39; 22:3) and a Pharisee (23:6; 26:5). He also openly refers to his Jewish identity in his epistle to the Romans (11:1) as well as to his Pharisaic legacy in his epistle to the Philippians (3:5). Traditionally interpreted in the light of the contrast between the Law of Christ and the Jewish Law (nomos) that Paul himself is the frst to theorize, Paul’s Jewish initiatives and self-defnition have long been understood as peripheral remnants of a henceforth obsolete and theologically irrelevant religious universe. During the most recent period of modern exegesis, the so-called new perspective on Paul (NPP) with Ed P. Sanders, Brad Young, N. T. Wright among its most preeminent representatives, unequivocally turned this traditional approach upside-down: Paul’s deep-rootedness in Jewish identity is precisely what enables us to grasp the true meaning of his theological statements on Christ’s law and the practice of Torah. There is no doubt that the NPP produced interesting results. The issue that we are discussing here merely addresses one specifc aspect of NPP’s hermeneutical framework. Provided that Paul never ceased to grant theological signifcance to his Jewish identity, is it plausible that he made of Torahobservance a rule for all Jews that became disciples of Christ? On this matter, the proponents of NPP appear to disagree among themselves.38 Meanwhile, the validity of Kinzer’s ecclesiology partly rests on the fact that its author gives a unilaterally positive answer to the question that is being raised: “Paul taught that Gentile Yeshua-believers should not become Jews or take on distinctive Jewish practices. However, he expected Jewish Yeshua-believers to live a faithful and observant Jewish life, and his own practice conformed to this expectation.”39 Here I beg to disagree with Kinzer and the proponents of NPP with whom he aligns himself.40 I strongly question the idea that Paul advocated the

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necessity of Torah-observance for all Messianic Jews. At the same time, I would dispute the claim that dismissing this thesis leaves us with nothing more than the option of abandoning NPP and going back to the traditional anti-Jewish or at least dejudaized picture of Paul. If my claim is correct, there must be a coherent way of harmonizing the commitment of Paul to Jewish identity and a Jewish lifestyle with his refusal to impose Torah-observance on himself as well on his fellow Messianic Jews. In order not to reach hasty conclusions on this delicate topic, let us examine the two major issues related to the Jewish dimension of the primeval Ekklesia with which Paul was confronted, namely, circumcision and the rules regarding food purity (Kashrut).

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3.2.2. Circumcision In Post-Messianic Judaism, Kinzer offers two lines of argument that connect Paul’s understanding of the value of circumcision with the notion of a necessary Torah-observance. The frst focuses on the decision of the Council of Jerusalem to free Gentiles from the religious observances followed by Jews (Acts 15 and 21); the second is centered on the recommendation for circumcised as well as uncircumcised to remain in their original state (1 Cor 7:18–19). The issue of circumcision lies at the origin of the Council of Jerusalem’s fateful decision: “Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’ ” (Acts 15:1). The opposition of Paul and Silas to this theologoumenon (circumcision is integral to salvation) brings the discussion back to Jerusalem (see 15:2–3). There, it becomes clear that this theologoumenon fnds supporters among a group of Jewish believers that are said to be related to the Pharisaic party: “But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses’ ” (Acts 15:5). Kinzer sees in the unanimous opposition of Paul as well as the whole apostolic group to this theologoumenon, a tacit and a contrario confrmation of the duty of Torah-observance among non-Gentiles, that is, Jewish, believers. Freeing Gentiles from the obligation of circumcision would have no meaning if Jewish disciples already enjoyed such freedom. According to Kinzer, the fact that at a later point (21:20–26) James and the elders of Jerusalem do not add credit to the malignant rumors according to which Paul is trying to dissuade Jewish brethren from circumcising their children goes equally a contrario to show that Paul positively supported the custom of circumcision among these Jewish disciples: “a straightforward reading of this text on its own terms can lead to only one reasonable conclusion: according to Luke,

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Paul does not teach Jews to forsake Moses, circumcision, and the customs, nor does he live in a way that would imply that such defection from Jewish practice is acceptable.”41 Kinzer fnds an additional confrmation of his interpretation in the words that Paul uses to address the leaders of the Jewish community in Rome at the end of the Book of Acts:

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“Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our ancestors, yet I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans” (Acts 28:17). Luke wants to leave us with this image of Paul: speaking to his fellow Jews, arguing that Yeshua is the Messiah, and asserting that he has never done anything against his people or violated its way of life.42

True, all these passages would lead to conclude in favor of Kinzer’s interpretation if only the fact of not being against was straightforwardly identical to the action of positively prescribing, as implied in the notion of religious obligation. Strikingly, in none of these passages does Luke’s Paul state his active commitment to upholding circumcision and other customs among Jews and especially Messianic Jews—something that he could have done, and certainly with great personal advantage, in his dealings with the elders of Jerusalem and the leaders of Rome’s Jewish community. Actually, Kinzer’s interpretation of Acts 21:20–26 makes us lose sight of the primary object of the discussion between Paul and the elders of Jerusalem. Why was Paul suspected of persuading the Jewish brethren in the diaspora to give up circumcision in the frst place? Why did this accusation carry such weight as to force Paul to make a public display of his allegiance to traditional customs by taking the Nazirite vow? The accusation could not have been conceived, formulated, and steadily upheld, had at least something in the teaching of Paul not induced people to think that he did not support the practice of circumcision among his Jewish brethren—which in turn entails that he never actively promoted it. Between virtues and vices, things that one had to do and things that one had to avoid, the ancient philosophical world had distinguished a third and intermediary category, to adiaphoron, what does not matter.43 Everything seems to indicate that Paul was no stranger to reasoning according to these three categories: the necessary or vital, the unholy or despicable, and fnally what is indifferent.44 But in what sense can one claim that a disciple of Jesus such as Paul, so highly aware of the value of Judaism and committed to the ongoing existence of his people, would consider circumcision, the very rite that embodies the Covenant between God and Israel, a matter of indifference? This is precisely what is in question in Kinzer’s second line of argument regarding Paul’s attitude toward circumcision.

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Here, Kinzer sets two passages, one from the frst epistle to the Corinthians (7:17–20) and one from the epistle to the Galatians (5:3–11), next to each other, so as to produce the following “striking syllogism”:

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Major premise. All that have been circumcised should remain circumcised (i.e., should accept and affrm their circumcision and its consequences). Minor premise: All who are circumcised are obligated to observe the Torah (i.e., live according to distinctive Jewish practice). Necessary conclusion: All those who are born as Jews are obligated to live as Jews.45 Let us examine the two premises of this syllogism with reference to their original contexts. Major premise (1 Cor 7:17–20): Where is the necessity of “affrming circumcision and its consequences”? Paul is referring to the condition of Jews that precedes their coming to faith in Christ: “However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you” (1 Cor 7:17). This is quite different from prescribing to Jewish parents to circumcise their children after their calling, which would be the case if Paul wanted to affrm circumcision as a Torah-obligation for all Jewish followers of Jesus. Unsurprisingly, the verse that immediately follows causes some embarrassment to Kinzer: “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing (Η περιτομὴ οὐδέν ἐστιν, καὶ ἡ ἀκροβυστία οὐδέν ἐστιν); but obeying the commandments of God is everything” (1 Cor. 7:19). In order to salvage his interpretation, Kinzer draws on an analysis of the verse by Peter Tomson: by “keeping God’s commandments,” Paul would mean that Gentiles and Jews should each observe their own, the Noahide law in the case of Gentiles and, in the case of Jews, a Torah that includes the commandment to circumcise their offshoot.46 Unfortunately, it is obvious this interpretation does not render the text: the affrmation of a circumcisionpositive Torah should lead to strengthening the importance of the circumcision commandment, not to dismissing circumcision as being devoid of signifcance. Minor premise, Gal 5:3–11: Does Paul consider the obligation to be circumcised and live according to the Torah as a valid commandment for any follower of Jesus? In the frst verse of the chapter, Paul contrasts the “freedom of Christ” to “the yoke of slavery” (τῇ ἐἠλευθέρωσεν μὴ πάλιν ζυγῷ δουλείας ἐνέχεσθε), in order to warn the Galatians against letting themselves be circumcised: “Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no beneft to you (ἐὰν περιτέμνησθε, Χριστὸς ὑμᾶς οὐδὲν ὠφελήσει)” (Gal 5:2). The verse on which Kinzer’s interpretation rests comes immediately after: “I give my assurance once again to every man

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who accepts circumcision (παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ περιτεμνομένῳ) that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law” (Gal 5:3). From a grammatical point of view, one may not understand this verse as referring to the actual situation of a person who has been circumcised as a child. It cannot be given an absolute meaning such as: “All those who are circumcised must keep the Law.” In contrast to the passive voice (περιτμηθείς), the middle voice (περιτεμνομένῳ) indicates that the person has willingly sought to receive circumcision, as the translation rightly suggests. The sentence has, therefore, a conditional value: in the case of a person who has accepted circumcision (“if you accept circumcision”), this person is (“you are”) obligated to keep the whole Law. But this is a possibility that Paul radically discards: “You who want to be justifed by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (Gal 5:4). Paul emphasizes that any man, who seeks circumcision (παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ περιτεμνομένῳ) on behalf of justifcation, fnds himself separated from Christ. Indeed, Paul’s demonstration does not make sense if Jewish disciples are an exception to the rule. Or are Jews that came to faith to be excluded from the “freedom of Christ” due to their Jewish origin? In this manner, Kinzer’s syllogism appears to be less than “striking.” It actually leads to a conclusion that is very different from the one suggested by Kinzer. Major premise: Jewish brethren should remain circumcised if they were so before coming to faith. Minor premise: No one, Jews included, coming to faith should seek circumcision in order to be saved. Conclusion: Circumcision cannot be prescribed to Jews as mandatory in order to receive salvation. In the very same epistle, Paul explicitly declares that circumcision plays no role in what he teaches: “But my friends, why am I still being persecuted if I am still preaching circumcision? In that case the offence of the cross (τὸ σκάνδαλον τοῦ σταυροῦ) has been removed” (Gal 5:11). Drawing on James D. G. Dunn’s commentary on Galatians, Kinzer wants to limit Paul’s denial to the sphere of gentility: Paul is persecuted by the group of Jewish zealots who would like to impose circumcision on all the disciples, while Paul is reserving circumcision for the Jewish disciples. Paul’s opponents would persecute him because he is not willing to prescribe to the Gentile brethren what he is prescribing to his fellow Jewish disciples: “ Paul urged Jewish Yeshua-believers to live as faithful Jews and Gentile Yeshuabelievers to remain as non-Jews. His early Jewish opponents found this twofold message inconsistent and untenable. His later Christian adherents found it incomprehensible.”47

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Is this twofold message so “inconsistent” and “incomprehensible”? There is hardly anything more anchored in the Jewish tradition than the notion that circumcision should be reserved for Jews and that the absence of it would defne being a Gentile. What novelty deriving from the “scandal of the Cross” would there be if Paul continued to preach this ultratraditional principle within the new religious entity that, owing in great part to his efforts, was rapidly taking shape? James, according to Kinzer, was naturally holding fast to this principle when he required from Jewish disciples a faithfulness to Torah-observance that he would not require from Gentile converts. This attitude carried with it the awareness that Gentiles were not converting to the Law of Moses, as a number of them had done in the past and were still doing at the time, but to a faith that, though bound up with the Law, was not numerically identical with it. From this point of view, it is rather the circumcision preached by the group of zealots that appeared to be at odds with this ultratraditional principle. These Jews wanted to force upon Gentiles a Torahobservance that was foreign to the reason for their conversion. If Paul had in mind here this new and unheard preaching to which he and James never adhered, why would he evoke—even if to dismiss it by the same token— the possibility of him “still” (ἔτι) “preaching circumcision”? Paul never preached that Gentiles coming to faith in Christ should be circumcised. Accordingly, what preaching is he alluding to, what preaching might have he endorsed, if not that of circumcision by Jews to Jews? This explains Paul’s statement: the refusal to place circumcision at the center of his own predication witnesses a true mental revolution, especially in a former Pharisee. For Paul, continuing to preach circumcision in this manner nullifes “the offence of the Cross (τὸ σκάνδαλον τοῦ σταυροῦ).” Conversely, taking this offense seriously implies a discontinuity with standard Jewish preaching. If Paul’s rhetorical point has a minimal force of persuasion, it is not because it implies him actively preaching circumcision to Jews but exactly the opposite. Paul is not preaching circumcision even in the context of Jewish sub-communities of disciples. Paul’s idiosyncratic terminology corroborates this interpretation. In only one passage of Paul’s epistles does one fnd another occurrence of the term σκάνδαλον—“obstacle,” “stumbling block” that Paul uses in Gal 5: 11. It is the famous line of 1 Cor 1:23: “we proclaim Christ crucifed, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” The identity of the term (obstacle/cross of Christ) points to the identity of the theological idea. The Cross of Christ overcomes the line of division (“the wall of hostility,” see Eph 2:14) between Jews and Gentiles by opening a source of communion that is deeper and more powerful than what separates them: “but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). Paul’s claim in Gal 5:11 that preaching circumcision would amount to nullifying the σκάνδαλον of Christ’s Cross partakes of the same logic.

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Emphasizing the very symbol of the division between Jews and Gentiles would go against what Paul is trying to achieve through his preaching; namely, showing that Christ’s Cross is the doorway to a yet unheard-of communion between the two. To summarize, Paul is facing persecution at the hands of his fellow Jewish brethren because he actively refuses to preach what would reinforce the separation between Jews and Gentiles, namely, circumcision. Instead, he places at the center of his preaching what unites them, that is, the Cross of Christ. This makes it impossible to preach to Jews the opposite of what he is preaching to Gentiles. I, therefore, fnd little or nothing in Paul’s attitude toward circumcision that would imply a commitment to prescribing as mandatory the most fundamental marker of Jewish identity as well as the frst sign of Covenant responsibility to his brethren of Jewish origin in the Ekklesia. Can one infer something more Torah-positive from his attitude toward the rules of food purity (Kashrut)? 3.2.3. Food purity

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Two major passages from Paul’s epistles bear witness to the attitude of their author regarding Kashrut: the discussion on the “weak” and the “strong” in Rom 14 and the so-called incident of Antioch in Gal 2. Neither of these passages can be invoked in support of the idea of Paul’s being favorable to mandatory Torah-observance among the Jewish disciples of the primeval Church. The most Kinzer can achieve here is to provide alternative interpretations that undermine their direct use against the thesis he advocates. But should these alternative interpretations be seriously upheld? I venture to doubt it. In Rom 14, one reads: Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarrelling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (Rom 14:1–4)

Paul justifes his teaching in the following manner: I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be

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spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Rom 14:14–23)

Basically, the point that Paul makes here is clear: the “strong” (i.e., those who are not afraid of transgressing the traditional commandments regarding Kashrut) should be wary of offending “the weak” (i.e., those whose faith in Christ is not suffcient to let them transgress these commandments without qualms of conscience) by sticking to their dietary freedom. The discussion among commentators revolves around the identity of the “strong” and the “weak.” Supposing that the “weak” according to their faith are disciples of Jewish origin while the “strong” are disciples of Gentile origin, this implies that Paul is theologically proving the latter right when they transgress Torahobservance, even if he recommends them to refrain from doing it out of concern for the former’s lack of spiritual maturity. How could Paul prescribe Kashrut as mandatory to the former when he describes them as still lacking the faith that would enable them to discard the rules of Kashrut? Here Kinzer brings forward two different types of counterarguments. The frst relies on a fairly idiosyncratic interpretation of the passage by Mark Nanos: “According to Nanos, the ‘weak’ of Romans 14–15 are Jews outside of the Yeshua-movement, and their weakness consists not in their Jewish practice but in their lack of Yeshua-faith.”48 The context would be that of a synagogue simultaneously attended by mainstream Jews and disciples of Yeshua. Let us suppose that Nanos is right in disagreement with the overwhelming majority of his colleagues.49 Let us forget about the fact that this scholar does not produce any single documented instance of such a mixed community of Yeshua-believers and Jewish non-Yeshua-believers. Let us try to pretend that the picture of Gentile Yeshua-believers openly despising the purity rules observed by the very ones they were, as “God-fearers” supposed to learn from—why be part of a Jewish community otherwise?—is credible. Let us ascribe to the poor Jews, who were supposed to bear with all this boasting about some newly acquired “freedom in Christ,” some angel-like patience that would have prevented them from immediately kicking such Gentile trouble-makers out of the

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congregation. There remains the fundamental inconsistency of Paul calling “weak” according to the faith those who were foreign to this faith. If one has in mind mainstream Jews, they were indeed strong according to their faith, a faith that rested on traditional Torah-observance. What about calling “weak” the faith of a Lutheran because he does not pray to the Virgin Mary or obey the Pope? Blaming a person for being “weak” is meaningful only as long as one refers to the system of values of this precise individual. But supposing for a moment that all the issues mentioned earlier are irrelevant, one naturally asks: What would Nanos’s interpretation tell us about the Jewish disciples of Yeshua? The fact is that Nanos has merely in mind mainstream Jews. Kinzer tersely writes that “the reading of Romans 14–15 championed by Nanos conforms to the Pauline syllogism presented in this chapter.” In other words, it confrms the notion that Paul would have all Jewish Yeshua-disciples be Torah-observant as himself. The conclusion implies what is so much in need of being demonstrated, namely, that faith in Yeshua did not in the least affect the relationship of Jewish believers to Torah-observance, so that they modeled their practice on that of other Jewish believers of the community who did not share their faith. This is doubtful at the very least. Indeed, does Paul not place himself among the “strong,” those whom Christ has freed from the fear of transgressing the rules of Kashrut? If Paul wanted other Jewish Yeshua-believers to behave as he does, then all should have renounced the dietary rules observed in the rest of their Jewish community. The problematic character of Nanos’s interpretation is probably the reason why Kinzer brings forward a different line of interpretation, one that preserves the traditional exegetical consensus. Writing about the “weak” according to the faith, Paul intends to designate Jewish Yeshua-believers, distinguishing them from the “strong” that are Gentile Yeshua-believers. Here, Kinzer describes the “strong” and the “weak” as two extreme and mutually opposite tendencies: the “strong” are the Gentile Yeshua-disciples who believe that Torah-observance is a kind of archaic practice while the “weak” are hyperscrupulous Jewish Yeshua-believers. The former “publicly consume meat and wine that the ‘weak’ view as impure (Rom 14:2–4), they ‘treat all days as sacred and refuse to show greater honour to one day than to another (Rom 14:5–6).’ ” Meanwhile, the latter “consider the meat and wine served at the community meals to be ‘intrinsically impure’ (Rom 14:13) and on such occasions will consume only vegetables”; they “also view certain days—probably the Sabbath and Jewish holidays—as (intrinsically) more sacred than other days”: they even refuse to drink most likely “untainted wine.”50 Whereas the “ ‘weak’ believe that Gentile Yeshua-believers should be required to live in full compliance with Jewish law and custom,” the “strong,” through some sort of pre-supersessionist move, “believe that Yeshua came to liberate the

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Jewish people from their ancestral customs and to create a new community in which the distinction between Jew and Gentile is entirely eliminated.”51 Paul is portrayed as standing about half-way between the two positions. Paul agrees with the “strong” that purity rules are not “ontological” (pertaining to the order of Creation) but “ritual” or resulting from a divine ordinance that can be reversed. In addition, he believes with them that God has given to Gentile disciples a wide freedom on matters of food. Nevertheless, he teaches that these disciples are wrong when they do not respect the scruples of the “weak,” which they should do out of fraternal concern: “In despising their Jewish partners in Messiah and their way of life, they are not walking in love.”52 The point of Kinzer is that endorsing the dietary freedom of Gentile Yeshua-believers while condemning the scruples of hyper-zealous Jewish Yeshua-believers leaves room for prescribing the “normal” rules of Kashrut to average “Jewish Yeshua-believers”: “while [Paul] defends the right [of Gentile Yeshua-believers] to eat anything (Romans 14:2), we need not conclude that he likewise eats anything” (N. B. as a consistent Jewish Yeshua-believer) .53 I do not think this point can be taken. Even if one accepts Kinzer’s stylized picture of these two mutually exclusive “parties,” one needs to explain why Paul believes that, when it comes to eating or refusing to eat specifc dishes, some are theologically correct; namely, the “strong,” because they are anchored in Christ’s freedom while others, the “weak,” are theologically wrong because their faith is still imperfect. Why not declare that both parties are right as to what they do well (Gentile disciples to enjoy freedom / Jewish disciples to observe Kashrut) and wrong where they fail to be faithful to sound teaching (Gentiles when they despise their Jewish brethren / Jewish disciples when they overdo Kashrut-observance)?54 It is not true to claim, as Kinzer does, that according to “the standards upheld by Paul in Romans 14–15, the approach to Jewish practice adopted by the ‘strong’ is just as defective as that of the ‘weak.’  ”55 According to Paul, the “strong” are right regarding the freedom to eat food that traditional Torah-observance declares impure: “Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables” (Rom 14:2). Where the “strong” err, according to Paul, has nothing to do with their understanding of how to relate to “standard Jewish practice.” What is at stake is the way they relate to those who cling—maybe over-scrupulously—to standard Jewish practice on matters of food. In other words, they are blamed for their lack of fraternal love in Yeshua. This gives little room to Paul for prescribing the rules of Kashrut as mandatory to fellow Yeshua-believers of Jewish origin, unless Paul is willing to grant the character of rule to what refects some imperfect degree of faith. But Paul’s stance leaves the possibility open for these Jewish brethren, just as for himself, to freely adopt these

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rules whenever and wherever they do not become stumbling-blocks to those who are weaker in their faith: “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve” (Rom 14:21–22). 3.2.3.1. The “Incident of Antioch” The epistle to the Galatians relates the following episode:

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But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? (Gal 2:11–14)

Interestingly, this famous and controversial confrontation of Peter by Paul refers to a situation that is symmetrically opposite to that just described in the epistle to the Romans. In Antioch, those who suffer scandal in the eyes of Paul are not those who cling to the traditional Jewish dietary prescriptions, but those who do not, namely, the Gentile brethren who are exempted from them. Accordingly, the reason why Paul blames Peter for withdrawing from the meals with Gentile brethren appears to be identical to the reason why he encourages the “strong” Galatian disciples to respect the dietary observances of their “weak” brethren: on matters of food, the rules that one adopts for oneself should yield to the requirements of fraternal communion. In the case in question in Antioch, this meant that, according to Paul, Peter ought to have transgressed the rules of Kashrut for the sake of preserving the communion with Gentile brethren. This does not sit well with the claim that Paul, like the rest of the community in Jerusalem, held the observances of Kashrut to be mandatory for the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, Peter included. Drawing once again on Nanos’s exegesis, Kinzer argues that Peter never broke the rules of Kashrut in his dealings with the Gentile brethren in Antioch. Indeed, Jewish tradition conceives of situations—mission ministry for instance—where a Jew would not be considered as transgressing Torah while sharing meals with Gentiles. The only condition was that he might be allowed to keep the dietary rules of Kashrut at the home of a Gentile host. In this framework, Paul does not blame Peter for not eating non-kosher food but for not being willing to sit at the same table with Gentile brethren. Peter behaves as an ultra-zealous Jew for whom even the accommodation criteria

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acknowledged by mainstream Judaism are too liberal to become a valid norm in the mixed communities formed of Jesus’s disciples. One will naturally ask for the reason for such behavior if there was an agreement to welcome Gentiles as Gentiles in these communities. Kinzer does not provide an answer to this question. According to Nanos, Peter wanted—or the “certain people from James” wanted Peter—to make the point that, in spite of this acceptance, Jews in the community preserved a superiority as children of Israel and as such deserved some exclusive status. The decisive element, however, is that Peter is making this point by letting Gentile brethren understand that a Jewish disciple is not to transgress the rules of Kashrut for the sake of communion with them. Whether there was a way to justify eating together with Gentiles or not from a Torah-observant perspective, the gesture of withdrawal would have had no meaning, had it not been interpreted as a refusal to transgress Torah-observance for the sake of communion. Conversely, Paul’s criticism of Peter’s gesture proclaims the necessity of demonstrating that communion has priority over the concern about Torah-observance. However, this is irreconcilable with the rules of Kashrut. Eating kosher at the table of a Gentile does not have the meaning of proclaiming one’s communion in faith with Pagans from a Torah-observant perspective; it has the meaning of preserving oneself from the deflement that derives from eating at the table of people with whom a Jew may not be in communion. Indeed, the reason why standard Halacha would proscribe even the possibility of eating (kosher food) at the table of Pagans was the fear of eating food consecrated to idols: Ishmael says, “Israelites who live outside of the Land worship idols in all innocence. How so? A Gentile who makes a banquet for his son sends and invites all the Jews in his town. Even though they bring and eat their own food and drink their own wine and take along their own servant who stands over them and pours for them, Scripture regards them as though they had eaten from sacrifces of corpses, as it is said, ‘And they will invite you and you will eat of their sacrifce’ (Exod 34:15).”56

The whole issue at stake in the incident of Antioch is precisely whether Gentiles should still be considered as idolaters after converting to faith in Yeshua. The recommendation that Gentiles abstain from food consecrated to idols, as stated by the frst Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:20, 29) and Paul himself (1 Cor 8), was destined to mark the essential distinction between Gentile converts and Gentiles that were still foreign to the faith of Israel. If the disciples, Jews as well as Gentiles, are in communion of faith with one another, should the barriers raised by standard Halacha when it comes to shared meals not be abolished? Why even have recourse to a lenient Halacha that allows Jew to sit at the table of Gentile idolaters if the Gentiles

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in question are no longer to be considered as idolaters? The issue of the transgression of a Halacha that simply cannot envisage the case of Gentiles that, while remaining Gentiles, are in full communion of faith with Jews is of the essence in the confrontation between Paul and Peter. Paul’s rebuke of Peter has no meaning or relevance if it does not amount to encouraging the transgression of all extant halachic practices for the sake of communion with fellow-believers, as a manner of acknowledging the entirely new confguration born out of the teaching of Christ. Paul’s accusation of Peter behaving as a hypocrite does more than confrm this standard interpretation. It puts it into perspective. The gesture of withdrawing is meant to suggest that Peter, as a disciple of Jewish origin, holds to strict Torah-observance, but this is hypocrisy because in reality—in other circumstances—he behaves as a Gentile: “You, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew” (Gal 2:14). The argument cuts as sharply as a knife: How can you compel the Gentiles to live like the Jews?” Indeed, how can a Jew who is familiar with transgressing Torah-observance suggest that Gentiles should comply with Torah-observance—either by keeping their meals separate from those of their Jewish brethren or by converting themselves.” To avoid the crystal-clear implication that Peter repeatedly failed to be Torah-observant, Kinzer has recourse to two alternative interpretations. He frst refers to Dunn’s hypothesis that “like a Jew” (ἰουδαϊκῶς) is a metaphor for an ultra-orthodox, Pharisaic way of life, whereas “like the Gentiles” (ἐθνικῶς) refers to the mocking manner these ultra-orthodox Jews viewed mainstream Torah-observant Jews (they behave like Goyim). But the whole argument would fall fat if “͗ἰουδαϊκῶς” did not refer to the Jewish identity of Peter—“though you are a Jew, σὺ ἰουδαῖος ὑπάρχων.” Being a Jew according to the nationality never implied that one should be a member of an ultraorthodox Jewish sect. This was the result of a choice—and more precisely, of a choice that Peter never made according to all existing records. By contrast, being a Jew by nationality went together with standard Torah-observance at a time and place when religion determined membership in the Jewish nation and vice-versa.57 This indeed corresponds to what the Gospels and the Book of Acts have transmitted to us regarding the personality and behavior of Peter, at least until Acts 10. In this confguration, implying, as Paul does, that Peter no longer behaves as the mainstream observant Jew he would be expected to be according to standard Jewish tradition, seems to point at a change in Peter’s attitude under the infuence of his newly found faith in Jesus. In fact, the Book of Acts tells about such a dramatic change occurring in the life of Peter, and I fnd it diffcult to ascribe to mere chance the fact that this change actually relates to Kashrut. I have, of course, in mind the vision of Peter in Acts 10—the table set with all sorts of food forbidden by standard Kashrut:

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“He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of fourfooted creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat’ ” (Acts 10:11–13). Even if this vision does not imply that Peter totally discarded Kashrut afterward, it certainly explains that he no longer felt bound to it as before. The second alternative interpretation Kinzer brings up is Nanos’s conjecture that views “living like a Gentile,” ἐθνικῶς, as referring to the new life in Christ associated with Baptism: “Thus, when Paul says to Peter that he lives like a Gentile, he means that he has received life in the same way as the Gentile Yeshua-believers—through faith in the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah.”58 Being a Yeshua-believer, Peter should associate with Gentiles rather than with Jews. I fnd this interpretation of ἐθνικῶς puzzling. Since when is Baptism reserved for Gentiles? Are not Gentiles being baptized the way Jews were before them? How can the supposedly Torah-observant Paul call “life in Christ” a Gentile way of being? Does Paul imply by contrast that the Jewish way of life is some spiritual death? And if by “Jewish way of life” Paul implies the literal opposite of “Gentile way of life” (=true life in Christ), how could he want Peter to abide by such a spiritually lethal way of life in his capacity of Jewish follower of Jesus? Meanwhile it is clear that Nanos’s interpretation does little to solve the issue. The question is not why Peter should be in table-fellowship with Gentiles. It is how this table-fellowship could be understood otherwise than as a transgression of Jewish Torah-observance. If anything, Nanos’s hardly understandable antithesis between baptismal life and a truly Jewish lifestyle, leaning toward severing contacts with Gentiles, makes it harder to fnd an answer. Just as in the case of Paul’s statements on circumcision, Kinzer’s attempts at showing that Paul’s attitude toward the rules of food purity is compatible with an insistence on the mandatory character of Torah-observance for the Jewish disciples of Yeshua are unconvincing at best. Does this mean that the standard portrayal of Paul as preaching the simple cancellation of Jewish Torah-observances, with the de facto “Gentilization” of the whole Ekklesia as consequence, is justifed? I do not think so. I believe that the fundamental insight of the NPP holds. Nowhere does Paul claim that, by joining the Ekklesia, disciples that come from the nation of Israel should abandon their identity. The question reads: How are they supposed to persevere as Jews if they no longer abide by all the observances associated with standard Torah-observance? Is there a way of understanding Paul’s teaching on fexibility that would make room for the preservation of a distinctive Jewish identity within the Ekklesia? To tackle this issue, let us examine the

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passage where Paul formulates the principle of this fexibility in the most powerful but also the most precise terms. 3.2.4. The Obligation to Freedom in Yeshua In 1 Cor 9:19–23, Paul writes: For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

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Kinzer is keenly aware of the diffculty of reconciling this passage with the notion of a Torah-observant Paul: “Commentators have traditionally understood this text to be Paul’s missionary principle of accommodation that justifed his living as a practising Jew when around Jews and as a nonpracticing Jew when around Gentiles. If this interpretation is correct, Paul did not view Jewish practice as obligatory for all Jews, since he was sometimes exempt.”59 The solution that Kinzer suggests, a solution that constitutes the bottomline of the extensive monograph that David Rudolph dedicates to the same passage, once again consists of “shifting” Paul’s contrasts toward the (Jewish) conservative side as it were. Instead of emphasizing a virtual breaking point between Torah-observance and an entirely new religious attitude stemming from faith in Yeshua, Kinzer describes a dilemma taking place within the inner sphere of the Jewish religious world. Here a strict interpretation of traditional Halacha is put into contrast with a more lenient one: Paul has come to follow a lenient halacha on the Gentiles’ supposedly idolatrous intention, and therefore to give them the beneft of the doubt as far as that more liberal tradition allows. When he eats with conservative Jews, on the other hand, he is prepared to accommodate himself to their stricter parameters of observance. Thus, “not being under the law” means that while Paul himself does not affrm the narrowly ethnic type of halacha, he can happily adapt to it and operate within it, if thereby he can win some of his stricter compatriots. Thus, Paul had a certain amount of halachic fexibility—but not a complete freedom from halacha. He varied in his Jewish practice depending on his circumstances, but this text gives us no grounds for thinking that he ever actually violated basic Jewish practice (i.e. by eating non kosher).60

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Before dealing with issues of terminology, one needs to underline that, in this framework, the behavior—although not the ideas—of Paul is indistinguishable from that of Pharisees involved in mission work. Making contact with Gentiles is halachically tolerable under certain conditions (keeping kosher at the table of a Gentile), but these concessions are forgotten as soon as the missionary goes back to his original Pharisaic environment. This certainly matches the “continuity-model” that was described earlier: the discovery of Christ’s Messiahship by Jews is to be integrated into a Jewish pattern of religious observance that is shared with Jews who do not confess Christ. It is clear that this way of thinking challenges the self-understanding of an Ekklesia that has always referred to the authority of the frst disciples and Paul in particular, to claim just the opposite, namely, that the newness of faith of Christ cannot but dramatically affect all preexisting patterns of religious behavior—everything that has been upheld as a norm of piety while ignoring Christ’s Messiahship, be it among Gentiles or among Jews. One must, therefore, ask if this passage still has a logical meaning when it ceases to indicate that a Christ-inspired behavior shatters both traditional Jewish and deeply embedded Gentile patterns of religious practice. Indeed, if the whole point of the passage is to bring into focus a freedom regarding various types of religious practices that only faith in Christ can generate, how could it not be ruined by the concomitant admission that such freedom is legitimate—the adjective that comes to mind is “kosher” of course—in a Pharisaic, Yeshuanegative Jewish environment? The truth is that contrasting some yet unheard-of type of freedom in Christ with one interpretation of the Torah among others—the most stringent one in this case—does not make sense. If this freedom is really a yet unheard-of type of freedom, if it really ushers into a whole new religious era, it must be contrasted with the concept of law that used to preside over the religious habits and practices of the whole Klal Israel, not with some anonymous ultraconservative sect within it. This idea is confrmed by a brief analysis of the syntagm on the meaning of which the Kinzer-Rudolph line of exegesis hinges, namely, ὑπὸ νόμον, “under the Law.” Neither Kinzer nor Rudolph substantiate the claim that this is a technical expression designating the mindset of a specifc group or stream of ultra-observant Jews. This is hardly surprising since one fnds it diffcult to connect the syntagm in question with the meaning that Kinzer would like to give it. In the Liddell-Scott Dictionary, the preposition ὑπό followed by the accusative case is defned as indicating the movement of placing an object under something and hence the notion of subjection, control, or dependence.61 What is above has a natural authority over what is below. This authority can be good and legitimate, such as the authority of a father over his children (Epictetus, Discourses 3:29) or of kings over their subjects (Menander,

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Works, 340, see ibid.). It is in this sense that one comes across an early occurrence of the syntagm ὑπὸ νόμον in the Defnitions, a treatise emanating from Plato’s academy, at the article “State” (πόλις): “A State is a place where many people live together by making use of the same decrees; a multitude of people existing under the same law (ὑπὸ νόμον τὸν αὐτόν).”62 From this point of view, the whole Klal Israel, and not only an exclusive part of it, is to be considered under Moses’s Law or Torah. The expression suggests the movement of people placing themselves under the transcendent authority of a God-given Torah. It does not in any way suggest the somewhat symmetrically opposite movement of a group of people submitting Torah to their specifc interpretation of it. Still, an authority can sometimes misuse its position—the notion of dependence here comes close to that of servility or slavery, as in the translation of Prov 6:1–7 that one fnds in the LXX: My son, if you have stood surety for your fellow, Given your hand for another, You have been trapped by the words of your mouth, Snared by the words of your mouth. Do this, then, my son, to extricate yourself, For you have come into the power of your fellow: Go grovel—and badger your fellow; Give your eyes no sleep, Your pupils no slumber. Save yourself like a deer out of the hand [of a hunter], Like a bird out of the hand of a fowler. Lazybones, go to the ant; Study its ways and learn. Without leaders, officers, or rulers, μηδὲ ὑπὸ δεσπότην ὢν ‫ֲׁשר אֵ ֽין ־לָ ּ֥ה מ ֵֹׁשֽל‬ ֶ֖ ‫א‬

I would argue that Paul is playing on the ambiguity or rather the polyvalence of the syntagm, pointing to the negative, despotic outcome of a reality that is fundamentally positive: Israel placed itself under the Law of God. The freedom that derives from faith in Yeshua is the antidote to an authority that ended up assuming a despotic character. While Kinzer does not refer to the other occurrences of the syntagm in Paul’s writings, Rudolph contends that one cannot draw on some uniform meaning in all of them. For example, “Galatians 3:23, 4:4, 5, 21 and 5:18 has also been the subject of vigorous debate. Proposed meanings of the expression may be grouped into three categories: Under a legal or legalistic system of the law (2) Under the

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condemnation or curse of the law; and (3) Under the guiding, restraining infuence of the law.”63 But where is the technical meaning supposed to designate a radical interpretation of the Law? The fact is that when all these different registers of the syntagm are referred to the most general notion of Torah, they make a remarkably coherent whole. A positive reality—the placing oneself under the “guidance” of a “legalistic system” as Torah—can have negative consequences under certain circumstances and due to its own limitations. The Law of God becomes a “curse” when one relates to it in a servile way. Let us take a closer look at the few passages where the ὑπὸ νόμον syntagm occurs. The one I fnd most relevant to the present discussion is in Gal 4:1–7. I will dedicate most of my attention to it. This is the passage in question:

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My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, in order to redeem those who were under the law, ἵνα τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον ἐξαγοράσῃ, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

It is essential to Paul that Christ would be γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, born “under the Law” or a Jew among Jews because Christ did not come to redeem a sect among Jews but all those who are subjects to the law, τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον. Gal 4: 1–7 and 1 Cor 9:20 strikingly echo each other. Paul depicts his own mission in the very terms he uses to evoke the Son’s kenosis (“emptying-of-one-self”): “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, in order to redeem those who were under the law, ἵνα τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον ἐξαγοράσῃ” Gal 4:4–5

“To the Jews I became as a Jew, ἐγενόμην τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις ὡς Ἰουδαῖος in order to win Jews. ἵνα Ἰουδαίους κερδσω” 1 Cor 9:20a

“to those under the law I became as one under the law τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον [ἐγενόμην]· so that I might win those under the law. ὡς ὑπὸ νόμον, κερδήσω” 1 Cor 9:20b

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Christ becomes one under the Law in order to redeem those under the Law. Likewise, Paul becomes as one under the Law in order to announce Christ’s redemption to those who are under the Law. Now, if being under the Law designates the common Jewish condition (Jesus was not born a Pharisee or a member of a specifc sect among Jews), how could the clause of 1 Cor 9 where Paul declares that he himself is “not under the Law,” μὴ ὢν αὐτὸς ὑπὸ νόμον (v.20) mean, following Rudolph’s suggestion, that he does not observe the Law as a strict Pharisee? If I say “those are French citizens, but I am not!” I am not implying that I do not support some specifc French political party—I am simply saying that I am not French. Kinzer and Rudolph will certainly want to avoid assigning the same meaning, that of main stream Jewish condition, to the ὑπὸ νόμον of Gal 4:4–5 and the ὑπὸ νόμον of 1 Cor 9:20, since it would indicate that Paul views as negative the very thing that they would like Paul to promote among the Jewish disciples of Yeshua; namely, the full observance of Moses’s law (although without Pharisaic rigorism). The problem is that in Gal 4:4–5, where ὑπὸ νόμον undeniably designates this common Jewish condition, it also unquestionably views it in a negative light. Why would Christ want to redeem those under the Law like himself if being under the Law was Paul’s ideal of religious behavior, at least for Jewish believers? This does not suggest that the Torah of Israel is bad in itself, although it is certainly imperfect without Christ in the eyes of Paul. There is a way of relating to the Torah that is bad, and it is the way of those who believe that there is no—and cannot be any—higher authority than that of the Torah of Moses. This must be understood in the light of the most crucial and insistent teaching of Paul. Since this Torah, while condemning sin, is insuffcient to wipe out the punishment that those who commit it deserve, sinners who are ὑπὸ νόμον in this manner owe to God a moral debt that they are unable to cover with the sole resources of the Torah. The grace of forgiveness that comes with and through faith in Christ induces a relationship to the Torah that is fundamentally different from that of being “under it.” Of himself, Paul declares that he is not ὑπὸ νόμον. But this does not mean that he is without Torah: “To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law.” “τοῖς ἀνόμοις ὡς ἄνομος, μὴ ὢν ἄνομος θεοῦ ἀλλ᾽ ἔννομος Χριστοῦ, ἵνα κερδάνω τοὺς ἀνόμους”. (1 Cor 9:21) Paul who became without law with those who are without law says of himself that he is “not free from God’s law” since he is legitimate or literally “in-the-law,” ἔννομος, in regard to Christ.64 The relationship to Christ translates into a new relationship to the Law: not “under” but “inside” it. Whatever this might mean concretely, it entails that the prescriptions contained in the Torah are no longer the central focus of what Paul conceives as

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genuine religious practice: “You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted” (Gal 4:10–11). Throughout the passage (Gal 4:6–20), Paul warns his readers about coming back to the type of slavery induced by the primacy given to Torahobservances by his opponents, “those from James.” It is at the end of it that one fnds the fourth occurrence of the syntagm ὑπὸ νόμον in Galatians: “Tell me, you who desire to be subject to the law, will you not listen to the law? Λέγετέ μοι, οἱ ὑπὸ νόμον θέλοντες εἶναι, τὸν νόμον οὐκ ἀκούετε;” (Gal 4:21). That the problem of those who are “under the Law” does not originate in a particularly rigorous interpretation of the Law but in the nature of the Law itself, which follows from Paul’s midrashic demonstration that the regime of the Law is much inferior to that of faith in Christ:

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For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the fesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two Covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. (Gal 4:23–26)

Left to itself, Moses’s Torah behaves like a despotic master to those who place themselves under its authority. It continuously requires pledges of obedience from its followers (like keeping “days, months seasons and years,” v.10) while it does not bother to secure them with much-needed protection against the assaults of sin. By contrast, faith in Christ is presented as opening up to new freedom arising together with the strengthening of our moral intentions in the fght against sin. Freedom implies that one is not constrained by a law that is external to one’s will. If this freedom is not a blank endorsement of our whims, a freedom to sin, then the law one follows when one rejects sin—“I am not without Law”—must coincide with the core of one’s inner will. As the strengthening that the Galatians seek does not happen by means of the Law but by faith, as they are taught that faith comes with an inner, self-evident understanding of good and evil, how could they continue to view the prescriptions of the Law, like keeping the days, seasons, and so on, as the highest and therefore unconditioned references of a religious behavior pleasing to God? Paul is in the Law, ἔννομος, as a consequence of his relation to Christ. He does not declare that external prescriptions are meaningless and

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invalid, but he implies that they must be subordinated to the higher criterion of good and evil that faith in Christ brings with itself. The last two occurrences of ὑπὸ νόμον in Rom 6:14 and 15 confrm this reading. Here is the passage in question:

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So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (οὐ γάρ ἐστε ὑπὸ νόμον, ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὸ χάριν). What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace (Ἁμαρτήσομεν, ὅτι οὐκ ἐσμὲν ὑπὸ νόμον, ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὸ χάριν)? By no means! (Rom 6:11–15)

If Paul used the syntagm ὑπὸ νόμον to designate a rigoristic interpretation of the Law, he would contrast it with a more lenient one. But Paul contrasts the fact of being ὑπὸ νόμον to a religious principle that does not refer to the Law; namely, the grace that stems from faith in Christ. Clearly, it is the notion of Law itself—and not a specifc interpretation of it—that is put on a balance with that of grace, as a reality that cannot be reduced to the defning elements of the Law: “we are not under law but under grace.” Once again, the fact of being under the Law is identifed with a type of slavery since a behavior exclusively based on the observance of the Law is described as unable to prevent the domination of sin. On the contrary, the authority of grace is said to free believers from the domination of sin associated with the exclusive authority of the Law. Liberation from this exclusive authority appears to entail the dismissal of mandatory precepts, the goal of which is to keep believers safe from sin—otherwise Paul would not rhetorically evoke the possibility that being under the authority of grace makes believers “free to sin.” Indeed, the whole idea of the passage is that this freedom in regard to the mandatory precepts of Torah is anchored in grace as a power against sin that is superior to these precepts: “Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness” (Rom 6:13). In conclusion, Paul does mean the Torah of Moses whenever he uses the syntagm ὑπὸ νόμον. But what he blames is not this Torah itself. Rather, he points out that the Torah remains imperfect as long as the grace of Christ is missing. Meanwhile, as soon as the grace of Christ is acknowledged as the ultimate authority, one is no longer obliged by the precepts of the Torah. Instead, one is endowed with an inner and transcendent sense of good and

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evil that has priority over the observance of precepts as it leads to the goal that these precepts indicate without bestowing the actual power to reach it.

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3.2.5. Paul’s halacha The analysis that we just provided leaves little room to the idea that Paul ever—at least after his conversion—consciously modeled the pattern of his religious life on the Halacha of his time, even a lenient one. It does not mean that he dismissed Jewish customs completely or that his ostensible attachment to Jewish identity had no practical consequences. As argued by the proponents of NPP, the fact that Paul deliberately took on the Nazirite vow cannot be reconciled with the picture of a wholesale “Gentilized” Paul. This is truly the one element in the behavior of Paul that unambiguously tells about high regard for the traditional forms of Jewish religious life. What is remarkable here, however, is that this one element does not pertain to a precept that would apply to all; it is a vow, that is the result of an individual commitment to follow a path of action that remains outside the realm of Torah mandatory observances: “When you make a vow to the LORD your God, do not put off fulflling it, for the LORD your God will require it of you, and you will have incurred guilt; whereas you incur no guilt if you refrain from vowing” (Deut 23:22–23).65 I fnd in Rom 14.14 a confrmation that Paul’s Nazirite vow might involve a more systematic thinking about the regime of traditional Torah-observances in Christ: “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.” Can the claim that food is not unclean in itself be reconciled with the mandatory nature of Kashrut for the Jewish disciples of Christ? Relying on a teaching ascribed to Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the central fgure of Jewish religious rebirth after the destruction of the second Temple, Kinzer argues that it can: “‘It is not the corpse,’ supposedly teaches Rabbi Yochanan, ‘that imparts uncleanness nor the water that effects cleanness. But it is a decree of the Holy One, blessed be He. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘A statute have I enacted, a decree have I made, and you are not at liberty to transgress my decree: This is the statute of the Torah’” (Num 19:1).66 Thus, according to Rabbi Yochanan, purity and impurity are not properties that belong to the nature of things; they are a consequence of divine decrees. Paul would follow Yochanan ben Zakkai in claiming that nothing is impure per se.67 But if Paul also holds with Yochanan that the rules of Kashrut proceed from divine decrees, how could he consider these divine decrees as a matter of subjective human choice?68 Whenever they pay attention to the second part of Paul’s verse (“it is only . . . unclean”), commentators speak of the value of what is purely subjective

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or invoke the enduring relevance in God’s eyes of a misguided way of thinking.69 But even if one supposes that Paul has unexpectedly turned into a pupil of Protagoras, how could the realm of pure subjectivity ever validate an action the only purpose of which is to elicit God’s benevolence? The Greek verb that Paul uses to describe both the action of considering the food as clean and the effect of this consideration on the subject of this action (εἰ μὴ τῷ λογιζομένῳ τι κοινὸν εἶναι, ἐκείνῳ κοινόν) is heavily loaded theologically, especially in Paul’s writings. In the Old Testament, λογίζομαι, “to calculate, consider, think for oneself” often means “to be reckoned” at the passive voice—which sometimes is a “passivus divinus,” a passive where the divine agent is implied but not formally mentioned. For instance, when dealing with the lot that they must consecrate to the Lord, the Levites are commanded to select it from the tithe collected from the Israelites—this “tithe of a tithe . . . shall be accounted to you (λογισθήσεται ὑμῖν, heb. ‫ְׁשב ל ֶָכ֖ם‬ ֥ ַ ‫ ) ְונֶח‬as your gift (τὰ ἀφαιρέματα ὑμῶν). As with the new grain from the threshing foor or the fow from the vat” (Num 18:27). Clearly, the One that reckons is God while the ones that beneft from the reckoning—expressed by the dative case, ὑμῖν—are the Levites that offer their tithe.70 This syntactic construction, λογίζομαι “passive + dative complement, is equally that of Rom 14.14b: “it is unclean for anyone (ἐκείνῳ κοινόν) who thinks it unclean (εἰ μὴ τῷ λογιζομένῳ τι κοινὸν εἶναι).” Most importantly, it is the construction used in Gen 15:6 to describe the value of Abraham’s faith in the eyes of God: “And because he put his trust in the LORD, He reckoned it to his merit (ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην; ‫) ַוּי ַ ְחׁשְבֶ ֥ ָה ּל֖ ֹו צְדָ ָ ֽקה‬.” As is well-known, Paul draws a whole midrash out of this sentence to illustrate the value of faith in contrast to that of the works of the Law in Rom 4: “Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him,’ were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justifcation” (Rom 4: 22–25). The idea that God rewards with justifcation those who act according to their faith in Him is one of Paul’s quintessential insights. We fnd it, still in the same epistle, applied this time to Gentiles that obey the prescriptions of the Law without knowing it, because the law is somehow inscribed in their hearts: “So, if those who are uncircumcised keep the requirements of the law, will not their uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision (οὐχ ἡ ἀκροβυστία αὐτοῦ εἰς περιτομὴν λογισθήσεται)?” (Rom 2:26). Circumcision is credited as righteousness when one obeys the law not only in words but in deeds; uncircumcision has the same value in the eyes of God in the case of those who obey the Law in deeds although they do not know the

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words that defne it (Rom 2: 1–26). In Rom 14:14, a reckoning of the sort is applied to Yeshua-believers of Jewish origin. Here, it does not pertain to the absence of knowledge of a law that has eternal validity (“do not steal,” Rom 2:21) but to the persistent observance of rules that are no longer considered as laws by the community of Yeshua-followers. Although the mandatory prescriptions regarding food purity have lost relevance since all food is declared clean, a Jewish believer in Yeshua that chooses to abide by them performs an action that will be reckoned (as righteousness) by God. This divine reckoning is strictly personal, according to the logic of a vow: ἐκείνῳ κοινόν—for him [this type of food] is impure, and not for the others who have not taken on these observances as a vow. In this manner, no Jewish believer can boast of being better or holier than Gentiles or lesser-observant fellow Jews because of the number of external prescriptions that he or she manages to carry out:

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Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justifed by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Rom 3:27–31)

It is the freedom induced by Christ’s grace, together with the awareness of the ultimate criterion of good and evil it communicates, that places the Law “on its true footing.” Obedience to its precepts is not the result of an impersonal divine command, but a personal choice inspired by the acknowledgment of Christ as the ultimate truth. If one can derive from the epistles of Paul a teaching directed at the Jewish disciples of Christ, it is not that they should refer to Moses’s Torah in order to practice their faith in Christ, as in what I called the “continuity-model.” Instead, it is about Jewish disciples of Christ referring to their faith in Christ in order to practice the commandments of Torah. This is what I called the “Messianic Torah-model.” 3.2.6. Paul: Conclusion Nothing in the teaching of Paul corroborates the notion of mandatory Torahobservance in the case of the Jewish disciples of Christ. Accordingly one cannot draw on this teaching to claim that the congregation of Jerusalem led by James, the congregation with which Paul was in doctrinal communion, was Torah-observant in the way in which mainstream Jews—or sectarian Jews for that matter—were at the time. We need to move a step further on—or backward—and examine the basic argument on which the notion of

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a Torah-observant community of disciples is established. I presented it in a syllogistic form earlier: a- Halacha has its source in the Torah destined to Jews and revealed by Moses. b- Jesus used to abide by Moses’s Torah. c- Therefore a Jewish follower of Jesus must abide by Halacha. The minor (b) is vague at best. In what sense should one claim that Jesus abided by Moses’s Torah? Did this observance coincide with standard Jewish Halacha? If it did not, the conclusion (c) ceases to be valid in that it implies that the religious practice of the disciple is modeled on that of the Master. Conversely, determining the nature of the relation of Jesus to Halacha should lead us to formulate the principles according to which a Jewish disciple of Jesus should conform his religious practice with the Torah. I believe that the case for a “Messianic-Torah model” will become even more convincing in this way. 3.3. Jesus, the Law, and Jewish Identity

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3.3.1. Investigating the Gospel Narratives Unsurprisingly, Kinzer claims that Jesus did and said nothing that would not comply with the religious standards of a practicing Jew of his time, though he did not hesitate to stretch the limits of the Halacha that went with them. At the same time, Kinzer shows that a few elements in Jesus’s behavior and teaching leave room for disciples that would not relate to the Law of Moses in the same manner as did his Jewish followers. For example, the attitude of Jesus toward purity rules foreshadows the acceptance of a “Gentile way” of being a disciple. Kinzer’s picture of Jesus as a regular Torah-observant Jew is far from ground-breaking in the feld of contemporary exegesis. Gone are the times when Benjamin W. Bacon would summarise the message of Jesus as promoting “a new and higher Torah” and Hans Windisch’s claim that “fulflling the Torah” in the sense of Matt 5:17 meant it could disappear after giving birth to a law that was far superior.71 The more recent claims by Eduard Schweizer that “love for the neighbour” formulates the heart of a law that entirely transforms the one of Moses, and by William D. Davies that the “Messianic Torah” of Jesus has only a remote resemblance to that of Moses, have apparently followed the same fate.72 From this point of view the research of E. P. Sanders, among other Christian exegetes, appears to vindicate the insights of Jewish New Testament scholars such as Joseph Klausner, Pinchas Lapide,

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Schalom Ben-Chorin, David Flusser, Geza Vermes, and more recently Daniel Boyarin.73 Nonetheless, I take exception to the theological conclusions that Kinzer attempts to derive from the rediscovery of Jesus’s Jewish identity and intimate connection with the Jewish religious tradition of his time. I believe Kinzer avoids the questions that one should ask before reaching these conclusions. I hope to show that the whole issue of the relationship of Jewish Yeshua-disciples to the Law is hidden in the elements that Kinzer repeatedly neglects to consider. From a naïve point of view, the general framework of Kinzer’s interpretation cannot but leave unprejudiced readers highly perplexed. The narratives of the synoptic Gospels are flled with controversies between, on the one hand, Jesus and, on the other, Jewish elders, priests, scribes, and Pharisees regarding the correct way to follow the Law. One can well accept that Jews would expect a holy man such as Jesus to “conform to the standards upheld by the most pious parties of his days” and that these controversies erupted when the somewhat eccentric behavior of Jesus challenged their expectations.74 But if it is true to claim with Kinzer that, after all, the disagreements were not suffciently signifcant to put the fundamental validity of Moses’s law into question, then one cannot help asking why—why do the Gospels tell us so abundantly about these controversies? Was it without purpose that the God-incarnated-Jew called Jesus spent the greatest part of his public ministry in endless quarrels with the religious representatives of his people about the correct application of the Law? A good example of this general problem is Kinzer’s treatment of Jesus’s healing of the almost life-long sick man at Bethesda in John c. 5. Standing accused of breaking the Sabbath by healing this man and ordering him to carry his mat, Jesus’s defense, sometime later at the Temple, seems to point to his divine origin: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (John 5:17). The grounds for accusing Jesus of breaking the Law are certainly minimal. Still, Kinzer writes: “Even if we were to adopt the unlikely view that John saw Yeshua as in some sense breaking the Sabbath, the defence he gives for his action—his authority as the unique divine Son hardly provides a basis for his followers to imitate his actions.”75 Still, if the controversy is not an opportunity for the Master to teach his followers what true religious behavior is about, what meaning does it have? The episode gives rise to a declaration of Jesus regarding his divine identity, but why insert this declaration into a context of controversy regarding the observance of the Law? Why indeed if the self-affrmation by Christ of his divine origin did not imply a relation to the Law that not only would not be conceivable without this affrmation but also should be adopted by all those who would henceforth rally to the affrmation?

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Kinzer repeatedly refers to Matt 5.17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfll.”76 However, what is in question is the form of this accomplishment. If people have suspected Jesus’s teaching of striving to abolish the Law, is it not because the type of accomplishment he had in mind was fundamentally different from what the disciples of Pharisaic rabbis were familiar with?77 I am afraid the absence of an answer to this and similar questions in Kinzer’s work points toward a theological faw that affects the entirety of his argument; namely, what is exactly the novelty of Christ’s revelation? The hypothesis that Christ’s revelation was not meant to revolutionize the standards of religious behavior as they were previously practiced by Jews who wished to abide by God’s genuine teaching to Moses, necessarily leaves one wondering why did God überhaupt become a Jew when He became a man. I understand that the revelation that God has an eternal Son without ceasing to be One is not devoid of interest, especially for theologians, but this revelation could have been achieved by other means than the Jewish incarnation of this eternal Son. Why make of the utterly tragic confrontation between Jesus and the religious authorities of his time the theme of the Gospels? Or was the purpose of Christ’s coming merely to provide Gentiles qua Gentiles an access of their own to the faith preserved by Israel? Kinzer gives at times the— probably wrong—impression of firting with a neo-Rosenzweigan type of perspective.78 But once again, why should the achievement of such a purpose have to go through a tragic confrontation between Jesus and Jewish religious authorities? At this point, I would like to consider a few concrete instances of this confrontation and discuss the possible implications when it comes to Torah-observance.

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3.3.2. The Sermon on the Mount and the Prohibition of Divorce I spoke earlier about the morally “universalistic” vision of the Sermon on the Mount (see sections 2.4–5 in chapter 2). I evoked the divine ἐξουσία or authority that resounds in the words “but I say to you, ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν,” as drawing the line between the teaching of Jesus on Torah and that of standard rabbinic instances. In order to better understand what is at stake in this contrast, let us shortly examine the issue of marriage and divorce as it appears in the Sermon. In Matt 5:31–32, one reads: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certifcate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” As E. P. Sanders emphasized, no transgression of Moses’s law is involved here:

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The prohibition of divorce, especially the long form (Matt 19:3–9//Mark 10:2–9) is radical in a way similar to the Covenant of Damascus, where divorce is also prohibited (a parallel which has often been noted), but it is not against the law, since staying married is not a transgression: the person who remains married will never transgress Deut 24:1–4. Jesus’ prohibition implies that the Mosaic code is not strict enough, and thus that it is not wholly adequate, at least for the time which he envisaged.79

Relying on the analyses of Peter Tomson, Kinzer mentions the closeness between Jesus’s position and that of Shammai—in contrast to Hillel—on this issue.80 However, the type of explanation that Jesus provides for his interpretation of the Law is perfectly idiosyncratic:

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Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one fesh’?” (Matt 19:3–5)

Jesus does not justify his interpretation of the Law by referring to the Law, just as any Pharisee of his time, great or small, would do, but to a bygone, mythically pristine order of the cosmos. Moreover, he indicates in his answers to the Pharisees that Moses’s law is not perfect. Actually, what makes it imperfect is the imperfection of the people to whom it was destined: “They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certifcate of dismissal and to divorce her?’ He said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery’  ” (Matt 19:7–9). That a law is imperfect does not mean that one should transgress it. But the consideration of a higher and more perfect order than the type of situation regulated by the law leads to a way of living according to it that does not take advantage of the whole amount of latitude it grants. The radical newness of Jesus’s approach to the Law does not evade his own disciples. However, applied to the issue of marriage, this newness is highly perplexing: “His disciples said to him, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry’ ” (Matt 19:10). Jesus cannot possibly want to delegitimize matrimony after characterizing it as a divine institution. At the same time, the specifc, highly demanding nature of the calling to married life offers room for another equally specifc and highly demanding type of calling: “But he said to them, ‘Not everyone

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can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can’ ” (Matt 19:11–12). Not only does Jesus’s interpretation of Moses’s law point toward a superior order that preexisted the Law, but it opens the door to a pattern of religious life that is absent from the Law. This pattern of life points toward the eschaton, the end of times when the succession of human generations that is to fll the earth will come to a halt. Thus, when Jesus teaches about the correct way to observe Moses’s law on the chapter of marriage and divorce, he introduces considerations about the Beginning and the End of human time that fall entirely beyond the scope of this law. These considerations give rise to extreme patterns of religious life when it comes to observing the Law hic et nunc: marriage without any (or very limited) possibility of divorce and life of perfect celibacy . . . . Without the supernatural reality that Scriptures and the tradition of the Church call grace, Jesus’s interpretation of Moses’s law seems almost impossible to follow. And since grace is inseparable from faith in Christ, Christ’s interpretation of the Torah is quintessentially irreducible to standard Halacha. No rabbi would claim that personal faith in him is a condition for observing teaching that derives from the Torah. On the issue of marriage and divorce, the teaching of Christ is generally said to clash with that of the Pharisees of his time because it is more stringent. This is also the case for oaths (Matt 23:16–22). But there are also occasions on which the contrast between the two sources of authority is due to the fact that the teaching of Christ appears to be less stringent than that of the Pharisees. It is the case for all the Shabbat controversies. Let us give a closer look to their content.

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3.3.3. Shabbat Controversies and the Messianic Factor On the issue of Shabbat observance, it is not diffcult to show, after E. P. Sanders and with Kinzer, that there is as little legal ground to accuse Jesus of transgressing the Law as on the topic of marriage and divorce. Allowing disciples to pluck grain or heal sick people can be said to go against an extremely rigorous Halacha, but none of these actions can be said to be incompatible with common Jewish observance of Shabbat.81 Neither is there anything that would betray some incoherence on the side of Jesus. Compared to rival schools or types of interpretation of the Law, the teaching of a Rabbi can be more stringent on a set of issues and less so on another set of issues without being accused of being inconsistent. A steady but original approach can challenge traditional party lines.

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When one examines what causes the Shabbat controversies, two elements stand out. The frst is the unique relationship of Jesus to Shabbat itself. We just recalled the healing of the sick man at Bethesda in the Gospel of John and how Jesus commented his own action (see John 5:17). But the most telling episode in this regard is the way Jesus justifes the behavior of his disciples as they pluck ears of corn on a Sabbath in Mark 2:23–28. Discarding the accusation that his disciples infringed Shabbat regulations, Jesus evokes King David eating the loaves of bread reserved to the priests in the Holy of Holies. This analogy between the behavior of Jesus’s disciples and that of David and his companions elevates a very minor deviation from Pharisaic Halacha to an action that disrupts the most sacred rituals of the most sacred place from a Jewish standpoint. According to the law to which Jesus refers, only priests were allowed to eat these loaves in the Holy of Holies. But this is precisely the point of the analogy. David is Israel’s Messianic fgure par excellence. From him is said that a Messiah will come that will be “priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”82 Seen in this light, the gesture of David eating the loaves in the Holy of Holies becomes a prefguration of the priestly dignity of the Messiah to come—a “new priesthood” as the order of Melchizedek is called to replace the Levitical one.83 In addition—and it is, I believe, the gist of Jesus’s argument here—the “Messianic privilege” of David extended to his companions who found themselves with him in the Holy of Holies. Likewise, the behavior of the disciples is covered by the authority of the one who calls himself “Master of the Shabbat” (Mark 2:28//Matt 12:8). To sum up whether the behavior of the disciples can be justifed or not from a halachic point of view is not the issue here. What is crucial is that Jesus decides to justify it by reference to an authority that is far superior to any Halacha, namely, that of a Messianic realm coming true in his very person. Indeed, only the Messiah can put back in perspective a divine decree that human Halacha had turned into a despotic rule: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). This “Messianic factor” that transforms Torah-observance is even more striking when one examines another characteristic feature of the Gospels’ Shabbat controversies, namely, miracles. As in the two other Shabbat controversies mentioned earlier, it is not diffcult to make a case for the “Mosaic legality” of the healing of the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:1–5 and that of the once possessed and now crippled woman in Luke 13:17. It is possible to save a life on Shabbat (Mark 3:4) and if one can draw an animal out of the pit where it fell (Luke 13:15), why would it be forbidden to subtract human beings from the miseries that befell them? At the same time, these two healings added to that of the sick man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–17) contain clear hints of the divinity of the one who performs them. Jesus heals

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the hand of the man in Mark as God once healed the hand of Moses (Exod 4:6); Christ rescues the woman from her illness as a master rescues the ox he owns from the pit where it fell; to the Jews who harass Jesus because he ordered the paralyzed of Bethesda to take up his mat and walk on a Shabbat, he replies: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (John 5:17). The symbolic dimension of these healings is equally clear: they feature the supernatural recovery of their primeval integrity by a sinful and damaged humankind. This is the symbolism of the Messianic Age. The parable that Jesus develops after healing the crippled woman speaks of a banquet where “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” will be the frst invited (Luke 14:15). They echo the Messianic signs that Jesus gives to John the Baptist (Matt 11:5, see Isa 29:18–19; 35:5–6; 61:1). It is anything but a coincidence if these signs are given on a Shabbat, the day when God completed his creation: “On the seventh day God fnished the work that He had been doing ‎‫ּשׁבִי ִ֔עי ְמלַאכ ְּ֖תו‬ ְ ‫( ” ַוי ְַכ֤ל אֱֹלהִים֙ ַּבּיֹ֣ום ַה‬Gen 2:2). Just as the Father, the Son is at work completing the Creation, and the signs he gives on the day of Shabbat point toward the fnal Shabbat of Creation when diseases and death will be banned forever from the surface of the earth. With the advent of Jesus, this Messianic Age has begun. Accordingly, what a rigorous Halacha sees as a deflement of Shabbat— healing and its consequences—and therefore as a neglect of the honor due to the Shabbat day, once seen in this Messianic light reveals itself as the most glorious and authentic celebration of Shabbat worship. As the goal of Creation, Shabbat is about the defnitive triumph of life over death. In this manner, any gesture that, stemming from the power of resurrection displayed by Christ, contributes to this triumph or its manifestation most excellently honors the decrees of the Law concerning Shabbat. Jesus’s “Messianic Torah” is a renewed and living interpretation of Moses’s Torah that does not have its sources in standard Halacha, so that it at times gives the impression of being incompatible with it. Finally, the notion that this Messianic Torah is more liberal and fexible than a rigorous form of Halacha proves to be superfcial. It does not take into account the fact that there is no truly Messianic interpretation of the decrees of the Torah that would not be anchored to the intrinsic necessity of Christ’s grace and therefore the requirements of a divine law that is itself the source of Moses’s Torah. 3.3.4. Controversies on Food Purity As we continue to examine the relation of Jesus to Torah in the Gospels, we come to the last and most diffcult point: the rules regarding food purity. Mark 7:15–19 is certainly the most embarrassing passage for Kinzer’s argument. It seems to give defnitive credit to the view, prevailing for so long in the

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Christian tradition, according to which the intention of Jesus was to promote a new law that would simply replace the discarded Torah of Moses. The controversy erupts with the Pharisees asking Jesus why his disciples do not wash their hands before meals (v.5). As Christ lashes out against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, he teaches that “nothing [going in] outside a person” can defle, but “the things that come out are what defle (Mark 7:15), such as “fornication, theft, murder, adultery” (Mark 7:21–22). In my opinion, Kinzer reasonably contends that Jesus’s teaching does not formally exclude the one handed down by Moses as far as the distinction between clean and unclean types of food is involved: “in Mark 7:15, 18–19a, 21–23 Yeshua emphasises the ‘weightier matters of the Torah’ but does not annul all purity restrictions.”84 Unfortunately, the clause that follows immediately after is much more diffcult to explain away. It reads: “Thus he declared all foods clean” (Mark 7: 19). Did Jesus really pronounce that the type of food that Moses declared to be unclean was clean? E. P. Sanders is so unhappy with this clause that he fatly discards it as a late redactional insert in a footnote that smacks of petitio a principii, what the English call the art of begging the question.85 True, the textual confguration of the clause is entangled as some manuscripts read “cleansing” or “purifying,” from the Greek καθαρίζω, with an omega and others with an omicron, so that one may either understand the syntagm as related to Jesus, just as in the translation that we just read, or to the sewer that, according to what Jesus declares here, becomes the receptacle of whatever is ingested. Bravely, Kinzer picks up the fght with the lectio diffcilior, “Jesus declared all food clean,” and undertakes to prove that it does not contradict Moses’s Torah.86 Naturally, the clause, according to its content, appears to be very close to the passage of the Epistle to the Romans on which I dwelled earlier on: “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean” (Rom 14:14). This explains why Kinzer brings up the same authority, that of Rav Yochanan Ben Zakkai, in order to establish the compatibility of the clause with the founding decrees of Jewish Kashrut. Like Rav Yochanan, Jesus believes that nothing is impure per se but also that this is not a reason to forsake the rules of Kashrut.87 To the question why make such a highly philosophical statement on the nature of Kashrut in the context of the passage, Kinzer has an answer. In a manner that is reminiscent of Rosenzweig’s insights in the Star of Redemption, Kinzer claims that, by interpreting the words of Jesus in this way, the redactor of the Gospel of Mark wanted to make room for the Gentiles who, while uniting themselves with the Truth that originates in the Jewish tradition, would not share the burden of Torahobservances reserved to Jews, be they disciples of Jesus or not: “I am suggesting that the author of the fnal version of the Gospel of Mark (in Mark

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7:19b) interprets the tradition in this manner in order to support the view that (1) Gentile Yeshua believers were exempt from the Jewish dietary laws and (2) this exemption did not relegate them to a secondary status of purity in relation to Jewish Yeshua believers.”88 Even if one accepts Kinzer’s interpretation of Rabbi Yochanan’s distinction between inherent purity and purity as a consequence of God’s decrees, it is clear that Jesus’s clause loses all meaning and relevance once expounded in this light. The disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees has to do with the manner in which Jesus’s Jewish disciples relate to the halachic tradition of their time. How could Pharisees ever blame Gentiles for not washing their hands before meals? The clause does not respond to the objection of the Pharisees as long as it cannot justify the behavior of Jesus’s disciples. If the goal of the redactor was to ease the conscience of Gentiles that would later join the group of disciples, inserting an episode that does not make sense out of a purely Jewish context would hardly have been an option. In addition, Kinzer’s reference to the teaching of Rabbi Yochanan is not more convincing in this case than in regard to Rom 14:14. The thinking of Rabbi Yochanan acquires a completely different meaning when transplanted to the context of the controversy regarding the purifcation of hands. Instead of reinforcing the value of Torah-observance, it disparages it. Indeed, if Jesus holds that the distinction between pure and impure types of food is a matter of divine decrees, how could his teaching not openly transgress these decrees by allowing his disciples to freely disrespect the ritual destined to ensure this purity? For one thing, Rav Yochanan was certainly not encouraging his disciples to cultivate the same indifference when his last words to the same disciples on his death bed are said to have been: “Clear out utensils from the house, because of the uncleanness.”89 The truth is that there is no way to explain the lectio theologically diffcilior on the grounds of any received Halacha of the time of Jesus. Common Jews might not have followed all the cleansing rituals that characterized the Pharisees’ zeal for Torah, but they would certainly not have questioned the Mosaic distinction between pure and impure types of food. Nevertheless, I maintain that the clause is not necessarily incompatible with a Torah-positive attitude as soon as one gives up the attempt to make it sound like standard Jewish Halacha, designated here as “the tradition of the elders.”90 Interestingly, the verb that is used in the clause, “to cleanse” or “to purify” καθαρίζω is remarkably infrequent in the Old Testament with the exception of Leviticus, c.14, where it is used fourteen times. This chapter deals with the purifcation by priests of those who suffered from contagious skin diseases. It describes how priests are to offer sacrifces—a lamb, two turtle-doves or pigeons—to heal these people and inseparably purify them from their sins:

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The priest shall then offer the sin offering and make expiation for the one being cleansed of his uncleanness. Last, the burnt offering shall be slaughtered… καὶ ποιήσει ὁ ἱερεὺς τὸ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας καὶ ἐξιλάσεται ὁ ἱερεὺς περὶ τοῦ ἀκαθάρτου τοῦ καθαριζομένου ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας αὐτοῦ καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο σφάξει ὁ ἱερεὺς τὸ ὁλοκαύτωμα. ‫ְַאחר יִׁש ְַח֥ט אֶת־הָע ֹלָ ֽה‬ ֣ ַ ‫( ְוע ָ ָׂ֤שה הַּכֹהֵן א‬Lev 14:19) ֖ ַ ‫ָאתֹו ו‬ ֑ ְ‫ֶת־ה ַחּטָאת וְכִ פֶ ר עַ ל־הַ ּמִ ּטַ ֵה֖ר מִ ּטֻ מ‬ ‫ ישחט את הקרבן‬,‫ אחרון‬.‫לאחר מכן יציע הכהן את קרבן החטאת ויבצע כפרה למטהר מטומאתו‬ Earlier, examining the controversy regarding the plucking of the ears of corn in Mark 2:23–28, I drew on the priestly dimension of Jesus, Messiah of Israel, to explain the analogy with the episode of David eating the loaves of bread in the Holy of Holies. What if the clause in Mark 7 equally contained a reference to Jesus’s dignity of Messianic High-Priest? Jesus would “cleanse” food as the priests in the Temple would “cleanse” those defled by skin disease in Leviticus c.4. Just as physical diseases, the impurity of food is the consequence of a cosmos disrupted by sin—and in both cases, the recovery of integrity rests on a purity of which priests are the agents. Christ is himself the source of kippur-ha-khataim, forgiveness of sins (see Mark 2:10). True, the “purifcation” of impure food is not in Moses’s Torah and is therefore a concept foreign to any extant rabbinic Halacha. But it is not foreign to Messianic Jewish thinking. An ancient midrash on the Psalms describes the advent of the Torah of Messiah in the following terms: “Some say that in the time to come all the animals which are unclean in this world God will declare to be clean, as they were in days before Noah. And why did God forbid them (i.e. make them unclean)? To see who would accept his bidding and who would not; but in the time to come he will permit all that He has forbidden.”91 While this Messianic Torah does not derive from Moses’s Torah, it does not transgress it. Priests did not abolish the decree that considered as impure somebody who had contracted leprosy when they healed or tried to heal him or her; instead, they were endeavoring to fulfll the Law. Likewise, when Christ, displaying his Messianic privilege, purifes food that is considered to be impure he is not claiming that what is impure is actually pure; he is claiming that what used to be impure has actually been purifed. This is actually the literal sense of Mark’s insert in 7:19: “καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα”: Jesus was “cleansing all food.” If the food—or those who eat it—have already been purifed, the disciples do not need to apply the rituals of purifcation prescribed by the elders.

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Once again, a discussion over a minor or even hypothetical transgression about Torah-observance becomes a pretext to demonstrate the distance between standard Halacha, “the tradition of the elders” and the Messianic interpretation of Torah that only the Son can reveal. Once again, this Messianic teaching ushers the disciples into the bygone Eden of God’s original creation, the “days before Noah”—the time when, as Rav Yochanan reminds his disciples, neither corpses defled nor was water used for purifcation because everything was pure. If there is one point on which my interpretation of the clause coincides with that of Kinzer, it is that it creates a space for Gentile disciples that will not respect the rules of Kashrut since all types of food are declared ontologically pure. But I would contend that the clause equally affects the relationship of the Jewish disciples of Jesus to the rules of Kashrut. Christ does not ban the tradition of the elders; however, he does not forbid his disciples from transgressing them. He defends them when they do not follow them, which is not the same. If all types of food are pure, as a consequence of the advent of a Messianic era, Jews are not bound by the precepts of Kashrut in a categorical way, as if exceptions to these rules were to be viewed as transgressions of divine decrees. In the case of Jewish disciples, similar in this respect to the frst companions of Jesus, Kashrut might not be abolished, but its meaning is completely transformed from the inside. Because there is no longer divine obligation, the gesture of observance acquires the status of a free commitment, of a personal vow. In the Messianic era, it is the law engraved upon the hearts of the disciples (see Jer 31:33) that seemingly leads them to adopt or reject external and, wise though they may be, human prescriptions. As we draw the necessary conclusions from the previous scriptural analyses, we might come to see the Messianic Halacha we have been looking for.

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3.3.5. Messianic halacha and the “moral Universal” “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfl” (Matt 5:17). Completion or accomplishment is incompatible with total or partial cancellation. This completion might hint at a new mode of being of Moses’s Torah, but one that preserves its constitutive elements. Evoking the structure of the Sermon on the Mount, I spoke earlier about the universalization of Torah’s ethical message (see section 2.5 in chapter 2). By understanding Torah more stringently than standard Halacha, Jesus paradoxically opens the content of this ethical message to any human being, Jew as well as Gentile. It is the same universal understanding of Torah that resounds in the controversy on Shabbat in Mark 7:21-22 when Jesus contrasts what he considers to be real moral impurity, that is, “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit,

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indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly,” with the purity of external rules such as the injunction to wash one’s hands before meals. The positive moral ideal that surfaces in the Sermon as well as the profle of its polar antithesis in Matthew 7 do not have anything specifcally Jewish. Little less than a century ago, André Festugière portrayed Socrates as foreshadowing a similar ethical ideal.92 Humility, chastity, generosity, moderation in everything, courage up to martyrdom—Socrates could defnitely be an illustration of a Halacha that conforms to the teaching of Yeshua. The one thing that radically distinguishes the Greek hero from the Christian saint, as the same Festugière underlined elsewhere, has less to do with a defnite anthropological ideal than with the way to achieve it. Greek heroism spoke of moral excellence as being either the gift of a nature exceptionally endowed by the gods or as the almost unachievable horizon of moral self-discipline. The tradition that was born out of the teaching of Christ substituted a mysticism connected with the notion of a divine force—grace—coming to the rescue of a moral dynamism crippled by sin.93 Deciphering the Christian moral ideal in terms of Aristotle’s anthropology of virtues and vices, Aquinas likewise showed that its concrete implementation implied the supernatural reception of Christ’s grace reshaping human souls through faith, hope and charity. It is true that the living core of Christ’s ethical teaching is already expressed in Moses’s Torah:

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When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and frst commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt 22:34–40)

But precisely the effect of the grace of Christ working through faith is to give any Gentile the possibility to partake in this love for and from the Holy One that was once the exclusivity of Israel. And yet the Torah is not only about moral principles. Echoing the Epistle to the Hebrews, one could argue—which I will do at a later point—that the sacramental life arising from the sacrifce of Christ is the new mode in which the rituals of the Temple fnd continuity. But what about the injunctions that function as Israel’s “identity markers,” like circumcision, Shabbat observance, and the rules of Kashrut? Emphasizing the difference between the rituals of the Temple and the rules of Kashrut, Kinzer argues that “the dietary laws have nothing to do with providing purifcation or access to God. Instead, their essential function is to distinguish the Jewish people from the

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other nations of the earth.”94 In another passage of the same book, where he analyzes the position of Justin of Alexandria on Judaism and Jewish Christianity, Kinzer observes that sanctifcation is not the only function of mitzvot: “Justin is a perceptive enough reader to recognize that some of the ceremonial commandments have an additional purpose: they serve as distinguishing ethnic markers, separating and preserving Israel as a nation.”95 In other words, these observances have a meaning because they are Jewish: they are the response of the love of Israel to the love of God for Israel—a love that created Israel and has carried it all the way through History.96 In what manner does Christ’s fulfllment of Torah preserve such observances, albeit in a new mode? The controversy of Mark 7 regarding the cleansing of cups resurfaces in the form of a short moral midrash in Matt 23:25–26: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.” As we saw, the teaching of Christ addresses human inner sinfulness. His miraculous healings are the signs of a power that can overturn the spiritual death associated with sin: “For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘stand up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic— “Stand up, take your bed and go to your home” (Matt 9:5–6). In Mark 7 and Matt 23:25–26, the notion of inner purity is contrasted with the notion of external purity associated with rabbinic Halacha. What comes into focus is the gap between halachic practices and the inner spiritual dispositions they should manifest. This is the recurrent theme of Pharisaic hypocrisy. However, the criticism of Pharisaic Halacha does not amount to the rejection of the principles from which such Halacha is derived. The contrary holds true: Jesus would not have blamed standard Jewish Halacha as unable to realize its holy purpose if he had considered this purpose to be irrelevant and meaningless. Jewish tradition distinguishes between divine authority as it is stated in Torah (d’oraita) and rabbinic authority (d’ rabbanan). The raison d’être of rabbinic authority is to formulate the way in which divine authority should be put into practice. The two sources of authority cannot contradict each other, d’rabbanan being always derived from d’oraita and yielding to it in case of confict. This distinction provides the controversy of Mark 7 with its legal background: (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat

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anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles). So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me teaching human precepts as doctrines.” You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition. Then he said to them, “You have a fne way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” (Mark 7: 3–8)

Here Jesus refutes the teaching d’rabbanan as he refers to the principles d’oraita, showing that the former betrays the latter instead of helping the faithful to put them into practice. What should dictate the practice of these divine decrees, ἐντάλματα τοῦ θεοῦ, is the expression of the love of Israel qua Israel for God—and this is precisely what the “tradition of the elders,” παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, with its human decrees, ἐντάλματα ἀνθρώπων, fails to accomplish. The question is therefore not about the goal—being faithful to the divine observances that characterize Israel’s singularity—but about the manner to achieve it. As surely as Jesus does not dismiss the divine decrees that concern Israel, he nowhere teaches his disciples a set of alternative rules about how these should be observed. Jesus does not tell his disciples how they should relate to Kashrut or the prescriptions governing Shabbat observance. He does not prescribe external rules. Instead, he appears close to dismissing the very idea of prescribing rules: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a fnger to move them” (Matt 23:2–4). The problem with identifying external observances with mandatory rules is that the fact of fulflling them becomes ipso facto an objective criterion of faithfulness to God. Since it is the fulfllment that matters, what should only be the expression of an inner readiness to love God is considered by those who witness this expression as demonstrating this inner readiness itself. The manifestation of an inner reality becomes the reality itself for those who

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have no access to the inner reality. In such circumstances what it manifests is nothing else than the desire to produce this manifestation for the sake of the consideration it will generate. This is the very essence of Pharisaic hypocrisy: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of flth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt 23:27–28). If their mandatory character is what prevents halachic observances from achieving the purpose that justifes their existence—the manifestation of Israel’s loving response to the love of God for Israel—why not abolish this mandatory character? The controversies that we have examined earlier do not question the necessity of Halacha, but the fact that human beings, παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, grant it an authority that eventually supersedes the divine authority to which it is essentially subordinated. Healing a sick person or allowing disciples to rob ears of corn on a Shabbat, letting them eat meals without purifying their hands, are all teachings that put into question the absolute authority of Halacha. An authority that can be dismissed under specifc circumstances or for a specifc reason is no longer a mandatory authority. In all the episodes in question, the specifc reason why rabbinic Halacha is dismissed has to do with the love of God for Israel as manifested through the new Messianic regime inaugurated in Jesus (healing, priestly dignity of the disciples, purifcation of food), a love to which the disciples are called to respond through their own loving disposition toward God. What matters is this disposition generated by faith in the all-powerful mercy of Christ, as the very embodiment of God’s love for Israel. This is the inner law, revealed in Christ, that determines what course of action is best to observe the divine decrees of Moses’s Torah. Accordingly, the criterion of the fulfllment of the divine decrees concerning Israel shifts from conformity with a human rule, falling under the assessment of external witnesses, to conformity with divine rule, that of love for God in Messiah, as an inner disposition the authenticity of which only God can assess. The love of God for Israel manifested in the divine decrees of Moses’s Torah, ἐντάλματα τοῦ θεοῦ, and in the Messianic deeds of Jesus are one, because they are subordinated to the same purpose: Israel’s response of love to God. This response is a commitment to the divine decrees of Torah anchored in the Messianic freedom stemming from Jesus’s authority. For a Jewish disciple of Jesus, there is no observance of Torah without Halacha. But the use and therefore theological weight of Halacha appears to be very different for a Jewish disciple of Jesus and an observant Jew who does not accept the teaching of Jesus. A Jewish disciple assumes the moral dimension of Torah in the light of Jesus’s inner law, just as his Gentile

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brethren. And this inner law of love informed by faith in Yeshua is what this disciple will follow when deciding as a Jew about the halachic observances that best honor the divine decrees of Torah regarding Israel. A mitzvah that is not pervaded with this love has no relevance from the point of view of Jesus’s discipleship. This coincides with the teaching of Paul in Gal 5:6: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” As we saw earlier, Paul does not forsake circumcision and other Jewish observances. What he does repeatedly is emphasize that they do not provide salvation. Instead, it is salvation—“faith working through love”—that provides these mitzvot with meaning and purpose. Not being necessary to salvation, as one can be saved without following them, these mitzvot are left to the discernment of the disciples. Such freedom in dealing with standard Halacha, a freedom Paul has personal recourse to but also theorizes and preaches (to Peter inclusively), is, of course, foreign to a religious tradition exclusively focused on the Covenant sealed by Moses. In contrast to a tradition that considers mitzvot as mandatory because this obligation is the very medium of religious worship, Messianic Jewish discipleship cannot view an obligation to observe mitzvot as belonging to the principles of their faith. According to the new Messianic mode that preserves but also accomplishes the divine decrees contained in Moses’s Torah, the manner in which a Jewish disciple will honor the Israel-centered decrees of Torah becomes a free commitment taken in the light of Christ’s inner law of love. A duty that is freely chosen is the very defnition of a vow. And as we saw while investigating the teaching of Paul, the vow to celebrate the love of God for Israel through the observances of Torah will be reckoned for justifcation and carries with it a blessing of grace, a kedusha. If the discussion regarding the mandatory character of standard Jewish Halacha for the Jewish disciples of Christ is so crucial, it is because the whole point of God’s Incarnation, life, death, and Resurrection from the dead is at stake here. Did the Gospel of Christ change something or not to the nature of the connection between Jews and Torah? Claiming, as Kinzer does, that a Jewish disciple of Jesus is on principle obligated to the same religious lifestyle as a Jew who is not a disciple cannot but reduce the purpose of the Gospel to nought. For these Jewish disciples, the Incarnation might as well not have happened, and Christ might as well not have given up his life. It is religion as usual. But what is the point of being a disciple in that case? In a Rosenzweigan way, one could say that the Gospel of Christ has meaning for Gentiles who are thus grafted on the tradition of Israel. But for a Jew, what is the beneft of this Gospel, except maybe a deeper insight into the eternal wisdom of the Jewish tradition? This is certainly not negligible—but where is the Messiah of Israel, the one destined to usher Jews into an entirely new era?

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Where is the Savior of the Jewish nation? How can a Jew proclaim with Paul that he is the frst one to be saved by Christ if nothing in his religious lifestyle witnesses that it has become the abode of Christ’s salvation? If Christ is truly Messiah of Israel, if he is truly the Savior of Jews as well as of Gentiles, the Torah of his disciples is called to become a Messianic Torah. Such an understanding of the connection of the Jewish disciples with Torah is of consequence as to defning the type of ecclesial body that these disciples are to form together with their Gentile brethren. The notion of Messianic Torah will hopefully help us to formulate an answer, albeit a non-Kinzerian one, to the central question of this book: How should we conceive the Catholic Church in the full theological sense of the term so that a distinctive Jewish or authentically Messianic presence might constitute an integral dimension of her being?

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NOTES 1. Processes of dogmatic self-defnition and, inseparably, mutually exclusive “heresiological” constructs are obviously posterior to the rise of distinct institutions respectively claiming to represent “Christians” and “Jews,” see Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 2. PMJ, 236. 3. Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, Michael G. Cartwright and Peter Ochs eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 3, quoted in PMJ, 215. 4. Karaism is a religious movement, emerging in ninth-century Bagdad, of Jews refusing to associate with Oral Law and rabbinic institutions. Vetus scriptura sola— Karaites acknowledge the authority of Written Torah only. 5. “Searching Her Own Mystery Together: A Response to Roch Kereszty,” Communio 42 (Fall 2015), 520–532, 530. 6. PMJ, 236. 7. SHOM, 127. 8. “A Response to Roch Kereszty,” 527. 9. See CCC 1963, 2053, 2068. 10. “A Response to Roch Kereszty,” 528 (N.B. author’s emphasis). 11. “A Response to Roch Kereszty,” 529. 12. “A Response to Roch Kereszty,” 527. 13. SHOM, c.7 in its entirety, 127–148. 14. SHOM, 146. 15. SHOM, 148. 16. Ibid. 17. Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux), Guru and Disciple (London: SPCK, 1974), XI. 18. See for instance Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009).

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19. Translation in Solomon Schechter, “Genizah Specimens,” Jewish Quarterly Review 10 (1898), 656–657. According to D. Boyarin, there is little to confrm the traditional ascription of the Birkat-ha-Minim to the sages of Yavne, active between 70 and 135 AD, who are said to have presided over the birth of rabbinic Judaism. The frst mention of the Birkat is to be found in the Tosefta, a compilation of the oral law, dating from the mid-third century. The notion of minim, as a Jewish category conceived as a counterpart to the shaping of the notion of heresy among Christians, would certainly encompass Jewish followers of Christ. Boyarin quotes another passage in the Tosefta where rabbi Tarfon defnes minim as worse than idolaters since those “do not know Him and deny Him, while these [the minim] know Him and deny Him [or, speak falsely of Him” (Shabbat 13:5, quoted in Border-lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity, 57). Tarfon would burn the houses of those who put the Name on their doorposts (=mezuzot) while confessing beliefs alien to the normative faith of Israel. It is only at a later stage, in the course of the fourth century, that the curse could have been directed at Gentile Christians. On all this see Border-lines c.2, “Justin’s dialogue with the Jews: the Beginnings of Orthodoxy,” 37–73. 20. Interestingly, Kinzer observes that, while the Amidah originally coexisted with the rituals of the Temple, the only consequence of the destruction of the Temple on the Amidah was the fact that this prayer became obligatory for all Jews: “In only one sense does the Amidah take the place of the sacrifces: in the pre-70 CE era this regimen of prayer was a voluntary practice undertaken by pious Jews, whereas in the post-70 CE era it would come to be seen as a standard practice for all Jews in fulfllment of Israel’s corporate duty of daily worship. In the absence of the Temple liturgy—which had previously constituted the essential component of Israel’s daily duty of worship—the prayer of the community grew in importance and became a basic requirement of fdelity to the Covenant,” SHOM, 137. In this belated decision to grant the character of covenantal responsibility to practices that used to be the expression of individual piety, one witnesses the deep transformation of the notion of covenantal obligation itself after the destruction of the Temple. While the memory of the sacrifcial cult that once was becomes the explicit center of Israel’s worship, the hope is that the character of obligation that pertains to this worship will have the same atoning value as the former cult used to possess. As one can see, the content of a Torah-obligation rooted in the Sinai Covenant has been changing over time, and its rabbinic concept is historically posterior to the establishment of the Church. 21. See ST IaIIae, q.106–108. 22. Benedict XVI, Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 70, quoted in SHOM, 11. 23. See for instance PMJ, 73–74. 24. The awareness that God has delegated to human beings both the task and authority to interpret his Torah is refected in the famous account of the dispute that opposed rabbi Eliezer to a group of equally illustrious colleagues. R. Joshua, one of them, declines listening to the Bat-kol (voice from Heaven) that gives reason to rabbi Eliezer over his opponents: “R. Joshua stood up on his feet and said,” “It is not in heaven” (Dt. 30:12). “What is the sense of,” “It is not in heaven” (Dt. 30:12)? Said R. Jeremiah, “[The sense of Joshua’s statement is this:] For the Torah has already

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been given from Mount Sinai, so we do not pay attention to echoes, since you have already written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, ‘After the majority you are to incline’” (Ex. 23:2). Not even God is allowed to interfere with a process of interpretation that He himself entrusted to his People. The end of the story confrms it: “R. Nathan came upon Elijah and said to him, ‘What did the Holy One, blessed be he, do at that moment?’ He said to him, He laughed and said, ‘My children have overcome me, my children have overcome me!’ ” Bava Metzia 59b, The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary, Jacob Neusner ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011), Vol. 14, 4:10, 286–287. 25. “The Son of God became Human as a Jew: Implications of the Jewishness of Jesus for Christology” in Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships, Philip A. Cunningham et al. eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 137, quoted in SHOM, 12. 26. Midrash Rabba, Kohelet 11, 8, https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​aria.​​org​/K​​ohele​​t​_Rab​​​bah​ .1​​1​.8. 27. PMJ, 155 28. Ibid. 29. On this point, Kinzer appears indebted to Michael Wyschogrod’s sagacious observations: “It is clear that both parties agreed that circumcision and Torah obedience remained obligatory for Jewish Jesus believers since, if this were not the case, one could hardly debate whether circumcision and Torah obedience were obligatory for Gentiles. Such a debate could only arise if both parties agreed on the lasting signifcance of the Mosaic Law for Jews. Where they differed was its applicability to Gentiles,” “Letter to a Friend,” Modern Theology 11: 2 (April 1995), 170, see PMJ, 66. 30. Ed P. Sanders emphasizes the autonomy of common people on matters that had to do with their daily lives: “As Morton Smith has pointed out, one of results of the fact that Judaism became a religion of ‘the book,’ which in theory covered all of life, is that lay people could study it. They seized the opportunity, as we shall see below. They could study laws of sacrifce and develop theories about them, and some did so. This was rather like doing theoretical engineering without a consultancy or a contract: they fashioned theories in case they could fnd a pliant priest to apply them. But the laity could also study aspects of divine law that they themselves could control: prayer, sabbath, some of the sub-categories of purity, planting, sexual relations and the like. Priests were the offcial authorities on even these domestic rules, but they could not do anything about the way most people kept them. Consequently, the possibility of lay leaders arose, non-priestly teachers of the law. We have seen them before, and we shall see them again. Just now I want to emphasise the degree to which ordinary people were responsible for knowing and observing the law in their private lives, so that they had a degree of control over it. Lay people could make private decisions about divine law; this was quite exceptional. Few individuals, to be sure, would make decisions that went very much against the norm, but it is nevertheless important that the Jewish law was internalized and individualized to a degree that sets Judaism apart from Graeco-Roman paganism,” Judaism, Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 313.

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31. The epistle to the Hebrews, written between 60 and 100, exudes confdence in the fact that what is emerging here, with a new priesthood centered on the sacrifce of Christ, is a reality far superior to the old regime associated with the Levitical service of the Temple (see especially 4:14–10:25). 32. Hegesippus (+180) describes James as a sort of permanent Nazirite, assiduously praying for the forgiveness of his people in the Temple. Witness to his integration into the wider Jewish community is testifed by representatives from the scribes and Pharisees who are said to have entreated him to stem the fow of Jewish converts to Jesus in the following terms: “We beg you to persuade concerning Jesus all who have come for the day of the Passover, for we all obey you. For we and all the people testify to you that you are righteous and that you do not respect persons,” see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, II, 23 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1983), 126–127. True, the portrait of James by Hegesippus, just as the few other non-scriptural sources regarding the frst community of disciples in Jerusalem, is preserved in a work—Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History—written at a much later stage (fourth century). In addition, attempts at reconstituting historical realities on the basis of the narratives of the New Testament are always conjectural. But is it a suffcient reason to present the ties between James’s community and the wider Jewish world of Jerusalem as an anachronic reconstruction dating from the Byzantine era? The argument was brought up by Miriam S. Taylor in Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity (Leiden: Brill, 1994). In my opinion, what is rather in need of credible demonstration is the notion of a Christian religion coming out of Judaism fully organized, dressed, and doctrinally armed, just like Athena from Jupiter’s thigh. 33. Even if the expression “zealot for the Law” seems to exclude a formal affliation to the insurrectional zealot party, simply known as “Zealots” (or Sicarii—hence Judas Iscariot), there is certainly a hint at the spirit of a party defned by its reference to Phinehas’ violent way of enforcing respect for the Torah (Num 25:11–14). This was the spirit of the Maccabees fghting against the Hellenisers, as manifested in the cry of Mattathia: “Let everyone who has any zeal for the Law and takes his stand on the Covenant come out and follow me!” (1 Macc 2:27, New Jerusalem Bible). It was enough to uphold a rigorous interpretation of purity rules and nurture an invincible repulsion for Pagan idolatry to be perceived as spiritually connected to the Zealot party. On all this, see the texts preserved in Hippolytus, Origenis Philosophumena sive Omnium Hæresium Refutatio, ix. 26, L. Dunker ed. (Göttingen, 1859), 482. 34. The spiritual and theological portrait of James by Patrick H. Hartin coincides with that of Kinzer: “Since his task was not the rejection of Israel, but its ‘restoration,’ James continued to observe the Jewish Torah. The purity rules of Judaism continued to defne access to God and relationships with others. James continued what Jesus had started under the choice and guidance of God. James does not envisage that Jews who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah should abandon the Torah, the purity rules and their traditions. In his interface with Peter, Barnabas, and Paul, James has one aim: the preservation of the social map of the world. The Torah defnes who belongs to Israel and the people of God. In the mind of James, the restoration of the house of Israel demands that one remain faithful to the Torah” [N.B. author’s emphasis], James of Jerusalem, Heir to Jesus of Nazareth (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 83.

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35. Greek-English lexicon (later LSJ), Henry G. Liddell & Robert Scott ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), “ὑπάρχω” B.2. 36. How could “those most zealous for Torah-fdelity . . . honor James as their leader,” as Kinzer claims (see Jerusalem Crucifed, 199), if James, far from endorsing their accusations against Paul, helps Paul to convince the group that their accusations are unfounded? James was certainly regarded by the group as having some authority. And still his authority was not suffcient to calm down their suspicions since James had to talk Paul into making the personal demonstration of his attachment to Torah. 37. PMJ, 161. 38. Scholars such as E .P. Sanders (Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1983, see 173, 178–179, 207), Love L. Sechrest (A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race, London: T&T Clark, 2009), N.T. Wright (Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1983, see particularly conclusion part II, 207–211) are reticent to support the notion of a consequently Torah-observant Paul. Meanwhile other scholars staunchly support it, see for instance William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian identity (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 89–93, Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 252; Mark Nanos, “The myth of the ‘Law-Free’ Paul standing between Christians and Jews,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 4 (2009), 1–21; “Paul’s relationship to Torah in Light of his Strategy ‘to Become Everything to Everyone,’ 1 Corinthians 9.19–23,” in Paul and Judaism: Crosscurrents in Pauline Exegesis and the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 123–124; J. Brian Tucker, Remain in your Calling: Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 62–114, and David Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews: Jewish Contours of Pauline Flexibility in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). 39. PMJ, 72. 40. More recently, a number of Bible scholars advocating the same position as M. Kinzer have regrouped under the name of “Paul within Judaism,” see, for instance, https​:/​/ww​​w​.pau​​lwith​​injud​​aism.​​com​/t​​​heolo​​gy. 41. PMJ, 68. 42. PMJ, 68. 43. The tripartition was systematized by the Stoics, see Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa: Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, Vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1948), 121–123; Anthony A. Long & David N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Vol. 1, 354–359. As is well-known, the use and scope of the category of adiaforon in matters of faith became the object of intense theological disputes in the early period of the Lutheran Reformation, following attempts to forge a doctrinal framework of reconciliation with the supporters of Papal authority. 44. There has been a resurgence of scholarly interest in the infuence of the stoic understanding of adiaphoron on Paul’s thinking in the recent years, see among others Will Deming, “Paul and Indifferent things” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 384–403; Richard N.

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Longenecker, “What Does It Matter? Priorities and the Adiaphora in Paul’s Dealings with Opponents During His Mission,” in Studies in Paul, Exegetical and Theological (UK: Sheffeld Phoenix Press, 2004), 96–121; Tuomas Rasimus, Troels EngbergPedersen & Ismo Dunderberg, Stoicism in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 134. 45. PMJ, 72. 46. PMJ, 73–74. I have not discussed the case of Timothy’s circumcision (Acts 16:3) because Kinzer does not expand on it. But there again, the passage hardly suggests a positive will to comply with this Torah observance; it rather hints at some concession to these other Jews who, in Lystra and Iconium, were zealously Torahobservant in contrast to Paul: “Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places. (διὰ τοὺς Ἰουδαίους τοὺς ὄντας ἐν τοῖς τόποις ἐκείνοις), for they all knew that his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:3). D. Rudolph recently tried to give another interpretation of Paul’s reasons: “The literary context suggests that Luke’s explanatory statement (‘because of the Jews who were in those places’) does not mean that the act of circumcision was an expedient, but that the timing of the circumcision was an expedient. I contend that the passage be interpreted: ‘and he took him and had him circumcised [at that time] because of the Jews who were in those places.’ Paul thought that the optimum time for Timothy to be circumcised (in order to confrm his Covenant identity as a Jew) was prior to visiting his home region. The Covenant-keeping motive for circumcision would have been well received by the Lystra Jewish community and would have opened hearts to Paul’s message” A Jew to the Jews, 27. In my opinion, the difference with the traditional interpretation of the passage is very superfcial. No one denies that the timing of the ritual was expedient. Actually, all commentators believe it was so for the very reason that Rudolph alleges; namely, this circumcision “would have been well received by the Lystra Jewish community and would have opened hearts to Paul’s message.” The timing is expedient because Paul was about to meet Jews who were more Torah-scrupulous than he was. This does not mean for that matter that circumcision had no value whatsoever for Paul. 47. PMJ, 73. 48. PMJ, 75. 49. See, for instance, the discussion between Robert A. J. Gagnon (“Why the ‘Weak’ at Rome Cannot Be Non-Christian Jews” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 62, 2000, 64–82) and M. Nanos (“A Rejoinder to Robert A. J. Gagnon’s “Why the ‘Weak’ at Rome Cannot Be Non-Christian Jews,” 1, http:​/​/www​​.mark​​nanos​​.com/​​ gagno​​n​-rej​​oinde​​r​-6​-​2​​0​-03.​​pdf. Don B. Garlington showed that the Pauline expression “obedience of faith” is especially coined to designate the novelty of Christ’s message of salvation to the intention of Gentile believers and their brethren of Jewish origin, as in the following passage from the Epistle to the Romans: “Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith”

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(Rom 16:25–26), see The Obedience of Faith: A Pauline Phrase in Historical Context (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 255–268. 50. PMJ, 77–78. 51. PMJ, 79–80. 52. PMJ, 82. 53. PMJ, 81. 54. Kinzer’s interpretation stumbles on the same diffculty as Nanos’s: it cannot explain the qualitative difference between “strong” and “weak” on which the whole reasoning of Paul rests in this passage, see C. Marvin Pate, The Reverse of the Curse: Paul, Wisdom, and the Law (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 275. 55. PMJ, 82. 56. Abodah Zarah, 8a, Neusner, The Babylonian Talmud, Vol. 17b, 31. 57. According to Lawrence H. Schiffman, the level of observance of “main stream Jews” from Galilea such as Peter was still fairly high: “Our examination of the specifc references in tannaitic sources to differences between the Galileans and Judeans has revealed that, in most cases, the Galileans were more stringent in regard to the law than their Judean coreligionists. . . . In no case did the sources portray the Galileans as lenient or less observant,” “Was There a Galilean Halacha?” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 143–156, 156; quoted by Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews, 187. 58. PMJ, 85. 59. PMJ, 86. 60. PMJ, 88. 61. LSJ, art.” ὑπό,” C 1–3. 62. Platonis opera, Vol. 5, J. Burnet ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907, repr. 1967), 415, c. l.3. 63. See Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews, 155. 64. We understand as a genitive of relation the two complements that are in several manuscripts put to the dative case, μὴ ὢν ἄνομος θεῷ ἀλλ ἔννομος Χριστῷ (Scrivener NT, Stephanus NT, Byzantine NT) with a value of purpose or beneft: “not “lawless for God” . . . but ‘in-the-Law’ for Christ 65. According to Sanders’s short defnition, “A vow is essentially a promise, with a guarantee of divine sanction if it is not fulflled,” Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 71. 66. Pesikta De-Rav Kahana 4:7. Kinzer quotes from J. Neusner’s translation, Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Vol. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987), 65. See equally Nanos, “The Mystery,” 199 and Rudolph’s A Jew to the Jews, 37 footnote 57. 67. PMJ, 8 68. I fnd it somewhat disheartening that Kinzer, following a suggestion from Nanos, speaks of the “putative” character of God’s decrees in relation to Rom 14:14, as if a concept forged by Luther and referring to the “juridical” character of sin and grace (by contrast to the way they might affect the natural abilities of human beings) could serve to understand the thinking of these Jewish luminaries of the frst century AD on God’s law and its relationship with the cosmos. When the Holy One declares

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“By the sweat of your brow Shall you get bread to eat” to Adam (Gen 3:19) or that the Shabbat is “holy to the Lord,” so that “whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death” (Exod 31:16), are those realities merely “putative”? Is not the decree of the Holy One truly effective, as striving to maintain the balance of the created order against the disruptions induced by sin? I understand rabbi Yochanan’s teaching as drawing a line between the original order of Creation and the order of God’s laws and decrees that aims at stymieing whatever keeps disrupting this original order, including what pertains to the sphere of human natural abilities. This is Torah’s very horizon of meaning. Be that as it may, the parallel between Paul’s declaration on food’s cleanliness and the teaching ascribed to rabbi Yochanan works only very superfcially. If Torah observance is obligatory regardless of the ontological nature of things, and if the purity/uncleanliness of certain types of food is part of Torah observance (just as water cleanses or corpses defle according to Ben Zakkai), then declaring as Paul does that all food (whatever be its ontological nature or previous divine rulings) is clean according to faith in Christ amounts to claiming that whoever eats what Torah observance proscribes is NOT guilty in the eyes of the Holy One, so that Torah observance is no longer an obligation. 69. “The subjective reaction of a person colors the conviction about it. Hence one’s estimate of such a thing can take on an importance that it does not have in se,” Joseph A Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 696; “because he truly thinks of it in his heart as unclean according to God’s own law, his conscience tells him that it would be wrong to eat it. And if he does in fact eat it, contrary to what his conscience tells him, he is guilty of sin. In such a case the sin is not in the eating per se, but in the violation of the conscience,” Jack Cottrell, Romans (Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 2005), 505–506. 70. In this passive mode, λογίζομαι indicates the true value or the value in the eyes of God of an entity or an action. This is eminently the case for genuine wisdom: “No precious stone is her equal, for compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand, and beside her, silver will be reckoned as mud (καὶ ὡς πηλὸς λογισθήσεται ἄργυρος),” Wis 7:9 (Revised Standard Version, RVSA); “For even if one is perfect among the sons of men, yet without the wisdom that comes from thee he will be regarded as nothing (εἰς οὐδὲν λογισθήσεται),” Wis 9:6 (RVSA). 71. Benjamin W. Bacon, “Jesus and the Law: A Study of the First Book of Matthew (Matt.3–7),” Journal of Biblical Literature 29 (1928), 204; Hans Windisch, Der Sinn der Bergpredig (Leipzig, 1937), 46. 72. Eduard Schweizer, “Matthaüs 5:17–20—Anmerkungen zum Gesetzesver­ ständnis des Matthaüs” in Neotestamentica (Zürich: Zwingli, 1963), 405; William D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 107. 73. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, 1985); Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. About Jewish research on Jesus, see Donald A. Hagner, An Analysis and Critique of Modern Jewish Study of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984); D. Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012).

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74. PMJ, 52. 75. Ibid, 92. 76. See especially PMJ, 59–62. 77. Kinzer’s treatment of the controversy on the grain that disciples pluck on Shabbat (Luke 6:1–5) deserves the exact same criticism. Kinzer stresses that the reference to David eating the loaves in the Holy of Holies should not be interpreted as a dismissal of standard halachic practice: “here the exception truly proves the rule—for Jesus explicitly treats his own act and that of David as exceptions rather than new norms. The plucking of grain by Jesus’ disciples did not involve a ‘rejection of current Sabbath practice’ any more than David’s eating of the bread of the presence entailed a ‘rejection’ of current temple practice,” Jerusalem Crucifed, 211. Ultimately, however, the question is not whether the exception abolishes the rule or not, but why did Yeshua made of the exception to the rule a crucial aspect of his teaching—and why did his disciples perceive it that way. 78. In the Star of Redemption, the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (+1929) construes the advent and teaching of Jesus as a divine means to make Gentiles partakers of Israel’s faith, so as to give to Israel’s enduring witness to the First Covenant the task of secretly orienting and illuminating the Covenant with Gentiles in Jesus. 79. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 6–7. 80. The school of Shammai reserved divorces to cases of sexual infdelity, see PMJ, 249. 81. “I conclude then,” writes Sanders, “that the synoptic Jesus behaved on the sabbath in a way which fell inside the range of current debate about it, and well inside the range of permitted behaviour. He is depicted as being queried about some of his actions, and about permitting his disciples to pluck grain when they were hungry; but he defended every case by some sort of legal argument (sometimes not a very good one), and there is no indication that his justifcations were not accepted or that those who scrutinized him laid charges with the local magistrate. Other Jews disagreed about equally substantial issues. The synoptic stories show that any possible transgression on the part of Jesus or his followers was minor and would have been seen as such by even the strictest groups,” Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 30–31. 82. Ps 110:4, see also Zech 6:9–13. There is at least some ambiguity regarding the priestly status of David himself. David is not a Levite, but his sons are said to be priests (2 Sam 8:18). How come? 83. Intertestamental literature is full of references to the Messiah-Priest to come: Book of Jubilees (33:20), see John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), especially 92–93, 126–128. 84. PMJ, 54. 85. “The saying attributed to Jesus—it is not what goes in that defles—appears to me to be too revolutionary to have been said by Jesus himself. The signifcance for the Christian movement of denying the Jewish dietary code was immense, and this saying makes Jesus the direct source of a rupture with ordinary Judaism. The Christian circles which broke with the dietary code surely broke at that very moment with

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Judaism as it was generally known. . . . In this instance I cannot maintain the assumption which I have made for the sake of the argument: that all the material really goes back to Jesus,” Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to Mishnah, 37–38. 86. PMJ, 54. 87. PMJ, 56. 88. PMJ, 57. 89. Berakhot, 28b, Neusner, Babylonian Talmud,4:2, Vol. 1, 189. 90. One should add that deflement was not necessarily caused by the absorption of non-kosher food or by the fact that kosher food might have turned into non-kosher food due to some accidental contact with defling elements. If priests had to wash their hands before eating consecrated food like the terumah “shewbread” offering (see Exod 25:30), it is not because the offering was not kosher but paradoxically because it was in a state of holiness. Touching what is pure when one is in a state of impurity does not defle what is holy but instead the one who touches it without taking the necessary precautions. Against the Sadducees’ better judgment, Pharisees would apply this principle (“uncleanliness corresponds to preciousness”) to holy writings (hence the question whether or not the scroll of Esther is sacred and“defles hands,” see b.Meg.7a), as well as to bones of holy individuals and to terumah food offering (see Mishnah Yad 4:6). Precisely, in the latter part of the frst-century CE, the decision of the Pharisees to impose on every Jew the obligation of washing their hands before eating bread was originally formulated in order to remind priests to wash their hands whenever they ate the terumah bread-offering (see b. Shabbat 14a). Being still only a “tradition” observed by Pharisees at the time of Jesus, this concept of purity was probably behind the criticism they addressed to Jesus in Mark 7:5, namely, why do his disciples “eat bread with impure hands,” κοιναῖς χερσὶν ἐσθίουσιν τὸν ἄρτον? One should therefore understand Mark’s use of the notion of “food” here (τὰ βρώματα) in the general sense of “meal,” the action of eating rather than referring to food itself (the word τροφή would have been more suitable in that case). Meals can defle, either because the food is (might be) non-kosher, impure, or because the one who eats is (might be) in a state of impurity. Accordingly, when it is said that Jesus “declared all food clean” (Mark 7:19), one should understand this statement in a qualitative sense rather than in a quantitative one: the action of eating would not bring with it any sort of deflement, either because of defcient Kashrut or because of the impurity of the one who would touch the food. 91. A Rabbinic Anthology, Claude G. Montefore & Herbert M.J. Loewe eds. (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), 583. 92. Socrate (Flammarion, 1934). 93. L’idéal religieux des Grecs et l’Evangile (Gabalda, 1932) ; La Sainteté (PUF, 1942). 94. PMJ, 94. 95. PMJ, 193. 96. Kinzer pointedly shows that rabbinic tradition preserved one aspect of the Gospels that Christian tradition forsook due to the development of its universalistic understanding of Torah-faithfulness. Christian tradition set aside the idiosyncratic features of Israel’s Torah faithfulness: “The very elements of the prophetic

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euangelion that the ekklēsia had abandoned were preserved as central components of the Jewish worldview. Guided in part by the Pharisaic component of its heritage, the rabbinic movement preserved the Torah as Israel’s national constitution and the narrative guide to Israel’s eschatological hope; the earth as the necessary locus of redemption; the geographical centrality and messianic signifcance of the land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount; and the irrevocable bond between the God of Israel, the Messiah of Israel, and the genealogical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” Jerusalem Crucifed, 236. However, the fact that these elements are present in the Gospels does not mean that they were revealed through the Gospel. Yeshua does not dismiss elements that he himself received from Israel’s tradition; the thrust of what he teaches bears on how one should relate to these elements. It is therefore misleading to describe the rabbinic tradition as equally partaking of Yeshua’s teaching with Christian tradition as Kinzer does in the same passage: “each side rejected that part of the prophetic euangelion that the other side preserved.” Rabbinic tradition preserved what Yeshua himself had preserved; namely, the love for Moses’s Torah; it did not preserve Yeshua’s teaching on how to embody this love.

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Chapter III

Ekklesia

1. STRUCTURE 1.1. The Defining Elements of the Ekklesia’s Jewish Component

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1.1.1. The Issue of a Jewish Ekklesia and the Historical Process of “Gentilization” of the Church We are looking for an ecclesiological framework that would warrant Jewish life within an authentically Catholic Church. The very possibility that our quest might not be entirely irrelevant brings up a new question: What is it— what are the factors—that caused the disintegration of the original Jewish presence in the Church that Christ established? A Catholic attempt at formulating a Messianic ecclesiology rests on the hypothesis that this disintegration was accidental or did not pertain to the nature of this Church. In other words, if the integration of Jewish life into the Catholic Church goes with its dissolution in the shorter or longer term, the notion of a Jewish Church that would be Catholic is nothing but a chimaera. It is, therefore, by assessing the reasons for this disintegration that we will be able to tell whether and on what specifc conditions the concept of a corporate Jewish presence within the Catholic Church is viable. In the space of a few generations, an originally Jewish Church became a predominantly Gentile Church. The infux of disciples coming from the Gentility would not have necessarily led to the disappearance of the Jewish dimension of the Church had an effective principle of distinction between Jews and Gentiles, the ecclesia ex circumcisione and the ecclesia ex gentibus, been adopted. The principle of communion between Jewish and Gentile 183

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disciples appears to have prevented the notion of a legitimate distinction between the two from taking an enduring ecclesial shape. True, as Kinzer following M. Wyschogrod shows, the notion of such a legitimate distinction could not have been foreign to the mindset that presided over the decisions of the First Council of Jerusalem. If Gentiles as Gentiles were declared welcome in the Church, that is, not being obliged to observe the religious discipline of Jewish disciples (Acts 15), this meant that the distinction between Jews and non-Jews in the Church was deemed to be relevant at the time. But what about the concrete translation of this distinction in terms of ecclesial discipline or organization? Nothing indicates that the mainstream Church, that originally had its center in Jerusalem, made it diffcult for Jewish and Gentile disciples to join the same local congregations, celebrate the same rites and share the same responsibilities in terms of governance. Under these circumstances, a factor that might have guaranteed the survival of the Jewish side of the original Ekklesia could have been the obligation for Jewish disciples to observe a religious discipline and lifestyle completely different from their Gentile brethren. This is precisely the reason why Kinzer ascribes such a viewpoint on this issue to the apostolic community headed by James in Jerusalem. The obligatory character of mitzvot observance could have contained the otherwise implacable process of Gentilization of Jewish disciples. Indeed, if a Jewish disciple is left free to observe the mitzvot that derive from the religious tradition of Israel, there is no reason why his adhesion to the Pauline ideal of communion with his Gentile brethren should stop short of endorsing intermarriage between Jewish and Gentile faithful. The problem is that the transmission of Jewish identity being biological (implying the existence of a Jewish mother at the minimum), there is no reason why this identity should be preserved after a few generations in a context where intermarriage would be practiced without restriction. But nothing indicates that what today appears as a possible way of ensuring a stable Jewish corporate presence in the Church actually coincided with the policy that the Church adopted during the frst century of her existence. Here lies a major objection to Kinzer’s central argument: there is no material record of an offcial attempt at imposing the observance of mitzvot on Jewish disciples, and this even at a time when the mission to the Jews (under the patronage of Peter) was still distinguished from the mission to the Gentiles (under the patronage of Paul).1 In order to counter the mechanical process of disintegration through assimilation, should not the allegedly rigorous observance of the Jerusalem community have been explicitly promulgated as a rule throughout the Church, had it ever existed as such? Earlier, as we went through topical passages from the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles of Paul, we did not fnd a trace of such rulings. It is only natural that the refusal to endorse a formal commitment to Jewish observance at the highest level of the nascent Church should have given birth

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to an “anti-judaizing” current in the Church, a current that would primarily target unregulated, spontaneous forms of Jewish practice among the Jewish— and, even worse, Gentile—converts. Speaking of Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, which was one of the most signifcant and thriving communities of the early Church, Kinzer writes: “Fifty years after the deaths of Peter and Paul, a prominent Christian bishop speaks disparagingly of Judaism and Jewish practice as ‘the evil leaven, which has grown old and sour.’ He exhorts all, Jews and Gentiles, to reject any attempt to combine Yeshua and Judaism: ‘It is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and practice Judaism.’  ” Kinzer concludes: “Sadly, we have come a long way in a short time.”2 Actually, the way was much shorter if one concedes that there has never been such a thing as an apostolic commitment to having Jewish disciples practice observances that would have set them apart from their Gentile brethren. “Fifty years after the deaths of Peter and Paul,” how could such a “prominent bishop” as Ignatius, so keen on professing his loyalty to the Church of Rome, have so forthrightly come up against an apostolic decision of the kind—a decision of which there is no trace either in the New Testament corpus or in the documents going back to the era of the Apostolic Fathers?3 On the contrary, as Kinzer himself points out, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Epistle to Diognetus, both anonymous works from the second century could hardly contain more despising considerations regarding Jewish observances.4 The so-called Ebionites and other groups of converts had to separate themselves from the Apostolic Church at an early stage to cling to Jewish observances. Among other doctrinal issues, they could not accept the teachings of Paul regarding the necessary communion between Jewish and Gentile brethren.5 Meanwhile one cannot eliminate the possibility that, notwithstanding the rebukes repeatedly expressed by many authorities of the early Church, a few groups of Jewish disciples tried to combine some form of affliation to the Church with traditional Jewish observances until well in the fourth century. In his Panarion, Epiphanius of Salamina (+403) gives a famous and extensive description of the so-called Nazarenes who, while “remaining wholly Jewish” and following the customs of the Jews in everything, had come to “accept the resurrection of the dead and that everything has its origin in God,” and “proclaim one God and his Son Jesus Christ.”6 Epiphanius considers that the Nazarenes are heretics, but this does tell us a little about the attitude of the Nazarenes themselves toward the mainstream Church. In a letter to Augustine, Jerome (+420) who knew Epiphanius personally, writes: “Up to the present there exists among the Jews in all the synagogues of the East a heresy that is called the heresy of the Minaei, and it is condemned by the Pharisees up to the present. They are commonly called Nazareans; they believe that Christ, the son of God, was born of the Virgin Mary, and they

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say that he is the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose, in whom we also believe.”7 Elsewhere, Jerome implies that the Nazarenes do not reject Paul’s writings.8 Still, this is not suffcient for Jerome to count them among the true disciples of Christ, as he writes in his letter to Augustine: “insofar as they want to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither Jews nor Christians.” Jerome expresses his indignation at the idea that somebody would “impose the necessity on us” of accepting Nazarenes in the “Churches of Christ”: “they will not become Christians but will make us Jews.”9 More than two centuries earlier, Justin Martyr (+165) had shown himself more amenable to the same perspective, albeit under restrictive conditions, as a passage from his Dialogue with Trypho indicates:

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If some [Jewish converts], due to their instability of will, desire to observe as many of the Mosaic precepts as possible—precepts which we think were instituted because of your hardness of heart—while at the same time they place their hope in Christ, and if they desire to perform the eternal and natural acts of justice and piety, yet wish to live with us Christians and believers, as I already stated, not persuading them to be circumcised like themselves, or to keep the Sabbath, or to perform any other similar acts, then it is my opinion that we Christians should receive them and associate with them in every way as kinsmen and brethren.10

Justin would not describe the idea of an observant Jewish presence in the Church as a possibility that could eventually be accepted—notwithstanding a great deal of opposition in the Church—had this idea been considered as normative by the previous apostolic generations. As Kinzer rightly observes, what is striking for such a broadminded theologian as Justin is the negative judgment he passes over Jewish observances. It is only due to the “instability of their will” that Jewish converts combine Christian faith and Jewish practice, implying they would have repudiated the latter, had they been more frmly anchored in their new faith. The truth is that, for Justin, Jewish precepts were only given them as a consequence of the “hardness of their hearts” in contrast to Christ’s law of charity. The freedom to practice mitzvot could eventuality be granted to Jewish disciples, but it is a freedom that is, according to Justin, devoid of theological value, a concession to Paul’s “weak according to the faith.” From this point of view, Justin is in agreement with all the post-apostolic writings we referred to: Jewish practice is connected with a law that has been replaced with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as the shadow of what is to come recedes with the coming of what it announces. Manifestly Gentile thinkers of the Apostolic Era such as Justin could not discern any theological justifcation for the preservation of Jewish observance. True, the decision of the Jerusalem Council sparing Gentiles from the

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burden of the Law implied that Jewish disciples in the community would continue to be observant as they had been before. Accordingly, Jewish identity was theologically meaningful for the frst apostolic generation, just as it was for the Ebionites and the Nazarenes in successive generations. Since Christ was the Messiah of Israel, the advent of the Church of Christ could not abolish the unique relationship of Israel to God—it could only fulfll it in a unique manner. This belief was and still is consubstantial to the existence of the Church. It implied that Israel as such should have an existence in the Church even as the Church promoted an authentic communion between believers of Gentile and Jewish origins. The problem is that de facto preservation of Jewish identity could not hold in a context of the increasing infux of faithful from the Gentile world. If the Church truly rested on the communion between Jews and Gentiles preached by Paul, only an apostolic decision to preserve de jure some distinct Jewish discipline within the Church could have countered the disintegration of Jewish identity in the short term. But such a decision was never made. The frst apostolic generation never translated this “Jewish truth” into an ecclesiological framework by granting special status to Jewish observance within the Church. I do not believe that this non-decision was due to negligence, fear, or any other accidental reason. As they were currently practiced in the wider Jewish world, mitzvot drew the line between the pure and the impure, those who feared God and the followers of idols. The implicit recreation within the Church of a “hard border” between the pure and the impure, Jews and nonJews, as a consequence of an apostolic endorsement of traditional Jewish practice, would have de facto removed all meaning from the simultaneous decision of accepting Gentiles as Gentiles in the Church on a par with Jewish disciples. As the “incident of Antioch” that was mentioned earlier shows, letting Jews practice Kashrut would have in effect relegated Gentiles among the “impure” within the community (see III, 3.2.3.2). The ground-breaking discovery of the apostolic generation was that the Messianic teaching of Yeshua, with its thoroughly nonstandard character, had the potential to be extended to non-Jews—and all the necessary signs that it should indeed be so were given at the proper time. Recreating within the Church the boundary that used to separate Israel from non-Jews would have amounted to nothing less than a rebellion against the Holy Spirit. The absence of formal commitment to impose a distinct Jewish practice was rapidly interpreted by Gentile believers as a deliberate and global condemnation of any form of Jewish practice within the Church. From a Gentile perspective, the new religious coherence associated with faith in Christ went together with habits and customs that had to be in radical contrast with the habits and customs of the Jewish tradition. The historical as well as doctrinal continuity between the law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ was thematized

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as a manner of divine pedagogy enabling the faithful to better grasp the quintessential discontinuity, down to the concrete elements of religious practice, between the Old and the New. The absence of a distinct policy toward Jewish disciples within the Church led to conceiving the Church as featuring a new and homogeneous Chosen People. What Torah foreshadowed through the history of a particular people was the advent of an era where there would no longer be a particular people among other peoples, the People of God being formed of all nations indiscriminately. As much as Jewish religious separation from the Gentiles used to characterize the law of Moses, religious communion between Jews and Gentiles became the hallmark of the newness associated with Christ’s law; and as much as religious separation entailed the prohibition of intermarriages, to that precise extent intermarriage became the most tangible fruit of the cancellation of this separation. The new People of God was to arise from the cancellation of any relevant distinction between Jews and non-Jews. Meanwhile, the refusal to forsake Jewish observances was increasingly interpreted as a rejection of the New Law established by Jesus. In a perfectly illogical and therefore very telling manner, Epiphanius views as a heresy the fact that the Jewish disciples do not comply with the rulings that the Council of Jerusalem destined to the Gentile segment of the Church: “How can [the Nazarenes that want to keep Shabbat and circumcision] maintain any argument when they do not listen to what was said by the Holy Spirit through the apostles to the believers from the Gentiles: ‘to lay [on you] no greater burden than these essentials: refrain from blood and from things strangled?”11 The anti-Jewish polemics of the Apostolic Era, polemics that persisted throughout the Patristic Era in a variety of ways, are themselves witness to the fact that this vision only gradually became predominant in the Church. There would have been no temptation of “judaizing” had there been no Judaizers in the Church. Up until the fourth century, the absence of formal obligation for Jewish disciples to observe a distinct form of practice could not mean the interdiction of self-initiated forms of Jewish observances. Tolerance or fexibility when it came to Jewish customs died hard in the Church of the frst millennium—so much so, actually, that it probably never died entirely. What this evolution reveals is not the doctrinal or structural necessity of the absence of a Jewish corporate entity in the Church of Jesus Christ. It rather points to a faw or a missed opportunity affecting the early development of the Church. For the apostolic generation who presided over the Council of Jerusalem it was clear that the worship of the God of Israel by the people to whom He frst revealed Himself was at the principle and heart of a Church based on the communion between Jews and Gentiles. It was the Messianic fulfllment of Israel—not her death but the accomplishment of her existence—that had brought about the diffusion of the promise Israel had carried

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since its origin to all the nations of the world, thus establishing the Church of Christ and providing her with a mission. However, in a situation where Jewish disciples could not think of a principle of distinction between Jews and Gentiles that would not ostracize Gentiles, Gentile disciples could not see the point of conceiving a form of communion with Jewish disciples that would preserve the specifcity of a Jewish presence in the Church. Although it stemmed from the very nature of the Church, the challenge of concretely conceiving a unity-through-distinction or a differentiated principle of communion, resting on a non-discriminating notion of Jewish observance, was never met. The number of Jewish disciples effectively shrinking and Gentile believers tending to become the overwhelming majority, this ecclesiological challenge rapidly sank into oblivion. Less than ffty years after the death of Peter and Paul, the picture of an undifferentiated new People, foreign to the existence of a distinct Israel entity in the Church, replaced the initial intuition of a differentiated whole as the embodiment of God’s salvifc project. As one refects on this evolution of the nascent Church, one can identify the fundamental challenge that any Messianic ecclesiology faces—and together with it, the essential task Messianic ecclesiology must take up. On the one hand, the intuition of a Jewish corporate presence in the Church was part of the mindset of the Apostolic Church. It could not have been otherwise since this embryonic Church was overwhelmingly Jewish and tied up with the Jewish world, its history and legacy. On the other hand, the discovery of the communion between Jews and Gentiles in Yeshua played a foundational role in the formation of this emergent mindset. As priority was given to guaranteeing this communion, the leadership of the early Church never gave an institutional form to the Jewish presence in her midst, notwithstanding their awareness of Israel qua Israel’s ecclesiological signifcance. Now that this awareness has found its way back into the Church as a result of the evolution of theological ideas after World War II and in connection with the development of the Messianic movement, contemporary Messianic ecclesiology needs to address the very same issue that was not solved during the days of the early Church; namely, to conceive a distinct form of Jewish corporate presence that would not hinder the principle of communion on which the Church rests—or, equivalently, a type of communion between Jews and Gentiles that would be suffciently fexible as to ensure the respect of Jewish identity along with that of Gentile identity. For the reasons just stated, I do not believe that a fully-fedged and selfaware Jewish ekklesia has ever existed within the Ekklesia formed by the frst communities of disciples. I cannot therefore defne the task of Messianic Judaism in terms of reestablishing what was at the beginning and has somehow been “lost.” But this does not mean that, as a project, the Jewish ekklesia does not belong to the nature of the Church established by Christ. The

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properties that fully realize the nature of a defnite reality always appear last, as becoming an adult for somebody who is still a child. I see Messianic ecclesiology as the achievement of a dimension of the Church that was present in her since the beginning because it is integral to her nature. With his “bilateral ecclesiology,” Mark Kinzer has the merit of being the frst theologian to tackle the challenge of such an ecclesiology seriously. Let us now briefy examine the most basic tenets of his response to this challenge.

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1.1.2. Kinzer’s Ecclesiology: Identifying the Problem Kinzer’s concept of a bilateral ecclesiology articulates the coexistence of two relatively autonomous corporate entities, a Gentile one and a Jewish one, within a unique ecclesial Body. To be viable, this concept implies that the mechanisms that safeguard the unity of the whole Body will not crush the legitimate diversity of the two parts and, conversely, that the autonomy bestowed on the two parts will not be detrimental to the unity of the whole. Does Kinzer’s notion of bilateral ecclesiology manage to ensure that this is the case? I cannot help thinking otherwise. In Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism, Kinzer refers to the refection of Lev Gillet on the two distinct forms that a “Jewish Christian Church” could assume.12 Gillet calls the frst the “unsynagogued” option, an option that itself gives rise to two sub-options: “ ‘Unsynagogued’ Jewish Christianity means a Jewish Christianity which has broken its ties with the Synagogue. Such a Jewish Christian group might exist under two forms. It could be a special and autonomous branch of one of the present Christian Churches. . . . Or the Jewish Christian group could become an independent Christian Church.” 13 A bilateral ecclesiology cannot dismiss this option. Indeed, if its framework is that of a unique macro-entity encompassing both Gentile and Jewish types of disciples, this macro-entity cannot be other than “unsynagogued” since it also includes a Gentile sub-group. Meanwhile, since the Jewish subgroup will ipso facto become a constitutive part of this macro-entity, it cannot form an “independent Christian Church.” This leaves us with the frst option within the frst option: “a special and autonomous branch of one of the present Christian Churches.” At the same time, the very purpose of a bilateral ecclesiology is to include Israel qua Israel within the Ekklesia. It implies an openness to the ongoing Jewish religious tradition. On this issue, the position of Kinzer appears to be most remarkably radical. Conceiving the Jewish part of the Ekklesia as bound to be Torah-observant, Kinzer fnds here a possibility to endorse the second major option listed by Gillet, that of a “synagogued” Jewish Christianity: “ ‘synagogued’ Jewish Christianity means a Jewish Christianity which keeps, as far as possible, its ties with the synagogue.”14

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For Kinzer, the development of a “synagogued” type of Messianic discipleship carries with it the promise of some integration into the wider, nonMessianic, Jewish world: As a postmissionary reality, the restored Jewish ekklesia will take its stand as part of the Jewish people. In the words of the UMJC [Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations] defnition statement, it ‘must place a priority on integration with the wider Jewish world. . . . For the restored Jewish ekklesia . . . . Jewish identity will be both religious and national. Furthermore, it will fnd Yeshua himself within Judaism and the Jewish people.15

In “Messianic Jewish Community: Standing and Serving as a Priestly Remnant,” an article from 2011, Kinzer writes:

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Like Peter, we are also summoned to live as agents of unity, binding together the ekklesia of the nations and the Jewish people. This requires meaningful relationship with the Christian Church. But the point of the relationship is not to reside in the Church’s own sphere for the sake of shaping its internal life. Instead, the point is to unveil for the Church the mystery of its identity as a participant in the eschatological blessings of an expanded Israel, and to actualize that truth in the Church’s life through mutual love and communal interchange. 16

In short, Kinzer denies that Gillet’s two major options regarding the possible ecclesial forms of a “Jewish Christianity” are mutually exclusive. Being a “special and autonomous branch” of a global, “unsynagogued” Ekklesia, the Jewish “side” of Kinzer’s bilateral Church features a “synagogued” form of discipleship. This Jewish side is as closely connected to the life of the wider Jewish world as possible. Such confguration at the intersection point of the Ekklesia and the Jewish world is what provides the Jewish ekklesia with her most intimate and exclusive task: contributing to the healing of the very frst “schism,” which saw a majority of Jews turn away from the nascent Church and, conversely, the growing Church increasingly turn away from the Jewish world. But is the prospect of such an acknowledgment on the part of the wider Jewish world realistic? True, many Messianic Jewish believers claim to be fully part of the Jewish world. Some Messianic leaders in Israel sought to have their congregations legally registered as synagogues and several succeeded in their endeavor. But in order to justify their stance, simple Messianic faithful as well as their leaders always go back to the same argument: they are not part of the “Christian” world, a claim that they prove by pointing to the absence of any affliation to some “Gentile Church.” The problem of Kinzer’s bilateral ecclesiology is that the Jewish ekklesia he foresees, as devoid of ethnically Gentile faithful

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as she might be from within, is still herself institutionally part of a global Ekklesia that includes a Gentile ekklesia. Stretching their religious tolerance to the limit, segments from the Jewish religious world might someday accept the idea of Jewish religious groups professing the Messiahship of Yeshua as part of the religious body they form together. However, what the wider Jewish world will never accept is the existence of religious entities affliated to a Christian Church as part of this subset. In its present form, this Jewish world results from the original decision to establish a corporate way in which Jewish identity and life could be preserved in the absence of a Temple and a homeland. Accepting a branch of any Church formed, even only in part by Gentile Christians would be tantamount to self-inficted destruction, since the boundary that separates Jews from non-Jews would be de jure abolished. This is not a matter of religious practice but of institutional framework. The least Torah-observant Jew is still regarded as a member of the Jewish world, whereas a biological and zealously Torah-observant Jew would be considered as a foreign religious element as soon as he or she professes membership in a Christian Church. And even if Messianic Jews succeeded in convincing a few instances from the Jewish world that they keep their Gentile brethren at suffcient distance, what would become of the visible unity within the global Ekklesia? The more a Jewish ekklesia will manage to “synagogue” herself, the more her visible unity with the Gentile ekklesia will become problematic. Kinzer is exceedingly sober, as it was, when it comes to describing the type of interaction between the two parts of the bilateral Ekklesia: “The discussion about ecclesial structure has yet to take place. It should be set in a dialogue between Christian and Messianic Jewish leaders who accept and embrace the need for both unity and bilateral differentiation.”17 But whatever form of visible unity between the two parts one may think of (unity of government, laws, types of ritual communion, etc.), it pertains to the very notion of visible unity—in contrast to a unity that remains at the level of dogmatic faith—that it will manifest itself through structural features that are commonly shared by both parts. According to apostolic teaching, unity in faith cannot exist in the absence of visible communion within the living Body of Christ; that is, a unity of religious practice between Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, the more visible the communion between the two entities will become, the farther away the Jewish ekklesia will drift from the synagogal world. Conversely, the smaller visible communion between the two will grow as a result of the Jewish ekklesia’s effort to come closer to the synagogal world, the less consistent and real the unity of the bilateral ekklesia will prove to be. Kinzer invokes the communion that derives from shared celebrations of the Eucharist: “Thus, any adequate structural and communal embodiment of bilateral ecclesiology will need to provide contexts where members of the

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Jewish and Gentile wings of the one ekklesia can gather together to celebrate HaZikkaron as one twofold body.”18 However intercommunion is the mode in which two ecclesial bodies that are not visibly united can sometimes manifest the reality of their proximity according to the faith.19 In actual fact, there is no way in which an authentic affliation to the wider Jewish world, with its desire to stay aloof from the Gentile world, could go together with full visible communion between Jewish and Gentile disciples within the same Ekklesia, since this form of visible communion is a token of their fundamental unity. In this model, the principle of distinction between Jewish and Gentile disciples, a principle that involves a deep form of communion between Jewish disciples and the wider Jewish world, does not appear to be reconcilable with an authentic form of communion between the two kinds of disciples of Yeshua. A Jewish disciple will always be torn between communion with the Jewish wider world and communion with Gentile brethren. As a result, he will be unable to fully realize one form of communion without emptying the other of its content. Yet seeking the recognition of the wider Jewish world, as praiseworthy as such an undertaking might be, is not essential to the project of establishing a bilateral Ekklesia in a non-Kinzerian sense of the term. What we have in mind is a Church that would make room for a distinct Jewish corporate presence in her midst without necessarily modeling the lifestyle of Jewish disciples on that of the Orthodox Jewish tradition. We are looking for an entity that would be: a) Corporate since this is about the presence of Israel qua Israel in the Church, in contrast to the limited existential options of private individuals. b) Distinct since it must give to Jewish disciples the possibility to express the uniqueness of their calling as Sons and Daughters of Israel. c) In communion with Gentile brethren since such communion is at the foundation of a truly Catholic Church. d) Stable since it must contribute to God’s project of preserving the existence of Israel as a corporate reality. To defne the structural features of a bilateral Church, Kinzer refers to the core teachings of the New Testament on Jewish tradition. The true Church is the one that refects the teachings of Christ. I cannot but agree on this principle. The problem is that I do not agree with Kinzer’s interpretation of these teachings, especially in relation to the Jewish tradition. In my view, one needs to go beyond Kinzer’s interpretation in order to conceive of a Jewish ekklesia that would be both distinctly Jewish and in full communion with the non-Jewish dimension of the one and authentic Catholic Church.

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1.1.3. Hermeneutical Crossbreeding as the Fundamental Horizon of Jewish Messianic Life within the Church

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A Messianic community cannot see the light of day without a minimally coherent framework when it comes to Halacha and liturgy, whatever be the degree of individual freedom that this framework grants to its members. The task of formulating a coherent liturgical and halachic framework that would faithfully refect the articulation-without-replacement of the Old and the New, as the central insight of Messianic Judaism, is as immense as it is fascinating. There is absolutely no theological reason why, because of a faith that accomplishes the Law, Jewish disciples should forsake the living tradition of Israel, a tradition that integrally derives from the Torah that Moses taught. When Gentile disciples do not follow precepts that pertain to the nation of Israel according to Moses’s Torah, they obey this Torah as Gentiles. In fact if they were to follow them, they would actually transgress these Israel-centered precepts of Torah, which apply exclusively to the Children of Israel according to the fesh. Following the same logic, one must claim that Gentile disciples gravely transgress the Torah that Jesus came to accomplish when they ask Jewish disciples to forsake the precepts given to them by this very Torah. The question is: What does it mean for Jewish disciples to follow Torah as Jewish disciples? Christian traditions have abundantly shown what it means for Gentile disciples to practice Torah in the Spirit of Yeshua. But what does it mean for Jewish disciples to practice Torah according to the same Spirit? We need to refect here, because history offers no relevant analogy. It merely bears witness to the widening gap between a non-Jewish Yeshua-discipleship and a Jewish non-Christian religious lifestyle. In Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism, Kinzer writes: If rabbinic Judaism is not valid, then no Judaism is valid. It is the only Judaism available—at least for the overwhelming majority of Jews in the world. It is the Judaism that preserved the Hebrew language, the Hebrew scripture, the synagogue and home liturgy, the Jewish way of life grounded in the Torah, and the Jewish people themselves. Like every tradition transmitted and nurtured by human communities, including the Christian tradition, rabbinic Judaism is imperfect and requires continual renewal, development, and contextual reapplication. Nevertheless, it is rabbinic Judaism that is being renewed, developed, and contextually reapplied. We cannot affrm the election and way of life of the Jewish people without likewise affrming the tradition that has sustained them both.20

I subscribe to this whole paragraph, but with one addition: if the revelation of Jesus Christ is a factor of renewal of the living tradition of Israel, then the “rabbinic Judaism that is being renewed, developed, and contextually

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reapplied” may no longer rightfully be called “rabbinic Judaism.” Where is Baptism or the Eucharist in the rabbinic tradition? Messianic Judaism would not be Messianic if it did not incorporate these elements, together with the whole teaching of Jesus, into its fundamental doctrine. But to do so, it irreversibly changes the inner meaning of the elements that constitute rabbinic Judaism. Even if one practices elements from the rabbinic tradition and even if one does so legitimately; that is, in order to manifest the ongoing reality of the Covenant between Israel and God, one has ipso facto come out of the framework of the rabbinic tradition. The hermeneutic parameters that are introduced here are foreign to this tradition and to the rules that permit it to evolve and, sometimes, to reform itself. The qualitative leap that proceeds from the revelation of Christ cannot but draw Messianic Judaism outside of the traditional setting of the Synagogue. The truth is that if Jewish disciples cannot be disciples of Yeshua in the same manner as their Gentile brethren because they are Jewish, they cannot either be religiously Jewish in the same manner as their Jewish brethren because they are disciples of Yeshua. In the second part of the present book, I tried to show that New Testament writings point to the radical newness of Yeshua’s understanding of faithfulness to Torah, what I called the “Messianic interpretation” of Torah. I have argued that one of the most salient aspects of this Messianic interpretation is the dismissal of the mandatory character of human interpretations of Torah faithfulness (“the traditions of the elders”). Since the mandatory character of mitzvot is at the heart of Orthodox Judaism, I believe that the Orthodox understanding of Torah-faithfulness is incompatible with the Messianic interpretation of it that Yeshua revealed to his disciples. The proof of this incompatibility is that, translated into ecclesiological terms, the Orthodox understanding of Torah-faithfulness destroys the communion between Gentile and Jewish disciples that is at the heart of the Church founded by Yeshua. This Jewish Orthodox understanding is meant to forge a coherent, self-contained Jewish world separated from the rest of humanity that it identifes with Gentility. The very reality that Kinzer mentions as a means to ensure the communion between a Jewish ekklesia ruled according to the Orthodox concept of Torah-faithfulness and the Gentile part of the global Ekklesia, that is the sacramental Communion in the Body and Blood of Messiah (ha-Zikkaron), is an infringement on this Orthodox concept of Torah-faithfulness. Indeed, one does not only betray Orthodox Judaism by ignoring its precepts but also by adding to them religious practices that it would reprove. Placing sacramental sharing at the center of the communion between Gentile and Jewish brethren in the Church would be from an Orthodox Jewish point of view tantamount to making transgression the cornerstone of the entity they form together. Accordingly, either Jewish disciples partake of the Church’s sacramental riches together with their Gentile

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brethren and disobey rabbinic authority, or they must withdraw from what constitutes the living heart of the Church to comply with it (although living rabbinic authorities would, on their part, never admit as much). However the Orthodox concept of Torah-faithfulness is not the only possible Jewish understanding of it. Both Reformed and Conservative Jews have a much more liberal and nuanced approach to rabbinic tradition than Orthodox Judaism. They would not be Jewish if they did not draw on this tradition, but they do not give its interpretation of Written Torah—as much as it can be formulated in legal terms—the same authority as Written Torah. Kinzer has a point when he observes that Jewish disciples of Yeshua need rabbinic tradition to learn about the Israel-centered precepts of Torah and the ways to put them into practice. Rabbinic tradition is the only source that can teach about a Jewish Torah-faithfulness, as distinguished from the Gentile Torahfaithfulness that characterizes the Christian tradition. Nonetheless one does not need to consider compliance with the Shulkhan Arukh or the complex system of Jewish observances as mandatory in order to cherish rabbinic tradition and learn from it. Within Judaism, other streams than the Orthodox one assess compliance with rabbinic tradition in the light of historical evolution and the growth of humankind’s moral conscience, for example. Why should disciples of Yeshua not assess such compliance in the light of Yeshua’s teachings and a moral conscience that grows together with their personal faith in him? As they share these teachings and this faith with their Gentile brethren, it is both an inevitable and a good thing that the approach of Jewish disciples to rabbinic tradition would refect a spiritual and intellectual attitude anchored in the communion of the Church. But when practicing Jewish customs in a unity of spirit with their Gentile brethren, Jewish disciples should not be afraid of losing the Jewish character of their practice. First, being universal, the teaching of Yeshua is not more Gentile than it is Jewish. Second, the Messianic interpretation of rabbinic tradition should not be the only source of Jewish Messianic life within the global Ekklesia. I view the opposite hermeneutical movement as equally important: what is needed is a deciphering of the Christian tradition from the point of view of Jewish Torah-faithfulness. The relation of Christian tradition to the teachings of Jesus is symmetrically opposite to the relation of the rabbinic tradition to Moses’s Torah. While rabbinic tradition has exclusively limited the content of Moses’s Torah to the life of the Jewish nation, carefully rejecting Yeshua’s universalism, Christian tradition, by focusing on the universal message of Jesus’s teachings, has lost sight of their deep-rootedness in the life and tradition of the Jewish nation. Of course, it would be wrong to look at the development of the Christian tradition in its prodigious diversity as a process through which the original “Jewish truth” of the Gospels would have been gradually altered by the contact of Gentile cultures. It is crucial to acknowledge that this interaction

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has manifested dimensions of the original truth that would have remained neglected had the teachings of Jesus been forever confned to their original Jewish setting. The relentless efforts of the greatest minds and most dedicated hearts to formulate these teachings in a manner that does not betray their original meaning and dismisses misleading interpretations, together with the efforescence of liturgical and artistic expressions of the Christian mystery constitute the treasure of the Church tradition, a treasure that Jewish disciples of Yeshua should cherish as much as their Gentile brethren. Just as Jewish disciples are unable to discern the Jewish content of Torah without relying on rabbinic tradition, they cannot access the content of Yeshua’s teachings without taking into account the lessons and achievements of the Christian tradition. I regard the claim of so many Messianic theologians and faithful—this is not the case of Kinzer—that they can directly access the original Jewish dimensions of these teachings without making the detour of Christian tradition as pure self-deceit. Whatever be their liking—or rather disliking—for the philosophical terminology of the Ecumenical Councils of the Church, Jewish disciples are just as much indebted to their achievements as their Gentile brethren when they hold that Yeshua is true God and not a superior angel (Nicea 325), that God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit are not simply external, earthly manifestations of the One God but designate the personal dimensions of His inner, inextinguishable life (Constantinople I, 381) or that Yeshua is both totally human and totally divine (Chalcedon, 451). Just as for their Gentile brethren, what Jewish disciples know about the manner in which Baptism, the Eucharist, or possibly other sacraments established by Yeshua should be celebrated come from the Christian tradition. On the other hand, there is no reason why Jewish disciples should model their religious practice on forms and expressions of the Christian mystery that have lost sight of the Jewish deep-rootedness of Yeshua’s teachings. Their contribution to the living and ongoing tradition of the Church precisely consists of reestablishing a dimension that is integral to these teachings, but that was forgotten or became hidden because of the estrangement of the Church from the Jewish tradition. When it comes to forms, truth is not uniform—it is essentially pluriform. The more authentic, the richer, and more diverse. While it does not suppress the beauty and depth of the various forms according to which the Truth revealed in Yeshua has found expression in the life of the Church, the Jewish form of this Truth is fundamental for the Church as it is the one from which all others originate. But since Jewish disciples have no direct access to this original form, reestablishing it requires a process of Jewish interpretation of the Christian tradition. For a Jewish ekklesia to see the light of day, Christian tradition, according to the confguration that it has acquired after almost 2,000 years of Gentilization, needs to be plunged into the elements of rabbinic tradition.

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Conversely, rabbinic tradition needs to be plunged into the newness of Christ’s teaching and grace to enter into the Messianic dimension that, by freeing it from unnecessary burdens, leads it to its promised Messianic fulfllment. A new and untrodden ecclesial path lies at the intersection of Jewish mitzvot practiced in the Spirit of Yeshua and Christian discipline understood according to its Jewish origins. In one of the parables on the Last Judgment from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus compares the kingdom of Heaven to a “treasure hidden in a feld” or to a “pearl of great value,” the discovery of which leads one to “sell everything he owns” (Matt 13:44; 46). As Jesus makes it clear in the parable that immediately follows, faith enables one to distinguish what from the past must be kept and what rejected. It is as if the acquisition of a treasure or a precious pearl gave to one the means to purchase again—but with a new spirit of discernment—what one used to possess:

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The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a feld, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that feld. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fne pearls; on fnding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fsh of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. (Matt 13:44–52)

What is new was already waiting there in the storeroom, maybe for a long time. What is old is fnally unveiled, since it is brought out of the storeroom for the frst time. One needs to delve into the memory of ancient traditions to bring to view what nobody had yet perceived. Meanwhile it is of the essence of the new to reveal what has been there since the origin. The old produces the new while the new reveals the old. In the same manner, a tradition based on the so-called Old Testament can generate an entirely new way of life when revisited in the light of Yeshua, just as a tradition derived from the socalled New Testament leads to a rediscovery of authentic Torah-faithfulness when deciphered in the light of the rabbinic tradition. In this “hermeneutical cross-breeding,” the old—rabbinic tradition—can be newer than the new— Christian tradition—as when the former brings out a radically new form of existence from the latter. Likewise the new can be older than the old, as when Christian tradition unveils a form of Jewish existence that is closer to the spirit of the Torah of Moses than rabbinic legislation. It is the ongoing rabbinic tradition that enables Jewish disciples to rediscover the Jewish dimension of Christ’s grace. Conversely but inseparably, it is the newness of Christ’s grace that brings rabbinic tradition to its Messianic fulfllment. As the one who discovers the pearl in the feld must sell his previous possessions,

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as the fsherman throws away the fsh that, once brought to the shore, was not selected, the holy hermeneutics out of which a Jewish ekklesia will arise must dismiss much of what has crystallized in Christian and rabbinic traditions in order to keep the living core of an authentically Jewish Messianic existence. An ekklesia founded on the interaction between the eternal newness of divine grace and the ancient wisdom of Moses’s Torah is integrally Jewish. This ekklesia is neither rabbinic nor Gentile, though resting on the hermeneutical interaction between both traditions—she is an authentically Jewish Messianic Church. At the same time, this ekklesia is established in a fundamental communion with the non-Jewish side of a bilateral Ekklesia. The heart of her ecclesial existence is the same outpouring of the Holy Spirit that constitutes the heart of non-Jewish, purely “Christian” traditions. It would not cross the mind of a Catholic theologian to claim that Maronite faithful are not in fundamental communion with faithful of Latin rite. The fact that each category of faithful adheres to a different type of canonical and liturgical tradition does not contradict their claim to belong to the same Church, as both explicitly acknowledge that they are grafted on the same supernatural reality stemming from Christ’s death and resurrection. What visibly manifests their communion is the fact that they practice liturgical hospitality (just as Latin faithful are allowed to take part in the liturgical life of Maronites and viceversa), and recognize the same ultimate principle of hierarchic authority over the whole Ekklesia. At this point, I suppose that one can conceive how a distinctively Jewish corporate presence in the Church is compatible with the requirements of true and visible communion that defne the very nature of the whole Body of Christ. Still, out of the four aspects that we had listed regarding the nature of the Jewish presence (see III, 1.1.2), we have hitherto dealt with three only; namely, that of being corporate, distinctly Jewish and in communion with the wider Church. There remains one aspect to be examined, that of stability and continuity. 1.1.4. Continuity of the Jewish Presence and the Issue of Conversion I believe one of the reasons of Kinzer’s emphasis on the necessity of stringent mitzvot observance is the desire to guarantee the consistency of a Jewish biosphere within the Church. It is the idea, fairly common in the Orthodox Jewish world, that keeping the Gentile world at bay is the best way to preserve the chances of Jewish biological continuity through religion-based endogamy. The problem, as I have been saying repeatedly, is that this position is no longer tenable when one speaks about a corporate body that, like the Catholic Church, rests on the reality of communion between Jews and Gentiles. Besides I doubt that, if strictly applied, such a separation between

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Jewish and Gentile disciples on the basis of observances would effectively guarantee the continuity of a Jewish presence within the Church. Who can predict that the children of the few perfectly homogeneous couples of Jewish disciples determined to keep Halacha “à la manière” of Orthodox Jews will assign the same value to the continuity of a “pure” Jewish presence in the Church and be as determined as their parents to keep some Orthodox-inspired version of Halacha? I cannot see how one could avoid a trend that, starting from a quantitatively insignifcant population, would see it rapidly decrease down to its complete extinction.21 I leave aside the endless number of issues associated with such a confguration, like the case of couples being torn apart between two totally distinct ecclesial affliations and therefore unable to share a common life of prayer. Contemporary Messianic Judaism is familiar with these inseparably personal and ecclesiological quandaries. What to do when a congregation is formed of a great number—often a majority—of Gentile disciples that, for some reason or another, choose to be affliated to the Jewish Messianic movement? To preserve the Jewish identity that justifes the movement’s existence, one can give to Gentiles a statute that will be different from that of Jewish disciples, such as that of “God-fearers.” But this is merely postponing the inevitable: either this distinction will have consequences, such as ascribing privileges and responsibilities to Jewish faithful, thus reducing “God-fearers” to second-class brethren in faith, or this distinction will have no consequences at all. In the frst case, how could one account for a form of discrimination, which is so clearly contrary to the Pauline understanding of true communion between Jewish and Gentile disciples? In the second case, how could one prevent the fateful disintegration of the Jewish component of these congregations, a disintegration that this distinction was precisely supposed to prevent? The Jewish Messianic movement is not older than half a century, and many of its members are already wondering about its chances of survival in the shorter- or longer term. In addition, when considering the status of Gentile disciples affliated to the Messianic movement, I fnd Kinzer’s bilateral ecclesiology rather short. Far from the realia of the current Messianic movement, Kinzer seems to hypothesize a Jewish ekklesia the members of which would—as to their overwhelming majority if not their totality—be Jewish. Indeed, what would be the purpose of a distinction between a Jewish ekklesia and a Gentile one within one truly Catholic Church if the greatest number of the members of the Jewish ekklesia were Gentile? On the other hand, asking Gentile “Godfearers” to cancel their affliation to the Messianic movement and join the traditionally Gentile part of the Catholic Church—if ever they wanted to belong to this Church—sounds like a rather harsh decision to make. Does the dedication of these Gentile disciples to the Messianic movement, their

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understanding of Israel’s purpose within the Body of Christ, and their wish to work on its behalf, count for nothing? Regardless of halachic stringency, one remedy to the foreseeable depletion of a purely and exclusively Jewish ekklesia would be the establishment of a conversion process on the model of those existing in the different branches of Messianic Judaism. True, rabbinic Judaism never envisaged conversion as a means to guarantee the survival of the Jewish nation. If anything, it has rather discouraged Gentiles to undertake this process. In contrast to the dynamic of Christian faith, biological transmission lies at the core of the religion called Judaism. There is a sharp contrast between the inward-oriented Jewish faith and the outward-oriented, bent on expansion through proselytizing, historical Christianity. On the other hand, the reasons that lie behind the establishment of a conversion process in mainstream Judaism are very similar to what would fundamentally justify the establishment of a similar process in the Messianic movement. This is about Gentiles that feel drawn to becoming part of Israel as a result of what they identify as God’s calling.22 The issue of conversion has sparked vivid discussions within the Messianic movement.23 The two main federations of Messianic Jewish congregations have adopted fairly different attitudes: while the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) seems defnitively closed to the idea of setting up a conversion process, the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC), after offcially rejecting the proposal in 1983, has gradually developed a much more sympathetic stance. In 2004, the Messianic Jewish rabbinic Council (MJRC) opened a path to Gentiles wishing to convert within the Messianic movement. It has defned the purpose and boundaries of this process in a booklet published for internal use in 2008. One of the main arguments against conversion has to do with the tenets of faith in Yeshua in their Pauline interpretation: “Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no beneft to you” (Gal 5:2). Why should one seek to observe mitzvot if one is granted the fullness of salvation through faith in Christ? I have examined this issue in the second part of this book. Like Kinzer, I concluded that the inability of mitzvot observance to grant salvation did not imply that they had no signifcance as to the calling of Israel within Christ’s gift of salvation. It is precisely this calling specifc to Israel that draws Gentiles toward conversion. Yet Paul seems to take issue with the idea of Gentiles trying to change their natural condition: “However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision” (1 Cor 7:17–18).

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The tendency of the Messianic advocates of circumcision is to contextualize this and other similar statements found in Paul’s writings. Paul is allegedly trying to free proselytes from the pressure of Jewish zealots who were not able to conceive how the favor of God could encompass Gentiles as Gentiles. One should be cautious with the eristic use of contextualization however. It is often logically fawed: empirically relative circumstances do not make of a statement of principle occurring under these circumstances an empirically relative statement. But what these circumstances show a contrario is that conversion should not be the rule in the absolute. The Ekklesia of Yeshua must be constituted of a Gentile pole and a Jewish one—normalizing conversion would destroy the divine project of a bilateral Ekklesia. From this point of view, Paul’s statement of principle should be understood as defning the character of a Messianic conversion rather than as denying its very possibility: Messianic conversion can only be an exception to the rule, the consequence of a very specifc calling—what the Thomistic tradition would call a gratia gratis data, a grace that serves the purpose of God’s work of salvation (like that of prophecy for instance), as distinguished from the gratia gratum faciens, the grace that makes us the objects of Christ’s salvation.24 This is exactly the position advocated by the MJRC and the reason why it adds clear limitations to the path that it opens:

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Applicants must see their own path as exceptional, as a particular divine calling that they cannot in conscience resist but also that they cannot present to others as an exemplar to be imitated. In fact, while embracing Jewish life, they should be quick to dissuade others from the path they themselves have taken—and should be able to give reasons to newly interested Gentiles why they should probably not pursue full involvement in the Messianic movement but should instead help the Church fnd its own identity in relationship to Israel.25

It is not with the purpose of gaining an additional opportunity to receive salvation that a Gentile joins the people of Israel. The calling to join Israel is a special calling within the universal calling to salvation. Ahavat Yisrael can be as such considered as an exceptional case in the Body of Christ when it leads individuals, married to Jews or not, of Jewish descent or not, to personally identify with the Jewish nation. It is the reality and the consistency of this Ahavat Yisrael that is the essential object of the conversion process; it is this Ahavat Yisrael again that is put to the test by the quality and quantity requirements of this process. Certainly, the number of candidates that will achieve this process and end up being recognized as Jews within the Messianic ekklesia will always be insignifcant compared to the masses of traditional Christian faithful. Still, at the quantitatively microscopic level that will continue to characterize the Jewish presence in the Ekklesia, the

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infux of converts might provide a decisive contribution to the stabilization and continuity of this presence. In addition, it would help to solve the thorny issue regarding the status of Gentile God-fearers that would seek affliation with the Jewish ekklesia. In my view, the real theological question raised by the setting up of a conversion process within a Messianic ekklesia lies elsewhere. It is a daunting as much as it is a paradoxical question; namely: Would a Jewish ekklesia be entitled to convert any Gentile to Judaism? Meanwhile the question to which such a paradoxical question leads could not be more decisive from the perspective that is ours here; that is: To what extent can we claim that a Jewish ekklesia is still part of Judaism? In one of the contributions to which the debate about conversion within the Messianic movement gave rise, Kay Silberling articulates this issue in blunt but, in my opinion, fairly adequate terms:

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Messianic Jews have yet to gain consensus and to articulate, as a movement, what it is that proselytes are converting from, and even more importantly, what they are converting to. Despite protestations of the contrary, Messianic Judaism as it is practised in many regions today, is not a Judaism. In many, if not the most cases, it a judaized form of Protestant Christianity. The world to which many in the movement continue to gaze for their vision, their direction, their theology is the world of late Twentieth Century Christian revivalism. To be sure, that world has much to offer. Many Messianic Jews owe their lives in Yeshua to Christian revivalists. But Christian revivalism is not Judaism (I do not say this in a critical manner; I say it so that we may be precise in the terminology and categories that we use). While I have argued above that Jewishness itself is a notoriously fuid category, when it comes to the defnition of Judaism, there is general consensus, and Christian revivalism isn’t one.26

A religious movement that is not part of Judaism cannot convert Gentiles to Judaism. One must acknowledge with the author of these considerations that Messianic Judaism is historically born of a particular stream of Protestantism that has barely anything to do with Judaism. However, the whole theological effort of Kinzer is to formulate the conditions according to which this unexpected fruit of the Protestant world’s evolution could legitimately be deemed to be part of Judaism. The Jewish character of the members of this ekklesia within the Ekklesia, combined with a reappropriation of the rabbinic tradition, certainly draws the entity that he theorizes much closer to the world of Judaism. What remains is the most fundamental divergence with what most people would designate as Judaism—what K. Silberling refers to as an object of consensus. One could summarize it in the following manner: Judaism is

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the religion based on the gift of the Law of Moses that does not confess Jesus as Messiah of Israel. Strangely, when one looks for the defnition of Judaism in the various editions of the Jewish Encyclopedia, this negative aspect (rejection of Yeshua’s Messiahship) is hardly mentioned. Far from presenting Judaism as a counterproposal to Christianity, the authors of these articles aim to defne the content of Judaism in purely positive terms: unity of God, universality of God, Israel’s mission, Justice, Purity, and so forth. The result is that nothing here contradicts the tenets of Messianic Judaism. Even Maimonides’s thirteen articles of faith, one of the intentions of which was to set clear boundaries between Jewish and Christian faiths, are not incompatible with the most fundamental beliefs of the Messianic persuasion. With Maimonides, a Jewish Messianic ekklesia would confess the unity of God since a Trinitarian belief infringing on this unity would be heresy. With Maimonides, she would have no diffculty proclaiming the inalterability of Moses’s Torah, since the Law that Yeshua came to reveal is but the fulfllment of Moses’s Torah. Finally, she would equally profess the Coming of the Messiah, since she is expecting this coming to complete the work of salvation associated with the Incarnation. The case can be made that Messianic Judaism does not take anything away from the essence of Judaism. Nonetheless one cannot in all honesty claim that it does not add to what is commonly called “Judaism” elements of faith that are radically new to it, the result of this addition being a thorough reinterpretation of such “Judaism.” In themselves, these elements are not foreign to the sphere of Jewishness if one keeps in mind that Yeshua and his disciples were all Jews. But it remains as a fact that “Judaism” is Jewish tradition minus these new elements. If this is true, does this mean that there is little more than some essential homonymy—that is, the designation of two different realities with the same word—between “Judaism” and Messianic Judaism? Imagine a Newtonian physicist miraculously hurled back to the era of Aristotle. Would it be fair if he claimed to be able to teach physics to students willing to learn the only type of physics known at the time—that of Aristotle? Just as the physics of Aristotle and Newton, rabbinic Judaism and Messianic Judaism are tackling the same issues. Just as physics will always try to give an account of the material structure of the world, likewise Judaism will always be about observing the law of Moses. But just as the scientifc approaches of Aristotelian and Newtonian Physics have almost nothing in common, likewise the manner in which rabbinic Judaism and Messianic Judaism tackle the law of Moses is so different, that the use of the term of Judaism to designate both remains intrinsically ambiguous. True, Messianic Judaism is a Judaism; that is, a form of religion peculiar to Jews. But there is no denying that the word “Judaism” commonly designates rabbinic Judaism and not Messianic Judaism. Claiming that Messianic Judaism can usher Gentiles into the world

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of Judaism is deceptive as long as these Gentiles understand this world as associated with rabbinic Judaism. More precisely, it is self-deceptive, as no other type of Judaism would ever consider this possibility seriously. Still—and this is, I believe, a most decisive point—Judaism is not Jewishness. Here, I would argue against the passage quoted earlier. To some extent, it is the notion of Judaism that is fuid, not that of Jewishness. While there are many ways to be a religious Jew, those in which one can be called a Jew—a member of the Jewish nation—are much fewer and more precise. A Jew is either someone born of a Jewish mother or a person who converted to Judaism. If Messianic Judaism is truly a religious practice peculiar to Jews, as it claims, it has the capacity to transmit the graceful election that derives from a divine disposition. By so doing, it does not make Gentiles partakers of the religious world associated with rabbinic Judaism. But it makes Gentiles members of the Jewish nation. That such conversion has little chance to ever be recognized by the other branches of Judaism has no relevance. Conversions carried out by Reform or Conservative Jews are not recognized by Orthodox Jews. But as long as a Jewish movement believes in its own legitimacy, it cannot give up the notion that its authorities are entitled to supervise a conversion process. Besides considerations pertaining to “Church politics,” there is no reason why such an understanding should not apply to Messianic Judaism or to a Jewish ekklesia. In point of fact, it is not so much the ontological reality associated with conversion as its wording that I fnd problematic. The Christian concept of “conversion,” just as its Hebrew equivalent, “teshuva” or “return,” suggests the notion of giving up the ways of thinking and behaving that keep one apart from God so that one can seek to reconcile oneself with the Creator through repentance. However, abiding by the decisions of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) implies accepting that Gentiles do not need to become Jews to come closer to God. The whole religious existence of Francis of Assisi witnesses an act of personal repentance that led him to a condition of ever-increasing intimacy with God, a condition that the Catholic Church has identifed with sainthood. From what doctrinal error or moral wrongdoing would Francis have turned away, had the saint wanted, against all the odds, to become a Messianic Jew? Indeed, when Gentiles with a Christian background decide to become Messianic Jews or any other sort of religious Jews, their decisions can hardly go without the full realization of the numberless injustices committed against the Jewish nation in the name of Christ throughout the ages. For many, their personal gesture has value as an expression of repentance on behalf of historical Christianity. Yet many other Gentile Christians do not experience the personal need to become Jews to reach the same realization. While this type of awareness needs to be present in anyone willing to join the people of

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Israel, it should not motivate this decision. Becoming part of Israel should not result from spiritual mortifcation but from a positive aspiration to partake of Abraham’s promise according to the fesh. I would therefore suggest replacing the term “conversion” with a term similar to “passage” or “crossing” since both evoke the root that gave the term “Hebrew” in Hebrew: ‫עבר‬. This terminological change is an additional proof of the manner in which Messianic faith transforms the traditional content of Judaism. “Conversion” and “crossing” designate the same reality—the addition of an individual to the nation of Israel—but the theological and ecclesiological perspectives associated with Messianic Judaism assign a radically new meaning to this reality. The devil is in the details, or rather in the trial of reality. I just sketched out the general picture of what I would consider a genuine Jewish ekklesia, at the intersection of Jewish and Christian traditions. But there lies a great distance between this very broad and theoretical picture and the concrete life of an organic ecclesial body. In the next section, I would like to begin approaching the concrete conditions of existence of a Jewish ekklesia by examining two constitutive elements of any ecclesial life; that is, its sacramental and its hierarchic aspects.

2. SACRAMENTAL LIFE AND HIERARCHIC ORGANIZATION

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2.1. Baptism and “Palingenesia”27 Baptism, the rite that incorporates the faithful into the living Body of Christ that is the Church, has long been considered in the tradition of historical Churches not only as independent of the Jewish rituals from which it is derived—those relating to mikveh or baths of purifcation—but also as antithetic to Jewish identity. The “new man” clothed in Christ’s grace should leave behind the “old man,” something that was interpreted in the case of Jewish converts as an obsolete attachment to the customs of the Torah of Moses. Before Vatican Council II, these converts were asked to sign a formal renunciation of Jewish customs and practices as a requirement for the reception of Baptism. A similar procedure was never offcially abolished in the Orthodox Church.28 Unsurprisingly, from a standard Jewish point of view Baptism is the step that ratifes the severing of the ties between the one that takes it and his or her Jewish community of origin. Kinzer legitimately and convincingly questions this understanding of Baptism. Christ was baptized for the salvation of the whole of sinful humanity, Jews included, and the salvation conveyed through Baptism is part of a project where Israel qua Israel plays a central role:

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Those “sinners’’ with whom Jesus most immediately shows solidarity are Jews, and his purpose in doing so is to fulfll the words of the exilic prophets who promised that the nation of Israel would be restored and Zion would be glorifed. As a result of Israel’s eschatological renewal, all nations would come to know the Lord’s saving power and worship the God of Israel in fellowship with the people of the Covenant.29

The Baptism of Jesus (Matt 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–23) marks the beginning of his public ministry among the people of Israel. The inner purifcation that Yeshua’s immersion into the Jordan River symbolizes, echoes the announcement of the renewal of Israel issued by its prophets from of old.30 Kinzer, partly drawing on Lustiger, claims that for Gentiles the incorporation into Christ that sacramental Baptism conveys carries with it a spiritual incorporation into Israel, while it entails a “radical act of identifcation with Israel” in the case of Jewish believers.31 Insofar as renewal implies the recovery of a pristine condition, Kinzer expands here on the theme of palingenesia (παλιγγενεσία), literally the coming-to-be-anew,” a notion that surfaces in epistle to Titus: “he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως πνεύματος ἁγίου)” (Titus 3:5).32 In John 3: 4–7, Jesus takes his cue from Nicodemus’s question “whether a man can enter the womb of his mother and be born again (δεύτερον εἰσελθεῖν καὶ γεννηθῆναι),” when he claims that, in order to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, one must be “born through water and the Spirit.” At the same time, palingenesia points toward the eschaton as it is often symbolically described as the fnal restoration of Israel. The term appears explicitly in Matt 19:28: Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me (ὑμεῖς οἱ ἀκολουθήσαντές μοι ἐν τῇ παλιγγενεσίᾳ) will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” The picture of a world reunited with God through the renewal of Israel, epitomized by the reign of the twelve tribes, is the ultimate realization of the promises made to the people of Abraham. Reversing the traditional perspective on sacramental Baptism that views it as a perpetuation of a quintessentially Gentile religious legacy and therefore as a rupture with their own tradition for Jewish converts, Kinzer can thus conclude: “For Gentiles, rebirth signifes rupture; for Jews, rebirth signifes eschatological self-realization.”33 The promise of salvation made to Israel fnds an accomplishment when, through the Baptism of its members, a Jewish community becomes Christ’s Body. This fulfllment must therefore be conceived as a promotion and not a destruction of the religious practice and customs conveyed by the living

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tradition of Israel. I cannot but agree with Kinzer on that point. At the same time, I believe the sacrament of Baptism must also be more than—or, pace Rosenzweig, qualitatively different from—a way for God to provide Gentiles with access to the living tradition of Israel and symbolically reaffrm the signifcance of Jewish identity. Without doubt the members of the frst communities of Jewish disciples had certainly no intention to give up their participation in the wider Jewish world when they received the sacrament of Baptism. The religious behavior of the members of James’s community in Jerusalem, of which we spoke earlier, is suffciently eloquent in this regard. Yet if the Book of Acts and the epistles of the New Testament place so much emphasis on Baptism, it is because this sacrament was perceived as carrying a divine blessing, the equivalent of which had never been seen or experienced in the whole history of Israel. To be sure an eschatological symbolism that points toward the destiny of Israel belongs to the sacrament as one of its dimensions. But the very presence of this symbolic dimension is itself the manifestation of the transforming reality concealed in the sacrament. What medieval theologians used to call the res sacramenti, the “reality-thing of the sacrament,” is nothing other than the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is already the message of John, son of Zechariah, to the crowds that came to him in the desert: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fre” (Matt 3:11). It is the Holy Spirit that baptizes, the water being only the ordinary medium or channel of this supernatural action. This comes out clearly in the words that Peter addresses to the Jewish disciples at the house of Cornelius: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:44–47)

At a slightly later point, Peter acknowledges that this is the Baptism of which John the Baptist spoke and that had remained unknown until the glorifcation of Jesus: “And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit’ ” (Acts 11:16). One of the effects of the transformation operated by the Holy Spirit is to open the present reality to the eschaton, the reality to come at the end of times. But the restoration of Israel associated with this eschaton cannot be conceived as a simple return to what used to be at the beginning. This would

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render the whole history of humanity, including the history of human salvation, pointless as it might as well not have taken place. The truth is that the origin that will be restored according to the words of Jesus in Matthew has never happened before. Never in the course of history has Israel reigned as it will reign when history ends. In this regard, I am not sure if Kinzer pays honor to the depth of content conveyed by the notion of palingenesia. One can go back according to the dimension of space, not that of time. With verbs indicating a transfer of position in space (“going,” “coming”), πάλιν can imply a motion backward, back to the point of origin. But the verb γίγνομαι does not indicate a transfer of position in space. “Becoming,” “coming to be,” designate a transfer of position in time devoid of spatial motion. In this case, πάλιν takes the meaning of “again, once more.”34 Logically, the fact that one has already begun excludes the possibility of going back to the same beginning (one never begins again in an identical way since one will never be again as one was when one had not yet begun). But one can be granted a new beginning—a beginning that does not efface the reality of the frst beginning but that is endowed with the same potentialities as the frst beginning, even if what happened since this frst beginning exhausted the potentialities that it brought with itself. In this case, it is fair to say that this new beginning had never taken place before. This is precisely what is at stake in the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. Jesus knows that the arrow of time makes it impossible to “enter the womb of his mother and be born again.” But the rebirth Jesus has in mind is not this physical beginning, the point all human beings come from; it is a new beginning that is not identical to the frst because it is essentially spiritual and destined to be experienced by his disciples only: “What is born of the fesh is fesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above’” (John 3:6–7). This birth according to the Spirit is a new beginning because the human disposition toward Good that came with physical birth but was wasted in the course of an individual’s purely human evolution is somehow given back to him or her. This time however, the presence of these potentialities derives from a supernatural intervention and not from a natural process. Consequently, the reality into which the gift of the Spirit ushers this individual is entirely novel. His or her purely human life is henceforth pervaded with the divine life conveyed by the Holy Spirit. I believe the logic that applies to individuals also applies to communities and corporate entities such as Israel. For the Jewish disciples of Christ, the beneft of receiving Christ’s Baptism is not limited to strengthening their Jewish identity and their ties with the nation of Israel. The gift of the Holy Spirit is destined to transform the religious practice of a Jewish community

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from the inside. The Baptism of spiritual fre that Christ established communicates to Jews and Gentiles alike the supernatural capacity of becoming “Children of God” (John 1:12). One of the fruits of this transformation must be a radically new form of religious communion with Gentiles as it the very same spirit that “is poured upon Gentiles” (Acts 10:44). The Spirit is not poured on Gentiles because they converted to Judaism but because they believed in Christ through the announcement of his death and resurrection. It is the transformative power of the Spirit that makes a Church composed of Jews and Gentiles one. True, the gift of the Spirit grafts Gentiles onto the living tradition of Israel. But through the bond of communion that now unites Jews and Gentiles, it also enables Jewish believers to partake of the spiritual and human riches that were hitherto the exclusive privilege of Gentile nations. The palingenesia associated with the gift of the Spirit does not feature some return to a preexistent stage—however glorious it may have been. It designates a supernatural transformation of what preexisted to this gift, so that the potentiality that was present at the origin might eventually give its fruit of holiness for the greatest glory of Israel’s God. This new reality cannot be derived from rabbinic tradition—it manifests the very purpose of salvation associated with God’s Incarnation. Meanwhile, the irreducibility of the new reality to the existing rabbinic tradition according to form and content does not imply that the opposite is true; that is, that the existing rabbinic tradition contains elements that, according to their forms and content, are irreducible to the new spiritual regime established through the sacrament of Baptism. Characteristic of the supersessionist mindset is the claim that the New replaces the Old, implying that rabbinic tradition is part of the Old. But as I have said earlier, supersessionism is the theoretical absolutization of a partial truth; namely, that Yeshua aimed at providing an understanding of Torah that, being “universal,” would no longer be restricted to Jews. In the supersessionist framework, what fnds itself outside this universal model is dismissed as Pagan or obsolete. But the goal of Messianic Judaism is precisely to give expression to the element that this interpretation of Yeshua’s teaching in terms of “universalization” of Torah-faithfulness neglected; that is, the articulation of Israel qua Israel’s specifc relationship to God within the Messianic revelation of Yeshua. There is no reason why Gentiles that receive Baptism should espouse elements from the rabbinic tradition. But this absence of reason in the case of Gentile disciples does not mean that Jewish disciples that receive Baptism should turn away from rabbinic tradition since this tradition is about the unique relationship between Am Israel and God. In the present case, the clash between the supersessionist mindset and the Messianic approach is nowhere more evident than when one considers the practice of circumcision in relation to Baptism.

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The divine commandment of circumcision applies to the posterity of Abraham (Gen 17:9–10). It is the very mark that distinguishes Jews from Gentiles. At the same time, there is an evident analogy between circumcision and Baptism: as circumcision indicates that a new-born Jew or a convert to Judaism belongs to the nation of Israel, Baptism marks the integration of babies and converts to Christ in the Church. The Fathers of the Church have traditionally interpreted circumcision as a prefguration of Baptism: “Jesus, son of Nun, renewed the people’s circumcision with a knife of stone when he had crossed the Jordan with the Israelites. Jesus, our Savior, renews the circumcision of the heart for the nations who have believed in him and are washed by Baptism: circumcision by the sword of his word, sharper than any two-edged sword.”35 Again, there is nothing wrong with the metaphorical reading of Torah. This metaphorical reading is rooted in the New Testament itself. As one reads in the Epistle to the Colossians: “In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the fesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in Baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:11–12). What must be questioned is the notion that the advent of the reality prefgured in the Torah cancels the reality of what, in the Torah, is interpreted as a metaphor. If the commandment of circumcision helps us to understand what is involved in the mysterious reality associated with Baptism, does it imply that the commandment of circumcision is nullifed? Should a commandment that applies only to Israel because it is the external distinguishing mark between Israel and non-Israel be rejected from a Church that acknowledges in Baptism the symbol of the newly found communion between Israel and non-Israel? If circumcision is an adequate metaphor for Baptism, it is because Baptism can be viewed as circumcision in truth or accomplished. The external sign traced in the fesh was from the beginning meant to be the manifestation of a reality that was of an inner and spiritual kind. Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the LORD your God, the earth and all that is on it! Yet it was to your fathers that the LORD was drawn in His love for them, so that He chose you, their lineal descendants, from among all peoples—as is now the case. Cut away, therefore, the thickening [circumcise] about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more. (Deut 10:14–16)

Christ’s Baptism gives Israel the possibility to fulfll the promise that it received through Moses: “Then the LORD your God will open up your heart

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and the hearts of your offspring to love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live” (Deut 30:6, see also Jer 4:4). Circumcision is an external sign that manifests Israel qua Israel’s response of love to God’s election. As Paul writes in the Epistle to the Romans, a real Jew is a Jew who has received the circumcision of the heart: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God” (Rom 2:28–29). Why should the sign disappear when the reality is fulflled? The sign does not mean anything by itself, so that an uncircumcised who loves God will be incomparably more precious in His eyes than a circumcised who does not love Him. But a circumcised who loves God will manifest a reality that an uncircumcised cannot manifest because it is not his or her calling to do so— and this reality is the mutual love between God and Israel qua Israel. In this sense, a correct understanding of Baptism should emphasize the relevance of circumcision, far from cancelling it. Circumcision as such is not endowed with the newness of Baptism, but when it is received in connection with the renewal of Baptism, it acquires a new meaning that displays the hidden dimensions of Baptism. Circumcision would no longer draw the line between true worship and idolatry; from now onward, it distinguishes between two equal callings within a living Body made one by Baptism. Through a Baptism that does not entail circumcision, Gentiles are called to partake of the riches of Israel that are preserved in the living Jewish component of the Ekklesia. At the same time through a Baptism that is associated with circumcision, Israel qua Israel is called to worship her God in the unity of Spirit with the Gentile world without ceasing to be herself. To summarize, it is right to claim with Kinzer that Baptism is the way in which Gentiles access the living tradition of Israel as long as one claims that it is also the way in which God dramatically renews Israel qua Israel. The nation is no longer what it used to be—not because it becomes less true to itself, but because it becomes radically more so. Baptism is not the symbolic reaffrmation of Israel’s ongoing tradition independently of Messiah. It is the way in which Israel’s ongoing tradition acquires a meaning that is both totally new and very ancient, as it receives here the Messianic fulfllment toward which it strove from the beginning. 2.2. The Eucharist and the Concept of a Messianic Church I previously mentioned the considerations that Kinzer dedicates to the historical and spiritual convergence between the evolution of Jewish prayer and the structure of the Eucharist as the central liturgical action of the Church. I

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showed that the experienced presence of Jesus in the course of the synagogual liturgy, as spiritually genuine and factually explainable as it might be, cannot justify establishing a “rabbinic-only” type of prayer as the standard form of religious practice for Jewish disciples of Jesus (see II, 2.2.). Here I would like to approach the same series of considerations from another angle. I intend to show that correcting Kinzer’s view on the nature of the Eucharist in its interaction with the Jewish tradition of prayer is a condition for conceiving an authentically Messianic type of ecclesial existence. There is probably no denying that, ultimately, the two main forms of Jewish liturgical prayers, the liturgy of the Synagogue and the domestic liturgy centered on meals (eve of Shabbat, Passover Seder, etc.), have the same origin: the rituals of the Temple. Mainly relying on the works of Louis Bouyer, Kinzer shows that these two forms have contributed to the emergence and early formation of the rituals associated with the celebration of the Eucharist. The fact that the Eucharist is a meal refects the original connection between Temple sacrifces and sacred banquets: “Most of the sacrifces also involved a banquet in which the priests—or the priests and lay-people who had donated the gift—feasted on portions of the food that had been consecrated to God but not consumed on the altar. In this way, the priests and the people experienced a sacred meal that celebrated and confrmed their relationship with God. The Passover meal in frst-century Jerusalem provides the most well-known example of such a sacrifcial banquet.”36 A few pages later, Kinzer evokes the Messianic/eschatological dimension that these banquets assumed once separated from Temple liturgy: “In Second Temple Judaism the practice of the sacred meal extended beyond feasting on Temple sacrifces at the holidays. The community described in the rules of the Dead Sea Scrolls treated all their meals as holy, and many scholars believe that the Pharisees adhered to similar customs. In a setting of intense apocalyptic expectation, such meals would readily become ritual anticipations of the eschatological banquet” (Isa 25:6–8).37 Kinzer explains the symbolism of the Eucharist by pointing to this evolution: “This provides the background to the Gospel accounts of Jesus at table, and of Jesus’ parables that feature numerous banquet scenes, noted in our previous chapter. When Jesus sits with the Twelve at his fnal Passover and speaks of their eating and drinking in his kingdom (Luke 22:30), he adopts the same approach as later Jewish tradition in ascribing eschatological meaning to the festival and its sacrifcial meal.”38 At the same time, the Eucharist is a prayer of blessing or thanksgiving as its name indicates. The Amidah or the nineteen blessings (berakhot), one of the main elements of synagogue liturgical services, is equally connected to Temple sacrifcial rituals (timing of the recitation, special petition on Shabbat that features the zikkaron or remembrance sacrifce). Kinzer emphasizes that the Amidah recitation precedes the destruction of the second Temple, so that

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it only afterward took the meaning of a “sacrifce of the lips” the value of which would compensate the impossibility of continuing to perform concrete sacrifces in the Temple.39 Kinzer follows Bouyer when the French scholar argues that the Amidah equally contributed to the formation of the Eucharistic prayer: Bouyer argues that the Eucharist was originally celebrated in the context of a communal meal, and that its prayers at that time were modeled on the Jewish table blessings known as the grace after meals (Birkat HaMazon). Eventually the celebration of the Eucharist was detached from an actual meal and combined with a service of readings and prayers. Bouyer contends that at that point these early disciples of Jesus again drew upon established Jewish models of prayer and combined an adapted ancient version of the Amidah with its existing eucharistic liturgy.40

Having shown how deeply the Eucharistic prayer is indebted to its two Jewish sources, Kinzer laments an evolution that made it lose some signifcant elements deriving from this original Jewish setting. Some of these elements had to do with the infuence of the Amidah:

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First, the content of the eucharistic prayer lost any positive reference to the Jewish people or to the land of Israel. The particular national redemption of Israel no longer paved the way for a universal redemption of the cosmos, but instead was discarded as a relic of a transcended past. Second, as a physical expression of this post-Jewish vision of ecclesial life and its eschatological goal, the congregation and the offciant no longer faced toward Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Now they faced East (wherever in the world they were located), from which direction Jesus was expected to return.41

Another element has to do with the domestic dimension of the original Eucharistic prayer: As the ecclesia grew in numbers it soon became impractical to conduct the Eucharistic service in the context of an actual meal . . . . The early disciples of Jesus in the Diaspora were connected to local synagogues. They would attend synagogue worship on Saturday mornings with the rest of the Jewish community, and there hear the reading of the Torah; later that evening they would gather on their own to celebrate the Eucharist as part of a communal meal (Acts 20:7). Once the connection to the synagogue had been damaged, it became necessary to develop a distinctive ecclesial service focused on the reading of Scripture. These two pressing problems—the practical challenges of a large communal meal and the need for an ecclesial liturgy of the Word—could be

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resolved through a single ritual innovation: detach the rite of the bread and the cup from its original meal context and place it in a new congregational setting parallel to the Jewish morning service in the synagogue.42

Added to the loss of the reference to the people of Israel and the city of Jerusalem, the loss of the domestic communal setting has greatly contributed to severing the Eucharist from its original Jewish setting and, accordingly, to its connection with the living Jewish people. This evolution stands in contrast to both the communal and the “messianic” elements that, according to Kinzer, characterize the Jewish tradition

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In effect, each meal—and especially those of Shabbat and holidays—assumes a sacramental character . . . . I know this from my own daily meals, which are preceded by hand-washing and followed by the ritual grace, and even more from the encounter with God made possible by the holy banquets of the Sabbath, the Passover, and the other Jewish holidays. I have also witnessed Hasidic gatherings in Jerusalem where hundreds of Jewish boys and young men stand on risers and sing hymns while their beloved Rebbe and his council of elders sit at table in their midst and distribute pieces of food to be shared by all. I have likewise partaken of Orthodox Jewish wedding feasts in which the eating, drinking, dancing, and praying blend together in an ecstatic mix of earthly celebration and heavenly longing. In such settings, it is easy to imagine the wedding feast at Cana, the meals of the risen Jesus with his disciples, or the joyful “breaking of bread” of the Jerusalem community after Pentecost.43

There is no doubt that, from Kinzer’s point of view, one of the fruits of Jewish disciples of Jesus conforming to a traditional rabbinic lifestyle would be a recovered sense of the Jewish dimension of the Eucharist that would beneft the entire ekklesia: “The re-establishment of the ecclesia ex circumcisione and the renewal of communion and joint functioning of the Church’s ‘two lungs’ has the potential to transform the eucharistic consciousness of the Church of the nations without altering anything fundamental in its eucharistic practice.44 I fnd one of the elements of Kinzer’s argument most revealing. The historic move of the Eucharistic ritual out of its originally domestic setting, its shift toward an increasingly sacred congregational setting, is portrayed as contingent on practical considerations that have nothing to do with the preceding Jewish tradition. Once again, Kinzer comes close to a Rozensweigan picture of the Christian religion as a “Judaism-for-Gentiles”: “Would it not have been better if the eucharistic meal had retained all of the features of a Jewish festal banquet? From another perspective, however, these changes could have been appropriate and benefcial adaptations in the context of the

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Church of the nations.”45 Be it as it may, the case for a “betrayal” of the Jewish tradition could have been made had the Eucharist been simply about the “blessings of the bread and of the cup” that characterize Jewish domestic liturgy, in contrast to regular prayer services at the synagogue. However, as Kinzer himself shows, the Eucharist is somewhat more than a birkat-hamazon, a blessing of the food. At the Last Supper, Christ establishes this blessing as a zikkaron, an act of liturgical remembrance of his own sacrifce to come (Matt 26:29, Mark 14:22–25, Luke 22:15–20). In his frst epistle to the Corinthians, Paul already witnesses the existence of a Eucharistic ritual based on the proleptic zikkaron of the Last Supper:

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For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you (ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν). Do this in remembrance of me (εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν).” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new Covenant in my blood (ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι). Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me (εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν). For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (τὸν θάνατον τοῦ κυρίου καταγγέλλετε ἄχρι οὗ ἔλθῃ).” (1 Cor 11:23–26)

In his book on the Eucharist, Louis Bouyer eloquently describes how the zikkaron, the memorial, of the Avoda prayer conveys the mirabilia Dei, the great divine deeds associated with the creation of the world and the redemption of Israel.46 The berakhot or blessings that constituted the core element of the Temple liturgy were already calling for one’s entire dedication to God; thanksgiving and spiritual self-sacrifce went hand in hand.47 At the Last Supper, however, the sacrifce that defnes the content of Jesus’s berakha is about the very gift of his life up to death on a Cross, and the mirabilia Dei associated with this sacrifce do not relate to the creation of the world or to the liberation from Egypt, but to the salvation of the world, beginning with that of Israel. If someone is aware of the radical newness concealed in the institution of the Eucharist, it is Bouyer himself: Let us repeat that the fact that the expression of this “memoria” is found in the same terms both in the Abodah prayer for the consecration of the Temple sacrifces and in the third meal berakah underlines its sacrifcial character. It is in this way above all that the sense of a sacrifce was decidedly attached to the cross which would sum up all previous sacrifces in itself and abolish them. This sense is given by the berakah of the bread and wine, as his body and blood, which are forever to be the substance of the “memorial” left by Jesus to his followers, to be represented unceasingly to God by them, as the defnitive

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pledge of his redeeming love. It may be said that at the Last Supper the cross of Christ and the Christian eucharist have inseparably received a sacrifcial character from Jesus—the cross of Christ because he handed himself over to it at the Last Supper as an immolated oblation, like that of the Passover lamb, in order to effect the new and eternal Covenant conforming to the divine plan “acknowledged” in his eucharist—the Christian eucharist, because it becomes at the same moment the “memorial” of Jesus and of his salvifc act.48

Kinzer appears to break with the classical explanation for the shift of the ritual from the domestic setting of a meal to that of a public liturgical service. He does not dwell on the fact that the meal in question is no ordinary meal, but rather the memorial of a sacrifce whose signifcance, according to the Christian faith, both recapitulates in itself and defnitively supersedes all the sacrifces offered in the Temple. Kinzer has no diffculty in claiming that the ongoing liturgy of the synagogue is heir to the ancient liturgy of the Temple even in the absence of ritual sacrifce. But when there is a ritual sacrifce, as in the Eucharistic liturgy, he fails to mention even the possibility that instead of implying a disconnection from the preceding Jewish tradition, the public celebration of the Eucharist would purposely and relevantly echo Temple liturgy. It is as if whatever Eucharistic rituals included, they owed it to a Jewish tradition that does not know about the revelation of Christ: festal banquet, formularies of blessing, Messianic/eschatological dimension, and even the presence of the risen Christ that is organically bound up with the life of the Jewish people. Meanwhile, Eucharistic rituals appear in many respects as the poor cousins of Judaism’s rich tradition of prayer with its domestic dimension, its orientation toward Jerusalem, and its references to the people of Israel. The striking contrast between a Jewish tradition of prayer that revolves around an absence—that of the actual Temple with its actual sacrifces—and a ritual that celebrates a presence—that of the risen Christ, fully acknowledged and becoming part of the faithful through the sharing of his body and blood—never surfaces in Kinzer’s refection on the Eucharist. Meanwhile this contrast implies that, in a defnite sense, the public confguration of the Eucharistic ritual makes it much closer to the rituals of the Temple than any prayer service of the Synagogue. The Eucharist established by Christ is heir—albeit in a radically new and unrepeatable mode—to the sacrifcial system of the Temple, the loss of which lies at the heart of the prayer of the synagogue. Commenting on the fact that early Syrian places of Christian worship started to have apses oriented to the East, in contrast to the uninterruptedly Jerusalem-oriented apses of synagogues, and that they now had altars in apses that used to be empty in synagogues, Bouyer writes: “Along with the Jewish origin of Christian worship a comparison of these two arrangements

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illustrates better than any commentary, the newness of Christianity. The Eucharist has replaced the Temple sacrifces and henceforth the Shekinah resides in the humanity of the risen Christ, who has no earthly dwelling place, but will return on the last day as the defnitive East that each Eucharist anticipates.”49 It is obvious that this disposition is a reminiscence of the Temple in Jerusalem: “While it was empty in the old synagogues (later the ark was installed there), in the Syrian church this Eastward apse now contains the altar before which hangs a second curtain, as if to signify that from now it is the only ‘holy of holies’ in the expectation of the Parousia.”50 Kinzer speaks of the shift of the apse’s orientation from Jerusalem to the East as a step toward the “Gentilization” of the Eucharistic ritual. This is because he has the architecture of synagogues in mind. But what about the orientation of the apse in the Temple? What was the orientation of the place of worship that, while standing, gave its orientation to all other places of worship? Etymologically, orientation means “Eastward.” Logically, orientation correlates a place that is higher and more central than the place that needs to be oriented. It is most likely that the Holy of Holies faced the East. This has nothing to do with topological contingencies. One already observes this disposition during the journey of Israel, under the guidance of Moses, toward the promised land: “Those who were to camp before the Tabernacle, in front—before the Tent of Meeting, on the east ‫— ִל ְפנֵ ֩י ֽא ֹהֶל־מֹו ֙ ֵעד׀ ִמז ְָ֜רחָה‬were Moses and Aaron and his sons, attending to the duties of the sanctuary, , ‫וְַאה ֲ֣ר ֹן‬ ‫ׁש ֹמ ְִרים֙ ִמׁש ֶ ְ֣מ ֶרת ַה ִּמקְּדָ֔ ׁש‬ ֽ ‫ּו ָב ָ֗ניו‬, as a duty on behalf of the Israelites; and any outsider who encroached was to be put to death” (Num 3:38). One fnds confrmation of this disposition in Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple: “[The angel] led me back to the entrance of the Temple, and I found that water was issuing from below the platform of the Temple—eastward, since the Temple faced east ‫— ּכִ ֽי־פְנֵ ֥י ה ַ ַּ֖בי ִת ק ִ ָ֑דים‬but the water was running out at the south of the altar, under the south wall of the Temple” (Ezek 47:1). The symbolic meaning of the eastward “re-orientation” of early Christian church architecture is fairly clear: henceforth, since the death and resurrection of Christ each place of worship is the Temple—not in the sense of a material recreation of the Temple that used to be, either that of Solomon or that or Esdras, but of the Messianic anticipation of the Temple prophesized by Ezekiel. In contrast to the Messianic expectations that surface in the course of a prayer service at the Synagogue, the Eucharistic ritual features the realization of the Messianic hope, even if the full revelation of this realization will have to wait until the end of times: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). It is because the Messiah came, that places of Christian worship face East as the Temple of Jerusalem used to do. But while they face East, these “new temples” do not look in the direction of the past but of the future, as they

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are oriented toward the second and fnal Coming of the Messiah: “For as the lightning comes from the east and fashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt 24:27). There is no denying that in the course of their formation, Eucharistic rituals very rapidly lost elements that connected them to the ongoing prayer of Israel. Still, what Kinzer interprets as a contingent process of “Gentilization” is mostly due to the fact that all these rituals grew out of a kernel that is absent from the ongoing prayer of Israel; namely, the institution of the Eucharist as a sacrament, the supernatural transformation of a traditional berakha into a life-giving zikkaron that derives its grace and power from the sacrifce of Christ on the Cross. This kernel is integrally Jewish. It is as Jewish as Christ is a Jew. And it is because the kernel of the Eucharist is so integrally Jewish that it is intimately connected with the liturgy of the Temple in Jerusalem, not in some imitative manner, but in a way that preserves-and-transfgures its sacrifcial dimension. In my opinion, Kinzer’s reluctance to acknowledge that the Eucharist, according to its essence, does not proceed from the rabbinic tradition but is a divine institution carried out by a Jew-incarnated God, points to a signifcant limitation in his ecclesiology. It is as if any change or transformation affecting the regime of Moses’s Torah had to be rabbinic to be Jewish or, conversely, if any such change emanated from a non-rabbinic authority ipso facto concurred to the “Gentilization” of Torah. However, the new and defnitive Covenant sealed through the sacrifce of Christ on the Cross is such a change or transformation. True, it is a fulfllment. But this fulfllment would not be a fulfllment if it were only an additional manner of preserving things the way they used to be. It is not such: Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifces that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach . . . . When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifces and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “see, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the frst in order to establish the second ἀναιρεῖ τὸ πρῶτον ἵνα τὸ δεύτερον στήσῃ. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctifed through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb 10:1; 8–10)

The effect of this change is a sacramental structure without which no Church is conceivable. Just as the Eucharist and Baptism, the sacraments of the New Covenant are supposed to be explicitly or implicitly established by Christ. Are sacraments, these supernatural realities instituted by Christ, this Jew-incarnated God, portents of Gentilization because they do not emanate

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from a rabbinic source? One may well claim that such a question does not make sense since God, who is the ultimate source of these supernatural realities, is neither a Jew nor a Gentile. But what about Moses’s Torah then? It there any more reason to call it Jewish? Did God not trace the original tablets of the law received by Moses with His own fnger? Torah is Jewish because it is destined to the people of Israel. But this is also the case of Christ’s Covenant. Or is the Messiah of Israel not destined to Israel frst? If the whole Catholic Church is Jewish, in the sense that I defned earlier—that of a mark of the Church—it is because the Church is the cosmic extension of a message of salvation carried by Israel and addressed to Israel (see chapter 1). What does not make sense is placing on the same footing the Church and rabbinic tradition as if the fulfllment of Jewish identity was a matter of choosing between their respective “advantages” and “drawbacks.” Rabbinic tradition, even if it originates in Torah, is a human institution.51 The Church, if what she claims to be is true, is a divine institution.52 For this reason, the reality that Jews are called to live as members of the Church is and will always remain quintessentially different from the reality they are living as members of the Synagogue, whichever is their stream of affliation. Once again, this does not have to do with a process of Gentilization that is contingent to the essence of the Church but to the very essence of the Church. As regards the Eucharistic ritual, re-incorporating, as Kinzer suggests, a reference to the Land and the people of Jerusalem and recovering the dimension of festal banquet, eventually of domestic celebration, are certainly steps in the right direction.53 But the more one re-judaizes the Eucharistic ritual—and the more rightfully and relevantly one does so—the farther away one drifts from rabbinic Judaism, rather than getting closer to realizing the dream of blending with it. The notion of a Man-God, Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the World, that gives his life for his nation on a Cross is consubstantial to the Eucharist, as it is the true body and blood offered in this sacrifce that the disciples are invited to consume. The more elements are taken from the rabbinic tradition and integrated into the rites associated with this celebration, the more absurd and religiously dangerous will this experiment be perceived by a tradition that has from the start rejected the main belief of Christianity as a heresy. But for those Jews who have embraced this belief, there is no other reason to join the Church than the conviction that they will fnd in her what they are unable to fnd in a Jewish tradition that developed independently of her. For them, the Messianic dimension of the Eucharist as well as the other sacraments is the goal and accomplishment toward which the whole Jewish tradition and identity lead. As emotionally painful as it might be, one must accept that the distance from the rabbinic religious world lies at the foundation of the Church. According to its essence, this distance does not result from the attitude of the

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Church but from that of the rabbinic world. When it comes to the Church, she should be capable of assimilating the true riches of the rabbinic tradition as they proceed from a Covenant, that of the Torah, that she acknowledges as part of her legacy. The truth is that this distance stems from the rejection by the rabbinic world of the belief on which the entire Church rests. Accepting this distance amounts to acknowledging the reality and intrinsic dignity of the rabbinic tradition. No one can or should be obliged to espouse the tenets of the Christian faith. Rejecting them, as disputable as this decision happened to be from a traditional Christian point of view, has indisputably enabled the vast majority of the Jewish world to build a splendid religious tradition, truly faithful to its divine foundation in Moses’s Torah. One cannot want to learn from this tradition and at the same time force it to deny itself by accepting what it cannot accept. If there is one aspect of the Eucharist that strikingly displays the quintessential and irreducible essence of this bloodless sacrifce, it is the fact that it is consumed by Jewish and Gentile disciples on an equal footing. Baptism, as the sacrament that constitutes the Church, is identically received by Jewish and Gentile disciples. The Eucharist, the sacrament that continuously sustains and unceasingly recreates the life of the Church, is identically shared by Jewish and Gentile disciples. The effect of the sacrament that ushers the faithful into intimate communion with God is to establish the communion of the faithful among themselves, thus making one people by breaking the wall of division between Jews and Greeks. This aspect did not elude the attention of Kinzer who sees here a main factor of unity in his model of a bilateral Ekklesia: “It seems clear from the Apostolic Writings that one of the crucial functions of this ritual is to be an expression and instrument of unity” (1 Cor 10:16–17; 11:17–32). It is also clear that the apostles viewed the partaking of food at the same table (in contexts that likely included a Eucharistic dimension) as a primary sign of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in one community (Gal 2:11–14). Thus, any adequate structural and communal embodiment of bilateral ecclesiology will need to provide contexts where members of the Jewish and Gentile wings of the one ekklesia can gather together to celebrate ha-Zikkaron as one twofold body.”54 Out of the one Eucharist, notwithstanding the multiplicity of rites, a new people is born formed of Jews and Gentiles. One of the main tenets of Judaism is that the promise of a “new people,” as it unfolds in the Christian Church, implies the deliberate and biological disintegration of Israel identifed with the “old people.” The challenge of a Messianic ecclesiology is to show that this is not necessarily the case. On what basis? What could be the structure of a Jewish Church within a Church that is both Catholic and Jewish according to her essence? One cannot conceive of a sacrifce without the one who offers the

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sacrifce. Refecting on the Eucharist brings about a discussion on priesthood, a decisive element when it comes to defning the structure of the Church.

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2.3. Priesthood “Salvation is from the Jews, ἡ σωτηρία ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐστίν”—traditional interpretations of Jesus’s saying in John 4:22 refer to the origin of salvation, either as the history and religious legacy of Israel or as the specifc kinship of Jesus. We saw that there could be another interpretation of the same verse. Relying on the causative function of the preposition ἐκ, one may argue that what is indicated here is the corporate role of Israel in the death of Jesus: by bringing its Messiah to death out of ignorance, Israel involuntarily brings about the salvation of the world. Not only is the one that intentionally and freely brings salvation to the world a Jew, not only does his deed constitute the ultimate achievement and goal of Israel’s sacred history, but the deed through which salvation is achieved involves Israel as the involuntary instrument of its realization. Moreover, the nature of this instrumental role has to do with the priestly function of Israel. Through the sacrifcial hand of Israel, Jesus offers his life to the Father on behalf of humankind. In this sacrifce offered once and for all, as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is both High Priest and victim: “For it was ftting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifces day after day, frst for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7:26–27). All priesthood in the Church derives from the priesthood of Christ— “Christus . . . est fons totius sacerdotii, Christ is the fountain-head of the entire priesthood” writes Aquinas.55 If Israel is closely connected to the sacrifce that manifests Christ’s priesthood, how could it not be connected with the priesthood that derives from Christ’s priesthood? But in what manner? What is certain is that the sacrifce of Christ entails a dramatic change in the structure of Israel’s priesthood as it is defned in the Torah of Moses: Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood—for the people received the law under this priesthood—what further need would there have been to speak of another priest arising according to the order of Melchizedek, rather than one according to the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well, μετατιθεμένης γὰρ τῆς ἱερωσύνης ἐξ ἀνάγκης καὶ νόμου μετάθεσις γίνεται. (Heb 7:11–12)

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How does the institution of a new, non-Levitical priesthood in Christ transform the priestly role of Israel? Refecting on the nature of Israel’s priesthood, Kinzer does not focus on the institution that came to an end with Christ’s sacrifce on the Cross. Instead, he refers to the enduring sacramental dimension of Israel’s biological existence. He quotes, not without qualifying it, M. Wyschogrod’s claim that Judaism does not need sacraments in the ecclesial sense of the term because Israel’s only sacrament is her own “fesh” in which “the presence of God makes itself felt in the world.”56 Kinzer speaks of a “sacramental primacy” of Jewish biological existence, as a token of a holiness to which all human beings are ultimately and eschatologically called: “In the narrative of the Torah, the people of Israel becomes the frst-fruits of the eschatological consummation that awaits all creation on that day when all the world will become a temple for God’s glory.”57 On the same line, he argues that the sacramental dimension of Jewish fesh is the reason why rabbis are not as crucial as priests are when it comes to the constitution and stability of their respective communities of faith. He goes so far as to contrast ordained ministry in an ecclesial context with sexual reproduction within the Jewish people: The sacraments of holy orders and Baptism function together within Catholic life as the instruments of ecclesial continuity and identity from one generation to the next. The true analoguè to these sacraments among the Jewish people is neither the offce of the rabbinate nor the commandment of circumcision, but feshly reproduction within the framework of communal Jewish life. While the sacrament of holy orders normally involves the ordination of celibates, the sacrament of Jewish continuity involves sexual intercourse and physical birth in the context of marriage. According to Catholic teaching, the former transmits a priesthood corresponding to Jesus’ resurrection by the Spirit of holiness; according to our reading of Hebrews, Ephesians, and Romans, the latter transmits a priesthood corresponding to Jesus’ feshly descent from the patriarchs and the kings of Israel. These two priesthoods are not at odds, nor are they sequentially related (with the former replacing the latter). Rather, they are mutually interdependent, from beginning to end.58

The argument rests on the intimate connection between the calling of holiness and the dignity of priesthood as inscribed in the very Jewish being, prior to circumcision and regardless of any attempt at keeping mitzvot: “you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6). Beyond the abrogation of the Levitical priesthood, it is the function of this “national” or “natural” priesthood that, according to Kinzer, undergoes a thorough transformation within the Church of Christ:

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The sanctifed genealogical bond with both the patriarchs and the Messiah does not in itself assure the eternal destiny of individual Jews, but it does distinguish the entire people of Israel as a nation set apart for special divine service. The “fesh” has its own necessary and proper role to play—for both Jesus and his kin. We should not be surprised, therefore, to discover that those who are joined to Messiah Jesus in both fesh and Spirit—the chosen ones from among the chosen ones—are also summoned to a distinctive priestly vocation. According to this calling, they serve as an effective sign of the enduring holiness of Israel in Messiah Jesus, and of the apostolic foundation and catholic identity of the messianic ecclesia.59

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Stated in this manner, the priestly function of Israel in the Body of Messiah comes down to its sheer existence as both the calling to holiness and faith in Jesus Messiah are suffcient to ensure the “apostolic foundation” as well as “the catholic identity” of the Church. But Kinzer argues that, due to the context of separation from the wider Jewish community, the Jewish disciples that are in the Church receive an additional priestly assignment. As the descendants of Aaron represented the whole of Israel before God, the “remnant” of Israel—that is, the Jewish disciples of Jesus—intercedes for the whole Jewish community, the majority of which does not acknowledge Yeshua as Messiah. In order to show this, Kinzer develops a fairly original interpretation of a statement from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “If the part of the dough offered as frst fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy” (Rom 11:16). He identifes the “frst-fruits” with the “remnant” of Israel: The offering of frst fruits fts into a wider pattern within the Torah according to which a part is devoted to God as representative of the whole. The Aaronic priesthood constitutes a prime example of this pattern in which the holiness of the representative part sustains the holiness of that which it represents—the entire people of Israel. Similarly, Jewish disciples of Jesus perform a priestly service on behalf of their fellow Jews by representing them before God.

Some scholars refer the “frst-fruits” and the “root” to the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, arguing that Paul intends to emphasize the holiness of the olive tree on which Gentiles are grafted as “wild olives” (see 11:17). It is true that, with Kinzer, one can also understand the frst-fruits from an eschatological perspective, as referring to the defnitive “re-acceptance” of Israel at the end of this eon (see 11:15).60 What is more diffcult is to see here a reference to the relation of representation that characterizes the priestly offce. In either case—“frst-fruits” referring to the Israel of the origins or to the Israel of last times—the relationship in question is not that of priestly representation but

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generic growth. The “root” does not “represent” the branches; it gives birth to them in time. The relationship is identical to that of the “frst-fruits” with the “batch” in the sacrifcial system of the Temple. Mixed with musk, oil and four, the frst-fruits of the earth such as pieces of corn, after being presented in the Temple were to be offered by way of sacrifce in the mode of a baked product: “As the frst yield of your baking, you shall set aside a loaf as a gift; you shall set it aside as a gift like the gift from the threshing foor” (Num 15:20). The quality of the outcome depends on that of the origin. One fnds the same idea expressed in Galatians: “A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough, μικρὰ ζύμη ὅλον τὸ φύραμα ζυμοῖ” (Gal 5:9). Contrary to the notion of generic growth that implies identity of subject (the same piece of corn will become a cake once baked), that of representation associated with priesthood implies a quintessential difference between the subject that represents and the subject that is represented. This is the defnition of ordained priesthood: one is appointed to represent the faithful before God. A process of selection or election of the one who represents is inferred, whatever this process might be. A priest is endowed with natural or supernatural prerogatives, which makes him worthy of his function. In the Catholic tradition, ordination itself is the supernatural endowment of a subject whose natural abilities have been deemed suited to this offce. As a result, a priest is both “like” the faithful by virtue of his humanity—otherwise he would not be able to re-present them before God—and “above” the faithful by virtue of the grace of the sacrament—otherwise he would not be worthy of representing them. This is pre-eminently the case of the one who is at the source of this sacramental grace—Christ whom the epistle to the Hebrews depicts as the one and perfect high priest: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and fnd grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:15–16). True, ordained priesthood is not the only possible form of priesthood in the Jewish and Christian traditions. As Kinzer rightly mentions, Israel as the people of God is a kingdom of priests. Although a member of Israel is not appointed but born as such, he or she performs priestly duties to the extent to which he or she serves God. But Israel has also known the ordained type of priesthood that belonged to the sons of Levi. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one reads: The chosen people was constituted by God as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” But within the people of Israel, God chose one of the twelve tribes, that of Levi, and set it apart for liturgical service; God himself is its inheritance. A special rite consecrated the beginnings of the priesthood of the Old Covenant.

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The priests are “appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifces for sins.”61

Since the priesthood of the Old Testament is fulflled in Christ, the same Catechism points to an equivalent twofold sacramental disposition in the Church:

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Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church “a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.” The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. The faithful exercise their Baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confrmation the faithful are “consecrated to be . . . a holy priesthood.”62

The Catechism emphasizes both the distinction and the mutual articulation of these two categories of priesthood: “The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, ‘each in its own proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ.’ While being ‘ordered one to another,’ they differ essentially.”63 Clearly, it is ministerial priesthood, the one “chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifces for sins” (Heb. 5:1), that the author of the epistle to the Hebrews has in mind when he declares: “For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well, μετατιθεμένης γὰρ τῆς ἱερωσύνης ἐξ ἀνάγκης καὶ νόμου μετάθεσις γίνεται” (Heb 7:12). It is striking that Kinzer almost leaves ministerial priesthood aside when he develops his considerations on priesthood and the Jewish disciples of Christ. As I mentioned earlier, he contrasts “feshly reproduction,” as the main feature of Israel’s priesthood, with ordained priesthood as a property of the Catholic Church, implying in this manner that this notion is foreign to the defning element of Israel’s priesthood. But what about Aaronic priesthood? Is it not equally important in the tradition of Israel? The truth is that the fliation between Aaronic priesthood and Catholic ministerial priesthood is obvious, especially at the reading of the Epistle to the Hebrews: just as Aaronic priests used to offer bloody sacrifces of animals in the Temple, likewise Jesus offered his fesh and blood by way of sacrifce on the Cross. This is the reason why some are appointed to offer sacrifces that re-actualize the sacrifce of Christ within his Church, in the likeness of the sons of Aaron who were appointed to offer sacrifces in the Temple.64 Such fliation is no simple continuity; it is, as the author of the Epistle writes, a μετάθεσις, an analogical transposition, an identity of proportion through a difference of content: “μετατιθεμένης γὰρ τῆς ἱερωσύνης ἐξ ἀνάγκης καὶ νόμου μετάθεσις γίνεται

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(when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well).”65 It is not a simple continuity because the change involves the shift of an identical type of relationship from an inferior stage to a superior one:

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[Christ] entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifes those who have been defled so that their fesh is purifed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! (Heb 9:12–14)

Just as the sacrifces of animals at the hands of Aaronic priests used to renew the physical purity of the faithful, a new type of priesthood, “according to the order of Melchizedek,” now perpetuates the sacrifce of Christ out of which it arose, so that the inner or moral purity of the faithful might be renewed. If a corporate Jewish presence within an authentically Catholic Church is legitimate, as Kinzer and myself claim, then I must agree with Kinzer that the result of this metathesis is not the cancellation of Israel’s call to holiness and priestly dignity. But just as the new ministerial priesthood in Christ cancels the exclusive entitlement of the sons of Aaron to priesthood, the new priesthood pertaining to the faithful or common priesthood that arises from Christ’s sacrifce cancels Israel’s exclusive entitlement to holiness and priestly dignity. Jews and Gentiles are equally called to holiness in Christ; they equally partake of the priestly dignity that only Christ fully possesses. Accordingly and from now on, any Jew, just as any Gentile, can become a priest if he is deemed worthy of this offce by those who have the authority to do so. To conclude, the analoguè according to Christ of Israel’s priestly dignity according to the fesh (as a chosen nation) is not the Church’s ministerial priesthood but the priestly dignity of the whole people of God that constitutes the Church of Christ. This implies that one cannot simply defne, as Kinzer does, the priestly role of Israel in the Church as a calling to holiness and priestly existence. It is true that according to “the narrative of the Torah,” the holiness of Israel points to an “eschatological consummation” when “all the world will become a temple of God’s glory.”66 But according to the narrative of the New Testament and the tradition of the Church, this eschaton is already partially realized in the Church. The calling to holiness as well as the priestly dignity characterizes all the disciples of Christ in the Church, Jews and Gentiles indiscriminately. Consequently, the specifc priestly role of Israel in

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the Church cannot be identifed with the proclamation of God’s holiness in a non-specifc manner—this calling belongs to all members of the Church. Conversely, the analoguè according to Christ of the ministerial priesthood of ancient Israel is not the common priesthood according to the fesh of Israel. The common priesthood of Israel cannot be the outcome of Christ’s metathesis or transposition of Aaronic priesthood since both priesthoods existed simultaneously before Christ’s metathesis. As a matter of self-evidence, the analoguè according to Christ of Aaronic priesthood is the Church’s ministerial priesthood. It is fairly easy to understand why Kinzer ignores this obvious analogy. One cannot emphasize this analogical fliation without simultaneously considering the glaring absence of an equivalent one within rabbinic Judaism. Since the religious lifestyle of Jewish disciples of Christ should, according to Kinzer, reproduces that of rabbinic Judaism within the Ekklesia, Kinzer is not prepared to consider the hypothesis that this Gentile side could have preserved an institution more faithful to the tradition of ancient Israel than its rabbinic equivalent. This a priori dismissal has dramatic implications when it comes to the fgure of a Messianic ekklesia. Indeed, accepting that in this respect the Church could be “more Jewish” than the rabbinic tradition implies that by embracing ministerial priesthood as it has been preserved in the Church, Jewish disciples might renew a dimension of their Jewish identity that even if it corresponds to the design of God over Israel, is nowadays lost from sight or rather suspended in rabbinic Judaism.67 Naturally, it does not make more sense to claim that the priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek is Jewish than to claim that it is Gentile. The life-giving sacrifce of Christ is anchored in the divine being of Christ; it stems from the abyss of the Trinity as the eponymous icon of Andrej Rublev gives us to contemplate—and God is neither a Jew nor a Gentile. It is not a coincidence that the book of Genesis is silent regarding the origin of Melchizedek (14:18), as the Fathers of the Church have so repeatedly emphasized and magnifcently glossed over. The only certainty here is that the kingpriest of Salem was not from Abraham’s stock since Abraham was the one who owed him tithe and not the reverse (14:20). The priesthood according to Melchizedek transcends the boundaries that divide humankind into Israel and non-Israel. But it is not a coincidence either that God took Jewish fesh or that it is through this Jewish fesh, sacrifced on a Cross, that He willed to pour His incorruptible life over all humankind. To the extent that the promise of God destined to all nations is consubstantial to Jewish being, priesthood according to Melchizedek pertains to Jewish identity. The institution of a priesthood according to the Aaronic order is what prepared the advent of a priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. Messianic priesthood as warranting

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a “worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24) was promised to Israel from the beginning. The coming of this worship that is “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21) is inscribed in the prayer of Solomon dedicating the frst Temple in Jerusalem: if a foreigner who is not of Your people Israel comes from a distant land for the sake of Your name—for they shall hear about Your great name and Your mighty hand and Your outstretched arm—when he comes to pray toward this House, oh, hear in Your heavenly abode and grant all that the foreigner asks You for. Thus all the peoples of the earth will know Your name and revere You, as does Your people Israel; and they will recognize that Your name is attached to this House that I have built. (1 Kgs 8:41–43)

It is anticipated by Isaiah among many other prophets:

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I will bring them to My sacred mount And let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices Shall be welcome on My altar; For My House shall be called A house of prayer for all peoples. (Isa 56:7)

Non-Jews did not know the gods they worshipped, as Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, but, as Jesus adds, “we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). For this reason, the “worship in truth and spirit” the imminent coming of which Jesus announced to the Samaritan woman, worship that would include Jews and non-Jews on an equal footing, features the Messianic fulfllment of a promise that was made to Israel alone. It is fair to claim that, to some extent, the priesthood according to Melchizedek is simply the reestablishment of the worship of Israel according to its inner truth: “Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’ but you are making it a den of robbers’ ” (Matt 21:12–13).68 Ministerial priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek does not belong to any ethnè in particular, as it realizes the Messianic promise of a “house of prayer for all the peoples”—and yet it uniquely relates to Jewish identity, as this universalization of divine worship is the realization of the Messianic promise made to Israel alone as well as the intimate truth of Israel’s tradition of worship. It is true to claim with Kinzer that Israel qua Israel exercises a priestly function within the Church as a consequence of its sheer corporate existence.

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But this “common priesthood” of Israel is not the exclusive source of holiness in the Church; the whole common priesthood of the Church refects the holiness of Christ. What the common priesthood of Israel in the Church specifcally refects is the holiness of Israel in Christ; it is a tribute to the holy Jewish fesh of Christ; it is a testimony to the identity of Israel’s corporate holiness and the holiness of Christ. From this point of view, the priestly function of Israel qua Israel does not change with the metathesis of Christ; it is simply fully manifested, and this to the beneft of the whole Church. By contrast, what changes because of Christ’s metathesis is ministerial priesthood. But in contrast to what Kinzer seems inclined to think, this universalization of the Aaronic priesthood through the transformation of its very content is not indifferent or neutral in regard to Jewish identity. On the contrary, the truth of Israel’s worship comes to be fully manifested in it, and this in a manner that is unknown to the rabbinic tradition. Ministerial priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek has the potential to secure the most authentically Jewish worship mediation between Israel and its God—to restore its ancient Hebraic dignity in a new and perfect mode. True, just as for the other sacraments that we have examined, the form of ministerial priesthood as it is exercised nowadays in historical Churches such as the Catholic Church is the outcome of a long, almost bi-millennial estrangement from the Church’s Jewish roots. It is the task of a Jewish ekklesia to reappropriate ministerial priesthood to itself. I will examine how at a later stage. What I would like to do now is refect on the ecclesiological implications of our considerations on the common priesthood of Israel.

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2.4. The Common Priesthood of Israel: Distinguishing the Sanctifying and the Sanctified The common priesthood of Israel plays a central role in Kinzer’s bilateral ecclesiology. As said before, Kinzer, commenting on the metaphor of the frst-fruits and the batch in Romans, defnes the priestly role of the “remnant” of Israel in the Church in terms of intercession for the wider Jewish world: “Jewish disciples of Jesus perform a priestly service on behalf of their fellow Jews by representing them before God” (Rom 11:16).69 This is not the only priestly function of the “Jewish side” of the bilateral Ekklesia according to Kinzer. Being the living nexus between the wider Jewish world and the Gentile ekklesia, the “remnant” intercedes on behalf of Gentile disciples as well. Kinzer develops this idea in connection with Paul’s use of “saints” to designate the members of James’s kehillah in Jerusalem: A priestly reading of Romans 11:16 draws support from a curious Pauline idiom. In several texts, Paul refers to the ecclesia of Jerusalem as “saints” (Rom

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15:25–26, 31; 1 Cor 16:1; 2 Cor 8:4; 9:1, 12). This usage resembles that already seen in Ephesians, where the term “saints” sometimes refers to Israel as a whole, and sometimes to the Jewish ecclesia. In light of Romans 11:16, we may understand this terminology as implying that the community of Jewish disciples of Jesus, especially as it was embodied in frst-century Jerusalem, constituted a sanctifying frst fruits not only for the Jewish people, but also for the ecclesia from among the nations. (see Jas 1:18)70

Kinzer sees a manifestation of the priestly offce of the “remnant,” identifed with the frst community of disciples in Jerusalem, in one passage of the Epistle to the Romans where Paul tells about his intention to organize a collection on behalf of the “saints” in Jerusalem: At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints [i.e., the Jerusalem ecclesia]; for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources [koinonia] with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. They were pleased to do this, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to share [koinoneo] in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service [leiturgeo] to them in material things. (Rom 15:25–27)71

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Kinzer draws a picture of the intimate dynamics of the frst Church from this passage: The Jewish Jesus-followers of Jerusalem have ‘shared’ their spiritual treasure with those from the nations; in gratitude, those from the nations are now reciprocating by “sharing” their material treasure. As a parallel expression for this “sharing” of material resources, Paul says that those from the nations are performing “priestly service” (leiturgeo) by sending material gifts to the Jerusalem community. The reciprocal nature of the “sharing” noted by Paul implies that the ‘‘priestly service’ was likewise reciprocal—since the Jerusalem Jesuscommunity had also performed priestly service for those from the nations by sharing with them their spiritual treasure, the good news of God. Paul’s priestly apostolic service for those from the nations as a leiturgos (Rom 15:15–16) is related to the priestly apostolic function of the Jerusalem community, and presumably of the body of Jewish disciples of Jesus as a whole.72

There is no denying that, at the time of Paul’s ministry, the community of Jerusalem played the role of “mother Church” in respect to all other congregations. It counted among its members some who had been living witnesses to the teachings of Christ and the events surrounding his death and resurrection. There is no denying either that Paul was fully aware of Israel’s prerogatives as the human matrix out of which the message of God’s salvation

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was addressed to all nations under the sun (see Rom 9–11). The question is whether on this basis one may consistently argue that James’s community was exerting a priestly offce on behalf of Gentile Churches as well as of the wider Jewish world. As Kinzer points out, the mission of sanctifcation pertains to the very essence of priesthood. However, I fnd it diffcult to derive the unique priestly calling of the congregation in Jerusalem from the fact that Paul speaks of the “saints” that belongs to this community (Rom 15:25). The overriding point is that Paul mentions the presence of “God’s holy people” or “saints” in just about every community to which he writes: in Corinth (1 Cor 1:2; 16: 15; 2 Cor 1:1), Philippi (Phil 1:1; 4:21), Colossae (Col 1:2, 21:4, 12), and last but not least, Rome itself (Rom 1:7–8; 12:12–13). When Paul sends to the “saints” of Philippi the greetings from the saints of “Caesar’s household” (Phil 4:21), there is little likelihood that these “saints” are Jews. As Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians, the “saints” are all those, Jewish disciples as well as Gentile converts, who dedicate their efforts to building the living Body of Christ that is his Church: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, πρὸς τὸν καταρτισμὸν τῶν ἁγίων εἰς ἔργον διακονίας, εἰς οἰκοδομὴν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ” (Eph 4:11–12). There is no reason to assume that, for Paul, Jewishness added anything to the holy character of the ministers of Christ or that holiness referred to the Jewish ekklesia in contrast to the Gentile one. In his view, it is not Jewishness that sanctifes but the Gospel of Christ to which the “saints” have dedicated their existence. True, the situation of the community of Jerusalem was unique in the original Church. Sometimes Paul mentions “the saints” without additional qualifcations, referring to those that are in Jerusalem (e.g., 2 Cor 8:4; Eph 1:15). And when he arranges a collection to be sent to them from the communities where he preaches, he points to its work of sanctifcation that has benefted these communities: “for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, τοῖς πνευματικοῖς αὐτῶν ἐκοινώνησαν τὰ ἔθνη, they ought also to be of service to them in material things” (Rom 15:27). But is this unique status of the community of Jerusalem as head and sanctifying source of the whole Church due to the Jewishness of its members or to the fact that it is from it and through it that the Gospel was announced to all the nations of the world in the frst place? As illustrated earlier, Kinzer bolsters his case for the priestly function of the community of Jerusalem by associating it with the personal ministry of Paul: “Paul’s priestly apostolic service for those from the nations as a leiturgos (Rom 15:15–16) is related to the priestly apostolic function of the Jerusalem community, and presumably of the body of Jewish disciples of Jesus as a whole.”73 But in the passage

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Kinzer refers to, it is striking that the verb that implies a truly sanctifying action (ἱερουργέω, “performing sacred rites,” by contrast to λειτουργέω that mainly refers to performing civil duties) designates the service of the Gospel or the apostolic dignity: “because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, ἱερουργοῦντα τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctifed by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:15–16). It is not their degree of Jewishness that endows the community of Jerusalem and Paul with an apostolic dignity that translates into a sanctifying function on behalf of Gentile congregations. It is in virtue of their unique apostolic dignity that the community of Jerusalem and Paul teach Gentile congregations and, by the same token, sanctify them. All the apostles were Jews, but not all Jews were apostles. Jewish congregations founded through apostolic preaching were exactly in the same situation of being taught and sanctifed by the community of Jerusalem. Just as Paul was designated to preach to Gentiles, the community of Jerusalem designated Peter as apostle to the Jews. What sanctifed those to whom Peter and Paul were sent was not the Jewish fesh they shared—otherwise what would have been the beneft of apostolic preaching to Jews?—but their common faith; that is, the power of God working through the announcement of the Gospel: “for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles” (Gal 2:8). That one needs to distinguish apostolic dignity from its Jewish substrate so as not to describe the ecclesiological status and function of the Jewish ekklesia in terms of apostolic dignity is clearly shown by the fact that the two realities were rapidly separated in the course of the Church’s early history. While the original Jewish community of disciples in Jerusalem disintegrated, the apostolic dignity endured in a specifc mode. The transmission of apostleship, what will later become apostolic succession, is already attested in the Book of Acts: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (Acts 13:2–3). Like Paul, Barnabas is an apostle (Acts 14:14) because together they were sent off to preach the Gospel after having had the elders of Jerusalem lay their hands on them. If it is true that apostolic dignity is transmissible in that manner, why should it not be transmitted to Gentile disciples in a Church where the wall of hatred between Jews and Gentiles has defnitively been abolished? It might well be the case that the frst successor of Peter in Rome, Linus (+76) was already a Gentile. It does not make sense to claim that just because they are Jews, the function of Jewish disciples in the Church is to sanctify Gentile disciples. It is

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the actual transmission of the Gospel of salvation that sanctifes the one who receives it. A Jewish disciple that has received the Gospel is not holier than a Gentile disciple in the same situation, and the same goes for the distinct congregations they might form. For the very same reason, neither does it make sense to claim that one of the priestly duties of Jewish disciples is to sanctify the wider Jewish world. If it is the transmission of the Gospel that sanctifes, how could Jewish disciples sanctify those who do not want to receive it? The former surely can pray on behalf of the latter; they might have more reasons to do so than their Gentile brethren, but there is no reason to believe that their prayers will be more effective than those of their Gentile brethren if these are holier and closer to God than they are themselves. True, what is transmitted and sanctifes, that is, the Gospel, cannot be understood without its Jewish component; receiving it means that Gentiles become children of Abraham in their own way. Conversely, Jews are no longer the owners of God’s revelation. As we saw earlier, they need to convert, just as Gentiles, to receive the salvation that is destined to them—which is precisely the object of the apostolic preaching to Jews. Just as Gentiles are required to discover and cherish the holiness of Israel, Jewish disciples are required to open themselves up to the holiness that God works among Gentiles and to cherish it. Obviously, Paul has in mind his own nation when, in a passage of his Epistle to the Colossians, he evokes the “mystery hidden for generations and centuries” that has “now been revealed to his holy people” or his “saints”: “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1: 27). The common priesthood of Israel, that which is consubstantial to Jewish fesh and messianically transfgured in Yeshua, entails celebrating the holiness and marvels of Israel’s God in the midst of His Church. It is a spiritual necessity for Gentiles who have become children of Abraham in Christ. But Gentiles are also endowed with Christ’s priestly dignity as soon as they receive Baptism in his name. Gentile common priesthood involves celebrating the holiness and marvels of the God of Israel on behalf of the nations. It is a spiritual necessity for the Jewish disciples who, without the testimony of Gentile holiness, would never be able to grasp the breadth and depth of the mystery that had been entrusted to them since the beginning and has been now, at the last stage of history, fully revealed to them. In the interaction of these two types of common priesthood that ends up constituting the common priesthood of the whole Church, there is not one who teaches and the other who is taught; there is not one who preaches and the other who listens: both teach and both are taught by each other; both preach through their mere existence and both need to listen to what the other preaches to them in this manner.

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In my opinion, Kinzer’s identifcation of the community of Jerusalem with the embodiment of the Jewish ekklesia does not convey an adequate picture of the confguration and situation of this ekklesia in the very early Church. To better understand the ecclesial forms of the Jewish presence within the original Church, I believe one needs to consider the basic unit that manifests this presence—the “standard” kehillah of Jewish disciples. This, in turn, will lead to refecting on the dimensions of the ministerial priesthood in the context of Jewish discipleship.

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3. CHARISMA AND INSTITUTION: DISTINCTION AND INTERACTION BETWEEN APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY AND THE JEWISH PRESENCE IN THE CHURCH From the Book of Acts and the various letters included in the New Testament, it is clear that the original Church was not only the fruit of apostolic preaching, even if she could never have developed independently of such preaching. Small communities here and there on the surface of the oikumene formed after hearing the Good News, often from the mouth of self-proclaimed preachers and with scant reliable information. Apollos, himself a Jew, is the example of such a wandering preacher. His understanding of the Message needed to be corrected and supplemented by disciples of Paul (Acts 18:26). The community in Ephesus that Apollos guided had not heard about Baptism in the Holy Spirit before Paul came and instructed them, laying his hands upon some of them (Acts 19:2–6). It is only natural that the Message would frst circulate through the network of the Jewish diaspora and fnd its original anchorage in Jewish settings. One cannot come to faith without hearing: “how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent” (Rom 10:14–15). On the other hand, one cannot believe in what one hears without the Holy Spirit: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:6–7). Describing the community of Jerusalem as the main instance of the Jewish ekklesia leaves aside the quintessential difference between this community and a “normal” community of Jewish converts. The community of Jerusalem was endowed with apostolic authority. From it and through its emissaries the word spread to the congregations of the Jewish diaspora (Acts 13:5, 14–47; 14:1; 17:1, 10, 17; 18:4, 19; 19:8; 23:6). It is the same community

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that through the same emissaries ratifed or “institutionalized” the fruits of apostolic preaching. The community of Jerusalem presided over the apostolic activity in the Church while new communities of Jewish and Gentile converts were merely the outcome of this activity. However it would be wrong to assume that the members of these communities of the diaspora were merely passive listeners of the emissaries from Jerusalem. Countless times in the Book of Acts we see that God had prepared the hearts of those who, Gentiles or Jews, received the apostolic words. The way we are told about the very beginning of the community in Philippi in Acts 16 is enlightening in this regard. On a Shabbat, Paul goes to the place, near a river, where Jews gathered to pray. There, Paul meets a woman called Lydia: “A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). It is the Holy Spirit that sends Paul and his companions to Macedonia (Acts 16: 7–9), and it is the same Holy Spirit that prepares Lydia’s heart to receive the preaching of Paul. In the absence of some central administration, the growth of local communities out of apostolic preaching must unquestionably be ascribed to the powerful action of the Holy Spirit. The apostolic generation is witness to this growth that is both spiritual and organic because, just as in a body, it gives rise to specifc functions that are all coordinated for the sake of the whole:

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There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling . . . . But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift . . . to some, his “gift” was that they should be apostles; to some prophets; to some, evangelists; to some, pastors and teachers . . . . The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. (Eph 4:4,7, 11–12)

At the same time, the Book of Acts shows that the fruits of the Holy Spirit needed to be fraternally confrmed and formally affrmed by those who had apostolic authority, lest local communities went astray so that they could not distinguish what pertained to the Holy Spirit from what was foreign to it. The Book of Acts tells about “elders” from local communities being appointed by the emissaries from Jerusalem: “And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, χειροτονήσαντες δὲ αὐτοῖς κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν πρεσβυτέρους, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe” (Acts 14: 23). The verb that is used here, χειροτονέω, designates the action of voting or electing by stretching one’s hand.74 The institutional charisma with which the

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community of Jerusalem entrusts Paul confrms and strengthens the choice of an embryonic community of Jewish converts under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The very notion of “elder,” that derives from the tradition of ancient Israel and was still very much in use to designate a specifc category of the Jewish establishment, always relates to a local community that the elder represented.75 This community could be a city or a town in an era where Jews still enjoyed some degree of political autonomy. But it also could be a community of faith, grouped around a synagogue in places where civil authorities were Pagan, as in the diaspora of Paul’s time. The elders chosen by Jewish disciples of the diaspora who formed communities on the basis of their Messianic faith would simply minister in the context of synagogues affliated to the community of James in Jerusalem.76 Such “bottom-up” dynamics of the early Jewish ecclesia does not cancel the exclusively “top-down” picture of the same dynamics conveyed by Kinzer’s refection—but the former fundamentally corrects the latter. The community of James is Jewish because salvation comes from the Jews and spreads from Jerusalem to the whole world. But the new communities of disciples that arise along the fabric of the Jewish diaspora are Jewish because Jews are the frst recipients of salvation. The very fact of their birth and existence displays the active intention of God to establish a Jewish presence within the Apostolic Church. Besides, what the Book of Acts clearly shows is that the relation between the community of James and the Messianic communities of the diaspora is not similar to that of a multinational company opening “branches” in various countries. There were no “organization charts” or “global strategies” that would unfold from the top to the bottom of one coherent whole. Instead, we see a somewhat loose convergence between local organizational dynamics and a mission of preaching and institutional oversight emanating from a unique—and therefore unifying—center. The offce of priest, both as a minister of sacraments, ἱερεὺς, and as an elder-pastor, πρεσβύτερος, leading a congregation through his teaching and regulations, is most probably born somewhere at the intersection between the transnational, institutional charisma of the apostolic community, and the informal, prophetical charisma of local communities of disciples. Meanwhile the limited mission of kerygmatic preaching, sacramental transmission and doctrinal oversight emanating from the center suggests that local Jewish communities at the periphery had a large degree of autonomy initially. A confguration where local congregations constituted the basic units and where federative, transnational oversight had limited impact at the local level is not so far from the current situation of the Messianic movement in our days. Equivalently, such a confguration was very far from the standard ecclesiological model currently in use in the Catholic Church, with the omnipresence of a hierarchical structure headed by a transnational center

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and where local congregations have little self-organizational latitude. I would suggest that the triumph of the standard model over time is in itself a token of the disintegration of the original Jewish presence in the Church. Indeed, as we read in the Book of Acts, the network of autonomous synagogues that used and continues to constitute the fabric of the Jewish diaspora became the natural recipient of the original apostolic kerygma. Nothing similar existed, however, in the Gentile world. With the diffusion of the kerygma to the non-Jewish world, beyond the limited circle of Gentile so-called God-fearers grouped around synagogues of the diaspora, whole congregations had to be built from scratch. The “top-down” or “center-periphery” structure of the Church that prevailed characterizes the mission to the Pagans that became the absolute priority of the Church for more than a millennium and continued to develop during the modern era. For my part, I do not think that the original confguration of the frst Jewish presence in the Church is a mere accident of history. I believe it has ecclesiological signifcance. The Jewish ekklesia cannot have the form that derives from the missio ad Gentes. True, in contrast to the original Jewish ekklesia, the Messianic movement is not involved in a stable and formative interaction with the apostolic nucleus directly established by Yeshua. But the project of conceiving an authentically Catholic approach to Messianic Judaism or, in other words, to defne the conditions of a renewed interaction between a Jewish ekklesia and an institution endowed with apostolic authority leads us to refect on the ecclesiological relevance of the original model of the Jewish presence in the ekklesia. I will venture to do that by examining Kinzer’s working hypothesis regarding a Jewish ecclesia sui juris.

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3.1. Ecclesia particularis and Jewishness as a Mark of the Church Following the track that Lev Gillet calls the “unsynagogued” type of Jewish Church, we remember that she will necessarily assume the status of “a special and autonomous branch of one of the present Christian Churches” since she will not be “independent” but part of a wider bilateral Church, the one that we call “truly Catholic.” In one of the few passages where Kinzer attempts to describe the concrete features of a Jewish entity within the wider Ekklesia, he mentions the Catholic category of “particular Churches” as a possible counterweight to the scattering of authority that characterizes the Protestant world: Catholicism has a long history of incorporating new communities and movements into its institutional life without fragmentation. We see this especially in the formation of religious orders and their integration into the wider life of the church. More relevant to our situation, however, is the Catholic approach

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to diverse rites (such as the Byzantine, Ukrainian, or Syriac). Catholicism has found a way to accommodate the particularities of various theological, liturgical, and devotional traditions within its ranks. It has the capacity to do so in part because its ecclesial structures transcend the local congregation.77

Indeed, the Catholic Church has a long historical experience of accepting what her Magisterium calls extraterritorial “particular Churches” associated with specifc rites and canonical disciplines in her midst. To some extent, the Latin Church could be considered as an ecclesia particularis subsisting among others, like the Maronite or the Chaldean churches within the Catholic Church. What distinguishes the Latin Church, however, is that her head, the Pope appears to be the ultimate authority in regard to all the other particular Churches within the Catholic Church, a power he exercises in communion with the respective heads of these particular churches. According to Catholic teaching, the Pope, being the head of the Latin Church carries the ultimate responsibility for the unity of the whole Church. To introduce the notion of particular Church sui juris or endowed with its own specifc canonical discipline, the Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes Paul VI’s encyclical letter Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975): “In the mind of the Lord the Church is universal by vocation and mission, but when she puts down her roots in a variety of cultural, social and human terrains, she takes on different external expressions and appearances in each part of the world.”78 The metaphor is that of a shoot that, coming out of a seed, grows in symbiosis with its environment, integrating the infuence of external elements into its development. The seed is the teaching of the apostles out of which grew, according to tradition, the great and ancient patriarchates of Christianity— Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem (according to the canonical order fxed at the Council “in Trullo,” 692)—generating a rich diversity of ecclesial traditions through a dynamic interaction with local cultures and customs. The offcial recognition of a number of these traditions by the Roman See has effectively integrated them into the life of the Catholic Church while granting them a fair amount of autonomy. One could think of a similar solution in the case of the Jewish disciples of Christ. They bring with them the legacy of a nation characterized by a rich diversity of customs and a wealth of cultural elements. However the difference between the members of the Jewish nation and that of non-Christian traditions is plain to see. The Jewish nation, with its customs and cultural elements, is not originally foreign to the seed of the Gospel. It cannot be the shoot that grows out of the teaching of the Apostolic Church. If one follows the metaphor that Paul uses in Rom 11, it is instead the apostolic teaching that grafts the nations onto the shoot of Israel: “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their

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place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Rom 11:17–18). One cannot generate the shoot that carries oneself, the root out of which oneself grew. Here surfaces a truth that I regard as ecclesiologically decisive. While the process of diffusion of the Gospel was structurally identical for Jews and Gentiles, so that, after receiving the apostolic kerygma. Jews and Gentiles began forming communities of disciples together, the meaning of this reception was far from being identical for both. For Jewish disciples, the apostolic kerygma signaled the long-awaited Messianic fulfllment and the fnal transfguration of Israel’s legacy. For Gentiles, it marked the beginning of a long historical journey that would manifest and actualize the spiritual potential of their own Pagan cultures. From this point of view, the relation of each group to the apostolic authority was necessarily distinct, even if this difference was prevented from taking an ecclesial shape due to the rapid disintegration of the Jewish corporate presence in the Church. Church traditions from the Gentility owe their existence to apostolic authority in one form or another, whether historically, institutionally or both. The Church of Rome claims the See of Peter as its origin; the Church of Constantinople claims to have been founded by Andrew, and so forth. Even Churches originating in the Reformation claim to owe their ultimate foundation—not in a strictly historical but in a doctrinal sense—to the authority of the apostolic group. They developed out of the apostolic kerygma and, in the case of the so-called “historical Churches,” in continuous interaction with the hierarchy acknowledged by the apostolic group and their appointed successors. Through doctrine and government, the grace or the supernatural power that ultimately stems from Christ’s authority has energized the intellectual, spiritual, and artistic potentialities of Pagan cultures, thus producing the variety of Church traditions that is familiar to us. Israel, however, does not owe its corporate existence to the apostolic authority but to the blessing of Abraham’s descendants and the gift of the Torah to Moses. It is faith that affliates a Gentile to the people of God, whereas it is biological birth and commitment to the Torah that makes of a Jew a member of the Chosen Nation. Apostolic authority does not give existence to Israel; it realizes its Messianic self-awareness or revelation in Yeshua. If anything, it is rather apostolic authority that owes its existence to the legacy of Israel and not the other way round—not in the sense of a suffcient condition, since it is established by virtue of the divine authority Christ is endowed with, but in the sense of a necessary condition: apostolic authority could not have existed if Israel had not existed, just as Christ, God incarnated as Messiah of Israel, could not have existed as such if Israel had not existed.

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Being the matrix of the Apostolic Church and not one of its offshoots, Israel is related to the whole Catholic Church. To put it in more precise terms, the entire Church, beyond any specifc Church tradition, is ontologically related to Israel. Everything that the Catholic Church has, including the rich variety of her ecclesial traditions, she originally received from the Jewish nation and its spiritual legacy. The God incarnated she confesses is a Jew. The faith on which she is established was originally preached by a Jewish group of disciples of Jesus. Through the apostolic preaching, Gentiles became partakers of the whole tradition of Israel. All the spiritual, doctrinal, and liturgical traditions that took shape within the Church are rooted in a tradition that developed before she even existed. The reason why this Jewish presence cannot be embodied in the canonical category of particular Church such as the Ukrainian or the Syriac Church is that it partakes of the common denominator of all particular Churches. In a defnite sense, the whole Catholic Church is Jewish. Jewishness is not a Church in the Church. It is what the Catholic tradition calls a mark of the Church. As the Church is, according to the Creed, one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic, likewise the Church is Jewish. Latin faithful are ipso facto not Ukrainian and vice-versa, but Latin, as well as Ukrainian faithful, belong to a Church that is Jewish because she is apostolic. Whichever Christian congregation denies the teaching of the apostles is not Catholic. Likewise, whichever Christian congregation denies the Jewish dimension of the Church, as present in her Scriptures and Tradition, excludes itself from the Catholic communion.79 Moreover, just as claiming that the Church is apostolic does not make all of her members apostles, claiming that the whole Church is Jewish does not make all of her members Jews. Jewishness as a mark of the Church means that the whole Church, encompassing all human groups, is ontologically related not only to the tradition but also to the existence of a particular human group. The supersessionist mindset inherited from the patristic era carefully separated the tradition of Israel from the living people of Israel. It would seem that this tradition no longer belonged to the people that had generated it. From the moment of the rejection of their Messiah, the living people of Israel had somehow yielded its rights to the ownership of its tradition to the Church, henceforth promoted as its only lawful interpreter. The awareness that this mindset was fundamentally fawed has been growing in many Churches and in the Catholic one, most especially since Nostra Aetate. In the frst part of this book, I have argued that the “intrinsic connection” made by John-Paull II between the mystery of the Church and the mystery of Israel as a living corporate entity is anchored in the sacrifce of Christ on the Cross and the role of the Jewish people in this sacrifce. For all these reasons, there can be no authentically Catholic Church that would not count a living Jewish presence in her midst.

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As we strive to conceive a stable, distinct and communion-sensitive Jewish corporate presence in the Catholic Church—something that, as such, has never happened before in the history of the Church—we need to distinguish two types of positions and dynamics in relation to apostolic authority. Typical of the Gentile ekklesia is the impulse coming from this apostolic authority and unfolding by way of a hierarchized and centralized Church as she fecundates foreign cultures. In the case of the Jewish ekklesia, however, the apostolic authority is not the instance that generates the movement; it is an instance bringing to its perfection a movement that does not come from itself but from the depth of Israel’s three-millennial old and still-ongoing tradition. Accordingly, the relationship of an instance endued with apostolic authority to Jewish disciples should not be seen as a mandate to shape a purely passive entity through a higher, God-given power of decision. The best analogy for this interaction might be the one that took place between Christ and Israel. The relation of Christ to Israel is very different from his relation to the Gentiles. Christ comes out of Israel, and his teaching is primarily addressed to Israel. The specifc attitude of Christ toward Israel comes up in a particularly striking manner in a passage of the Gospel of Matthew where the disciples try to turn his attention to a Canaanite woman asking for help: “He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table’ ” (Matt 15:24–27). Christ’s authority comes directly from God, and his teaching is divine. Still, Christ does not use this authority to issue commands and sweeping statements. Rather, he engages in conversation with the representatives of his kin, trying to open their understanding of their tradition to a new awareness, a Messianic horizon. If Socrates has sometimes been called a Christ for the Greeks, one could say that the reverse is to some extent true: Christ is a Socrates for the Jews, unfolding the deepest aspirations of Israel as well as exposing the errors and lies that distort them whenever he engaged in an informal, friendly but also tense conversation with his brethren. Of course the Pope, even when collaborating with the Episcopal College, is not Christ. Still, the relationship that should take shape between the highest authority in the Church and Jewish disciples should be conceived by analogy with the relation of Christ to his people. The function of apostolic authority is not to “evangelize” Israel as a body that would a priori be foreign to its message. It is to accompany Israel in its effort to assimilate the new and absolutely singular life promised to it from the beginning, the life that Christ came to reveal to it. It is to assist Israel in its striving to receive the Messianic fulfllment of its own identity and truth, a fulfllment that Christ came to grant it.

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Let us now see how this “maieutic” interaction between apostolic authority and Jewish disciples can translate into concrete, organizational terms.

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3.2. Pastors, Priests, or Rabbis? As previously stated, the notion of ministerial priesthood does not appear to play any meaningful role in Kinzer’s ecclesiology. This echoes the general understanding that there is nothing specifcally Jewish in the priesthood established by Christ. Of course, as was also mentioned earlier, the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to Aaronic priesthood to characterize the new priesthood “according to the Order of Melchizedek.” But the underlying interpretation of Christ’s metathesis is that, unlike the ministry of the old priesthood that it comes to replace, the priesthood according to Melchizedek no longer pertains to the sole worship of Israel. Priesthood in Christ is concerned with the worship of the whole Church. But what about Jews in the Church? The meaningfulness of this priesthood from a Jewish perspective does not transpire anywhere in the traditional Magisterium of the Catholic Church. In my opinion, however, the institution of a new priesthood makes perfect sense as a response to the inner dilemma of a non- or pre- Messianic Judaism. It is a hardly disputable fact that, at the time of Jesus, the purely ritualistic understanding of priesthood associated with the high clergy of Jerusalem and represented by the party of the Sadducees came under harsh criticism from the most religiously vibrant elements of Jewish society.80 Both Essenes, with their monastic reclusiveness, and Pharisees, with their populistic zeal, positioned themselves as alternatives to an offcial priesthood focused on the activities of the Temple in Jerusalem. After the destruction of the second Temple, it was the legacy of the Pharisees that assured the survival of the Jewish nation. Their emphasis on the importance of shaping everyday life according to the teachings of the Torah made the Pharisees less reliant on the existence of the Temple—and unlike the Essenes, they were in continuous interaction with Jews from all walks of life. Paradoxically, however, the movement that refused to reduce Jewish spiritual life to the sacrifces and offerings of the existing Temple is also the movement that after the destruction of the Temple placed its memory of the Temple at the center of Jewish spiritual life. In the rabbinic tradition, the locus of Jewish exilic religious existence is the empty place left by the destruction of the Temple. This is the meaning of the famous episode relating the reaction of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the legendary refounder of Judaism at Yavne when confronted with the desolation of Israel: Once as Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai was coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the Temple in ruins. “Woe unto us!” Rabbi

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Joshua cried, “that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid waste!” “My son” Rabban Johanan said to him, “be not grieved; we have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? It is acts of lovingkindness, as it is said, For I desire mercy and not sacrifce” (Hos. 6:6).81

Mitzvot, including prayer, replace the sacrifces of the Temple as long as they convey the memory of the lost Temple:

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When one proceeds to pray, if he is standing outside the Land of Israel, he should turn toward the Land of Israel, and aim also at Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Holy of Holies. If he is standing in the Land of Israel, he should turn toward Jerusalem, and aim also at the Temple and the Holy of Holies. If he is standing in Jerusalem, he should turn toward the Temple, and aim also at the Holy of Holies. If he is standing behind the kaporet, he should turn toward the kaporet.82

Priesthood is imperfect to the extent that it remains a ritualistic mediation that does not foster a personal relation to God based on Torah. Conversely, a personal relation to God based on Torah remains incomplete inasmuch as it is merely meant to compensate the absence of ritualistic mediation. PreMessianic Judaism has known only two types of spiritual leadership: priesthood without personal commitment to Torah and rabbinic tradition without ritual sacrifce. From this point of view, it is plain to see that the laying of hands on elders from the synagogue by the apostles had the character of a Messianic fulfllment. Those who were committed to Torah received a ministerial grace that did not come from human tradition but directly from God in Jesus Christ, albeit through the mediation of the apostles. This grace transformed them into a new kind of priests. Not only were they conversant with Torah and eager to promote it, but they became, in turn, channels of God’s grace for the faithful of their congregations through a ministry rooted in the sacrifce of Christ for all humanity. They became simultaneously both doctors of the law and ministers of Christ’s sacrifce, a sacrifce that they would perpetuate most especially through the celebration of the Eucharist. The grace of Christ was to simultaneously renew Jewish disciples’ understanding of Torah and energize their efforts to abide by it supernaturally, as fre both produces light and releases heat. Traditional Torah wisdom would be reinterpreted according to the terms of Christ’s teaching so that, through the power of Christ’s grace, Israel’s worship might reach its perfection. It is not a worship for the sake of Israel; it is the worship carried out by Israel qua Israel for the whole world, a worship that vitalizes the entire Church as long as it is essentially part of her life.

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During the early formation of the Church, the specifcally Jewish approach to priestly ministry did not translate into forms that would be different from those in use among Gentile disciples. The universalization of Torah as it expanded to the Gentile world through faith in Christ brought with it the necessity of establishing a type of worship that Gentile and Jewish disciples would have in common. As I argued before, this resulted in the disintegration of a corporate Jewish presence in the Church. If today the question of giving room to such a presence arises again, it is because of the process of deepening and strengthening Jewish identity that took place in the course of the bi-millennial journey of the Jewish nation estranged from the Church. Here the distinctiveness of Jewish religious identity becomes manifest, together with the design of Providence to keep the nation alive, even at the price of numberless persecutions. Paradoxically, it is rabbinic tradition, with its rejection of Christianity and itself prey to persecution at the hands of the Church, which can provide Messianic worship with the forms it needs to develop a life of authentic Jewish worship within the Church. The Jewish tradition, including its rabbinic dimension, longs for the Messianic transfguration that will establish a most authentic Jewish priesthood, but for this transfguration to become a reality the contribution of a bi-millennial Jewish tradition is indispensable. This includes the traditional forms of rabbinic ministry. Throughout 2,000 years of exile, rabbis have creatively cemented and organized Jewish communities, providing the Jewish nation both with a sense of its distinctiveness and of its institutional stability. They have developed a specifc type of interaction with the members of their communities so as to ensure the perpetuation of Israel’s worship together with the basic elements of Jewish social life. With rabbis and students from other communities, they have created the conditions of a collective, ongoing and intensely innovative refection on Israel-centered Torah observance. There is more for a Jewish disciple of Jesus in rabbinic tradition than merely replacing a discontinued model of Torah obedience with one suited to the times that follow the loss of the Temple and the dire reality of exile. This tradition has brought about an understanding of Torah and of the absolute singularity of Israel’s religious existence that never existed before. Accordingly, the Messianic fulfllment of Jewish identity cannot reclaim rabbinic tradition while ignoring almost 2,000 years of Christian history, just in order to revive the purportedly golden age of Jewish discipleship. The very notion of Israel’s corporate existence that needs to become part of the life of the whole Church is the fruit of rabbinic tradition. It is the rabbinic understanding of Israel’s religious existence that needs to come to its fulfllment in Messiah. By the same token, it is through the messianically transfgured forms of rabbinic tradition that Israel’s worship will shine through its own, distinctive life within the life of the Church.

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The task of creating the conditions for a creative and coherent refection on a Messianic Jewish lifestyle, as well as carrying it to some practical conclusions, rests with the leadership of the Jewish ekklesia, a leadership that needs to be simultaneously cognizant of rabbinic and Church traditions. To a greater or a lesser extent, no existing Messianic congregation can avoid carrying out this task under the guidance of its head. Moreover here the integration of sacramental priesthood adds a new level of complexity. In spite of a number of differences, the status and position of a Protestant pastor are in many respects closer to that of a rabbi than to those of a Catholic priest, especially of the Latin rite. In contrast to the latter, the former receive their ministry from the local congregation that selects and appoints them; they are not vowed to a life of celibacy. But here also, the hermeneutical process that I described earlier applies: one should distinguish between the grace of the sacrament stricto sensu and the gentilized forms that it has taken after almost two millennia of Christian history. If rabbinic tradition needs to be fulflled in Messiah, this fulfllment, in turn, needs rabbinic tradition to recover the Jewish expression that lies hidden under the layers of a bi-millennial Gentile inculturation process. To what extent is celibacy an essential dimension of the sacrament conceived from a Jewish Messianic perspective? After all, a married Chaldean priest is no less Catholic than a Latin-rite priest. And if, as I argued earlier, the top-down hierarchic dynamics of the Church is a consequence of millennia of Gentile evangelization, should not more room be given to the voice of local Jewish Messianic synagogues in the appointment of their pastors and on matters of self-administration in general? In this process of discernment, one needs to simultaneously heed the radical newness of Christ’s grace and the absolute singularity of Israel’s tradition. For one thing, Messianic priests—or whatever be the name that one would decide to grant them—cannot carry out this task of discernment in isolation from one another. One important element of this Jewish tradition is precisely conciliarity: a rabbi exercises his ministry in cooperation with the other members of his synagogue as well as colleagues from other synagogues. In my opinion, taking the measure of this conciliar dimension of a Jewish ekklesia is the right way to approach the role of bishops—or whatever the title that they would receive—in their midst. 3.3. The Office of Bishop and the Forms of Communion with the Wider Church One of the tasks of the rabbis-elders gathered in a deliberative body or council is to exert global oversight (ַ‫ ְלנ ֵ ַּ֑צח‬in the Tanakh, ἐπισκοπεῖν in LXX, see 2 Chronicles 34:12) of the Messianic ekklesia. On matters of doctrine or moral behavior, whether collective or individual, the opinion of a majority of

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experts always carries more weight than that of a single pastor. At the same time, the council must entrust one of its members with the task of ensuring the fairness and conclusiveness of the proceedings. It is natural that the one who presides a council should be the one endowed with the highest authority among his peers. During the Second Temple period, one of the frst decisions of the Sanhedrin, the council that was the highest juridical and political body of Judaism was to appoint a High Priest who would also serve as its president (nasi). It is the very same logic, including political representation, which in contemporary mainstream Judaism lies behind the appointment of chief rabbis endowed with preeminent authority among their peers. At an early stage in the tradition of the Catholic Church, there arose the need to distinguish between the offce of priest (elder, πρεσβυτέρ), in charge of a local congregation, and that of bishop (“the one who has oversight,” ἐπισκόπος), in charge of the priests and their local congregations on a given territory. Here again and most eminently, the Catholic tradition considers this offce as the fruit of the supernatural authority entrusted by Christ to the apostles. A bishop is said to possess the fullness of authority and grace associated with the sacrament of Holy Orders, in contrast to priests who merely partake of this grace and authority. Just as Messianic rabbis, appointed by their local communities, may become priests by virtue of the sacramental ordination administered in the name of the apostolic authority, likewise chief rabbis, appointed by the council of Messianic rabbi-priests, could become bishops by virtue of the corresponding sacramental ordination. Such an ordination would not necessarily lead to the establishment of a top-down, centralized structure any more than the ordination of Messianic priests. Conciliarity being a structural feature of the Jewish tradition, the Jewish form associated with the sacrament conferring the episcopate could be that of an authority exerted in concertation with the Messianic priestly body. The reasons that plead in favor of ordaining one or more chief rabbi(s) as bishop(s) of a Jewish ekklesia are not only for internal convenience or due to general organizational concerns. To maintain and develop the communion between the Jewish ekklesia and the wider Catholic Church, a representative from the Jewish ekklesia must be endowed with the apostolic authority that characterizes the universal college of bishops. This representative cannot be a collective instance as apostolic authority is always conferred to an individual, while the collection of individuals thus ordained form the Episcopal College. The appointment of such an individual/such individuals to the offce of bishop(s) is an opportunity for the Jewish ekklesia to participate in the governance of the whole Catholic Church, the Bishop of Rome carrying the ultimate responsibility for this governance. Being able to convey the requests and needs of the Jewish ekklesia to those who are in charge of the universal

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Church, the bishop(s) of the Jewish ekklesia is (are) also the one(s) that can convey the needs and requests of the whole Church to their ekklesia. Accordingly, the modes of visible communion between the Jewish ekklesia and the wider Catholic Church are of three types:

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a) A communion in doctrine and sacraments. Nothing that is believed or practiced in the Jewish ekklesia is liable to be rejected on the part of the rest of the Church and vice-versa. b) A communion in fraternity and mutual hospitality. Membership in the Jewish ekklesia, with its rights and duties, should be clearly defned. The contrary would invalidate the very purpose of constituting this ekklesia. However, nothing should prevent non-Jewish disciples from taking part in the religious life of their Jewish brethren and vice-versa. In the same way as a Latin-rite Catholic may participate in a Eucharist celebrated according to the Ukrainian rite, a Jewish disciple should be welcome to a regular Catholic Mass and a non-Jewish disciple to a ha-Zikkaronliturgy. The Pauline principle that rigid observance should yield to communion each time it risks provoking offense or scandal should prevail in everything. c) A communion in governance. The bishop or the bishops that, together with their councils, has/have oversight of the Jewish ekklesia is/are subjected to the government of the universal Church that belongs to the Pope together with the Episcopal College. Conversely, this bishop or these bishops of the Jewish ekklesia represent the Jewish disciples within the Episcopal College that govern the universal Church under the supreme responsibility of the Pope. Interestingly, the only existing structure in the Catholic Church that almost perfectly mirrors the dynamics of the traditional Jewish Sanhedrin is the organ of her supreme government. Just as the representatives of the Jewish priestly leadership used to appoint a High Priest that would preside over them, bishops who are members of the body of Cardinals elect a Pope that will preside over the college of bishops. Let us shortly refect on the papal offce from a Jewish Messianic point of view. 3.5. Note on the Papacy from a Jewish Messianic Perspective While endowed with supreme doctrinal and governmental jurisdiction over the Catholic Church, the Pope does not differ from any other bishop from a sacramental point of view. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, which means that there is nothing like a “Sacrament of the Papacy.” The Pope is a bishop among bishops just like Peter was an apostle among the apostles. This does

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not exclude the fact that Peter enjoyed a unique position, in his personal capacity, within the apostolic group: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18). From a Catholic point of view, pontifcal prerogatives, including doctrinal infallibility, are the manner in which the exceptional position of Peter within the group of the apostles is translated into ecclesiological terms. In a Church that is truly Catholic or inclusive of all humanity, Gentiles as well as Jews, there is no reason why a Pope should be Jewish rather than Gentile. He can be either—but whoever he is, he is required to exert his authority over both. As regards the Jewish ekklesia, the primary institutional role of the Pope would be to assess and approve candidates to the position of bishop. The Pope would have no more reason to exercise his power of immediate direct and ordinary governance on a self-administered Jewish ordinariate than on any ecclesia particularis sui juris. In practice, the only circumstances in which such power is used is when these fairly autonomous ecclesial entities are confronted with issues they cannot solve relying on their sole force and abilities. This being said, the Pope should relate to the Jewish ekklesia in a special manner and with a particular concern. While Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, Peter was sent to Jews (Gal 2: 7–8). All his behavior, including the incident of Antioch, indicates Peter’s solidarity with his Jewish brethren. Judeo-Christian and even Jewish traditions have preserved the memory of Peter as fundamentally attached to his Jewish identity.83 In a Church that is overwhelmingly Gentile, there is little chance that a Jewish entity might preserve its autonomy and own discipline, let alone have its voice heard within the governing instances of the universal Ekklesia, if the supreme authority of the Church is not personally entrusted with the task of protecting the interests of this Jewish entity. While history offers many examples of the Popes’ harsh treatment of Jews, it also portrays them as their protectors on numerous occasions. In a confguration where Jewish disciples would form an ordinariate or some other type of corporate entity within the Church, the title of protector of this entity should be added to the prerogatives associated with the pontifcal offce. Accepting the undeniable, that is, the fundamental difference between Messianic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism, opens the possibility to conceiving a Jewish ekklesia that, while being distinctly Jewish, would be able to foster true communion with her Gentile equivalent. Sacramental identity, fraternal hospitality and hierarchic integration are all features that derive from a Messianic interpretation of the Jewish tradition. At the same time, a canonical status of ordinariate could preserve the distinctiveness of a Jewish ekklesia within the Ekklesia while granting her a large degree of autonomy.

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Be that as it may, the Messianic reappropriation of the sacramental and hierarchic elements that are integral to the Church only partly defne the life of a Jewish ekklesia that is being envisaged concretely. I said earlier that rabbinic tradition conveys a defnite understanding that is foreign to Christian tradition, namely, that of the specifc relation of Am Israel to Torah. I have argued that Yeshua did not abolish the endeavor to formulate this specifc relation in the language of specifc observances, mitzvot, any more than he abolished the “tradition of the elders.” At the same time, I have emphasized that this relation should be interpreted in a Messianic way that gives to the grace and love revealed through Yeshua ultimate hermeneutical precedence over mandatory observance.84 At this point, what we need to ask is in what manner this Messianic reading of Jewish tradition can inform the life of the whole Jewish ekklesia? It would be ridiculous to pretend giving an exhaustive answer to this question in the framework of the current book. But one can still try to forge a general idea of the most characteristic content of a Jewish ekklesia’ s inner life by selectively probing the living texture of synagogual prayer in the light of Yeshua ha-Mashiach.

4. THE SHAPING OF A LIVING TRADITION

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4.1. A Messianic Reading of the Jewish Liturgical Year There is no communion in faith without a common life of prayer and worship. This spiritual sharing has little to do with a material opportunity to gather individuals of the same religious persuasion. It is a most immediate spiritual necessity wherever individuals happen to have a common faith. Without common prayer, these individuals would be deprived of any tangible and identifable refection on the spiritual mystery they carry in their innermost being. It is a basic element of religious anthropology that the private faith of an individual is strengthened and nourished through worship and prayer shared with fellow believers. Even hermits invisibly join with the prayer of the whole Church whenever they pray in solitude. Kinzer does not deny this reality when he approaches the issue of communal prayer. We have dealt earlier with his treatment of the Amidah prayer in connection with the Eucharist (see section 2.2 in this chapter). The problem I see is that his ecclesiological thinking makes it impossible for this communal prayer to specifcally express or refect a Jewish Messianic faith. In his attempt to emphasize the role of Jewish disciples as a living bridge between the Synagogue and the Church, he often presents the prayer life of Jewish disciples in the Ekklesia as grosso modo indistinguishable from that of the Synagogue. How this identifcation with the Synagogue can endure

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notwithstanding the celebration of rituals such as the ha-Zikkaron/Eucharist that are utterly specifc to Messianic faith, remains unclear, as was also mentioned earlier (see ibid. III 2.2) One cannot defect the dilemma by arguing that these Messianic additions are but insignifcant details. Is the Eucharist such an insignifcant addition to liturgical life? Even if it were, this would not eliminate the fact that a similar addition, by disrespecting the traditional content of synagogual liturgy, would render the role of Jewish disciples as a living bridge between the Synagogue and the Church questionable at the very least. Meanwhile, supposing against all the odds that Messianic prayer followed Synagogue liturgy in everything, such a confguration would amount to denying the possibility for Jewish disciples to express their faith through prayer objectively, and therefore would take away from them the strengthening and nourishment that go with this expression. In my opinion, this wrong approach to prayer life has dramatic consequences—not because of what it would induce Jewish disciples to do, but because of what it would cause them to lose. There can be no better demonstration of the legitimacy of a Jewish presence in the Ekklesia than the spiritual riches its creative mode of worship should be able to offer to its followers as well as to the life of the Church in general. In the considerations that follow, I shall strive to give a faint idea of what I mean by a creative contribution of a Messianic ekklesia to the prayer life of the whole Church. 4.2. Daily Prayer: Shacharit and the Akedah

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From the cycle of daily Jewish prayers, one could, for instance, take the Shacharit, the “service of the dawn,” which is the frst public prayer of the day. Its origin is traditionally ascribed to the prayer of Abraham on the morning of the Akedah, the sacrifce of Isaac. In fact, the memory of the Akedah surfaces at a signifcant moment of the service. It introduces the recitation of the frst Sh’ma (“Hear, o Israel”) after the Blessings (berakhot): Sovereign of all worlds! Not because of our righteous acts do we lay our supplications before thee, but because of thine abundant mercies. What are we? What is our life? What is our piety? What our righteousness? . . . Nevertheless we are thy people, the children of thy Covenant, the children of Abraham, thy friend, to whom thou didst swear on Mount Moriah; the seed of Isaac, his only son, who was bound upon the altar the congregation of Jacob, thy frst born son, whose name thou didst call Israel and Jeshurun by reason of the love wherewith thou didst love him, and the joy wherewith thou didst rejoice in him. It is, therefore, our duty to thank, praise and glorify thee, to bless, to sanctify and to offer praise and thanksgiving unto thy name. Happy are we! How goodly is our portion, and how pleasant is our lot, and how beautiful our heritage! . . . Hear, O Israel: the

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Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His name, whose glorious kingdom is forever and ever.85

The Akedah and the frst Sh’ma constitute one liturgical unit that has been added to the service during the Middle Ages. It seems that the awareness of the Akedah’s spiritual importance for the atonement of Israel’s sins grew considerably among Jews during that period, both under the infuence of Christianity and as a reaction of defense against it.86 At the same time, this evolution stems from the depths of Jewish tradition. The rabbinic idea that the Akedah is the source and foundation of the sacrifces of the Temple has a biblical basis.87 The sacrifces of the Temple no longer being able to atone for the sins of Israel, Israel should directly refer to the eternally atoning value of the Akedah: “Let us be looked upon by the Lord (through the merits of Isaac).”88 Christian writers started drawing the parallel between the Akedah and the sacrifce of Christ at an early stage. Melito of Sardes, writing around 160, is probably one of the frst witnesses to this enduring Christian topos: On behalf of Isaac the righteous one, a ram appeared for slaughter So that Isaac might be released from bonds The ram, slain, ransomed Isaac So also the Lord saved And bound, released us And sacrificed, ransomed us.89

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A few decades later, Tertullian already relegated the Akedah to a fgure of the “real sacrifce,” that of Christ, offered on behalf of Gentiles: This “wood,” again, Isaac the son of Abraham personally carried for his own sacrifce, when God had enjoined that he should be made a victim to Himself. But, because these had been mysteries which were being kept for perfect fulflment in the times of Christ, Isaac, on the one hand, with his “wood,” was reserved, the ram being offered which was caught by the horns in the bramble; Christ, on the other hand, in His times, carried His “wood” on His own shoulders, adhering to the horns of the cross, with a thorny crown encircling His head. For Him it behoved to be made a sacrifce on behalf of all Gentiles, who “was led as a sheep for a victim, and, like a lamb voiceless before his shearer, so opened not His mouth” (for He, when Pilate interrogated Him, spake nothing); for “in humility His judgement was taken away: His nativity, moreover, who shall declare?90

In the sacrifce of Israel’s Messiah on the Cross, Jewish disciples of Yeshua do contemplate the fulfllment of Isaac’s Akedah: “Then Isaac said to his

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father Abraham, “Father!” And he answered, “Yes, my son.” And he said, “Here are the frestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” And Abraham said, “God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son” (Gen 22:7–8). However from a Messianic perspective, the sacrifce of Christ is not a “reality” the advent of which renders the fgure that foreshadowed it somehow obsolete. It is the fulfllment of Abraham’s prophecy; and prophecy is in the frst place destined for his children according to the fesh, all those who will be born out of his son Isaac. Through Abraham’s merits, the time will come when God will provide the lamb that defnitively washes away the guilt of Israel. For the Jewish disciples, since the coming of Yeshua this time is now. Following this logic, adding the reference to Yeshua’s sacrifce to that of the Akedah opens the Shacharit prayer to a completely new dimension. As the prayer encapsulates the whole journey of Israel from the Promise to the Redemption, it leads the disciples to contemplate in Christ the fruit of Abraham’s faith, unfolding as a source of grace and forgiveness for the children of Israel through his sacrifce on the Cross. Messianic prayer books suggest this perspective instinctively when they reformulate the passage from the traditional Shacharit in question. For example, one reads in Ray Looker’s Messianic Prayerbook this creative version (Messanic additions in italics): Yahweh our God and God of our fathers, remember us favourably before You, and be mindful of us for deliverance and mercy from the primaeval, most supreme heavens. Remember in our behalf, Yahweh our God, the love of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Your servants, and the Covenant, the loving kindness, the vow which You have sworn to Abraham on Mount Moriah, and the “Akedah,” the binding of Isaac upon the altar, and the binding and sacrifce of Your Holy Anointed One, Yahshua [sic]. A man should forever fear Yahweh in the inner-most recesses of his heart and acknowledge the Truth in his heart. Let him rise early and say: Abba Yahweh, Master of the world! It is not because of our own righteousness that we present our supplications before You, but because of Your abounding mercies, and the Sacrifce of Your Holy Anointed One, Yahshua, and His resurrection and ascension into heaven. What are we? What is our life? What is our kindness?91

Jeff Morgan does the same, albeit less emphatically, in his Messianic Complete Daily Prayer Book: Nevertheless we are Your people, the children of Your Covenant, the children of Abraham, Your friend, to whom You did swear on Mount Moriah; the seed

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of Isaac, his only son, who was bound upon the altar, the congregation of Jacob, Your frst born son, whose name You did call Israel and Jeshurun by reason of the love wherewith You did love him, and the joy wherewith You did rejoice in him. It is, therefore, our duty to thank, praise and glorify You, to bless, to sanctify and to offer praise and thanksgiving unto Your name, through Yah’shua [sic] the Messiah.92

This simple instance taken from the Jewish daily cycle of prayers displays a pattern—“fulfllment without replacement” as it were—that, when applied to more complex but also more fundamental cases, gives an idea of what could give birth to a new and wonderfully rich liturgical life.

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4.3. The Weekly Cycle: Between Shabbat and Sunday Refecting on a Messianic interpretation of Shabbat, the sacred day around which the whole week gravitates according to Jewish tradition, brings up a set of issues that are distinct from the one raised by the Jewish daily cycle of prayers and Shacharit in particular. True, opening daily Jewish prayers to a Messianic dimension was already a new step. But this step was relatively easy: one can always modify the texts of Jewish prayers so that their “Messianic potential” come into view. However in the case of Shabbat, such freedom of reinterpretation appears to be restricted. Indeed, Christian tradition claims to have developed its own “Messianic interpretation” of this specifcally Jewish domestic-and-public liturgy. The result of this interpretation is none other than the Christian concept of Sunday, with its discipline and various rituals. Of course no one would deny that the founding principle of Sunday worship is essentially distinct from that of Shabbat: no other day than the seventh day of the week is able to commemorate the rest of God after the six days of Creation (Gen 2:1–3), just as no other day than the eighth day of the week can be dedicated to the memory of the Lord’s Resurrection. At the beginning of the ffth century, Pope Innocent I wrote that “We celebrate Sunday because of the venerable Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we do so not only at Easter but also at each turning of the week.”93 As John Paul II points out in his encyclical “Dies Domini,” this timing has a frm scriptural basis: According to the common witness of the Gospels, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead took place on “the frst day after the Sabbath” (Mk 16:2,9; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1). On the same day, the Risen Lord appeared to the two disciples of Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13–35) and to the eleven Apostles gathered together (cf. Lk 24:36; Jn 20:19). A week later—as the Gospel of John recounts (cf. 20:26)—the disciples have gathered together once again when Jesus appeared to them and made himself known to Thomas by showing him the signs of his

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Passion. The day of Pentecost—the frst day of the eighth week after the Jewish Passover (cf. Acts 2:1), when the promise made by Jesus to the Apostles after the Resurrection was fulflled by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 24:49; Acts 1:4–5)—also fell on a Sunday. This was the day of the frst proclamation and the frst Baptisms: Peter announced to the assembled crowd that Christ had risen and “those who received his word were baptised” (Acts 2:41). This was the epiphany of the Church, revealed as the people into which are gathered in unity, beyond all their differences, the scattered children of God.94

In the early days of the Church, the disciples would solemnly celebrate both days, keeping Shabbat as the memory of the Creation and establishing Sunday as a feast commemorating Christ’s resurrection as a re-Creation of the cosmos.95 Very rapidly, however, the weekly celebration of the Resurrection started to have an impact on the traditional meaning and discipline of Shabbat observance. To begin with signifcant voices in the Church began asking the disciples to keep the Jewish type of worship at bay. In his Epistle to the Magnesians, composed in the early second century, Ignatius of Antioch writes:

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Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness; for “he that does not work . . . not eat.” For say the [holy] oracles, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.” But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor fnding delight in dancing and plaudits which have no sense in them. And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s Day as a festival, the resurrection-day, the queen and chief of all the days [of the week].96

Simultaneously, the notion of rest that presided over the discipline and symbolism of Shabbat started to be transferred to the eighth day. The Canon 29 of the Synod of Laodicea (c.364) offcially endorses this evolution: “Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.”97 The memory of Christ’s Resurrection, ushering his disciples into the newness of the eighth day, was very rapidly entrusted with the task of manifesting the discontinuity between the regime of the Old Testament, henceforth associated with Shabbat observance, and that of the New Covenant. On a theological level, however, this shift is devoid of justifcation. There is no reason

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to see Shabbat and Sunday as mutually exclusive: Shabbat is the ongoing memory of the work of Creation while Sunday celebrates the Resurrection as a divine act of recreation. But this shift is perfectly understandable from an ecclesiological point of view: Shabbat observance being shared with those who, under the name of Jews, were now identifed with Christ’s adversaries, Gentile believers were naturally led to assume that this observance should be relegated beyond the visible boundaries of the Body formed by the followers of Christ. As Jewish identity was confned almost exclusively to a community hostile to Christian faith, the task of shaping the Church according God’s design became de facto identical to that of giving existence to a religious universe that would be intelligible to those coming from a Gentile culture. Obviously Shabbat observance was not among the observances that could make sense from such a point of view. As Tertullian candidly confesses, to “us”—which indistinctly designates disciples of Christ and Gentile ones— “Sabbaths are strange.”98 One should be wary of ascribing the entire responsibility for this evolution to some sort of arbitrary takeover by Gentile disciples, further ostracizing the few Jewish disciples remaining in the Church and inducing the others to join the ranks of Judeo-Christian sects that proliferated well into the fourth century. One ought frst to consider the following point: Gentile disciples were and still are perfectly entitled to develop a liturgical symbolism corresponding to the dimensions of their faith in Christ, a perspective that views the event of Christ’s resurrection as a radical new beginning and an exclusive source of salvation.99 Since according to criteria that have to do with social commonweal, there could hardly be more than one day of rest out of the seven that constitute a week, it was only natural that the choice of the new disciples of Christ would fall on the day of Christ’s Resurrection. True, the proclamation of Shabbat’s sanctity and obligation, a part of the Ten Commandments, is absolute: Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God: you shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exod 20:8–11)

One will look in vain in the New Testament for a justifcation of the abolition of Shabbat. However, one must also keep in mind that this absolute commandment is given to the nation of Israel, especially as it is about to enter the Land after its liberation from Egyptian slavery (see Deut 5:12–14).

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Shabbat is Israel’s prerogative because the celebration of its own Covenant with God lies at its core: “The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a Covenant for all time” (Exod 31:16). The symbolism of Shabbat cannot be as powerful for non-Jews as for Jews since it refers to the First Covenant and the destiny of Israel qua Israel.100 The singular relation that exists between Shabbat and the nation of Israel is expressed in a number of midrashim from the Jewish tradition. In his book on Shabbat, Abraham. J. Heschel refers to one of the most beautiful and telling among them:

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At the beginning time was one, eternal. But time undivided, time eternal, would be unrelated to the world of space. So time was divided into seven days and entered into an intimate relationship with the world of space. With every single day, another realm of things came into being, except on the seventh day. The Sabbath was a lonely day. It may be compared to a king who has seven sons. To six of them he gave his wealth, and the youngest one he endowed with nobility, with the prerogative of royalty. The six older sons who were commoners found their mates, but the noble one remained without a mate. Says Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai: “After the work of creation was completed, the Seventh Day pleaded: Master of the universe, all that Thou hast created is in couples; to every day of the week Thou gavest a mate; only I was left alone.” And God answered: “The Community of Israel will be your mate.”101

To the extent that this perspective does not directly involve Gentile believers, their observance of Shabbat cannot and should not be identical to that of Jewish disciples. Conversely, to the extent that Jews are directly concerned by Shabbat observance, Jewish disciples should be able to develop a liturgical symbolism and a discipline peculiar to them within the Ekklesia. This does not condemn the evolution that has been that of the Church in a Gentile world, rather it renews it with a perspective that has long been forgotten in the Church—the perspective of the frst disciples of Jesus who were all Jews. Indeed, there is nothing specifcally “Gentile” in the liturgical memory of Yeshua’s breaking of the bread on the day of his Resurrection. This event takes place fully within the sacred history of Israel. The liturgical memory of this event displays a deeply meaningful connection with Shabbat, the memory of God’s rest on the seventh day of Creation. I would argue that the meaning of the former unfolds its deepest content considered in connection with the latter and vice-versa. From a traditionally Jewish point of view, the memory of God’s rest on Shabbat conveys a foretaste of the world to come, the olam ha-ba. A wealth of midrashim and tales expresses this intuition as Heschel points out:

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That the Sabbath and eternity are one—or of the same essence—is an ancient idea. A legend relates that at the time when God was giving the Torah to Israel, He said to them: “My children! If you accept the Torah and observe my mitzvot, I will give you for all eternity a thing most precious that I have in my possession.—And what, asked Israel, is that precious thing which Thou wilt give us if we obey Thy Torah?—The world to come.—Show us in this world an example of the world to come.—The Sabbath is an example of the world to come.” An ancient tradition declares: “The world to come is characterised by the kind of holiness possessed by the Sabbath in this world . . . . The Sabbath possesses a holiness like that of the world to come.” Rabbi Akiva, the teacher of Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai, gave expression to the same idea. “There was a special song for every day of the week which the Levites used to sing in the Temple at Jerusalem. On the frst day they sang The Earth is the Lord’s; on the second day they sang Great is the Lord, and so on. On the Sabbath they sang A Psalm: a Song for the Sabbath Day; a Psalm, a song for the time that is to come, for the day which will be all Sabbath and rest in the life eternal.”102

The traditional Jewish understanding of the expression “the world to come,” olam ha-ba, refers to the life that comes after this life, olam-ha-ze, which is a life bound by the limits of created time and marked by death as its insuperable horizon. However olam ha-ba does not only designate individual afterlife, but it also refers to the “days of the Messiah,” the new era into which the Coming of the Messiah is supposed to usher all humanity. Messianic eschatology is embedded in the Jewish understanding of Shabbat. Of all the ritual elements of Shabbat, it is probably the song Lekha Dodi that captures this eschatological dimension most vividly:

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Come out my Beloved, the Bride to meet; The inner light of Shabbat, let us greet.

Before the last stanza of the song, the faithful rise, and, bowing their heads, turns toward the entrance of the Synagogue, as if to welcome the Shabbatbride. As Heschel shows, this picture of Shabbat as a bride repeatedly surfaces in the prayers of the Synagogue and is deeply rooted in the midrashic tradition of Israel: The Sabbath is a bride, and its celebration is like a wedding. “We learn in the Midrash that the Sabbath is like unto a bride. Just as a bride when she comes to her groom is lovely, bedecked and perfumed, so the Sabbath comes to Israel lovely and perfumed, as it is written: And on the Seventh Day He ceased from work and He rested (Exodus 31:17), and immediately afterwards we read: And He gave unto Moses kekalloto [the word kekalloto means when he fnished,

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but it may also mean] as his bride, to teach us that just as a bride is lovely and bedecked, so is the Sabbath lovely and bedecked; just as a groom is dressed in his fnest garments, so is a man on the Sabbath day dressed in his fnest garments; just as a man rejoices all the days of the wedding feast, so does man rejoice on the Sabbath; just as the groom does no work on his wedding day, so does a man abstain from work on the Sabbath day; and therefore the Sages and ancient Saints called the Sabbath a bride.”103

If this picture of the bride is eschatological, it is because it is associated with the prophetical tradition of the rebirth of Jerusalem out of its current misery, the fnal return of the exiles to the Land (see Hos 2:16–24; Jer 2:2; Isa 54:4–8). As the Lecha Dodi hymn goes: Be not ashamed, nor confounded, Why are you downcast, why astounded? In you, refuge for My poor people will be found, The city will be rebuilt on its former mound.

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This glorious and defnitive reconciliation between God and Israel that is pictured as a wedding where Shabbat is the bride has a reason. This cause is conceived as the Coming of the Messiah. “When the Sabbath is entering the world,” writes Heschel, “man is touched by a moment of actual redemption; as if for a moment the spirit of the Messiah moved over the face of the earth.”104 At the wedding where Shabbat is the bride, it is God, through his Messiah, who is the bridegroom. And the Lecha Dodi hymn goes on: Arise, now, shake off the dust, Don your robes of glory—my people—you must. Through the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, Draw near to my soul, set her free from her plight . . . Over you Your God will rejoice, As a groom exults in his bride of choice.

All Jewish disciples that celebrate Shabbat share a unique knowledge about the divine and human identity of the bridegroom. They know that he has come and they have welcomed his coming: “But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him’ ” (Matt 25:6). They cannot but rejoice as long as he is present among them: “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Matt 9:14–15, Mark 2:18–20, Luke 5:33–35). They understand that what is at stake in this wedding is the reconciliation between God and all humanity as the fulfllment of Israel’s mission:

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Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready (Rev 19:7)

That Israel, having settled in the Land, was to expect the Messiah meant that the deliverance from Egypt was only a step on Israel’s journey toward Redemption. Through the Messiah, a Shabbat that made memory of God’s eternal rest had to usher the children of Israel into the immediate experience of God’s blissful eternity. The resurrection of Yeshua provides more than the assurance of the olam-ha-ba, the eternity to come. Indeed, what is the resurrection if not the overcoming of the radical separation between olam-ha-ze and olam-ha-ba? Resurrection is eternity irrupting or gushing forth within this life. Olam-ha-ba: eternity comes into this life, olam-ha-ze, to raise our daily and mortal life to a new level of holiness and intimacy with God. The Eucharist is by nature this reception of God’s eternal life within the compass of a mortal body. Being in the Messiah risen from the dead as one partakes of his life through the Eucharist is the experience of a neverending peace-breaking through the boundaries of time and space. It is toward this peace that the memory of God’s original rest keeps pointing, and this experience itself points toward the moment when it will be complete and defnitively freed from the boundaries of time and space. Augustine writes in his Confessions: “O Lord God, grant us peace—for Thou hast provided all things for us—the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, the peace without an ‘evening.’ For, indeed, this very beautiful order of things which are very good will pass away, when they have accomplished their allotted measures; for both a ‘morning’ and an ‘evening’ were made in them.”105 The peace of Shabbat is to be found in partaking of Christ’s Resurrection, but never can this peace be experienced as more real than in the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection itself. This is why one is entitled to speak of the relation of the Seventh day to the Eighth day in terms of fulfllment.106 However, this must be conceived as a fulfllment without replacement. The encyclical “Dies Domini” comes to the same conclusion: On the Lord’s Day, which—as we have already said—the Old Testament links to the work of creation (cf. Gn 2:1–3; Ex 20:8–11) and the Exodus (cf. Dt 5:12– 15), the Christian is called to proclaim the new creation and the new Covenant brought about in the Paschal Mystery of Christ. Far from being abolished, the celebration of creation becomes more profound within a Christocentric perspective, being seen in the light of God’s plan “to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10). The remembrance of the liberation of the Exodus also assumes its full meaning as it becomes a remembrance of

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the universal redemption accomplished by Christ in his Death and Resurrection. More than a “replacement” for the Sabbath, therefore, Sunday is its fulflment, and in a certain sense its extension and full expression in the ordered unfolding of the history of salvation, which reaches its culmination in Christ.107

Accordingly, from a Messianic perspective, the connection between Shabbat and a Sunday centered on the Eucharistic celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection is about much more than the connection between a fgure that foreshadows a reality and a reality that reveals the meaning of a fgure.108 This perspective reverses the tenets of the hermeneutic developed by the Fathers of the Church. Since Shabbat is essentially for Jews the celebration of the unique and ongoing Covenant between Israel and God, it is the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection that, from a Messianic perspective, is seen in the light of Shabbat rather than the contrary. Being the accomplishment of the Messianic promises made to Israel, the day of the Resurrection features the culmination of Israel’s journey toward freedom and union with God, a journey that begins with its liberation from Egypt as the frst token of God’s Covenant with Israel. According to this perspective, there is continuity because the New Covenant in Christ unfolds as the Messianic fulfllment of God’s Covenant with Israel. The passage from Shabbat to Sunday is the precise liturgical translation of a continuity that proclaims God’s faithfulness and providential wisdom toward Israel.109 Here Jewish worship within the Ekklesia is called to reveal and display its unique spiritual richness. For the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, all the rituals of Shabbat must be flled with a special joy since they share this unique privilege of being witnesses to the wedding of God with Israel in Yeshua the Messiah: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice So this joy of mine has been made full” (John 3:29). When gathered around the table at home on the eve of Shabbat, Jewish people recite the Kiddush, the blessing over the wine, they know that the very same words are used to present the holy gifts at the Eucharistic table: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.” The same goes for the Ha-Motzi blessing over the challah-bread: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth.” For the disciples, Israel’s expectation of the Messiah is pervaded with praise to God who has answered the expectation of Israel by sending his Son as Messiah. They know that the longing of Israel for the Messiah will be flled with the Eucharist to come. And yet at the same time they truly partake of the longing of Israel as they also know that the Eucharist is nothing but a precious glimmer of the end of times that they expect together with all their Jewish brothers and sisters. If the Eucharist is the sign of the advent of Messianic times, it also points toward

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their achievement, that is, the Second and glorious Coming of the Messiah. Jewish disciples believe that the radiant face they and their non-Messianic brethren long to contemplate is the very face that underwent the last affronts at the hands of men almost two millennia ago.110 The end of times will feature the consummation of God’s wedding with humanity: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2). The fact that Messianic congregations do not wish to emphasize the connection between Shabbat rituals and Sunday Eucharist is a side-issue. What matters is the existence of this connection and the role it could play in the weekly prayer rhythm of Messianic congregations. Contrary to the notion that this connection should remain implicit, lest one should impose a liturgical framework foreign to that of the Synagogue, I argue that its role should be central. The Eucharist, the sacrifce of Christ, is in Shabbat as in a mirror— and Shabbat, the fragrance of God’s fnal reconciliation with humanity, is in the Eucharist as in its supreme completion. From a Messianic perspective, Shabbat and Sunday are one liturgical unit, one single day enclosed between two evenings, in echo to the divine commandment regarding the sacrifce of the Paschal Lamb: “The whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter [the Paschal Lamb] between the two evenings (‫) ּ֥ ֵבין ָהע ְַר ָֽ ּבי ִם‬.”111 Thus understood in the light of Shabbat, the Messianic practice of Sunday Eucharist does not detract from the practice of the rest of the wider Ekklesia. Celebrating the fulfllment in Messiah of the Promises made to Israel is celebrating the advent of salvation for all humanity.112 In the same way, the practice of Shabbat by the wider Ekklesia is in communion with that of the Jewish ekklesia: as the wider Ekklesia celebrates the memory of God’s work of Creation, she also meditates on the Jewish root of the Mystery of salvation to which she owes her existence and purpose.113 The fact that the discipline and liturgical coherence of the Jewish ekklesia does not coincide with that of the wider Ekklesia does not prevent both entities from being in a perfect communion of faith and understanding with each other. 4.4. Moadim: Releasing the Messianic Dimension of Jewish Festivals The overall shape that Jewish festivals, with their spiritual richness and variety, give to the liturgical year has little in common with that familiar to the Christian world. The only two festivals—closely connected to each other— that overlap are Pesach-Easter and Shavuot-Pentecost. Trying to artifcially merge Jewish festivals into the existing Catholic calendar would be as theologically irrelevant as liturgically absurd. Messianic Judaism is not about adding Jewish elements to the Gentile part of the Ekklesia; it is about achieving a

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fully Jewish identity in Messiah that would be both distinct from the Gentile part of the Ekklesia and in communion with it. Instead of creating a superior liturgical coherence, squeezing traditional Jewish and Catholic feasts into one calendar would destroy the intrinsic coherence of each calendar. On the other hand, one should not fear to depart from the canonical forms of the rabbinic tradition. Just as in the case of Torah observance, Messianic Judaism has no theological reason to recognize rabbinic tradition as an ultimate source of authority. As to strategic considerations—the hope of being accepted as a part of the Jewish world by the other entities that compose it—I have argued and will continue to argue that they are self-deceptive. If there is any theological truth to Messianic Judaism, one should be able to show that the realities of faith that give substance and purpose to the Gentile liturgical year are already engraved in Jewish festivals so that the task of a Messianic liturgy consists in nothing other than bringing them to the fore. Messianic celebrations of Jewish festivals are not based on artifcial modifcations of traditional rituals; they are the strikingly simple actualization of the Messianic dimension they have been carrying all along, an actualization in the light of a faith that radically renews the traditional meaning associated with these festivals. A thorough examination of the Messianic dimension of Jewish festivals could easily become the subject of another book. I will be satisfed here with giving a few insights destined to corroborate and illustrate the claims I just made. I will begin with the festivals that are the closest to the Christian tradition and gradually move to those that seem more foreign to it or more idiosyncratically Jewish.

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4.4.1. Pesach: Messianic Liberation of Israel Here and Now The notion that the Last Supper, the episode that lies at the origin of the Eucharist, occurred on a Seder, one of the evenings of the Pesah festival, is well attested in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus asks his disciples to prepare the meal “On the frst day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrifced” (Mark 14:12 /Matt 26:17; Luke 22:7). Nonetheless, scholarly discussions about whether these accounts are historically reliable continue until the present day. Factual discrepancies with the narrative of the Johannine Gospel and omissions of several basic elements associated with a traditional Jewish Seder are the arguments that usually justify questioning a longstanding consensus.114 I will not dwell on the various attempts at harmonizing John’s calendar of the Passion with that of the Synoptics. I will content myself with pointing out how odd it is to claim that there is no way to know what a pre-70 CE Seder included while simultaneously rejecting the account of the Synoptics on the ground that they do not mention a number of elements listed in much later canonical forms of the Seder. How can

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one retain these canonical forms as criteria of historical plausibility when one is unable to ascertain whether they were in use at the time of Jesus or not?115 Be that as it may, the theological gist of the issue lies somewhere else. To the extent that Catholic faithful are asked to view the writings contained in the New Testament as inspired, they are required to believe in God’s intention to have the events related to Christ’s Passion chronologically coincide with the Jewish Passover. If Christ is not the Paschal Lamb sacrifced on behalf of mankind, as variously but repeatedly emphasized in the writings of the New Testament (John 1:29; 36;19:36; 1 Cor 5:7–8; Rev 5:1–7; 21:14, etc.), it is not clear what remains of Christian faith. The truth is that there was hardly any other way to make this symbolic-sacramental reality manifest than to embed Christ’s Passion into the chronological framework of the Passover festival. The faithful are asked to believe that this is a divine deed because the writings of the New Testament describe it as such. For Gentile believers, the elements to which the Jewish Passover refers are symbols that enable them to contemplate the new reality of which they are called to become the participants as they annually celebrate the death and resurrection of their Saviour. Just as God saved Israel from the Egyptian bondage, He saved all humanity from the slavery of sin. In this manner, Jewish elements are integrated into a new type of liturgical service based on the memory of the Last Supper. However from the point of view of Jewish believers, the same divine deed manifests a very different dimension of meaning. Because it is embedded into the celebration of the ancient liberation of Israel from Egyptian bondage, the Last Supper can be deciphered in terms of a new divine deed of liberation on behalf of the nation of Israel. Why is the annual celebration of the liberation from the hands of the Egyptian such a fundamental mitzvah (Deut 16:12), if not because it conveys the notion that God is the One who fundamentally wants to liberate Israel? What God wants, God can achieve. The insertion of the Last Supper into the framework of the Passover festival indicates that it is the moment when God achieves this fundamental liberation. From the perspective of a Jewish believer, Yeshua’s Passion is the form that God had decided to give to this fnal deed of liberation on behalf of Israel. This also means that this liberation is very different according to its nature from that of the Exodus. As it points toward liberation of a spiritual kind in contrast to the political liberation from the Egyptian oppression, the memory of the Last Supper cannot but grant to the celebration of the Seder a radically new meaning. A Jewish believer is thus led to contemplate a coherent design, unfolding through time and space and leading Israel from political liberation to an ultimate spiritual regeneration. Accordingly, it is in the intrinsic connection between the traditional Jewish celebration of the liberation from Egypt and the Last Supper as the sacramental expression of

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Christ’s Passion, that the marvel of God’s providence on behalf of Israel can be liturgically brought to the fore. Traditional Christian Easter liturgy relies on the memory of Israel’s liberation from Egypt to highlight God’s act of spiritual liberation of humankind, sacramentally reenacted through the memory of the Last Supper. Meanwhile, a Messianic Jewish Pesach service relies on the memory of the Last Supper to highlight the message of spiritual regeneration contained in the Seder as the sacramental reenactment of Israel’s liberation from Egypt. After the destruction of the Temple, Jews could no longer offer the sacrifce of the Paschal Lamb as prescribed (Deut 16:5–6). This fact rapidly became a topos of Christian anti-Jewish apologetics.116 For Jewish believers, celebrating the Seder in the light of Christ’s Last Supper offers the best demonstration that the destruction of the Temple does not imply the rejection of Israel by God. On the contrary, God himself has provided the one and true Lamb for the burnt offering (Gen 22:8). Christ dies for the liberation of his people and Israel truly reenacts the sacrifce of this—of its—Pascal Lamb every time she celebrates the Seder in the light of the Last Supper. According to God’s mysterious ways, the physical sacrifce of Christ at the hands of Israel has become a sacramental source of salvation for Israel. It would be tedious to go through the whole Aggadah of Pesach (the liturgical retelling of the liberation from Egypt), pointing to the Messianic dimension of each of its elements. I will limit myself to singling out the moments that give to the Messianic celebration of the Seder its unique character, which is distinct both from a non-Messianic Jewish Seder and from a traditional Easter liturgy in the Ekklesia. Interpreted from a Messianic point of view, the preparatory rituals to the feast, which are focused on the search and liquidation of the hametz, all leavened products left in the house, symbolize the spiritual nature of this salvation: “Jesus said to them, ‘Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees’” (Matt 16:6).117 The opposite of hametz is matzah, the unleavened “bread of affiction,” ‫לחֶם ֑ע ֹנִי‬, ֣ ֶ that God asked Israel to eat before leaving Egypt (Deut 16:3). The “bread of faith,” as it is also called in the Zohar, is solemnly blessed (Hamotzi) after the blessing of the cups and before the meal proper begins.118 It is said in the Gospels (Matt 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19) that Christ gave the bread to the disciples after the blessing. As he was doing so, Jesus produced his own midrash, his own justifcation for the presence of matzah in Israel’s Passover celebration: “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). Thus, according to Jesus, it was for this very moment that the Jews had been given matzah to eat before their departure from Egypt. Jesus’s personal midrash transforms the memory of the liberation from Egypt into the “now” of a new, living and henceforth perpetual sacrifce: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Celebrated in the light of the Last

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Supper, the Seder’s “bread of affiction” becomes the “bread of heaven,” that is, the sacrament that forges the most intimate relationship between God and the one who partakes of it. This transfguration of a Seder celebration’s traditional element by virtue of Christ’s authority brings to the fore the Messianic dimension that was concealed in it; it supernaturally actualizes the matzah’s hidden Messianic meaning. The very same process can be seen in the blessing of the cup carried out by Jesus during the Last Supper. All four cups that are blessed during the Seder refer to the liberation from Egypt, albeit in different ways. A ffth cup, that of Elijah, the only one that is flled but not consumed, refers to the future ingathering of Israel in the Promised Land. After blessing one of the cups during the Last Supper (Matt 26:27, Mark 14:23; Luke 22:20), it is said that Christ provided another personal midrash: “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the Covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:27–28). This midrash brings to the fore the Messianic dimension of the wine as a liturgical element of the Seder. Blood is the symbol of the Covenant with Israel: “Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the Covenant that the LORD now makes with you concerning all these commands’” (Exod 24:8). As he claims that the wine of the Seder is transformed into his own blood, Jesus indicates that this wine was, from the very origin of its integration into the liturgy of the Seder, destined to become the sign and medium of a new Covenant with Israel, a Messianic Covenant that would reenact, albeit in a radically new and defnitive manner, the Covenant sealed through the blood of an animal at the time of Moses. Of all the cups of the Seder, the cup of Elijah is probably the one that is able to convey this new reality most remarkably—in the light of Christ’s midrash, this Messianic cup can now be blessed and drunk since the Messiah, the one who ingathers the exiles of Israel, is now present among them. In conclusion, a Messianic Passover is a Sunday Eucharist embedded in a domestic sacred meal akin to that of Shabbat Eve. In contrast to the weekly cycle, at Passover the difference between Shabbat and the Eucharist is abolished, thus manifesting the point of unity between rabbinic tradition and Christ’s Revelation. On a purely symbolic level, another ritual of the Seder liturgy perfectly expresses this Messianic actualization, “here and now,” of what had always been present, although in a concealed manner, within Israel’s Pesach celebration. It deals with an element that is intentionally hidden during the celebration. The liturgy of the Seder commands that three matzot, often interpreted as the three components of Israel’s nation, priests, Levites and common Israel, be stacked up on a plate. At the beginning of the Seder, the

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master of ceremonies breaks the middle matzah into two parts and puts the larger part into a special linen cloth or a pouch that is kept hidden until the end of the meal. In some traditions, children will later be entrusted with the task of fnding (or “stealing”) this missing parcel, the last element of the meal, called afkoman. There is no explanation for this ritual in traditional versions of the Pesach Aggadah. The Greek word that is usually referred to as a possible etymology, ἐπίκωμον, literally a “reveling,” often translated as “dessert, after-food enjoyment” only adds to the enigmatic character of this hidden parcel. Apart from the morphological distance between afkoman and epikômon, why hide as a dessert a piece of matzah that has already been conspicuously served as an accompaniment to the main course and that has nothing particularly enjoyable about it? The most likely candidate for the etymology of afkoman is, quite obviously, ἀφικόμενος (afkomenos), a past participial form of the verb ἀφικνέομαι, “to come into.” In the writings of Thucydides, Plutarchus, Plato, Philo, Flavius Josephus among others, this is a current form in the sense of “arriving to” or, more seldom, substantivized: “the one who comes.” As a synonym to ὁ ἐρχόμενος (Matt 11:3; 21:9; 23:39; Luke:7:19; 13:35), ὁ ἀφικόμενος often designates ‫ְהו֑ה‬ ָ ‫( ֭ ַהּבָא ּב ֵ ְׁ֣שם י‬Ps 118:26), the “one who comes in the name of Adonai” or the Messiah in the writings of the Fathers of the Church.119 These and other considerations have induced David Daube, working on a hypothesis formulated earlier by Robert Eisler, to suggest that the afkoman element was originally part of a Jewish ritual prior or contemporary to Yeshua, a ritual dealing with Messianic hopes that would later have been disguised in order to avoid providing additional support to Christian apologetics.120 Be that as it may, Jewish kabbalistic tradition knows of a Messianic interpretation of the afkoman as the “missing part” that, through Tikun-olam, a work of spiritual reparation, “makes the meal”—or the cosmos—“whole again.”121 Understood in the light of the Last Supper, this strange ritual takes on a symbolic meaning that, while globally coinciding with the “Tikkun-olam” type of explanation, appears to be much clearer and more precise. The Messiah, the One who comes, is separated, torn apart, from the nation of Israel, albeit on behalf of the nation of Israel. For the time being, the Redeemer of Israel remains hidden from Israel’s sight. However, he will reveal himself fully to Israel at the end of history. For Jewish believers who celebrate this ritual, the One who comes in humility is already known, so that they are made partakers of the great secret that the ritual of the afkoman symbolizes. Once again, read in the light of the Last Supper, the liturgical elements that compose the Seder unfold their concealed—very literally in the case of the afkroman—Messianic dimension, a dimension that pertains to God’s deed of spiritual liberation through Yeshua.

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4.4.2. Shavuot-Pentecost: celebrating the gift of the Law From a Jewish Messianic liturgical point of view, emphasizing the connection between the memory of the frst-fruits’ offering and that of the event of the Pentecost described in the Book of Acts 2 is as essential as bringing to the fore the connection between Pesach, the memory of the liberation of Egypt, and that of Christ’s death and resurrection. It is certainly not a coincidence that the effusion of the Holy Spirit over the disciples happens on the day when Israel celebrates ha-Bikkurim, the offering of the frst-fruits, ffty days or seven weeks (shavuot) after Pesach (see Deut 16:9–10). On a symbolic level, the effusion of the Holy Spirit is the spiritual “frst-fruits” of Christ’s victory over death. It is as much a spiritual consequence and sign of Christ’s Pesach as the offering of the frst-fruits was a material consequence and sign of Israel’s liberation from Egypt and installation in the Land. But the connection between the two feasts, the one celebrated by the Synagogue and the other by the Church, is even more intimate as it tells about the Mystery of God’s design for Israel. Indeed, in the Jewish tradition, the offering of the frst-fruits became associated with the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai (see Talmud, tr. Pesach 68b). The main reading is from Exodus 19–20, which contains the Ten Commandments. The parallel between the outpouring of the Holy Spirit over the apostles and the gift of the Torah at the Sinai is immediate and manifest: While it is said that the gift of the Torah was accompanied with “peals of thunder,” “fashes of lightning,” and “a very heavy trumpet blast” (Exod 19:16), Acts 2:2 evokes “a violent wind” that suddenly flled the entire house. While it is written that God “descended on the mountain in the form of fre,” one reads in Acts 2:3 that “there appeared tongues as of fre” resting on the heads of the apostles. Thus, what remains shrouded in mystery in the rabbinic tradition, that is, the reason for combining the offering of the frst-fruits and the gift of the Torah, receives a new and fairly clear meaning when it is read in the light of Acts 2: the “frst-fruits” of Christ’s victory over death is the gift of a new law or a spiritual law. Claiming that this law is new does not imply that it replaces the law of Moses. As I have repeatedly argued earlier on, this new law is nothing but the law of Moses messianically fulflled in Christ. The prophecy one reads about in the book of Ezekiel, c. 36, fnds a striking realization in the narrative of Acts 2: I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your fetishes. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of fesh; and I will put My spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules. Then you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people and I will be your God. (Ezek 36:25–28)

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It is Ezekiel that combines the theme of a spiritual renewal of the Law with that of the frst-fruits (see Exod 24:16) in the very same passage: “And when I have delivered you from all your uncleanness, I will summon the grain and make it abundant, and I will not bring famine upon you. I will make the fruit of your trees and the crops of your felds abundant, so that you shall never again be humiliated before the nations because of famine” (Ezek 36:29–30). The spiritual renewal of the Law promised by Ezekiel carries with it the promise of a new and abundant harvest. Before even depicting the birth of the Church—in contrast to the group formed around Jesus during the days of his public ministry—the Pentecost of Acts 2 tells about the achievement of Israel’s spiritual maturation through the power of her Messiah’s resurrection from the dead. The Pentecost of Acts 2 contains an element that foreshadows the universality of the Ekklesia, as encompassing all the nations of the earth; namely, the miraculous overcoming of the linguistic barriers that, according to Scriptures, had been dividing humankind since the destruction of the tower of Babel (see Gen 11:9): “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (Acts 2:5–6). It is clear, however, that these “devout men” are not foreign to Israel; they are “Jews and proselytes” (Acts 2:10). The diversity of languages refects the fragmentation of the diaspora, an element that the apostles will turn to their advantage as they endeavor to spread the Gospel.122 Thus, there is a Jewish dimension to the event of the Pentecost notwithstanding its universal message. Conversely, there is an element of universality present in the traditional celebration of Shavuot, notwithstanding the memory of a law that distinguishes Israel from all other nations. It has to do with the reading of the scroll of Ruth during the festival. The fact is that the theme of harvest is hardly a suffcient justifcation for the connection between Ruth and Shavuot. This aspect is merely the setting of a story that focuses on a Moabite woman who decides to join the people of Israel—and does it very successfully as she will become David’s ancestor. In the prophecy of Ezekiel about the spiritual renewal of the Law, one reads the following sentence: “Then you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people and I will be your God” (Ezek 36:28). In her initial dialogue with Noemi, her Jewish mother-in-law, Ruth utters a sentence, which is the precise echo of Ezekiel’s words—an echo that comes out of the mouth of a foreigner: “For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Within the Law, there is a spiritual core. Ruth, the non-Jew who joins Israel, is a witness to this hidden and universal reality. Meanwhile the Jewish

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disciples of Christ, as well as those who hear them talking on the day of Pentecost, are witnesses to the manifestation of this hidden reality to all nations of the world through the power of the Spirit, a manifestation out of which the Church is born. Ruth is the sign of the Messianic reality that Israel has been carrying with herself along her historic journey while Pentecost marks the beginning of the reception by the nations of Israel’s legacy in the Spirit. The universality of Moses’s Law and the Jewish dimension of its renewal in Yeshua; the loss of Israel’s singularity among all nations, so that all nations might partake of Israel’s spiritual legacy—these are the dimensions essential to Jewish Messianic identity that should be brought to the fore by a Messianic celebration of Shavuot, a celebration of the one Law that simultaneously gives life to Israel and to the whole Ekklesia.

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4.4.3. Hanukkah-Christmas: The Incarnation and the Renewal of Israel’s Hope Unlike Easter and Pentecost, the event of the New Testament to which the feast of Christmas refers does not take place at the time of a synonymous Jewish feast. It is not that Hanukkah does not appear in the New Testament. It is mentioned in John 10:22 as the ἐγκαίνια, the feast of the “renewal” of the Temple that celebrated Judas Maccabeus’s successful attempt at rebuilding the altar of the Temple after its desecration by king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (164 BC). However the Church authorities that established the feast of Christmas in the third century certainly did not have Hanukkah in mind since nothing in the narrative of the birth of Christ refers to this feast. The two feasts are nonetheless connected time-wise as they are both centered on the winter solstice. Hanukkah’s 25th of Kislev and Christmas’ 25th of December is “the same day” as it were; namely, the day when the year is at its darkest, even if they seldom materially correspond due to the difference of calendars. Thus, it is an identical symbolism that lies at the core of the two feasts. Hanukkah is the “festival of lights,” and the main liturgical action of the feast is the gradual lighting of the Hanukkiah, the 8-branch menorah, in memory of that which used to be placed in the Temple Sanctuary. Meanwhile the Gospel of John evokes Christ’s advent in the following terms: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9). To which the canticle of Zechariah in the Gospel of Luke echoes: “the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78–79)

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This symbolism of a light against which darkness cannot hold, a light destined to grow and become stronger from this very day, plays a central role in the two feasts. This symbolism immediately resonates with children who, in both traditions, are the frst to relate to these feasts, not least because most of the time they include the distribution of presents. Deciphered from a Messianic perspective however, this connection goes much deeper. The analogy between the Temple and the very person of Christ is fundamental. When “the Jews” ask Jesus to justify his violence against sellers and money changers in the Temple, he answers: “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” To which the author of the Gospel according to John adds this comment: “he was speaking of the temple of his body” (John 2:19–21). The Second Temple was destroyed, but it was rebuilt, renewed in the Ekklesia as the living Body of Christ. On the feast of the Dedication, Jesus asks “the Jews”: “Can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctifed and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?”(John 10:36). Celebrating Hanukkah in a Messianic perspective is celebrating the consecration and coming into the world of the One in whom the nation of Israel can contemplate its new and defnitive Temple: “And the Word became fesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). As we will see further on, the bi-millennial Jewish lamentation over the destruction of the Temple keeps a meaning for the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, a meaning which cannot be identifed with some endless eclipse of God on the horizon of Jewish history. With His mighty hand, God has erected in Yeshua a new Temple, flling the enemies of Israel with confusion. In the lighting of the menorah’s candles using the shamash (the “servant candle”), Jewish disciples are invited to recognize the fgure of the Messianic Servant of the Lord who, when he came into the world, lit the Temple’s Menorah once again and forever. With the children of Israel hearing about the story of the oil cruse that lasted eight days after having been discovered in the desecrated Temple, they can truly exclaim, referring to the light of the New Temple: “A great miracle happened here!” 4.4.4. Tishrei and the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year In many respects, the Jewish “High Holidays,” Rosh ha-Shanah through Yom Kippur, and the feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles) constitute a whole. It is so time-wise as all these festivals follow one another, separated only by short intervals, during the Hebrew month of Tishrei. But it is equally so spiritually, since the three festivals take the form of a unique journey in the presence of God, from the awe before divine Judgment (Rosh ha-Shanah) to the jubilation of God’s victory (Sukkot) via the depths of human repentance (Yom Kippur). For its timing, content, spiritual coherence, and crucial place within

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the Jewish liturgical calendar, this journey has no equivalent in the tradition of the Ekklesia. It truly concerns the exclusive relation that exists between Israel and the One who created it. Still, it would be wrong to assume that absolutely no echo of it can be found in the Ekklesia’s liturgical tradition. During more or less the same period, the Church marks the passage from the current liturgical year to a new one. I would argue that what should lie at the core of a Messianic celebration of this journey reveals itself as one meditates on the connection between the Jewish festivals of Tishrei and the “Catholic” understanding of this season of liturgical transition. Making the beginning of the year coincide with the beginning of the Autumnal period of agricultural work seems to have been established by the Mishnaic sages of Israel during the frst half of the second century. This date stands both in relation and in contrast to the month of Nissan, designated as the beginning of the year in Exod 12:1, as well as the celebration of Pesach starting on the 15th of the same month, a feast that has also an agricultural aspect (the barley harvest). One rabbinic source is particularly telling in this regard. It is the argument between R. Joshua and R. Eliezer concerning where the New Year should be placed in the calendar: “R. Joshua: ‘In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born; on New Year Sarah, Rachel and Hannah were visited; on New Year Joseph went from prison; on New Year the bondage of our ancestors ceased in Egypt; and in Nisan they will be redeemed in the time to come.’”123 In contrast to R. Joshua, R. Eliezer places all these events in the month of Tishrei. His last correction of R. Joshua’s point of view deserves special attention: “In Nisan [our ancestors] were redeemed and in Tishrei they will be redeemed in the time to come.”124 Thus, according to R. Joshua, the New Year should be celebrated during the month of Tishrei because this festival is not about the redemption that already took place, the one that is celebrated at Pesach, but about the celebration that will happen in the future, meaning Messianic times. It is fair to claim that not only Rosh ha-Shanah, but all the festivals of Tishrei are connected to the eschatological dimension of Redemption. Even when the liturgy focuses on the immediate future, as in Rosh ha-Shanah for the year to come, or refers to a sacrifce of the past, as at Yom Kippur, the fundamental perspective remains that of the fnal Judgment and Redemption. Since the beginning of the fourth century, the Church has had her own “New Year”; that is, a moment or period that marks the end of a liturgical cycle and the beginning of a new one. It is probably not a coincidence that the timing of this ecclesiastical New Year is loosely connected with the holiday of Rosh ha-Shanah, nor that it has an eschatological dimension. The controversies regarding the date of Easter that erupted toward the end of the second century show that some Churches were still following the Jewish liturgical

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calendar at the time—and for those that did not, this calendar still constituted a point of reference. The diversity of practices subsisted until the Council of Nicea (325), which was characterized by the will to integrate the ancient correspondence between Jewish and Christian feasts into a new, original and universal framework. Using the indiction; that is, the beginning of the Roman fscal year on Sept. 1st, as a basis to draw the line between the two cycles, the old and the new, the Fathers of Nicea were distancing themselves from the Jewish computation of the New Year while preserving the eschatological dimension associated with it.125 Until the present day, the 1st of September has remained the beginning of the liturgical year in the Byzantine tradition. Meanwhile, the Western tendency to consider the Nativity as the start of the civil year in the High Middle Ages brought about the shifting of the liturgical New Year toward the beginning of Advent in the frst week of December.126 This change resulted in the emergence of a very specifc liturgical period between late October and December as the old cycle would gradually transition to the new one, a period continuously placed under the sign of the eschaton and the Second Coming.127 The almost “pre-established harmony” between the Jewish feasts of Tishrei and the season of the ecclesiastical New Year has, therefore, some objective roots in history. In my opinion, this correspondence will become a source of liturgical inspiration for the Jewish disciples within the Ekklesia. I will endeavor to show this as I examine a few Messianic elements conveyed by the Jewish festivals of Tishrei.

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4.4.5. Rosh ha-Shanah: Standing before the King of the Universe “All are judged on the New Year, and the decree is sealed on the Day of Atonement.”128 Rosh ha-Shanah and the ten days of repentance that follow are called Yamim Nora’im, “the Days of Awe.” Indeed, there is hardly a better word than “awe” to describe the religious emotions associated with Rosh ha-Shanah. The excitement generated by the contemplation of the Creator and King of the Universe is what generates fear at the prospect of standing under his Judgment, but the fear of God’s Judgment never dissuades one from extolling the greatness of the Creator and King of the Universe. The original formulation of the kedusha (prayer for the sanctifcation) for the Evening service (Arvit) of the feast, U-vekhen, expresses the intimate connection between the theme of God’s kingship and the Coming of the Messiah: Bring to early fulflment, even in our days, the hopes and prayers of the House of Israel for the coming of the Messianic era of thy servant David, ushering in days of justice and peace, humanity and holiness on earth. And therefore, Lord our God: Speed the time when those who love righteousness will behold these

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days and rejoice; when the upright and the kind will be glad and break into song; when wickedness shall be silenced and every form of violence vanish like vapor, because thou wilt cause the rule of arrogance to cease from the earth.129

The One who creates the universe and continuously steers its course is also the One who will perfect it in justice through the Messiah at the end of times. The Messiah is the fnal dimension of God’s kingship over the universe. The feast of Christ the King, established by Pius XI in 1925, a feast that marks the end of the liturgical cycle in the Catholic Church, is an expression of the manner in which the Ekklesia conceives the Messianic kingship of God. Quas Primas, the encyclical that introduces the feast, offers a clear echo to the kedusha quoted earlier:

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Do we not read throughout the Scriptures that Christ is the King? He it is that shall come out of Jacob to rule (Num. 24:19) who has been set by the Father as king over Sion, his holy mount, and shall have the Gentiles for his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession (Ps 2). In the nuptial hymn, where the future King of Israel is hailed as a most rich and powerful monarch, we read: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the scepter of thy kingdom is a scepter of righteousness” (Ps 45:6). There are many similar passages, but there is one in which Christ is even more clearly indicated. Here it is foretold that his kingdom will have no limits, and will be enriched with justice and peace: “in his days shall justice spring up, and abundance of peace . . . . And he shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” (Ps 72)130

Indeed, the New Testament is also flled with explicit allusions to the Messianic kingship of Yeshua.131 Still, the goal of Rosh ha-Shanah is not to speculate about the Messianic era; it is to face the King of the Universe and Protector of Israel whose judgment continuously results in a reward for the just and punishment for the wicked. Precisely, the idea of Rosh ha-Shanah is that this experience will both help us to amend our ways and induce God to look favorably on the course of the year to come. To some extent, each Rosh ha-Shanah is a “mini-fnal Judgment”—but a fnal Judgment that is still open to revision given our disposition toward inner renewal. Un’taneh Tokef (Let us speak of the awesomeness), probably the most remarkable Ashkenazi piyyut or liturgical poem inserted into the feast, is chanted just before the kedusha mentioned earlier while the Ark of the Covenant is open and the faithful are standing, and it expresses this aspect of God’s kingship in the following manner: As a shepherd herds his flock, Causing his sheep to pass beneath his staff,

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So do You cause to pass, count and record, Visiting the souls of all living, Decreeing the length of their days, Inscribing their judgement. On Rosh ha-Shanah it is inscribed, And on Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many shall pass away and how many shall be born, Who shall live and who shall die, Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not, . . . Who shall have rest and who shall wander, Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued, Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented, Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low.132

Although it was composed at a much earlier date according to modern scholarship, Un’taneh Tokef bears a close resemblance to the hymn Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), a poem that has long been associated with “All Souls Day,” one of the feasts of the Latin Catholic Calendar that characterize the “eschatological season” preceding the new liturgical year.133 As the Ekklesia prays for the eternal rest of the deceased, she invites all faithful to face the prospect of God’s Final Judgement, which is the very purpose of Rosh ha-Shanah. Just as Un’taneh Tokef, Dies Irae evokes the Book of Life in which God keeps the destiny of every individual sealed:

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“You open the book of remembrance Which proclaims itself, And the seal of each person is there.” U.T.

“ Lo, the book exactly worded, Wherein all hath been recorded, Thence shall judgement be awarded.” D.I.

Just like Un’taneh Tokef, Dies Irae addresses a divine Judge that responds with mercy to the one who turns to Him: “You do not desire the death of the condemned, But that he turn from his path and live. Until the day of his death You wait for him, Should he turn You will receive him at once.” U.T.

“King of majesty tremendous, Who dost free salvation send us, Fount of pity, then befriend us” D.I.

Of course, in contrast to Un’taneh Tokef, the divine Judge to whom Dies Irae refers has the face of Yeshua the Messiah. It is to the Son that his

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heavenly Father imparts the Final Judgement (Matt 25:31–46), but it is also the Son that the Father sent into the world to save it and not to condemn it (John 3:17). This understanding lies in the background of Dies Irae: Think, kind Jesus, my salvation Caused Thy wondrous Incarnation, Leave me not to reprobation.

Besides, Un’tanekh Tokef and Dies irae have another very concrete theme in common: “The great shofar is sounded, A still small voice is heard. The angels are dismayed, They are seized by fear and trembling As they proclaim: Behold the Day of Judgement!” U.T.

“Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth, Through earth’s sepulchers it ringeth, All before the throne it bringeth.” D.I.

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The tuba that signals the imminence of God’s Judgement, here translated as “trumpet,” is none other than the biblical shofar (see for instance Judg 7:18; 2 Sam 20:22, Ps 80:4). It is mentioned in the passage from the Book of Zephaniah from which Die Irae draws its main inspiration: Dies iræ, dies illa, dies tribulationis et angustiæ, dies calamitatis et miseriæ, dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulæ et turbinis, dies tubæ et clangoris super civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos. That day shall be a day of wrath, A day of trouble and distress, A day of calamity and desolation, A day of darkness and deep gloom, A day of densest clouds, A day of horn blasts and alarms ‫רּועה‬ ֑ ָ ְ‫ׁשֹופר ּות‬ ֖ ָ ‫— יֹ֥ום‬ Against the fortified towns And the lofty corner towers. (Zeph 1:15–16)134

The mention of the shofar in Un’taneh Tokef is far from a mere detail. The biblical name of Rosh ha-Shanah is the feast of trumpets (see Lev 23:24). Blowing the shofar is the “action-symbol” that characterizes the feast.135 By tradition, it is blown 100 times on each of the two days of the feast. Many understand the sound of shofar as contributing to the exaltation of God’s kingship (tekiah—a long straight sound), calling to repentance (shevarim—three broken notes) and indicating alarm at the sight of God’s impending Judgment (teruah—short staccato sounds). But there is more about the symbolism of

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the shofar than the register of courtly ceremonial and battle cries. During the morning service of the second day of Rosh ha-Shanah, the reading from the Torah is the story of Isaac’s binding (Akedah), which is followed by the “shofar service.” The Ark is open, the faithful recite verses standing and the shofar is blown thirty times. The material connection between the shofar and the Akedah is clear. A shofar is made of a ram’s horn, and there is mention of a ram in the biblical story, just after the angel of God prevents Abraham from completing the sacrifce of his only son: “When Abraham looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son” (Gen 22:13). However, the manner in which the Akedah and this episode, in particular, relate to the feast of Rosh ha-Shanah is less evident. According to a midrash, God told Abraham that his children were to blow the shofar whenever they were in danger of punishment.136 Thus, the shofar is primarily a reference to the merits of Abraham and Isaac obtained through the Akedah. The symbolic use of the shofar in this context acquires an even greater meaning if interpreted from a Messianic perspective. The ram sacrifced in place of Isaac foreshadows Yeshua. He is the one through whom the merits of Abraham and Isaac will turn a Judgment of justice into a Judgment of mercy.137 Blowing the shofar is like appealing to the one who comes in the Name of the Lord to redeem Israel. The relation of a long-term perspective focused on the Messianic era at the end of times to the short-term perspective focused on the year to come belongs to the core of Rosh ha-Shanah. The kingship of God extends to all times, past, present, and future. Seen in connection with the “eschatological season” of the Church’s liturgy (All Saints, All Souls, Christ the King, First Sunday of Advent), this relation acquires a whole new level of theological coherence: the one who is to come and establish his reign of glory at the end of days (All Saints, First Sunday of Advent) has already, although invisibly, been enthroned as King of the Universe (Christ the King) after the days of his frst coming, so that one can rely on the mercy he came to announce as one turns to the Judge of the living and the dead (All Souls). 4.4.6. The Days of Repentance and Yom Kippur: Beseeching Divine Mercy for the Sins of Israel With its spiritual intensity, Yom Kippur needs to be understood as a continuation of Rosh ha-Shanah: “  ‘All are judged on the New Year, and the decree is sealed on the Day of Atonement,’ the words of R. Meir.”138 Anthropologically, Rosh ha-Shanah leads the faithful into a phase of introspection, the result of which is an awareness of their transgressions that is bound to become more and more acute during the ten days of repentance until the culmination of Yom Kippur. Since this awareness should come

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with the desire to amend one’s ways, the feast of Yom Kippur is a spiritual journey of “return” to God (teshuva). Such “subjective” movement on the part of the faithful is, however, merely one aspect of Yom Kippur. It is intimately connected with the divine commandment establishing the sacrifce of the Day of Atonement. On that day, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies with the specifc types of animal to be sacrifced: “The LORD said to Moses: Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover. Thus only shall Aaron enter the Shrine: with a bull of the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering” (Lev 16:2–3). The sacrifce of the bull would make expiation for the personal sins of the priest while a ram together with one he-goat would be offered to redeem the sins of the people (this is the sin-offering called Chatat in Lev 16:5–11). Another he-goat would be used as a “scapegoat to Azazel” and ritually sent off to its death in the wilderness. While the Temple was standing, this specifc type of sacrifce would spare Israel the punishment that the deliberate transgressions of its children deserved. This is the very meaning of Kippur: “pay the ransom for one’s life, purge, atone.” Accordingly, Israel’s confession of sin is not a morbid form of self-deprecation; it is actively seeking from God an unconditional act of mercy. The complete fast that is observed from the eve of Yom Kippur to the following evening (see Lev 23:27) gives tangible expression to this quest and this hope. At Rosh ha-Shanah, the exaltation of God’s Kingship is balanced by the consideration of the Throne of Judgment. At Yom Kippur the desolation over one’s transgressions is tempered by the hope for divine forgiveness. Fasting, prayer, alms, good resolutions are all means supposed to obtain what sacrifces can no longer achieve after the destruction of the Temple. There is, however, one aspect of teshuva, of the dynamics of repentance, the importance of which prevails over all other—it is asking others to forgive the offenses we have committed against them. As it is stated in the Mishnah: “For transgressions done between man and the Omnipresent, the Day of Atonement atones. For transgressions between man and man, the Day of Atonement atones, only if the man will regain the good will of his friend.”139 No story better illustrates the connection between, on the one hand, the forgiveness of God toward human beings and, on the other, the forgiveness of human beings toward one another, than the parable of the wicked servant in Matt 18: 23–35: “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves” (Matt 18:23). The slave who does not forgive to those who owe him as his Master has forgiven him ends up excluded from his Master’s mercy: “Then his lord

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summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt” (Matt 18:32–34). As the parable indicates, the act of forgiving one another stems from an unconditional act of divine forgiveness. None of our “good deeds” can achieve this. They merely express our need for this forgiveness when our transgressions weigh on our conscience—or they are the expression of our gratefulness when we believe that this divine forgiveness has been granted to us. The last prayer service of Yom Kippur, Neilah, is pervaded with the sense that the “gates of Mercy are closing” as darkness looms, manifesting the awareness of human efforts’ futility to secure God’s forgiveness: “What are we? What is our life? What is our piety? What is our virtue? What is our salvation? What is our strength? What is our accomplishment? What shall we say before You, O Lord our God and God of our ancestors? Are not all the mighty as nothing before You, men of renown as if they did not exist?”140 From this arises a question that is never directly dealt with in the rabbinic tradition: If the sacrifce of Yom Kippur truly conveyed God’s unconditional act of mercy when the Temple was still standing, how could good deeds that are said to be unable to secure God’s mercy make up for this sacrifce after the destruction of the Temple? I would argue that there is a Messianic element in the certainty that in spite of the disappearance of the Yom Kippur sacrifce, God is still providing atonement for the sins of his people when they repent as they used to do during the days of the Temple. The description of Christ as the defnitive sacrifce of Kippur in the Epistle to the Hebrews immediately comes to mind: For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifce of himself. (Heb 9:24–26)

It is “to the Hebrews” that the epistle so-named announces this defnitive atonement. Salvation is achieved on their behalf, whether they acknowledge it or not. At the same time, a positive acknowledgment of this fact adds an entirely new layer of meaning to the celebration of Kippur. For the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, the need for repentance stems from Israel’s collective sin against her Messiah, a sin that in itself recapitulates all of Israel’s past and future transgressions. Such repentance, as I emphasized earlier in this

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book, is the key to the outpouring of mercy that stems from the sacrifce of Yeshua. The Messiah gives himself up to those who crucifed him on behalf of those who wanted him to be crucifed. For the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, teshuvah, the journey of return to God, is anchored in the spiritual reality evoked in Isaiah 53: Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, Our suffering that he endured. We accounted him plagued, Smitten and afflicted by God; But he was wounded because of our sins, Crushed because of our iniquities. He bore the chastisement that made us whole, And by his bruises we were healed. (Isa 53:4–5)

Accordingly, Yom Kippur in Autumn unfolds as the “other side” of Pesach in the Spring, a side that is somber but still flled with the contemplation of God’s boundless mercy. Pesach celebrates the long-awaited deliverance of the people by their Messiah; Yom Kippur lets Israel measure the price of her redemption as her children remember and make amends for their sins.

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4.4.7. Sukkot: Welcoming the Messiah Now and at the End of Times Even if four days separate Sukkot from Yom Kippur, one is supposed to start building the Sukkah-booth immediately after Yom Kippur. That tells us how much Sukkot should be viewed in continuity with Yamim ha-Noraim. But this new festive sequence strikes a note that is completely celebratory. After reaching the nadir of her self-esteem at Yom Kippur, Israel is invited to experience a profound renewal of her relationship to God during the period that begins with Sukkot and ends at Simkhat Torah, the jubilatory closure of the annual cycle of readings. Just like Pesach and Shavuot, Sukkot combines the marking of an important moment of the agricultural cycle when the frst-fruits of the harvest are gathered (Exod 23:16, 34:22), with the memory of an episode of Israel’s history; namely, Israel’s wandering in the desert after the liberation from Egypt (Lev 23:42–43). With Pesach and Shavuot, Sukkot is one of the three annual pilgrimages that God commanded the whole nation to celebrate (Exod 34:23; Deut 16:16). Among the three, it rose to pre-eminence—so much that it was usually simply called “The Feast” (1 Kgs 12:33). The reason for this popularity is not self-evident, as Israel’s liberation from Egypt and the gift of the Torah seem to speak more eloquently about God’s favor for Israel than the

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years of wandering in the desert. I would argue that Sukkot’s popularity is due to the fact that the essential purpose of the feast is not about remembering an event of the past. At Sukkot, the memory of the past is merely the pedagogical way in which God’s ongoing guidance of Israel is experienced and exalted. More than about what God once did for Israel, the festive mood is inspired by what God is doing and will do for Israel. One of the designations of the feast is “the season of our joy.” Leaving the comfort of one’s house for the rudimentary setting of a homemade hut does not make sense if it is not to experience a protection that is much stronger and more exhilarating than that which walls made of stones can provide. It originates in the proximity of God Himself: “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are home-born in Israel shall dwell in booths; that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (Lev 23:42–43). Regarding this passage, the Talmud reports a discussion between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva, the two great masters of the late frst century/ beginning of the second century: “ ‘For I made the children of Israel dwell in sukkot’ (Lev 23:43), meaning in clouds of glory, the words of R. Eliezer. R. ‘Aqiba says, ‘They were actually sukkot that people made for themselves.’ ”141 Rabbi Eliezer understands “I gave a dwelling, ‫ׁשבְּתִ ֙י‬ ֙ ַ ‫הֹו‬, to the children of Israel” as if God Himself had become the dwelling place of the children of Israel by wrapping them in the mantle of His glory. The reply of Rabbi Akiva should not necessarily be interpreted as a rebuttal of Rabbi Eliezer’s interpretation. If it is true that there is no place where the children of Israel could better experience the glorious proximity of God than in the precarious booths that God made for them in the desert, the interpretation of Rabbi Akiva does not discard that of Rabbi Eliezer but rather adds a necessary precision to it. From this point of view the feast of Sukkot has a truly “contemplative” or “mystical” aspect to it. Jewish disciples of Yeshua cannot but establish a connection with the episode of the Transfguration in Matt 17:1–8 and Luke 9:28–33. As the face of Jesus shines like the sun on the high mountain and the disciples suddenly see Moses and Elijah standing at his sides, Peter exclaims: “ ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ ” (Matt 17:4–5). The “tents” mentioned by Peter (ποιήσω ὧδε τρεῖς σκηνάς) are a synonym of sukkah since “tent” is the term used in Exodus to designate the dwellings of the children of Israel during their peregrinations in the desert. It is as if God had “made” for the disciples a “cloud of glory” akin to those mentioned

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by Rabbi Eliezer, in contrast to the manmade booths that Peter had in mind. Rather than seeing in this episode a belittling of Sukkot, one can perceive here an allusion to the achievement of Sukkot’s mystical aspect: the immediate experience of the divine shekhinah or presence of God. The reading for the Shabbat of Sukkot recalls how God put Moses into the “cleft of a rock” (Exod 33:19–23) so that he might contemplate His glory, and how the face of Moses became radiant after this encounter (Exod 34:29).142 The seven-day “sukkah” experience is about encountering something of this intimacy with God’s presence. The episode of the Transfguration, in turn, tells about the contemplation of divine glory to which the disciples’ spiritual intimacy with Christ leads. Be that as it may, one should keep in mind that Sukkot is a pilgrimage that recalls a journey in time from one point to another; it is not an ascetical attempt at leaving behind the continuum of time and space. Moreover, it is a collective, celebratory pilgrimage and not an accumulation of individual, highly intimate spiritual experiences. The “Feast of Ingathering,” ‫חג הָָאסִיף‬, another name for Sukkot, also symbolically designates the ingathering of the children of Israel since it is there, in the Temple, that they are asked to present themselves before God. The frst day of the festival was marked by a great public ceremony. Known as Simkhat Beit ha-Sho’evah (“Rejoicing-of-the-House-of-waterdrawing”), libations of water drawn from the pool of Siloam were offered on the altar, perhaps in reference to Isa 12:3: “Joyfully shall you draw water From the fountains of triumph (‫ְׁשּועֽה‬ ָ ‫) ִמ ַ ּמ ַעי ְֵנ֖י ַהי‬.” These water libations were accompanied by dances, music and lighting of torches. In particular, three golden candlesticks, each ffty cubits high, were lit in women’s courtyard of the Temple, so that “there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem which was not lit up from the light of bet hasho’ebah.”143 According to the Mishnah, “Anyone who has not seen the rejoicing at the place of the water-drawing in his life has never seen rejoicing.”144 The custom of arranging celebratory gatherings under the same name continues during Sukkot until the present day. Each day of the feast a procession around the bema (central pulpit of a synagogue) takes place in memory of the ancient processions around the altar of the Temple, during which Jews wave a bundle of four plant species—a closed palm branch (lulav). Three myrtle branches (hadas), two willow branches (arava) and one citron fruit (etrog)—were representing the frst-fruits of the harvest. But the most important day of the festival proper was and still is the last one, the seventh. On this day, called Hoshanah Rabah (the great Hosannah) or the “Day of the willows,” the crowds waving willows would walk seven times around the altar, itself decorated with willows, continuously singing Psalm 118: I will give thanks unto Thee, for Thou hast answered me, and art become my salvation.

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The stone which the builders rejected is become the chief cornerstone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. We beseech Thee, O LORD, save now! We beseech Thee, O LORD, make us now to prosper! ( ‫יח֥ה ּנָ ֽא‬ ָ ‫יע֥ה ָּנ֑א אָ ּֽנָ ֥א ְ֜יה ֗ ָוה ַה ְצ ִ֨ל‬ ָ ‫ׁש‬ ִ ֨ ‫)א ָָּנ֣א ֭ י ְהוָה הֹו‬ Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD; (‫ְהו֑ה‬ ָ ‫) ּב ָ֣רּוְך ֭ ַהּבָא ּב ֵ ְׁ֣שם י‬ we bless you out of the house of the LORD. The LORD is God, and hath given us light; (‫)אל׀ י ְהו ָ֘ה ַו ָּי֪אֶר לָ ֥נּו‬ ֵ֤ order the festival procession with boughs, even unto the horns of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will give thanks unto Thee; Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever.” (Ps. 118:21–119:1 JPS)

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The expression Hoshanah, “save (hushia), pray (nah)!” is built on the root that gives the word salvation, ‫יׁשּועֽה‬, ָ yeshuah. To ignore the Messianic dimension of Hoshanah Rabbah is impossible. The celebration is flled with the expectation of the marvels God will achieve for Israel. In point of fact, on the frst day of the Feast, the day of the Simkhat Beit ha-Sho’evah, the reading of the Prophets (Haftarah) is Zechariah 14: Behold, a day of the LORD cometh, when thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle . . . And it shall come to pass in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem: half of them toward the eastern sea, and half of them toward the western sea; in summer and in winter shall it be. And the LORD shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the LORD be One, and His name one. . . . And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso of the families of the earth goeth not up unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, upon them there shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, they shall have no overfow; there shall be the plague, wherewith the LORD will smite the nations that go not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. (Zech 14:1–2, 8–9, 16–18) Until the present day, Zechariah 14 is read on the frst day of Sukkot.

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Even if Bible scholars fnd it diffcult to understand exactly why, it is a fact that Zechariah associates the Feast of Tabernacles with the “Day of the Lord,” a day when all the peoples of the earth, after a terrible battle, will gather in Jerusalem to worship the Lord together with Israel.145 To Zechariah proclaiming “Behold, a day of the LORD comes” (Zech 14:1), Psalm 118 echoes: “This is the day which the Lord has made” (v. 24). The crowds that, on Pesach, are said to have welcomed Jesus waving palms and branches at the cry of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Matt 21:9), were deliberately borrowing from the customs of Sukkot’s Hoshanah Rabah to signify the Messianic dimension of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem. It should therefore be no surprise if it is precisely on that day, the last day of the Feast, that Yeshuah chose to issue his ultimate proclamation about his Messianic identity to the crowds gathered in Jerusalem. This time he simultaneously unveiled the Messianic meaning of Simkhat Beit ha-Sho’evah and used this meaning to confrm the trustworthiness of his words: “On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall fow rivers of living water’ ” (John 7:37–38). The frst coming of Yeshua has only partially fulflled Zechariah’s prophecy regarding the feast of Tabernacles. True, the nations have been integrated into the spiritual legacy of Israel through him. But when have the nations joined in the living prayer of Israel on Mount Zion? Zechariah’s “Day of the Lord” has not yet come. Accordingly, when the Jewish disciples of Yeshua celebrate Sukkot together with all their Jewish brethren, they experience the religious thrill of its yet unfulflled prophetical dimension.146 With their Jewish brethren, they know that this fulfllment is due to consecrate the spiritual role of Israel among the nations at the end of times. But they are also grateful to God for having been made aware of the manner in which this prophecy will be fulflled. The Church is called to join in the living worship of Israel to be truly universal; and this call will materialize when Israel in her entirety welcomes the one who once, on the last day of the Feast, declared that he was her true Messiah. This process has already started; and the Jewish disciples of Yeshua are a crucial part of it. 4.4.8. Simkhat Torah: The final wedding Sukkot is immediately followed by two feasts that mark the conclusion of the whole High Holidays season, Shemini Atzeret (The Eighth Day of Assembly), centered on the blessing for rain, and Simkhat Torah (the Joy of Torah) that celebrates the end of the annual cycle of readings as the new one is about to start. Formally Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simkhat Torah are

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three distinct feasts, although the two last ones are celebrated on the same day in Israel. But viewed from within the dynamics of the High Holidays, and especially the last part of it, they form one whole, the joy of Sukkot reaching its climax on Shemini Atzeret and Simkhat Torah. Rabbinic tradition has often recourse to the language of love to express this inner coherence. In order to explain why God willed to add an eighth day to Sukkot, R. Schlomo Yitzchaki known as Rashi, the great Torah commentator of the eleventh century, writes that Shemini Atzeret is like a “small banquet that the king arranged for His beloved” before she departs for home.147 Tradition envisages the whole sequence of the High Holidays in terms of a wedding between God and his people: “Elul is the period of courtship; Rosh haShanah, the betrothal; Yom Kippur, the fast before the wedding; the seven days of Sukkot, the seven blessings of the marriage ceremony; Shemini Atzeret, the breaking of the glass; and Simkhat Torah, the consummation.”148 Simkhat Torah, in particular, is pervaded with the symbolism of a wedding. The tallit or prayer shawl that is held over children and readers evokes the canopy set up for a wedding couple. The singing and dancing as the scrolls of Torah are joyfully carried along bear the hallmark of a wedding celebration. Finally, the one who reads the last portion of the Torah cycle (Deut 33:27–34:12—the death of Moses) is called Hatan Torah, “the Bridegroom of the Law,” whereas the one who reads the frst portion of the new cycle (Gen 1:1–2:3—the creation of the world) is called Hatan B’Reshit, “the Bridegroom of Creation.” This wedding analogy should deeply resonate with the Jewish disciples of Christ. Did Yeshua not compare the Kingdom of Heaven “to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding” (Matt 22:2)? Yeshua is the Hatan promised to Israel and the world (Matt 9:15; 25:1–13; Luke 5:34–35; Mark 2:19–20; John 3:29; Rev 19:7–9; 21:2; 22:17; 25:1–13). In him, his Jewish disciples recognize God’s eternal Torah. This is particularly emphasized in “The Gifts of God are irrevocable,” the 2015 Vatican document: Christians affrm that Jesus Christ can be considered as “the living Torah of God.” Torah and Christ are the Word of God, his revelation for us human beings as testimony of his boundless love. For Christians, the pre-existence of Christ as the Word and Son of the Father is a fundamental doctrine, and according to rabbinical tradition the Torah and the name of the Messiah exist already before creation (cf. Genesis Rabbah 1,1). Further, according to Jewish understanding God himself interprets the Torah in the Eschaton, while in Christian understanding everything is recapitulated in Christ in the end (cf. Eph 1:10; Col 1:20). In the gospel of Matthew Christ is seen as it were as the “new Moses.” Matthew 5:17–19 presents Jesus as the authoritative and authentic interpreter of the Torah (cf. Luke 24:27, 45–47). In the rabbinical literature, however, we fnd the identifcation of the Torah with Moses. Against this background, Christ as the “new

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Moses” can be connected with the Torah. Torah and Christ are the locus of the presence of God in the world as this presence is experienced in the respective worship communities. The Hebrew dabar means word and event at the same time—and thus one may reach the conclusion that the word of the Torah may be open for the Christ event.149

For the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, Simkhat Torah symbolically features this “great mystery” of which Paul spoke in his Epistle to the Ephesians: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. . . . This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. (Eph 5:25–27, 32)

Indeed, this mystery has to do with the consummation of history. No symbolic ritual than of a wedding ceremony could be better suited to celebrate the end of a liturgical year that mirrors the end of times: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Rev 22:17).

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4.4.9. The minor feasts: through joy and despair, the hidden presence of Yeshua among his people The Jewish liturgical calendar includes many other feasts I have not mentioned yet and will not examine for lack of space. With the notable exception of Tu’bshvat in the late Winter that has come to have some similarity to the contemporary “Earth day” in April, most of these minor feasts have to do with events that have shaped the Jewish nation’s self-awareness—for better or for worse—long after the time of Moses. The recently introduced feasts that directly or indirectly relate to the existence of the State of Israel (Yom ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom ha-Atzmaut, Israel’s independence day, Yom ha-Zikkaron, the memorial day for the State of Israel’s fallen veterans; Yom Ierushalaim, commemorating the reunifcation of Jerusalem in 1967) should be understood in the context of a theological approach to the State of Israel. I will provide a few observations on this crucial theme further on. Here I will be satisfed with briefy singling out two feasts, one sad and one joyful, that echo one another as polar opposites: Tisha be-Av, the fast on the ninth of Av around August that marks the memory of the two falls of Jerusalem (in 586 BCE at the hands of the Babylonians and in 70 CE at the hands of the Romans) and the early Spring festival of Purim commemorating

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the deliverance from Persian persecution at the time of King Ahashverus (alias Xerxes, 586–565 BCE). Tisha be-Av is the most important of the four fasts associated with the fall of the frst Temple (the others are seventeenth of Tammuz, tenth of Tevet and Tzom Gedalyah, see Zechariah 8:19). It is without doubt the saddest day of the Jewish liturgical year. Curtains covering the Ark in the synagogue are either removed or are black; Torah scrolls are themselves sometimes draped in black; the congregation sits on the foor or low benches, reading in the dim light of candles. The Book of Lamentations (Eicha) is read or rather mournfully cantillated, as are the various elegies (kinot) composed for this occasion throughout the centuries to spell the magnitude of the disasters that befell Israel and the sins that led to them. Apart from the destruction of the Second Temple and the beginning of a 2,000-year exile, many other tragic events in the history of Israel are said to have occurred on the same day (the expulsions from France, England, Spain, the beginning of World War I, the approval of the “fnal solution” by Himmler, etc.). Whether these additional memories are historically accurate or not is beside the point. What matters is that Tisha b’Av epitomizes the recurring tragedies of Jewish history. After expelling the merchants from the Temple, Jesus declares: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), words that John interprets in the following manner: “he was speaking of the temple of his body” (John 2:21). In my opinion, there is no doubt that the majority of commentators are right when they identify the “Temple-body” that Christ has in mind with the Church. Still, if this “Temple-body” grants a new existence to the ancient Temple made of stones, it means that the destruction of this Temple-of-stones is a destruction that affects Christ’s body. Whether the worshippers of the ancient Temple fnd their way to the new Temple is a different matter. If the body of Christ and the Temple of Jerusalem are one reality, the fact remains that the suffering inficted on the Jewish worshippers as a consequence of the destruction of their Temple is suffering that rebounds on Yeshua himself. Likewise, the disciples of Yeshua are witnesses to the existence of the new Temple that is the Church, and yet this awareness does not spare them the realization of the desolation that befell all Israel—of which they consider themselves a part. The pain of Israel is theirs, and Israel’s sins are their sins. If anything, this realization is even more intense for the Jewish disciples of Yeshua than for the wider Jewish community. While they join in the lamentation of Israel, they are also partakers of the profound suffering of their Master. The divine love of Yeshua for Israel turns into suffering—a suffering of love—as a majority of Israel turns away from his divine love: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke

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13:34). But it is also a suffering of anger—love resulting in anger—at the sight of those of his disciples who have hated and persecuted the defenseless members of his own kin throughout history: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Jewish tradition has linked the idea that the Messiah was born or will be born on a ninth of Av150 to the passage of Zechariah that foresees the transformation of “the fast of the fourth month, the fast of the ffth month, the fast of the seventh month, and the fast of the tenth month” into “joy and gladness, happy festivals for the House of Judah” (Zech 8:19). For the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, there is no doubt that since the destruction of the Temple, the Messiah has been invisibly walking side by side with his people, accompanying them in exile and guiding their steps back to the Land. They do not either question that someday the fast of ninth of Av will change into a vision of joy as the Jewish nation fnally reaps the Messianic fruits of its long-lasting suffering. If Tisha b’Av in the summer is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, Purim in the early spring is the merriest. The memory of a thwarted persecution, the celebration of Queen Esther’s courage and of her uncle Mordechai’s spirit of decisiveness, and the jubilation over the defeat of Haman give rise to a multitude of rites and customs, some of them coming very close to the carnival tradition in Christianity (and earlier, to that of that of the Roman Saturnalia). It is not my purpose to describe them here. I only want to highlight one fairly remarkable aspect of the feast. It is a well-known fact that, in stark contrast with Pesach, the sacred text on which the feast is based, Megillat Esther (the Hebrew version of the scroll of Esther) does not contain the name of God. Why would a story that entirely revolves around the demonstration of God’s providence avoid the name of God? The rabbinic tradition is familiar with an exegesis of the name Esther, from the Hebrew root ‫ר‬-‫ת‬-‫ס‬, “to hide,” that connects it with Deut 31:18: “Yet I will keep My countenance hidden on that day (֙‫וְָאנ ֹ ִ֗כי ַהס ְֵּת֙ר ַאס ִ ְּ֤תיר ָּפנַי‬ ‫) ַּבּיֹ֣ום ה ַ֔הּוא‬.” Interestingly, Jewish philosophers and theologians like Martin Buber (The Eclipse of God, 1952), Eliezer Fackenheim, Emil Berkovits, and Yrving Greenberg referred to the same verse as they were refecting on the possibility of faith after the Shoah. Indeed, it seems more natural to apply this verse to an event where the providence of God seems to be absent, an event where God for some reason fails to rescue his people, than to the symmetrically opposite case. The whole verse from Deuteronomy sounds ominous when taken in its entirety: “Yes indeed, I shall hide my face that day, on account of all the evil which they will have done by turning to other gods.” At this point, I would like to mention another rabbinic tradition regarding Purim. It is said that Purim is the only feast that will subsist during the

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Messianic era. The fact is that rabbinic tradition views Purim as already carrying the fragrance from the Messianic era: The Patriarch Jacob had longed to institute that every day of the week be like the Sabbath of messianic times—totally saturated with the holiness of that Sabbath—but he was unsuccessful, for it was premature. He was successful, however, in that his descendants would be able to experience some taste of this messianic Sabbath even during the week, at such times as Chanukah and Purim.151

For the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, the hidden character of the Name in the story of Esther indicates that the Messianic hand that is secretly piloting most Jews throughout the meanders of history remains unknown to them. They believe that the true Messiah of Israel has always been actively at work to deliver the nation from its enemies, albeit in a hidden manner. And when, following Providence’s impenetrable designs, no material deliverance is in sight, it is the same Messiah who makes his presence felt to the unfortunate children of Israel in the same hidden manner. Ultimately, at the end of times, Tisha b’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar will manifest its identity with Purim, the merriest one. On that day, the hidden Messiah of Israel will reveal his identity to all the children of Israel, changing Tisha b’Av into a festival of joy and gladness according to the prophecy of Zechariah—or into a Purim celebration that will last throughout all the days of the year, as Israel will forever praise Yeshua, her Messiah and Redeemer that has delivered her from the hands of all her enemies.

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4.4.10. Conclusion: Messianic Jewish Prayer and the Ekklesia The collections of so-called testimonia (“witnesses”) are probably the earliest literary genre to which institutional Christianity gave rise. Zealous apologists would look for all the passages of the Old Testament that would prove to diffdent Jews that Jesus Christ was truly the one Israel had been waiting for. The various treatises adversus Judeos (“against Jews”) that the Fathers of the Church composed from the third to the ffth century drew widely on these collections of testimonia. Later, in the Middle Ages, converts such as Pablo Christiani, the main opponent of R. Moses Ben Nachman (Nachmanides, +1270) during the famous “Dispute of Barcelona” (1263), applied the same method to the Talmud, trying to establish that rabbinic tradition itself was a witness to the truth of Christianity. From a Messianic Jewish perspective, there can hardly be anything wrong with the theoretical premises of these apologetical attempts: if Yeshua is the true Messiah

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of Israel and if rabbinic tradition is to some degree legitimate, as deriving its conclusions from the authentic revelation of God consigned to the Torah, rabbinic tradition must contain elements that witness to Yeshua’s Messiahship. This is a fortiori the case for Scriptures that the Ekklesia considers to be directly inspired by God. What led those apologetical attempts fundamentally astray was their practical goal. It was unilaterally assumed that the realization by Jews of Yeshua’s legitimate claim to Messiahship would require forsaking faithfulness to the Torah and to ancestral customs as a preliminary condition for joining the Church. While I share the theoretical premise of these Christian apologists, my practical goal is opposite to theirs: what I am striving to demonstrate is that the realization of Yeshua’s Messiahship should encourage Jewish disciples to be faithful to both the Torah and to ancestral Jewish traditions as a preliminary condition for the Ekklesia to make room for a Jewish corporate presence and thus visibly achieve the fullness of her Catholicity. Simply—and this is the point where I fundamentally part with Mark Kinzer—I believe that when it comes to prayer life, which is, of course, an essential dimension of this Jewish corporate presence in the Church, the liturgical forms developed by Jewish tradition cannot—and especially ought not—be integrated as such into the Ekklesia. Besides a few disputable exceptions like the Birkhat-ha-Minim and certain hymns, these forms do not contain elements that would be objectively irreconcilable with faith in Yeshua as Messiah of Israel. At the same time, these forms do not contain elements that would be objectively supportive of faith in Yeshua Messiah of Israel. As I wrote before, a community of faith cannot survive if it is deprived of prayers that according to their content refect the specifc faith of this community. The famous saying lex orandi lex credendi works also the other way around: lex credendi est lex orandi— belief must be the rule of prayer. But there are more than the requirements of religious psychology to that. The “successful” translation of the Jewish Messianic belief into prayer and liturgical forms is in itself a demonstration of its fundamental legitimacy. Showing that traditional forms of Jewish prayer convey Messianic elements that point toward the truthfulness of Yeshua’s message is, of course, an essential part of it. Messianic Judaism is legitimate to the extent that Yeshua is the Messiah whom Jews have been expecting since time immemorial. Still, this aspect only constitutes one part of the demonstration. Showing that Messianic Jewish prayer can develop an original approach to Christ’s revelation, an approach that does not coincide with the liturgical forms that took shape within a de facto Gentilized Church, constitutes the other part of this demonstration of legitimacy. If the existence of a corporate Jewish presence in the Ekklesia has a purpose, it is because it conveys a perspective on Revelation that, while being doctrinally orthodox, is foreign to the non-Jewish understanding of it. This was the whole point

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of going through the various forms of Jewish worship, from daily prayer services to the main feasts of the liturgical year, singling out the Messianic elements that, in each of them, could be brought to the fore in order to create the tissue of an original and coherent Jewish Messianic prayer cycle. The idea was not to defne the concrete forms of this Messianic worship, not even by way of instances. Neither was it to conceive the general framework of Jewish Messianic worship in the Ekklesia—if one day a Jewish Messianic corporate presence fnds its way into the Ekklesia, it will probably manifest a great variety of approaches when it comes to the forms of liturgical worship, and legitimately so. Rather, my goal has been to theologically delineate the space between the well-defned forms of traditional Jewish worship and their Catholic equivalents that such worship would occupy should it ever see the light of day. My attempt at providing “Catholic” correspondents to the traditional forms of Jewish worship—Shabbat/Sunday, Hanukkah/ Christmas, High Holidays/Pre-Advent liturgical season—will certainly be criticized as an involuntary type of “Gentilization” of the Jewish tradition. The exact opposite is true. What is especially “Gentile” about the fact that Yeshua established the sacrament of the Eucharist during the Last Supper? Or the fact that he was born in Bethlehem and that he rose from the dead in Jerusalem on a day that followed a Shabbat? There is one answer to all these questions, and it is one word: forms. A Christmas-tree was certainly not part of the original memory of Yeshua’s birth in Bethlehem. One could say the same thing about the elaborate rituals that have crystallized as a consequence of millennia of Christian religious practice. The whole tradition of the Church, including doctrine, is the product of infuences coming from civilizations foreign to Jewish culture. But infuences on what? Surely the core of what constitutes the Church, that which has been unceasingly developed, shaped and reshaped over and over again, is a fact (or a combination of facts) that fully belongs to Jewish identity, culture, and history? Even the idea of broadening the salvation of Israel to all the nations of the earth is, according to its human dimension, a Jewish idea. Therefore, pointing out the connection between the Messianic elements included in the Jewish tradition of worship and in traditional elements from the Church liturgy does not imply unduly Christianizing Judaism or Gentilizing Jewishness; it is defnitely about rediscovering the Jewish core of Church tradition. Once again, I am not assuming that this core is some original “truth” that later developments would have lost from sight and disfgured. I fnd these developments astonishingly faithful to the core and amazingly rich and inspiring. At the same time, not only is there no reason why the Jewish core of Church tradition should remain hidden to Jewish believers, but I believe that its rediscovery would certainly be of spiritual beneft to the whole Church.

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Like the core of Church tradition, the Messianic interpretation of Jewish worship that I sketched out in the previous considerations rests on who Yeshua is, and what he did and said. Christmas is celebrated during the winter solstice because of the symbolism of light versus darkness associated with the person of Yeshua (John 1:9; 8:12, Luke 1:78–79, etc.). Each feast of the Christian calendar emphasizes a specifc aspect of the unique and indivisible Mystery of salvation revealed in Christ—the Incarnation as the light that shines in the darkness is the aspect of Revelation that is at the heart of the Christmas celebration. When Hanukkah is considered from the perspective of Christmas and its symbolism, the meaning of Hanukkah changes. It is not that Hanukkah ceases to commemorate the victory of Judas Maccabeus, but its symbolism opens to a radically new dimension. A very concrete ritual like the lightning of the hanukkiah (the 8-branch menorah for Hanukkah) partakes of this hermeneutical shift as soon as one sees Jesus as the suffering servant in the shamash, the ninth candle whose purpose is to light the others. Certainly, this new dimension that is anchored in the person of Yeshua springs from the development of Christmas as a feast of the Christian calendar. Yet the Messianic dimension of Hanukkah and its rituals preexisted Christmas. Thus, looking at Hanukkah from the perspective of Christmas does not “Christianize” Hanukkah; it does not add to Hanukkah an element that it would not otherwise convey. Rather it brings to the fore a dimension that was present in the festival but was not yet perceptible, a dimension that remains invisible as long as one celebrates Hanukkah without referring to the Christian calendar. The very fact of formulating the connection between Hanukkah and Christmas, translating it into a prayer that ipso facto modifes the literal content of traditional Hanukkah prayers, establishes Jewish disciples in a de facto—albeit not de jure—communion with all the members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.152 And yet the celebration of a Messianic Hanukkah remains a thoroughly Jewish celebration. Contemplating the Incarnation as the defnitive rekindling of the Temple’s menorah, the sign that Israel’s Temple is forever standing even though there is nothing left but the retaining wall from the Second Temple, is a fundamentally Jewish perspective on the Mystery of the Incarnation. I am not claiming that this perspective is completely meaningless for non-Jewish disciples of Yeshua. But just as in traditional Jewish worship, this perspective implies a specifc blessing of God over the nation of Israel. A Messianic Hanukkah should be a moment of collective awareness among Jewish disciples and deep communion with the rest of Klal Israel. Easter and Pentecost, the two most fundamental feasts of the Christian calendar, which constitute the most primitive embryo out of which the Church’s liturgical year came to existence, are themselves the result of the Messianic transformation of the corresponding Jewish feasts. The celebration

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of the liberation from Egypt has always hinted at the Messianic redemption of Israel to come, the fnal Geula. One could defne Christianity itself as the way in which God revealed the nature of this redemption. This divine deed— the very life and death of Yeshua—radically transformed the celebration of Pesach. The Messianic dimension that used to be a side-aspect of the feast became, with its materialization in Yeshua, the very purpose of the feast. Likewise, the event of the Pentecost described in Acts 2 transformed the focus of Shavuot, formerly an agrarian feast dedicated to commemorating the giving of the Law to Moses, into a celebration of the Church’s universality through the gift of the Holy Spirit. There is a hint at the virtual universalization of the Law in the reading of Ruth that is traditionally associated with the feast, but it is God himself—neither the Church nor men—who transformed the hint into a Messianic reality. This shift was so radical that the faithful quickly lost the awareness of the connection between the Moses-centered Shavuot and the Yeshua-centered Pentecost. As for Easter, the memory of the liberation from Egypt was reduced to a metaphor of the Redemption accomplished in Christ—the fourth-century homilies of Cyril of Jerusalem to the catechumens are a splendid testimony to this shift. That such evolution is perfectly understandable from a Gentile point of view does not imply that it is a theological necessity. The liberation from Egypt is the founding moment of the constitution of Israel as a nation. Does Christ’s redemptive deed imply the cancellation of the existence of Israel as a nation? The gift of the Law to Moses is the defning moment of this nation’s identity. Does the gift of the Spirit to all those who, regardless of their ethnic and cultural origins, come to faith in Yeshua imply the dismissal of the Torah’s signifcance and authority for Jewish believers? If the Redemption of Christ implies the rejection of Israel and her Torah as “outdated” and “no longer valid”—an idea that is still widely embraced, mainly implicitly but sometimes explicitly, by the faithful and even by clerics of the Catholic Church—trying to conceive the forms of a Jewish corporate presence in the Ekklesia is an absurd endeavor. But the absurdity here lies rather with the supersessionist idea. If the Ekklesia is built on the acknowledgment of Yeshua as Messiah of Israel, how could she simultaneously profess a Messiah who came to reject his own people, together with the religious tradition that led to him? Accordingly, commemorating the liberation from Egypt and the gift of the Law to Moses preserves all their signifcance in the framework of a Messianic celebration of Easter and Pentecost. For Jewish disciples, Pesach and Easter are one single feast, just as Shavuot and Pentecost. From their point of view, the Redemption of Christ accomplishes God’s design of liberating Israel, and the universality of the Church is the way in which the light of the Torah radiates throughout the world. The celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection is fundamentally embedded in the memory of the last meal in Egypt, the Lamb sacrifced and

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eaten in every Jewish home. Therefore, in the context of an ecclesial celebration of Pesach, the kiddush over the wine transforms it into the blood of Christ and the Ha-motzi blessing over the matzah transforms it into his body. The whole purpose of a Jewish corporate presence in the Ekklesia lies in the possibility of leading an authentically Jewish life in true communion with the rest of the Church. This true communion must be seen to be the untainted, “un-Christianized” outcome of the Messianic dimension of the Jewish tradition. This does not mean that this outcome is conceivable independently of God’s revelation in Yeshua, nor does it imply that it can be identifed independently of the tradition of the Church. By “Christianization” I mean the implicit projection of Gentile elements taken from the Church tradition onto the content of Jewish tradition. Yeshua as well as the content of the New Testament are not elements from Church tradition; they are at the foundation of the tradition of the Church—they are the “Jewish core” of this tradition. Even when, dealing with Rosh haShanah, I refer to a feast that has only recently been instituted on the Latin calendar, the feast of Christ the King (1925), I do not modify the content of the Jewish feast in order for it to look more Christian or “Catholic” than it is. It is not the Church who declared Jesus King of the Jews; it is Pontius Pilate under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Simply put, a Catholic feast such as “Christ the King” gives us the possibility of bringing to the fore the fulfllment in Yeshua of one aspect that is inherent to the Jewish feast; namely, the Messianic Kingship of the Judge of the universe. In turn, this implies the existence of some harmonious correspondence between the liturgical cycle as it was developed by the Church in the course of history and the Messianic celebration of traditional Jewish feasts. Harmony does not mean identity, but it does mean communion. Jewish disciples who celebrate Rosh ha-Shanah in the Spirit of the Messiah do not celebrate the Catholic feast of Christ the King according to the current dispositions of the Catholic Church; but, whether they want it or not, they are already in some sort of informal communion with the faithful of the Catholic Church who are doing so throughout the world. The approval of a Jewish Messianic calendar by the Catholic Church would only acknowledge a communion that already exists. Perhaps what I am advocating will become clearer with the help of a tentative table: Jewish feast and holy days Shabbat Pesach Hanukkah

Jewish Messianic core

Church liturgical cycle

Resurrection on the eighth day Death and Resurrection of Yeshua Birth of Yeshua

Sunday Mass Easter celebration (Triduum) Christmas

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Yeshua King of the Jews

Yom Kippur

Redemptive death of Yeshua

Sukkot

Transfiguration/—Proclamation of Jesus in the Temple/Entrance of Yeshua in Jerusalem at Easter Yeshua as the wedding groom All Saints Day Yeshua as the invisible providence Shrove Tuesday of Israel Yeshua suffering in the midst of Israel Friday of the Passion

Simkhat Torah Purim

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Tisha-be-Av

Feast of Christ the King/ All Souls Lent, celebration of the Passion Feast of the Transfiguration/ Palm Sunday

As one can see, the “harmony” mentioned earlier between the JewishMessianic and the Catholic liturgical cycle does not follow a strictly chronological pattern. Because of the palms used in Hoshanah Rabah, Palm Sunday in the spring fnds an echo during Sukkot in the autumn; the liturgical equivalent of the Tisha-be-Av fast in the summer would be Good Friday in the spring, and so forth. Indeed, the correspondence remains fragmentary. Some aspects of a Jewish feast can be echoed by a Catholic feast while others are left aside. Shrove Tuesday is flled with the carnival atmosphere of Purim, but it is not focused on the theme of God’s providence. What matters from a Catholic point of view is that a Messianic Jewish calendar, while developing its own coherence out of the traditional Jewish calendar, will nonetheless share the basic orientations of the global Ekklesia’s worship. The communion in faith that is the defning element of a truly universal Church should not be confused with liturgical uniformity; it is anchored in the conviction that it the same God who, through his Messiah, lives and breathes in all the members of his Body; the same God who is contemplated and exalted through a variety of liturgical forms. The truth is that there is nothing in a Jewish Messianic liturgy, such as the one that we have schematically described, that the wider Catholic Church could not embrace. But what about the contrary? What about the many liturgical elements pertaining to the core of the Catholic Church that seem to be foreign to the principles and constitutive elements of Jewish Messianic prayer? The magnitude of this issue is much larger than liturgy and prayer life. In order for the communion between a Messianic Jewish body and the wider Ekklesia to be real, it is not enough for the wider Ekklesia to accept the Messianic Jewish body’s doctrine, structure and liturgy; the converse must also be true. How is a movement steeped in Jewish tradition supposed to deal with all the “innovations” that the Catholic Church has been accumulating— or, more positively, the evolutions she has been going through—in the course of centuries? While this issue goes beyond the domain of liturgy stricto sensu, it is also true that liturgical emphasis reveals aspects of the tradition that are

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essential to the Church even if the theological constructs associated with them are more modest. This is eminently the case regarding the place of the Virgin Mary in the life of the Catholic Church. Doctrinal statements on the Virgin Mary are motivated by a devotion that steadily grew in the Church since early times—and which are but a pale refection of Mary’s importance for the Catholic faithful.

5. A JEWISH REAPPROPRIATION OF CHRISTIAN TRADITION

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5.1. The Virgin Mary At frst sight, there is little more foreign to Jewish religious sensitivity than Catholic forms of devotion to the Virgin Mary, which seem make a limited human being somehow part of the Divine. This woman is endowed with gifts—she gave birth while remaining a Virgin; she was taken up to heaven without going through physical death; she was herself conceived in a state of total purity that she always managed to preserve—that sets her far above the ordinary human condition. To which one should add the statues and multiple representations of the Virgin that the Catholic faithful regard as sacred. At the same time, the suspicion of idolatry associated with devotion to the Virgin Mary is not the exclusivity of Jews. It is shared by the Reformation within historical Christianity. Since genealogically speaking the Jewish Messianic movement is itself an outcome of the Protestant world, one should exert some caution before ascribing this suspicion to Jewish sensitivity rather than to the critical attitude of Protestantism toward the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary.153 From the theological point of view that is ours, a point of view that tries to consider Messianic Judaism according to its nature and fundamental principles and not according to the empirical variety of its current forms of existence, it is only Jewish religious sensitivity that matters. There is no more reason a priori why Messianic Judaism should lean toward Protestantism rather than toward Catholicism. The only premises that make Messianic Judaism what it is, and that should therefore be retained as valid, are the reclamation of Jewish identity and the acknowledgment of Yeshua’s Messiahship according to the writings of the New Testament. The question is whether a Jewish Messianic presence would lose something of its Jewish identity by joining in—or at least not dismissing as idolatry—the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. Besides, even if this issue is connected to that of the permissibility and even sacred character of religious images, the two issues should be distinguished. It is not only statues and images of the Virgin Mary that rabbinic Judaism rejects but the very idea of granting a religious role to fgurative representation, an attitude (aniconism) that derives from one of the

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Ten Words-Commandments given to Moses (Exod 24:4–5) and is much more ancient than Calvinism within historical Christianity (see eighth- and ninthcentury iconoclasm). Thus delineated, the question reads: Is there something in the theological fgure of the Virgin Mary according to the Catholic tradition that would alienate Jewish disciples from their Jewish identity, should they embrace the devotion that she enjoys in the wider Catholic Church? The method that I applied to Jewish liturgical life can be applied to the possibility of a Messianic devotion to the Virgin Mary. It consists of (1) going back to the Jewish origin of the object considered and (2) looking into the Messianic dimension of the rabbinic tradition. The fact is that the Virgin Mary owes as little to the tradition of a Gentilized Church as Yeshua and the apostles. Indeed, if one keeps to the narrative of the Gospels regarding the miraculous conception of Yeshua, she is the one to whom Jesus owes his Jewish identity since Joseph is an “adoptive father” of sorts. In other words, Mary is the condition of possibility of the Messianic movement, a movement that rests on the rediscovery of the Jewish identity of Christ. Certainly, this is not enough to endorse dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception (Mary was conceived free from sin, 1854) and the Assumption (Mary was entire, body and soul, taken up to heaven after her death, 1950). Nor can the case for Mary as a most powerful intercessor and dispenser of Christ’s grace, a type of worship much more ancient than these dogmas, be systematically argued from Scriptures—which is precisely the reason why this aspect of Catholic Mariology underwent the thrust of Luther’s criticism. Yet if one accepts to treat the question seriously; that is, to envisage the possibility of a Messianic reception of the Catholic tradition regardless of the quarrel with Reformation theology, there is no shortage of elements that point toward an intimate connection between these traditional aspects of Catholic Mariology and the heart of Jewish tradition. Considered from the perspective of the Torah, the fgure of the mother of Jesus immediately evokes that of the Virgin of Israel/Daughter of Zion as it emerges from the prophetic writings. The two designations, “virgin” and “daughter” are synonyms as one reads in the harsh admonishment of King Ezekias by the prophet Isaiah: Fair Maiden Zion despises you, She mocks at you; Fair Jerusalem shakes Her head at you. (Isa 31:22)

In the Book of Amos, the devastation of Israel is likened to the fall of a virgin:

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Fallen, not to rise again, Is Maiden Israel; Abandoned on her soil With none to lift her up. (Amos 5:2)

Similarly, in the Book of Jeremiah, the return of the exiles on the Land is likened to the rise of a virgin: I will build you firmly again, O Maiden Israel! Again you shall take up your timbrels And go forth to the rhythm of the dancers. (Jer 31:4)

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The “virgin Israel,” ‫ש ָׂר ֵ ֑אל‬ ְ ִ ‫ּתּול֖ת י‬ ַ ‫ ְב‬: one cannot conceive of a more intimate relationship than the one associating the fgure of a young virgin with Israel as an entity. In all these passages, Israel is a virgin, whatever be the exact nature of this identifcation. From our point of view, the question whether the analogy between Israel and the fgure of a virgin-daughter was originally conceived as a metaphor, a true personifcation or a mere manner of saying is irrelevant.154 We are interested in the constitution of a living tradition, and it is enough for us to single out the fact that this tradition conveys a philosophically undetermined identifcation between the feminine fgure of a virgin and the nation of Israel. The Targumic tradition is a witness to this state-of-affairs. In the Targum of Prophet Micah, probably going back to shortly before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the expression “daughter of Jerusalem” is more or less systematically replaced with ‫ ְכנִׁשְּתָ א דְ צִיֹון‬the Aramaic equivalent for “Knesset Israel,” “the assembly of Israel,” as in c.4:10: “Quake and tremble, O congregation of Zion, like a woman in labour.”155 / Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail.

Meanwhile, in the Targum of Psalms, written much later (between fourth and sixth century AD), the “barren one” of Ps 113:9 becomes “the assembly of Israel that may be compared to a barren woman.”156 One cannot help being struck by the manner in which this ancient Jewish understanding of Klal Israel as a holy entity distinct from the sins of its individual members and identifed with a virgin/barren woman resonates with the fgure of the Virgin Mary, as she is depicted in the New Testament independently of later dogmatic constructs. Mary is an individual within Klal Israel; she is a “daughter of Zion” and a “daughter of Jerusalem” in this factual meaning; and yet at the same time she is, as Lumen Gentium designates

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her, “praecelsa flia Sion” (§55), “daughter of Zion” in the supereminent, prophetical sense of the term, being singled out as the virgin that gives birth and a creature of extraordinary holiness. She embodies the very moral ideal of Klal Israel. In this sense, she is Klal Israel according to its undefled nature. Thus, being comprehended in Klal Israel by her birth, Mary comprehends Klal Israel in herself according to a holiness that is typifed by her virginal condition, as a most remarkable echo to the fgure mentioned in the prophetical writings. One does not deal here with a late dogmatic construct but with the new and concrete reality that is manifested in numerous passages from the New Testament and directly stems from God’s providential economy. The very fact of her coming to be like a concrete human being corresponds to a long-awaited messianic sign: “Assuredly, my Lord will give you a sign of His own accord! Look, the young woman (‫ ָה ַע ְל ָ֗מה‬, LXX παρθένος) is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel. She shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa 7: 14). The Magnifcat, the song of victory that comes from Mary’s lips, fulflls the prophecies of jubilation that one fnds in a number of passages from the books of the prophets:

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Gospel according to Zephaniah 3:14–15 Luke 1:46–49 “Shout for joy, Fair “My soul magnifies Zion, the Lord, Cry aloud, O Israel!

Zechariah 2:14–15

“Shout for joy, Fair Zion! For lo, I come; and I will dwell in your and my spirit Rejoice and be glad midst—declares rejoices in God with all your heart, the LORD. In Savior, Fair Jerusalem! that day many for he has looked The LORD has nations will with favor on the annulled the attach themselves lowliness of his judgement against to the LORD servant. you, and become His Surely, from now people, and He He has swept away on all generations will dwell in your your foes. will call me midst. Then you Israel’s Sovereign the blessed; will know that I LORD is within was sent to you For the Mighty One you; by the LORD of has done great Hosts.” things for me, and You need fear misfortune no holy is his name.” more.”

Zechariah 9:9–10 “Rejoice greatly, Fair Zion; Raise a shout, Fair Jerusalem! Lo, your king is coming to you. He is victorious, triumphant, Yet humble, riding on an ass, On a donkey foaled by a she-ass. He shall call on the nations to surrender, And his rule shall extend from sea to sea And from ocean to land’s end.”

According to her concrete being and conduct, Mary accomplishes Israel’s prophetical tradition in a manner that is intrinsically new, owing to God’s decision only, just as the Eucharist that Yeshua established completes Israel’ s sacrifcial tradition in a completely new and utterly concrete manner.

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But there is more about the connection between Mary as a New Testament fgure and the living tradition of Israel. The Gospel’s narrative tells about the union between Mary and the Almighty. As the angel sent by God tells the young virgin, “ The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The theme of the marriage between God and Knesset Yisrael, featured as a young maiden, is deeply anchored in the Jewish tradition.157 It is this royal bride that, since the time of the Amoraim (between the third and the sixth century AD), Israel welcomes as her queen on Shabbat.158 As Gershom Scholem showed, the identifcation between this feminine fgure representing Israel and the divine shekhinah, the Presence of God as a mediating entity between the Creator and Israel, did not come about before the Middle Ages, under the infuence of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Jewish Kabbalah.159 The downward movement of God revealing Himself to Israel, guiding it along its earthly journey, and the upward movement of a part of humankind, vowed to sanctify his Name crystallized in the same hypostasis. The effect of this inner evolution was to deepen the affnity between this feminine fgure and that of the Virgin Mary in the Christian tradition. In a tradition where the divine sphere and the created sphere are radically separated, the crystallization of a divine emanation and a sanctifed part of humanity was understood as a form of divine advocacy of Israel rising out of the innermost recess of the Godhead. The shekhinah intercedes for Israel within the divine sphere, and it is also through her that Knesset Israel has access to God. The shekhinah suffers and rejoices together with Israel.160 She is both the channel of God’s mercy toward Israel and the doorway of Israel to God. In this framework, the nuptial dialogue that gives its content to the Song of Songs is understood as taking place within the divine sphere itself, as featuring the relation between the masculine dimension(s) of God and his ultimate feminine emanation or Sefra, representing Knesset Israel in the mode of a virginal bride.161 This confguration has so much in common with the defning features of Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary, which Jewish scholars such as Peter Schäfer and Arthur Green ascribed the origin of these Medieval kabbalistic insights to the efforescence of Marian devotion during the same period, as witnessed in the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux to a supreme degree.162 Just as Mary is the Virgin Mother of the Church, the shekhinah is the Virgin Mother of Knesset Israel—the theological status and function of both fgures are very similar: “[Shekhinah], writes A. Green, is the Mother of all lower worlds, intermediaries, and serves especially as mother of the human soul. Shekhinah has precisely that function of standing perfectly balanced between the upper and lower worlds, the agent through whom grace (or shefa) descends to the community devoted to her praise. She is the sublime

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Community of Israel, the ideal of Israel of which the human community of Israelites is the earthly manifestation.”163 The hypothesis of a Christian infuence might be viewed as giving credit to the idea that such a feminine fgure is not genuinely part of the Jewish tradition. But one should frst admit that this conclusion implies a perspective widely different from our starting point, if not exactly opposite to it. Having forsaken the common belief that the cult of the Virgin Mary was entirely foreign to Jewish tradition, we have come to the idea that Jewish tradition presents an aspect so close to it that its existence could hardly result from any other factor than the infuence of Christianity. Meanwhile, the argument for such infuence has been heavily criticized, and I believe for good reasons.164 But even if this criticism were to be discarded, one still needs to justify the possibility of Christian infuence. Given the foundational divergence between the two traditions and the state of continuous tension between the two communities that upheld them, the Schäfer-Green conjecture is less than obvious. The hypothesis rests on the preexistence of patterns of thinking within the Jewish tradition that found an echo in the Christian forms of devotion and therefore could receive some inspiration from them. In one way or another, we are brought back to the idea that the Jewish tradition came close to essential aspects of devotion to Mary through its inner movement. True, Kabbalistic speculations on God’s divine dimension are infnitely more fuid and abstract than a veneration regulated by Church Magisterium. Still, faith in Yeshua, as well as the elements that derive from it, could not aspire to the status of Messianic revelation if their content were said to be identical to that of a tradition that developed independently from them. Indeed, my point was not to show that they were identical but that this specifc aspect of faith in Yeshua, namely, the cult of the Virgin Mary, was not foreign to Jewish tradition. The truth is that far from driving away Jewish disciples of Yeshua from the riches of Jewish tradition, an understanding of the theological role of the Virgin Mary along the lines of the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church might lead these disciples to deepen and reach further insights that are integral to Jewish tradition. By doing so, these disciples would come to the consideration of theological truths that are as new to the Catholic Magisterium as they are foreign to rabbinic tradition. There is little refection in the Catholic world on the relation of the Virgin Mary to Am Israel, the Jewish nation, in contrast to the kabbalistic emphasis on the indivisible union between the shekhinah and Knesset Yisrael. But just as, through faith in Yeshua, all disciples have been made partakers of the election of Israel, the maternal solicitude of Mary toward them can be said to fow from the original bond between Mary and Am Israel, a bond sealed in her Messianic motherhood: Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his

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mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:25–27)

Seen in this light, Jewish disciples are not Gentilized when they venerate Mary. On the contrary, Gentile disciples are those who, most of the time unwittingly, are Judaized whenever they venerate Mary.

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5.2. A Note on Saints and Their Role On holiness, the message of Torah and the teaching of Yeshua are one. In Leviticus, one reads: “For I the LORD am your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not make yourselves unclean through any swarming thing that moves upon the earth. For I the LORD am He who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God: you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44–45). In his epistle, Shimon-Kephas refers to this commandment when he explains the teaching of Yeshua: “Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’ ” (1 Pet 1:14–15). The teaching of Yeshua is precisely about the manner in which this commandment can be implemented: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20). As emphasized earlier in this book, the teaching of Yeshua is more stringent than the traditional rabbinic interpretation of the Law in several fundamental aspects, but it is also the source of a justifying grace that remains foreign to rabbinic tradition. Be that as it may, while the commandment of Leviticus is addressed to all the children of Israel, it is also true that all the faithful do not fulfll it to the same degree. A consecrated usage in Judaism and Christianity grants special status to the few who are perceived closest to being entirely faithful to this commandment: they are called “hassidim” or “tsaddikim” in Judaism, “saints” in the Christian tradition. As “imitators of Christ” who through their death conformed their lives to that of their master, the martyrs were the frst to deserve the epithet of saints in the history of the Church; from then on this privilege was extended to individuals whose virtues were found to be “heroic.”165 The belief that these righteous individuals enjoy a special type of proximity to God after their death has led faithful from both traditions to ask for their help or intercession.166 It is one of the main reasons why Jews visit the graves of such Hassidim.167 The Catholic Church canonizes saints and recommends the prayers of the faithful to their intercession in Heaven.

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Is true faith in Yeshua compatible with such customs of worship? Unlike the issue of the veneration of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church, that of the saints raises the question whether actual convergences with the Jewish tradition are not misleading rather than whether there exists an irreconcilable difference between them. However, the reasons behind questioning these types of veneration are very similar. Their rejection stems from the fear of a disguised form of paganism, where human beings are being divinized and placed on a level that is dangerously close to that of the Only true God. The faithful will be tempted to address their prayers to these powerful intermediaries rather than directly to God (or to the one who, as Son of God, is both integrally divine and integrally human). On this point, I fnd the opinion of the Maharam Shik, a great rabbi of the nineteenth century, enlightening. When a Jew confdes to another Jew about his concerns and motives of sorrow, it can happen that the latter takes these so much to heart that he prays to God as if they were his own. In this case, the second Jew is praying to God on behalf of the frst but the frst does not abandon the duty of praying to God for himself. There are simply two Jews praying to God about one and the same thing. Shik extends this case to the relation between a Jew that entrusts his concerns to a Tsaddik who is deceased. There are two Jews, one on earth and one already in the bosom of God praying to God about one and the same matter.168 This explanation touches on the very heart of the Catholic understanding of the saints’ intercession on behalf of the faithful. The notion of “communion of the saints” rests on Paul’s insight into the living Body of the Messiah as one organic whole where each part cannot separate its private interest from the interest of the other parts, whatever be the difference of their status and functions within the Body: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’ ” (1 Cor 12:21). Referring to this passage from the Epistle to the Corinthians, John Chrysostom writes: In the Body of Christ, we are the feet, martyrs are the head. The head cannot tell the feet: “I have no need of you!” As for them, they are the glorious members of the Body; but their lofty glory do not make them foreign to the bond that unites them to the other parts of the Body; indeed, it pertains to the fulness of their glory that this bond between them and us is not severed. The eye shines most among the parts of the Body; but this glory remains only as long as it has not separated itself from the other parts of the Body.169

Since the time of the Fathers of the Church, there has always been a clear line distinguishing the worship due to God (adoratio/ λατρεία) and the veneration reserved to the saints (veneratio/ δουλεία).170 Saints have no power of

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action of their own; the infuence that is ascribed to them rests entirely on the sovereign decision of God. What they possess is the power of compassion, which they use when they address to God the requests of the faithful as if they were their own, “covering” the indignity of the earthly supplicants with their merits. Thus, on the matter of prayer to the saints, it is enough for Messianic Jews to receive Jewish customs in the spirit of the Halacha in order to be in communion with the Catholic tradition.

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5.3. A Note on Images Jewish alleged “aniconism” goes back to the Third Commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth” (Exod 20:4). Yet as Kalman Bland showed a few years ago, the notion that Judaism would be averse to plastic art owes more to modern philosophical thought construing the Jewish tradition as a “religion of reason,” than to the truth of history and rabbinic doctrine.171 The tradition of Jewish sacred art is deeply rooted in the Tanakh, as the erection of the Temple required the contribution of inspired craftsmen (Exodus 35 and 36). Throughout the centuries, Jewish tradition has displayed abundant decorative creativeness, as witnessed on the doors of synagogues, on the Ark containing the Torah scrolls, on cups, lamps and table-covers used for Shabbat and festive days. One should also mention a trove of Medieval illuminations with their alternation of artistic calligraphy, geometrical motives, and pictures of fauna and fantastic animals. Theologically what is at stake is fgurative and especially human representation because it can fall under the prohibition of idolatry: “You shall not make idols for yourselves, or set up for yourselves carved images or pillars, or place fgured stones in your land to worship upon, for I the LORD am your God” (Lev 26:1, see also Num 33:52, Deut 4:16 and 27:1). The simple possibility of idol worship precludes the production of images featuring men, angels, or “heavenly bodies” (Talmud, tr. Avodah Zarah 42b, 43b; Shulkhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah, ch.11). Still, when all risks of confusion were excluded, Jewish artists often took great liberty with human representation, as a number of Medieval and Renaissance books of prayers, copies of Maimonides’s Mishne Torah and especially Aggadot for Pesach stemming from Spain, Germany, and Italy most clearly show. One can also think of private portraits in 17h-18th Holland and Germany.172 Meanwhile, scholars of Late Antiquity have been led to reconsider the whole issue of Jewish sacred art since the discovery of the synagogue of Dura Europos in the 1930s. During this period, roughly between the third and the ffth to sixth century CE, fgurative representation seems to have been far from confned to devotional books. One may speak of the “explosion” of pictorial art on the

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walls and pavements of synagogues in Palestine, especially in Galilee, as well as in the surrounding Jewish settlements. Mythological personifcations of the sun, of the Zodiac wheel and the seasons together with the representation of biblical scenes—including God’s hand in a few cases—tell about a very deliberate symbiosis of Jewish canons of sacred art with Hellenistic culture. Whatever be the manner in which the religious and cultural attitudes behind these ancient representations is explained, it points to an understanding of the Decalogue that is entirely different from the perspective that crystallized during Medieval times, a period during which Jewish artists were as much receptive to the infuence of Islam’s aniconism as they were apprehensive of the fgurative efforescence that was simultaneously taking place in Christian Europe.173 Trying to defne what Messianic Judaism is or should be from what we called an authentically Catholic point of view is certainly not about imposing canons of representation inherited from a Church tradition that has evolved separately from the Jewish tradition. At the same time, one needs to ask how the rich pictorial tradition of the Church should be viewed from a Messianic perspective. Is it the avodah zara, the idolatry described by Jewish Orthodox thinkers as well as by Christian theologians of strict Calvinist observance? The level of acceptance of Catholic tradition by Messianic Jews is only a secondary issue. The real issue is integral to Messianic Judaism. To what extent should faith in Yeshua shift from what is now identifed with the standard Jewish understanding of sacred art? We just saw that, on this matter, Jewish practice has known some fairly dramatic variations in the course of history. But faith in Yeshua sheds a totally new light on the interpretation of the Decalogue. Pagan culture was loaded with human representations that were conducive to idolatry, that is, to the worship of false gods. But what happens when, according to the faith of many Jews, the one true God of Israel manifests himself with a human face? To what extent should these believers hold that the prohibition of idolatry applies to the representation of his human face? This issue is identical to the one that was harshly debated in Byzantium between the seventh and ninth century, wreaking political havoc in the whole empire. The iconoclastic party derived its fundamental argumentation from the Mosaic prohibition of images.174 John Damascene (c. 675–749) refuted it by pointing at the gradual dimension of God’s revelation to mankind: “Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in fesh, and conversing with men, (Bar. 3.38) I make an image of the God whom I see.”175 The status of images related to the Mother of Christ, saints, and angels was at stake as well. The possibility of associating the worship of God in his invisible glory with the visible representation of his form according to human nature brought with it

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the possibility of venerating all those who were invisibly partaking of this divine glory through a material representation of their human or humanlike forms. In Byzantium, this whole discussion was heavily indebted to a post-Nicean Hellenistic type of conceptual terminology. The issue remained integral to the concrete event associated with Yeshua’s revelation and the original faith that it had generated among his Jewish disciples. If it surfaced in the Church centuries after the death of Christ, it is only because the faithful had to deal frst with more fundamental notions, such as the understanding of the Trinity and that of Christ’s human-divine being. Per se, the issue owes as little to Hellenic preconceptions as the nature of the Eucharist or the veneration due to the Virgin Mary. Jewish disciples have to determine to what extent their faith in Yeshua involves a devotion to his mother Miriam; they need to have a clear understanding of what they do whenever they eat bread and drink wine in memory of a Messiah that called this food his own fesh and blood. In the same manner, on the issue of sacred art, Messianic Judaism cannot adopt rabbinic teaching or perpetuate an aniconism inspired by a defnite stream of the Reformation as it touches on the content and inner dimensions of faith in Yeshua. Should the Incarnation of the God of Israel in Yeshua lead his disciples to distance themselves from traditional Jewish teaching on sacred art? Can one be a Jewish disciple of Yeshua and not think that this event thoroughly modifes the rabbinic reading regarding the prohibition of images? In actual fact, if the reason for the prohibition of images is the incapacity of visible created forms to manifest who the invisible Creator is and therefore the diffculty of conceiving a worship in truth through them, it can hardly be disputed that Yeshua is an exception to the rule: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). With this perspective in mind, one comes to the realization that the Decalogue’s true meaning is to reserve the possibility of sacred representation to the time of the Incarnation, that is, to the moment in which the veneration of a defnite visible form will not be misleading as it will genuinely manifest the invisible Creator. Indeed, how could one recognize the radically unique character of this possibility in Yeshua if one is not frst educated to deny it in the remaining part of all existing entities? True, for the disciples of Yeshua accepting images is not without risk. Only faith in Yeshua may correct the external errors of Paganism, but Paganism may well subvert faith in Yeshua from inside. Just as the cult of saints, the veneration of images or sculptures can become superstitious. Naïve faithful may ascribe magical powers, independently of God, to a particular saint or image, thus exchanging the precious content of their faith for the deceiving consolations of a false religion. Nonetheless one should be careful to draw

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the line between the teaching of an institution such as the Church and deviant interpretations of it that may arise among its members. “On images,” the decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) is unambiguous Representations of Christ, of his Mother, saints, and angels are permissible as long as it is not the material object itself that is worshipped but the one it represents—“For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these [images] should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν), not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν) which pertains alone to the divine nature.”176 Whenever they touch a Torah Scroll or kiss a mezuzah (small cases containing a divine blessing that one hangs at the entrance of a house and of rooms in a house), Jews do not relate to these items as idols; through the respect they show to these items, they mean to worship God only. Faith in Yeshua should entitle Jewish disciples to behave similarly toward representations of their divine Rabbi as well as representations of human beings that are thought to be united with his glory in Heaven. What is said here is probably enough to reject the view that Messianic Judaism would reduce the artistic treasures of the Church to avodah zara or idolatry. But it by no means implies that Messianic Judaism should adopt esthetic canons that are by and large products of an environment disconnected from the living Jewish tradition. As we saw earlier, this tradition itself is far from having always demonstrated some sort of doctrinal puritanism regarding human representation. A renewed theological assessment of the meaning and role of sacred art could lead Messianic Judaism to reconnect with streams of inspiration that, once vibrantly present within Judaism, are now forgotten or disavowed. No authoritarian doctrinal teaching, dictated by fear of straying away from rabbinic norms, by some instinctive rejection of defnite forms of artistic expressions associated with historical Christianity or by a combination of both, should prevent a genuinely original Jewish Messianic sacred art from seeing the light of day and fourishing. 5.4. A Note on Monasticism Monasticism—the choice to be alone (monos), in the sense of renouncing the joys of married life and the benefts of private possessions in order to strive, most of the time together with like-minded brothers or sisters, to be one with a God that is One (Deut 6:4)—is frequently viewed as intrinsically in opposition to Jewish tradition. It is presented as an unhealthy rejection of the physical dimension more or less directly inspired by a dichotomy ascribed to a Platonic type of thinking.177 Here, just as on a number of other issues, there is a convergence between the point of view of normative Judaism and that

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of the Protestant Reformation. Meanwhile, in contrast to the Reformation, the Jewish tradition is not bound to receive the words of Jesus that seem to commend a type of life foreign to the sphere of married life: “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can” (Matt 19:12). The truth is that it is diffcult to fnd an explicit echo of these words in the Tanakh. The remarkable expansion of monasticism in the Christian Church since the fourth century CE, very much rested on the conviction that faith in Yeshua opened religious practice to a wholly new dimension of experience and closeness to God.178 At the same time, this “newness” did not stem from the contrast between Christianity and Judaism but from that between the norms of Greek-Roman civilization and Judeo-Christian revelation. True, rabbinic tradition rejects the idea that the choice of celibacy and chastity as well as the renunciation of private possessions might bring those who practice it to a higher degree of intimacy with God. Quite on the contrary, it appears to treat voluntary celibacy as an outright transgression of God’s command: “Be fertile and increase” (Gen 1:28). In the Talmud, one reads “He who is without a wife is without joy, without blessing, without happiness, without learning, without protection, without peace . . . . He who is not married is, as it were, guilty of bloodshed and deserves death: he causes the image of God to be diminished and the divine presence to withdraw from Israel” (tractate Yebamoth 62b, 63a, 63b, 64a). Moreover, the movement that gave rise to what is commonly called rabbinic Judaism, a movement born after the destruction of 70 CE, seems to have obliterated many spiritual insights that pre-70 Judaism found perfectly legitimate. Whichever might have been the connections between on the one hand what Philo, Josephus, and Pliny the Elder describe as the Essenian sect and, on the other, the community that used to abide by the precepts of Qumran’s so-called Damascus document and Community Rule, there is no doubt that the members of these Jewish religious movements had adopted a lifestyle that shared some essential features with the monastic aspirations that emerged in the midst of fourth-century Christians. Refusing monetary commerce (Pliny, Natural History, V.73, living very frugally, these communities practiced ownership in common (Philo, Hypothetica 11, 3–4, Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.21, The Jewish War, II.127, Community Rule, QS1, col.9,179 Dead Sea Scrolls, 139), and celibacy on a large scale (Philo, Hypothetica, 11, 14; Josephus, Antiquities, 18.21, The Jewish War, 121).180 Famously, Philo depicts another Jewish sect, that of the “healers” (Therapeutae), established in the diaspora, mainly in Egypt (De Vita Contemplativa, III, 21), that seemed to surpass the Essenes as to their monastic spirit and lifestyle: “Having mentioned

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the Essenes, who in all respects selected for their admiration and for their especial adoption the practical course of life (οἳ τὸν πρακτικὸν ἐζήλωσαν καὶ διεπόνησαν βίον ἐν ἅπασιν) . . . . I will now proceed . . . to speak of those who have embraced the speculative life (περὶ τῶν θεωρίαν ἀσπασαμένων).”181 Manifestly, Philo is impressed by the centrality of contemplation, conceived as a radical and prayerful ascesis into true philosophy (I, 16, 27), in the daily discipline of these Jews who have “abandon[ed] their property without being infuenced by any predominant attraction, [fed] without even turning their heads back again, deserting their brethren, their children, their wives, their parents, their numerous families, their affectionate bands of companions” to establish themselves far away from the cities, in the dangerous solitude of deserted lands. Dwelling in small, individual houses deprived of comfort, the members of the community gather on Shabbat to share an ascetic banquet, thus abiding by what would much later become known as a semi-anachoretic rule of life: “on the one hand, they have determined to devote themselves to, solitude; and, on the other hand, they did not live very far from one another on account of the fellowship which they desire to cultivate, and because of the desirableness of being able to assist one another if they should be attacked by robbers.”182 The historical veracity of the community described by Philo is no longer as questioned as it used to be at the time of Ernest Renan. But even if the Therapeutes never existed, the mere fact that Philo presents them as existing is a proof that monastic ideals were all but foreign to pre-70 Judaism. This is hardly surprising. As much as Moses’s Torah defends the sanctity of matrimony against all possible sexual deviations, it establishes a connection between a condition of holiness and the experience of sexual abstinence. In Exodus, we read that Moses, while preparing the men of Israel to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai, “warned the people to stay pure, and they washed their clothes. And he said to the people, ‘Be ready for the third day: do not go near a woman’ ” (Exod 19:14–15).183 The conversation between David and the priest Ahimelech at the Nob sanctuary in the frst book of Samuel shows that this connection was perceived as obvious. When David asks the priest for bread, the following dialogue ensues: The priest answered David, “I have no ordinary bread on hand; there is only consecrated bread—provided the young men have kept away from women.” In reply to the priest, David said, “I assure you that women have been kept from us, as always. Whenever I went on a mission, even if the journey was a common one, the vessels of the young men were consecrated; all the more then may consecrated food be put into their vessels today.” So the priest gave him consecrated bread. (1 Sam 21:3–6)

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Great solitary fgures such as Elijah as well as the institution of the Nazirite vow (sometimes life-long, see Judg 13:7) point toward an ideal of self-dedication to God that renounce the prospect of matrimony and procreation. What is in question here is a thoroughly Jewish understanding that has nothing to with the hackneyed reference to an alleged “Platonic dualism.” As James A. Montgomery put it: To the Semitic mind the distinction was of another kind. Here it is the contrast between the Holy God and that which is not God, i.e. between Spirit and notspirit (cf. Isa 31:3). In various ways it was felt that the life of holiness, “the life with God,” involved something that is not of the common world. This distinction is not physical in character, as the opposition between the physis of the spirit and the physis of matter; it is the distinction between God and the creature, yet the latter possessing the possibility of holiness, for it is God’s creation and not essentially evil. (cf. Rom 8:19)184

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Rabbinic tradition itself has preserved elements of this fundamental tension between the experience of holiness and sexual activity when it teaches that intercourse was forbidden on the Day of Atonement (Mishna Yoma 8:1; bavli Yoma 74a; yerushalmi Berakhot 5:4) at certain times of fasting (Mishna Ta’anit 1:6; tosafot Ta’anit 1:5), during years of famine (b. Ta’anit 11a) or in a room that contained a Torah Scroll (yerushalmi Berakhot 3:5). In a most remarkable passage, the Midrash on Psalm 146 composed sometime between the end of the sixth century and the middle of the eleventh century AD (period of the Geonim) relates a complete absence of sexual intercourse until Messianic/eschatological times, characterized both by the continuous presence of God and the abolition of death: On the day that the Holy One blessed be He, revealed Himself on Mount Sinai to give the Torah to the children of Israel, He forbade intercourse of three days . . . . Now since God, when He revealed Himself for only one day, forbade intercourse for three days, in the time to come, when the presence of God ­(shekhinah) dwells continuously in Israel’s midst, will intercourse not be forbidden? What otherwise is meant by “bonds” in “will loose the bonds” [‫ֲסּורים‬ ֽ ִ ‫מ ִַּת֥יר א‬, Ps 146:7]? The bonds of death and the bonds of the nether world.185

The truth is that rabbinic post-70 CE unilateral rejection of “contemplative celibacy” in this world, be-olam-ha-ze, witnesses a deliberate departure from the spiritual universe of Second Temple Judaism.186 Most probably, the desire to distance oneself from the growing ascetic trends among Christians combined with a concern about the preservation of a nation scattered and in exile lies behind this marked change of attitude. In this regard, an instructive

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example is that of Rabbi Shimon Ben Azzai, a Tannaic rabbi from the second century CE known for his piety and learning assiduity. Like a number of his peers, Ben Azzai taught the duty of marriage in forcible terms: “Whoever does not engage in reproductive sexual relations, lo, such a one sheds blood and diminishes the divine image, since it says, ‘For in the image of God he made man. And it says, And you be fruitful and multiply (Gen 9:6–7).’ Asked why his own conduct did not match with his teaching, since Ben Azzai was himself unmarried—and likely remained so until his death, the rabbi could not but acknowledge that the very opposite of sinful intentions, that is, the longing for closeness with God, caused this enduring contradiction: ‘What shall I do? My soul thirsts after Torah, let other people keep the world going.’ ”187 The necessity of solitude and abstinence, either practiced individually or within a community of like-minded people in order to reach a higher degree of intimacy with the Holy One, repeatedly surfaces in the lives of great Jewish mystics and their companions. One can think of Isaac Luria (+1572)’s seven years of reclusion in Egypt as well as of the weekly sexual abstinence of his companions in Kabbalah study in sixteenth-century Safed.188 Since the time of the Baal Shem Tov (+1760) who spent long periods in the mountains or wandering in the forest alone, the Hassidic movement has developed the practice of solitary meditation (hitbodedut), the greatest representative of which is certainly rabbi Nachman of Breslov (+1810). Meanwhile, the emphasis of Menahem Mendel of Kotzk (+1859) on male communal life and kedusha or restrictive sexual discipline infuenced a number of Hassidic sects, especially that of Gur.189 The modern Jewish world even knows of a real monastery, located in Ethiopia, which existed from the ffteenth to twentieth century until the recent emigration of Ethiopian Jews to the State of Israel brought about its closure, the monastery appears to have played a decisive role as to preserving Jewish identity among the Beta Yisrael, keeping ties with Jewish communities established elsewhere and countering conversion efforts led by Protestant missionaries.190 The least one can say is that Judaism, even in its post-70 CE rabbinic expression, is not foreign to aspirations that see in asceticism and sexual abstinence ways of achieving a higher degree of intimacy with God. I would argue that, just as in the realm of artistic productions, the transforming effect of Messianic faith on the way Judaism is currently practiced points toward the recovery of a spiritual potential that has partially been lost. Just as a renewed Jewish understanding of fgurative sacred art derives from the visibility of God incarnated, likewise the contemplation of Yeshua’s choice of remaining celibate should lead to a reassessment of the monastic calling within Judaism. One is not dealing here with infuences that are foreign to God’s revelation to Israel, but with an aspect

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of this revelation itself. Messianic faith is about unfolding and realizing the very core of this Revelation, a core that, manifesting itself in various fragmentary manners throughout Jewish history, had hitherto remained hidden according to its fullness. To paraphrase the midrash on Psalm 146 quoted earlier, now is the time when the “presence of God (shekhinah) dwells continuously in Israel’s midst”; now is the time in which Yeshua has “loosened the bonds” of death by virtue of his death and resurrection. This time has begun and is heading toward its consummation at the Second Coming of the Messiah. The efforescence of monastic life in the Church is both a sign recalling the beginning of the Messianic Age and a portent of its eschatological completion. Meanwhile, when it comes to the manifestation of the Jewish tradition’s messianic potential, what is intended is not simply a return to some point in the past that would annul the spiritual legacy of a bi-millennial exile. Just as in the realm of artistic representation, this Messianic manifestation is heir to the spiritual achievements that occurred during the bi-millennial exile; it gathers them within itself, as it were. In her present condition, the Catholic Church does not vitally need an additional monastic order on the model of those which emerged throughout this period. But as a truly Catholic or Universal Church, the living Body of the Messiah that encompasses a Jewish messianic presence in its midst, she needs a Jewish monastic expression. She needs communities of consecrated life whose spiritual identity draws on traditional Jewish wisdom received in the light of their faith in Yeshua, Messiah of Israel. She needs these communities because her Jewish members need them as a sign that the doors of the Kingdom stand wide open and as a source of spiritual comfort. Finally, she needs them because the spiritual strength of her Jewish component is destined to affect the whole Body that she forms as a “breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory” of the God of Israel (Wis 7:25, New Jerusalem Bible).

6. ECCLESIAL AND POLITICAL SITUATION OF A JEWISH EKKLESIA 6.1. Relation to the Jewish World According to Kinzer, one of the most remarkable achievements—if not the main goal—of a Jewish ekklesia in the midst of a truly Catholic Church would be its role as a bridge connecting or rather re-connecting the Gentile part of the Church to the Jewish world. In David N. Freedman’s description of the original Jerusalem community of disciples led by James, retaining for themselves traditional Jewish observances while releasing Gentiles from the

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yoke of the Torah, Kinzer sees “the clearest statement of bilateral ecclesiology articulated by a Biblical scholar.”191 He quotes the following lines: Jewish Christians were able to have active and effective relations with Gentile Christians and at the same time retain operating status in the non-Christian Jewish community. Thus a link was forged, however tenuous, between Christianity and Judaism, and it persisted as long as the Jewish Christian community continued to exist. This halfway house with conduits to both sides could serve as meeting place and mediator, communication centre and symbol of the continuity to which both enterprises belonged.192

Kinzer argues that fostering obligatory observance—in the sense of the rabbinic tradition—among the members of the Jewish ekklesia would lead a Jewish Messianic entity further away from a generally Torah-negative evangelical world: Bilateral ecclesiology in solidarity with Israel summons the Messianic Jewish congregational movement to take a step towards the Jewish world and a step away from its evangelical matrix. Only by being distinct from evangelicalism, and connected to Judaism, can such a Messianic Judaism fulfl its vocation as an ecclesiological bridge enabling the church to discover its identity in relationship to Israel and enabling the Jewish people to encounter its Messiah as it has never done before.193

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Accordingly, rooting the Jewish ekklesia within the Jewish world through Halacha observance is what transforms a movement that historically grew out of Christian “missions to the Jews” into a post-missionary ecclesial reality: This ecclesiology stands in stark contrast to the Christian church’s missionary posture toward the Jewish people, especially in the post-Constantinian era. In that setting, the Christian church approached the Jewish people from outside, as an external community opposed to Jewish national existence and the Jewish way of life. In effect, it treated the Jewish people the way the early Yeshua movement treated the idolatrous Gentiles—only with greater contempt. Two centuries ago the Christian church’s missionary posture toward the Jewish people became for the frst time an aggressive, concerted, and organized missionary program.194

In my opinion, the understanding of a Jewish ekklesia as a bridge, as well as the quest for a “post-missionary” attitude toward the Jewish nation, is both positive and valuable insights. Still, on the basis of what was expounded earlier, I beg to differ regarding the way to achieve this goal. I think that the bilateral ekklesia portrayed by Kinzer has neither the ability to bridge the

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dogmatic-historical gap between the Gentile ekklesia and the Jewish world nor the capacity to supersede the dilemma raised by the missionary dimension of the Church. Proceeding a contrario as I discuss these points, I will endeavor to characterize what I believe the relationship of a Jewish ekklesia to the Jewish world should be. What does a one-way bridge stand for? A point of no return is not much different from a dead-end. There is no denying that the existence of a Jewish ekklesia within a truly universal Church would bring Gentile disciples of Yeshua closer to the Jewish world. The question is whether it would bring the Jewish world closer to Gentile Christians. For this to happen, the Jewish world should acknowledge a Jewish ekklesia as part of itself. I, however, strongly doubt that dedication to Halacha observance on the part of Jewish disciples of Yeshua could achieve this result. I understand that Judaism is often presented in terms of orthopraxy, by way of strengthening the contrast with the “creedal” essence of Christianity. Whereas it is the confession of faith that makes a Christian, it is the observance of mitzvot, a series of concrete deeds, of a Jew a religious Jew or ties him to Judaism. Since one needs to be a Jew to practice Judaism, although one does not need to practice Judaism to be a Jew—most Jews were born Jews—one could easily imagine that it is enough to practice Judaism to be considered part of the Jewish world. Of course, Gentiles that adopt customs from Jewish Halacha are not considered such since they did not undergo a formal process of conversion (otherwise they would not be called Gentiles). But the question arises in the case of Jewish disciples of Yeshua that could be deemed halacha-observant from the point of view of standard Judaism. Still, I would argue that when it comes to Judaism, a radical disconnection between the sphere of faith and that of religious praxis is untenable. On this point, I am in agreement with most non-Messianic Jewish critics of the Jewish Messianic movement: whatever be the degree of Halacha compliance on the part of Messianic Jews, their claim to be part of Judaism while believing in Yeshua must be rejected. The whole meaning of Jewish religious praxis is to express a defnite faith—that is, to attest the truth of the Sinaitic revelation. This is manifest in what Yeshayahu Leibowitz, probably the most eminent modern representative of Judaism as orthopraxis, writes to an Israeli woman brought up in an environment of free-thinkers and looking for reasons to embrace traditional Halacha. According to Leibowitz, just as following Halacha is being faithful to the God of Israel, one simply cannot follow Halacha on any other grounds than faith in the God of Israel: “The Torah- in which faith and mitzvot are fastened one to the other—is not a means for the preserving of (the nation of) Israel. For the faithful—one who accepts the yoke of the mitzvoth—it is the goal itself and not an aid to something, and the goal the service of God: The acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.”195 For instance, one should not affx mezuzot to the

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entrance of houses or rooms out of a belief that they will somehow protect those who live in them. Pure faith is both the only reason for performing this mitzvah and the only goal of this particular observance: “One who sees the mezuzah as a means for defence of a house and on its inhabitants belittles religion and has been ensnared in idolatry, which is completely rejected from the perspective of faith in God and His Torah. Faith in God is not dependent on the belief in reward and punishment, and a truly faithful person recognises that faith itself is the reward.”196 Naturally Messianic Jews can argue that their faith is substantially the faith that Moses transmitted to the nation of Israel, the only difference being that it was fully revealed in Yeshua. But this misses the point. The acknowledgment that is in question is supposed to come from the authorities of Judaism—and this acknowledgment will never come as long as these authorities conceive that their faith is radically distinct from faith in Yeshua. Messianic Jews tend to object that such rejection is discriminatory. After all, a number of ultra-Orthodox Jews belonging to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement claim that Moses Mendel Schneerson, their most venerated and recently deceased rabbi (+1994), is the Messiah, whose resurrection is expected to happen fairly soon. While this faction of the Chabad movement is viewed as heretical by a majority of religious Jews, it is not considered to be an entity foreign to Judaism. Why should Messianic Jews be treated otherwise by the rest of the Jewish religious world? The problem, as David Novak pointed out, is not Messiahship; it is the dogmatic content associated with the Jewish Messianic understanding of Messiahship: The real issue that now separates Jews and Christians is not messiahhood but the incarnation and the Trinity. Unlike the issue of messiahhood, which arose when Jews and Christians were members of the same religious-political community and spoke the same conceptual language, the issues of the incarnation and the Trinity divide people who are no longer members of the same community and who no longer speak the same language. There is no longer any common criterion of truth available for debating, much less resolving, the fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity.197

This is the reason why, according to Novak, even Messianic Jews that are born Jews are in reality Christians. This reason has nothing to do with orthopraxis; it is purely about heterodoxy.198 In 1998, the Chief Rabbi of Israel issued the following statement: “There are Christian groups that call themselves ‘Messianic Jews’ whose faith is totally alien to the Jewish faith, and members of these groups who were born to Jewish parents have a status of apostates who removed themselves from the Jewish Nation.”199 I cannot see

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on what theological grounds the religious authorities of Judaism would revise their judgment regarding Messianic Jews. That Messianic Judaism questions the very foundations of rabbinic Judaism is integral to the very nature of Messianic Judaism. Actually, Halacha practice among Messianic Jews produces the effect precisely opposite to that envisaged by Kinzer. As Faydra Shapiro pointedly observed:

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That Messianic Jews reject halacha does not bother the mainstream Jewish community one bit—most of the non-Messianic (i.e. mainstream) Jewish community rejects Orthodox Jewish halacha. Rather the contention that their own beliefs and practices are Jewishly acceptable is what bothers those outside the Messianic Jewish community. In fact, it is that minority of Messianic Jews that do strive to observe Orthodox Jewish halacha that are perceived to be the most threatening precisely because they appear to be Orthodox.200

This does not mean that Messianic Jews should exclude Halacha as part of their Jewish identity or as a commitment to the nation that received the Torah at Sinai. However, if this Halacha in its current form is the product of the ongoing rabbinic tradition, it cannot avoid being reinterpreted in a Messianic key as I have tried to show earlier. Accordingly, there is no way a Messianic Halacha could be the simple replication of Jewish Orthodox practice. Should the ideal of embodying a religious bridge between Christianity and the Jewish world be dismissed because of this? “ ‘Israel has sinned’ (Josh 7:11). Said R. Abba bar Zabeda, ‘Even though it has sinned, it remains Israel’ Said R. Abba, ‘This is in line with what people say: ‘A myrtle standing among reeds is still a myrtle and still called a myrtle.’ ”201 Though a Jewish convert should be removed from the nation as a result of his apostasy, nothing will ever take his Jewish identity from him. The very possibility of Messianic Judaism hangs upon this rabbinic ruling. This also means that Judaism and the Jewish world are not one and the same reality. Jewish emancipation (Haskalah) has transformed this virtual difference into a religious, cultural, and sociological reality. There is something like a Jewish world as an entity existing independently—albeit not separately—from Judaism. “A myrtle, though it stands, among reeds, is still a myrtle” and the many myrtles that exist throughout the world constitute the world that is peculiar to myrtles. True, communal bonds among Jews might be extremely loose. Yet few Jews would claim that Jewish identity is nothing more than a linguistic convention devoid of an anthropological substrate. Jews might be Buddhists, Atheists, Muslims, Ultra-Orthodox, or Messianic believers, they are and remain Jews—if not subjectively so, then at least from the point of view of Jewish Halacha. One might claim that the “world” formed by all

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these Jews is much too informal to deliver the type of acknowledgment that one is entitled to expect from an organic religious body such as the Orthodox rabbinate. This is true of a Jewish world in a condition of exile and dispersion. It is no longer so since the coming into being of the State of Israel. The organic society that results from the constitution of a political state, with all the rights, duties, and bonds that unite its citizens, is an autonomous and continuous source of acknowledgment. These acknowledgments are not necessarily unilateral, and they are not such most of the time. They are given in certain quarters of the society and not in others. But the same thing can be said of the Jewish religious world: notions or “realities” such as Jewish identity through patrilineal descent, feminine rabbinate, mixed assemblies, and homosexual marriages are acknowledged as legitimately Jewish by specifc streams of the Jewish religious world and not by others. What is fundamental is that Israeli society knows of many ways of being a Jew beyond the boundary set by rabbinic Judaism stricto sensu. At frst sight, it is diffcult to understand why a society that acknowledges the Jewishness of a Buddhist Jew would not acknowledge the Jewishness of a Messianic Jew whose religious beliefs and practices are much closer to the common denominators of the Jewish religious world. Besides, an acknowledgment coming from the Israeli society is in some sense much weightier than an acknowledgment coming from one or more religious stream(s) within Judaism. While these streams are part of the Jewish world, the Jewish world is not necessarily part of them. As a representative prototype of the Jewish world, the Israeli society with the diversity of its components is a whole in which the various streams of Judaism have a role to play as parts. From this point of view, legal rulings emanating from Israel’s High Court of Justice against Jewish disciples of Yeshua applying for the right to immigrate to Israel under the so-called Law of Return are of special interest. The bottom-line of the Court’s refusal to acknowledge the Jewishness of Brother Daniel Rufeisen, a Carmelite father, in 1970 and of the Berensford couple, two Messianic believers, in 1989, is that they all chose “another religion,” cutting themselves off from the Jewish community by the same token. In this way, the judges implicitly admitted that an offcial acknowledgment coming from the representatives of Israel as a secular state had a religious component. This is fully understandable when one takes into account that Jewishness cannot be defned without reference to Biblical revelation.202 Still, if the Supreme Court judges felt the need to base their decisions on religious criteria in the above-mentioned cases—moreover, if these cases were raised in the frst place—it is because of all religious traditions, the discussion revolved around the Christian faith of the petitioners. Jewish Buddhists or Jewish atheists do not need to petition the High Court of Israel in the hope of being entitled to the Law of Return since neither the adoption of Buddhism or atheism by

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Jews are viewed as per se implying some form of renunciation of their Jewish identity. In the case of the Berensfords, the judges did not see how their Messianic persuasion differed from the religious ideas that led the Church to persecute Jews that resisted them as well as systematically gentilize Jews that embraced them across past centuries.203 At no point did the majority of High Court justices show themselves willing to introduce a distinction between the intrinsic principles of the “Christian religion” and their historical interpretation by those in charge of representing it. In their opinion, the defnition of Christianity derived from the facts of history.204 And yet the very existence of the Messianic movement rests on the assumption that this is not the case. The desire of Yeshua to be acknowledged as Messiah of Israel by his fellow Jews lies at the core of New Testament revelation, so that there is absolutely nothing against Jewish identity or the coherence of the Jewish nation in the fundamental content out of which the “Christian religion” was born. For Messianic Jews, this faith is not in itself tied to the Gentiles that have misinterpreted it along the centuries and turned it into a weapon against Jewish existence. Religion is wider than its historical interpretations. While history cannot be changed, the Church herself through the voice of her current authorities is entitled to acknowledge the errors and mistakes, with all their tragic consequences, that have been perpetrated in her name or by those in charge of representing her in the past. Relying on what it holds to be its truth, religion has the right to reinvent itself just because it is wider than its historical interpretations. Therefore, the question is whether the members of such a reinterpreted religion are entitled to be acknowledged as part of the Jewish community as it is found in the State of Israel. Ultimately, those who are to judge about this right are not the senior authorities of the High Court but the members of civil society. As one of the justices discussing the Rufeisen case argued, it is in reference to the opinion of “the man on the street” that the High Court should rule on such matters.205 Should the perception that the members of the Israeli civil society have of Jews that have embraced Messianic faith change to the better, legal authorities will have to take this evolution into account. To a certain extent, facts on the ground will determine whether this change will happen or not. The involvement of Messianic Jews in Israeli society, their commitment to the welfare of the Jewish state, and the level of respect they exhibit for the existing religious institutions of Israel will be—and actually already are—decisive factors in the reassessment of the relations between Christianity as a religion and the Jewish world. However, to reach the desired level of visibility within the Israeli society, particular examples of integral commitment to the Jewish nation should be backed by the offcial stance of the ecclesial bodies these Messianic individuals, in the broadest sense of the word, belong to or form together. This applies to the Catholic Church in the frst place. That a truly

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or fully manifested Catholic Church should continue to revisit its historical relationship to the Jewish world in the spirit of repentance that surfaced with the pontifcate of John Paul II is a necessary condition but hardly a suffcient one. In the eyes of the Israeli civil society, the test of all tests is the manner in which the offcial authorities that represent this “different religion” relate to the State of Israel as the token of the Jewish nation’s providential survival. I will examine this point further on (see 6.3).

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6.2. Note on the “Mission to the Jews” What I would like to consider here is Kinzer’s claim that a Church thus rooted in the Jewish world would have superseded what could be called the “missionary temptation,” thus ushering the disciples of Christ into a “postmissionary era.” “Mission” is an ambiguous term. Understood in a historical and almost technical sense, it refers to Church organizations that are set up with the purpose of converting specifc categories of people whose origin, culture, or religion keep them away from embracing the Christian faith. While the Catholic Church was the frst to put such missions in place, especially since the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, it is mainly the Protestant world that developed missions to the Jewish people since the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, in a more fundamental sense that relates to ecclesiology, “mission” simply designates witnessing Yeshua’s salvation. In this sense, mission takes its source in the command that the risen Christ gave to his apostles: “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:18–20). Understood in this sense, a “post-missionary” Church is a contradictio in adjecto. How could a Church openly profess to disobey the teaching that coincides with her raison d’être? An ekklesia rooted in the Jewish world, in the manner just depicted, can be called “post-missionary” with reference to the frst, technical sense of the term “mission.” Certainly the ekklesia that we have in mind will always present a character that renders it foreign to a religious sphere defned by reference to the rabbinic tradition. The core of this “foreignness” is nothing other than the newness of Yeshua’s salvation itself, a message that does not replicate the rabbinic tradition even as it deeply resonates with it as we saw earlier. From this point of view, the dream of a Messianic testimony that, being perceived as coming from inside the religious world of Judaism, would not trigger rejection or hostility at an institutional level should be abandoned. Tensions with mainstream Judaism are inherent to the newness of a Messianic

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ekklesia. However, as I have tried to argue earlier, distance from the rabbinic tradition does not necessarily imply estrangement from the Jewish world. The newness of Yeshua reveals a yet unmanifested potentiality within the rabbinic tradition because it is, according to its essence, the very mystery associated with the existence of the Jewish nation. Yeshua is the Messiah of Israel. Seen from this perspective, members of a Jewish ekklesia expressing to their fellow Jews their belief in Yeshua as Messiah of Israel cannot be considered as missionaries since they are partakers of the same Jewish universe according to their origin, culture, and, for what they claim, religion. They are not trying to lead their fellow Jews away from their Jewish home and bring them into a Gentile home that will deny them the right or possibility to practice a Jewish religious lifestyle. On the contrary, the attempt to remain anchored in the Jewish world is the raison d’être of a Jewish ekklesia. One can and will object that this ekklesia, being part of a wider Catholic Church where the mind of Gentiles prevails, will de facto subtract Jews from the Jewish world. This would be valid criticism if this ekklesia were simply to be a smokescreen hiding a typically Gentile religious agenda, as so many Jews view the Messianic movement in its current form. But this argument ceases to be valid once this Jewish ekklesia enjoys the idiosyncratic status, organization, and practices that were described earlier. Would a Jewish member of the ecologist movement be suspected of turning Jews away from their Jewish identity by telling them about the benefts of joining an international organization, the members of which are overwhelmingly non-Jews and the headquarters located somewhere outside Israel? One can be a Jew, frmly anchored in Jewish values, and an ecologist at the same time—all the more if there exists a Jewish subset within the ecological movement. The same goes for a Jew who becomes a Buddhist or a Jew who becomes a Catholic. True, neither the ecologist movement nor the Buddhist one has had a history of anti-Jewish persecutions. “Praeterita non fuisse non subjacet divinae potentiae”206: nothing will ever change the generally negative attitude that the Catholic Church’s representatives have displayed toward Jews in the past. But if this attitude can change, the perception of it can change too. There might come a time when the rallying of a Jew to the Catholic Church will no longer be seen as a betrayal and when those who have contributed to it, voluntarily or not, will no longer be viewed as the accomplices of a crime perpetrated against the Jewish nation. The existence of a Jewish ekklesia frmly anchored in the Jewish world but not included within what goes under the name of Judaism would play an instrumental role in this shift of perception. There is no doubt that such a “post-missionary” ekklesia could play the role of bridge between the Jewish world and Christian Gentiles envisaged by Kinzer—and this without having to compromise with her original calling and thoroughly unique path.

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6.3. The Meaning of the State of Israel for a Jewish Ekklesia 6.3.1. On the Necessity of Revising the Catholic Magisterium Regarding the State of Israel Support for the State of Israel is one of the defning features of the Messianic movement in its current state. For the reasons just presented, the Messianic movement identifes with the constitution of a politically compact Jewish world that does not reject it a priori, in contrast to the religious authorities of Judaism. In point of fact, the Messianic Jews appear to be much more supportive of the State of Israel than large swathes of ultra-Orthodox Judaism whose positions range from strict political neutrality to violent hostility. But what about the Catholic Church’s view on the State of Israel? For one thing, it is much less “Medinat Israel” (State of Israel)-positive than the Messianic movement. After emphasizing the ecclesiological relevance of Israel’s political existence as a Jewish nation, we need to ask the following question: Does an adequate concept of a Catholic Jewish ekklesia require that the current Messianic perspective align with the circumspect attitude of the Catholic Church toward Medinat Israel or, on the contrary, that the Catholic Church evolve toward a more “Medinat-Israel positive” attitude? As I discuss the positions of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in regard to the political and moral dilemma associated with the existence of Israel as a political state, I will try to explain why it behoves the Catholic Church to evolve toward a more “Medinat-Israel- positive” view.

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6.3.1.1. The Catholic approach to the Land: complexity of the theological issue The Land—with capital L; that is, the territory on which the State of Israel is currently established—is a problem for the world. But while the world wrestles with one problem, it is fair to claim that Catholic theologians wrestle with two. Just as any other foreign political entity, especially those that happen to have human and material interests in the country, the Vatican State is repeatedly asked to take a stand in the confict that has been crippling the State of Israel since the frst hours of its foundation in 1948. But unlike all the other states, the Vatican, being merely the political persona of the Holy See, anchors its political reasonings in a realm that it calls theology, that is, in a teaching that allegedly exceeds the capacity of the natural human intellect since it is supposed to draw its principles from God’s revelation. Logically, discerning what is right or where justice lies in the confict that pits Jews against Palestinians on the territory of Israel is a frst-order problem. Discerning how Catholic theology should relate to this specifc problem, being itself a theological endeavor, is a second-order problem or a meta-problem.

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Governments do not tamper with the constitution and laws of their state when they formulate a political stance regarding Israel; they act upon them. But on the same issue, the Church of which the Vatican is the political emanation must engage with the theological tenets that should determine her attitude. Catholic theologians are to defne in what manner the knowledge they assume to be divinely revealed should interact with the concrete political dilemma brought about by the creation and ongoing existence of the State of Israel. One could argue that this second-order problem is not much of a real one. After all, the Catholic Church through the mouths of her leaders is accustomed to formulating political stances every time a problem involving social justice becomes acute in a particular country. She does it on the basis of the body of theological teaching that she calls social doctrine. In the case of Israel, however, the Church is obliged to consider yet another aspect of her so-called Magisterium or offcial theological teaching; namely, that which deals with the destiny of the Jewish people in relation to God’s design as it unfolds in Sacred Scriptures. The articulation of these two theological registers, one as universal as possible, since social justice should apply equally to all the nations of the earth, and the other utterly specifc, as it deals with the unique status of Israel as God’s “chosen people,” gives to this second-order problem a dimension of frst-order complexity. To what extent and in what manner should the Church’s “theology of Israel” affect her assessment of the Israeli confict in terms of social justice? To formulate the same question in even more precise terms: What is there in a Catholic theology of Israel that qualifes it to determine an issue essentially dealing with social and political justice? One cannot hope to provide an answer to this arduous question without clarifying what this social and political issue is in the concrete situation under discussion. This is the frst point that I shall tackle. I will then proceed to examine the manner in which Church authorities have drawn—or not drawn—on a theology of Israel to solve this issue. Finally, I will challenge these authorities to revise their current position in regard to a core aspect of the articulation between a Catholic theology of Israel and a political stance on the State of Israel. 6.3.1.2. The Sociopolitical Approach to the Conflict: Lingering Ambiguities in the Official Catholic Teaching If the bare mention of the State of Israel evokes a problem of social justice, it is because the existence of a Jewish state is a cause of suffering for the members of the entity that identifes with the Palestinian people. From whatever angle one sees it, this suffering is real and no one is entitled to deny it. But a fact is not yet a problem. The moment when real suffering becomes a problem, that is a point of contention between people with different opinions,

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is when it is associated with the term “unjust.” Of course, suffering in itself is not necessarily unjust. Leaving aside natural sickness and death, in regard to which it is always possible to blame the Creator of the universe, the type of suffering that comes from a guilty conscience or from a punishment for some objectively evil deed is not unjust by defnition. But suffering can also be morally neutral, as when I suffer because I need to leave a home that has been purchased by someone else. I can grieve because of the good memories associated with this house even as I fnd comfort in the thought of having sold it for a good price. Speaking of the Palestinian population’s suffering because of the Jewish state, there are objectively different opinions as to whether and to what extent this suffering is unjust—more or differently unjust than the suffering of the Jewish population caused by Palestinian so-called acts of terror, for instance. If the issue is so controversial, it is because at no point in Israel’s history has there been a legal norm of justice that would have been simultaneously acknowledged by both parties. In order for an action to be qualifed as a crime and therefore the punishment of a crime to be considered legitimate, the state and its laws must at least on paper be deemed to be approved by the citizens gathered as a political body. If such is not the case, an action that goes against the laws of a particular state could under certain conditions (see the tradition on the “right of resistance” since Grotius and Pufendorf) be considered to be an act of resistance to oppression. In this confguration, punishment administered by the state would be liable to the same moral scrutiny as the action that provoked it. Even if the State of Israel was established in 1948 on the basis of a consensus of foreign nations, it never had a chance to be acknowledged by the whole population gathered as a Body politic. Indeed slightly less than half of the total population fed in the wake of the war of independence (about 700,000 Palestinians from a territory that counted about 872,000 Jews) and there is not much evidence to back the claim that most of those who remained ever willfully embraced the decision made by the League of Nations. In the absence of any legal norm acknowledged by both parties, one is confronted with the logic of two self-consistent narratives: the frst refers to the right of a population to resettle on a territory they used to inhabit little less than 2,000 years ago, the second to the right of a population that was established on this territory until very recently to continue inhabiting it. As soon as one envisages the establishment of a legitimate Jewish state, the two narratives seem to collide: either the rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants are respected and it becomes diffcult for the state to preserve its claim to be Jewish, or their rights are not respected and the state can no longer pretend to be legitimate. In a situation where there is no commonly acknowledged political norm and where there is no obvious way through which the respective narratives of the two parties in confict could be reconciled, the criterion of what is just and

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what is not will very much depend on the narrative one adopts at the expense of the other. Seen from a unilaterally Zionist perspective, the undeniable suffering entailed by the death- or life-sentence of a Palestinian “terrorist” is not unjust, while a unilaterally anti-Zionist perspective will consider it as utterly so; that is, as another instance in the spiral of repression of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people. Naturally third parties are not obliged to endorse either of these unilateral perspectives. Seeing the confict from a distance, they can claim that they are able to identify what is morally right in each of the two positions. With the goal of creating the conditions for a peaceful and legitimate ­solution to the confict, they can strive to develop a view that singles out what is truly just in this concrete situation a point of balance to which each party should eventually come, leaving some of their claims behind in order to preserve the chances of others. This is the current position of the Holy See, as typically expressed in the frst document to offcially mention the State of Israel, the Apostolic Letter of John Paul II “Redemptionis Anno” from 1984:

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For the Jewish people who live in the State of Israel and who preserve in that land such precious testimonies to their history and their faith, we must ask for the desired security and the due tranquility that is the prerogative of every nation and condition of life and of progress for every society. The Palestinian people who fnd their historical roots in that land and who for decades have been dispersed, have the natural right in justice to fnd a homeland and to be able to live in peace and tranquillity with the other peoples of the area.207

The article 11 of the 1993 fundamental agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel emphasizes that the frst, being the legal persona of the Catholic Church’s supreme authority, “is solemnly committed to remaining a stranger to all merely temporal conficts, which principle applies specifcally to disputed territories and unsettled borders.”208 But this political neutrality is precisely the guarantee of a fair judgment on these matters, as the Holy See shows itself equally eager to maintain “the right to exercise its moral and spiritual teaching-offce.”209 Most recently, the conclusive message of the Middle East Synod presided by Pope Benedict (2010) preserves the skeleton, as it were, of an “impartial” view of the situation, giving its due to each party involved in the confict: We have taken account of the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian confict on the whole region, especially on the Palestinians who are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of

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separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees. We have refected on the suffering and insecurity in which Israelis live. . . . With all this in mind, we see that a just and lasting peace is the only salvation for everyone and for the good of the region and its peoples.210

Developing an impartial view of the confict implies that one is able to distinguish the just from the unjust or, equivalently, that one is able to refer to some norm of justice that would be acceptable to both parties as not being tied to a particular political, ideological, or religious agenda. The question reads: What is or what are this/these norm/s in a situation where the two parties derive entirely different and mutually exclusive conclusions from what they deem to be their respective rights to be on the Land? The easy answer is to point to existing international laws, such as the Geneva Convention in the case of demolition of homes. But is referring to these laws and agreements morally right because they signal that the State of Israel has transgressed the boundaries within which it may legitimately operate or because they serve as an additional confrmation that the State of Israel has no legitimacy whatsoever? When the suffering of Palestinians is denounced as unjust, is the criterion of justice a State of Israel that would be recognized as such and welcomed in the international community or a situation where Israel would not be allowed to function as a legitimate state under any circumstance? That I take someone to court for a punishable offense does not mean that, in my view, this person is merely guilty of this particular offense. It can simply mean that I am unable to fnd any other way of bringing this person to court. In this confguration, the trial is not a way of ensuring that the notion of justice as embodied in the laws of the state and implemented by tribunals will be effectively respected. It rather becomes an additional tactic in a fght for an idea of justice that cannot be—or can only be very partially—applied by the existing legislation because it is foreign to it. Accordingly, when Church authorities claim that, as representatives of a third and independent party, their one and only goal is to formulate where true justice lies, they may not satisfy themselves with pointing at some existing piece of international legislation. The fact is that this very same argument can be inspired by notions of justice that are very much at odds with one another. The reason for this ambiguity is that no international agreement stating the right of a Jewish state to exist and function within defnite borders has ever been acknowledged on the Palestinian side. While the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) endorsed UN resolution 242 that speaks about the right of both parties to “live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” the same 1993 resolution also mentions the necessity for Israel to

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withdraw from the territories conquered during the Six-Day War, thus leaving aside—or for the future—the issue of defning what these legitimate borders are. Even the geographical boundaries of the State of Israel as it emerged from the war of independence in 1949 were never recognized as legitimate borders. The Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement considered them as purely military lines that should not “in any way prejudice future arrangements or agreements under international law.”211 But if there is no agreed understanding about what the legitimate State of Israel is and how it should function, how could there be some objective agreement about what it is not and why it does not function the way it should? True, the League of Nations voted for the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The right of Israel to exist was the object of an international consensus. It is in reference to this decision of the international community that John Paul II could declare in an interview published in 1993:

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It must be understood that Jews who for 2,000 years were dispersed among the nations of the world had decided to return to the land of their ancestors. This is their right and this right is recognized even by those who look upon the nation of Israel with an unsympathetic eye. This right was recognized from the outset by the Holy See and the act of establishing diplomatic relationship with Israel is simply an international affrmation of this relationship.212

No doubt the state of mind of a world that had gone through a war with Hitler’s Germany and just discovered the full extent of the Holocaust had much to do with the decision that was made in 1948. Seventy years after, as the horror inspired by the Shoah is defnitely subsiding, this right is also becoming much less obvious. The January 2011 issue of Civiltà Cattolica, the Jesuit publication submitted to the approval of the Vatican Secretariat of State, included an article by the priest Giovanni Sale where the beginnings of the State of Israel are unilaterally designated under the term of Nakba, the Arabic term for “disaster” in reference to the Exodus mentioned earlier. In the article, Sale declares, “The Zionists were cleverly able to exploit the Western sense of guilt for the Shoah to lay the foundations of their own state.”213 Indeed, what if a confederation of Iroquoi tribes reclaimed the State of New York and managed to take over Manhattan by force? Could Iroquois’s suffering, tragic as it might have been, justify their claim to establish a state of their own in the eastern part of the present United States? The expulsiondispersion of the Iroquois tribes happened little more than three centuries ago. What then about a people deciding to resettle on a land that they had relinquished 2,000 years earlier? The fact that the local inhabitants of Palestine did not enjoy political independence at the time changes little to the fact that

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they suddenly found themselves compelled either to leave or to suffer the establishment of a state ruled by a conglomerate of more or less newcomers from Europe. One is obliged to concede that the claim of a nation that managed to survive an exile of 2,000 years to come back on the land they came from in this very distant past has no legal precedent. Accordingly, there is no international norm of law that could cogently justify their establishment in the Land. To refute the argument that this establishment is thoroughly unjust because of its dire consequences on the local Arab population, those who advocate the right for the State of Israel to exist and live within secure borders can only appeal to the immaterial force of a decision made by a foreign body of representatives and deprived of strong legal foundations. In this confguration, one does not see why the Palestinian fght against injustice should stop short of the liquidation of the State of Israel. After all, surely this international decision was inspired by the colonialist mentality that still prevailed in the immediate aftermath of World War II?214 The case for the existence of this state is so weak from a philosophical and legal point of view, especially in the light of a counter-narrative pushing forward the theme of brutal dispossession and ongoing state violence, that one can hardly see how it could manage to secure one square meter of the Land for the Jewish population to enjoy without considerable pangs of moral conscience. How could, therefore, a simple reference to the 1948 vote provide a sustainable framework for a state to “live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries”? If the fundamental injustice is the “occupation” of Palestine, to quote the term used by the Middle East Synod in its conclusive message, the existence of the State of Israel, even on such a small territory as the one originally defned by the 1948 vote, cannot but constitute an infringement of justice. In this framework, nothing can prevent a decision intended to guarantee the security of the state from being denounced as unjust. The erection of a wall and the establishment of military checkpoints will not be seen as responding to the need to prevent terrorist attacks. To quote the conclusive message of the Middle East Synod again, they will rather be blamed as offenses against the “freedom of movement.” In the same declaration, we read that those who have been put in prison because they perpetrated attacks or have been planning to do the same are called “political prisoners” and not terrorists. The “demolition of homes,” far from implementing a strategy of deterrence, is implicitly presented as a policy of gratuitous cruelty. Finally, there is no mention that the “disturbance of socio-economic life” has something to do with a concerted effort to rein in the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. One can easily imagine the anguish of Israeli political leaders when witnessing the growing erosion of the State of Israel’s legitimacy in the world’s public opinion. Because they can no longer rely on a fow of external sympathy streaming to support their conviction that the Israeli state has a right and a duty to protect itself, they naturally feel

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inclined to view the critical attitude of third parties as partaking of a biased and systematic attempt to undermine the very possibility of Israel’s existence. It is here that, in my opinion, theology—namely, the type of theology that I described above as an effort to substantiate some defnite political stand of the Catholic Church—becomes relevant and even crucial. What does an argumentation anchored in supernatural Revelation have to say regarding a situation where discourses based on shared natural reason, whether philosophical or juridical, are no longer able to secure a notion of justice that would make room for Israel’s sustainable existence as a state? Let us frst examine the way in which the offcial teaching of the Catholic Church views the articulation between the theological sphere and the current confict.

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6.3.1.3. Official Teaching and Magisterium: Open Questions Among the fairly large number of Catholic offcial declarations regarding Jews and Judaism since and including Nostra Aetate (1964), only a few directly address the right of Israel to exist and the issue of justice associated with its realization. The use of silence is especially striking in documents such as the lengthy 1985 document entitled “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible” emanating from the Pontifcal Biblical Commission, as it extensively evokes the promise of the Land made to Abraham and his descendants. Let me quote a couple of lines from §56: “Every human group wishes to inhabit territory in a permanent manner. Otherwise, reduced to the status of stranger or refugee, it fnds itself, at best, tolerated, or at worst, exploited and continually oppressed. Israel was freed from slavery in Egypt and received from God the promise of land . . . . The term ‘promised land’ is not found in the Hebrew Bible, which has no word for ‘promise.’ The idea is expressed by the future tense of the verb ‘to give,’ or by using the verb ‘to swear’: ‘the land which he swore to give to you’ (Ex 13:5; 33:1, etc.). In the Abraham traditions, the promise of land will be fulflled through descendants.” Nevertheless in the few offcial documents where the issue of the State of Israel is explicitly addressed, Church authorities appear eager to limit the theological validity of this specifc aspect of God’s Promise to a sphere of belief and identity—that associated with the Jewish tradition—presented as lying outside the teaching and tradition of the Church. Catholic faithful are invited to understand the essence of the Zionist position, controversial though it is, but they are frmly deterred from endorsing it. This stance is already expressed in the 1975 Statement of the Conference of the United States Bishops on Catholic-Jewish relations, a declaration on the occasion of Nostra Aetate’s tenth anniversary: “Whatever diffculties Christians may experience in sharing this view they should strive to understand this link between land

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and people which Jews have expressed in their writings and worship throughout two millennia as a longing for the homeland, holy Zion. Appreciation of this link is not to give assent to any particular religious interpretation of this bond.”215 The declaration does not outright dismiss the possibility of Zionism drawing some legal justifcation from these biblical roots—it is not because this religious argumentation is foreign to Catholic theology that it has no validity whatsoever—but it states that this virtual validity cannot be the one and exclusive criterion of justice regarding the confict: “this affrmation [the link between the Land and the Jewish people] is not meant to deny the legitimate rights of other parties in the region, or to adopt any political stance in the controversies over the Middle East.” Paragraph six of the 2001 Notes on the correct way to present the Jews and Judaism in preaching and catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church, a document emanating from the Commission for religious relations with the Jews, follows the same pattern: “Christians are invited to understand this religious attachment which fnds its roots in Biblical tradition, without however making their own any particular religious interpretation of this relationship.” At the same time, it includes a consideration that adds a new level of both dogmatic radicality and philosophical ambiguity: “The existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law.”216 One fnds no further elaboration of this remarkable statement, although the authors emphasize that it does not take away the religious element that Catholic faithful should discern in the bi-millennial survival of the Jewish people: “The permanence of Israel (while so many ancient peoples have disappeared without trace) is a historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God’s design.” What seems to be implied is that Catholics should limit this religious aspect to the sheer preservation of the Jewish people, so as not to associate a defnite geographical place with their survival. This adds to the abrupt character of the preceding statement: for some reason, the Land is the only aspect of God’s Promise that should not retain a perennial value in the case of Jews. The last document published by the same Commission, “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (2015) goes back to this passage, quoting but also somehow softening it as the two statements are contrasted with the word “however”: “The permanence of Israel is however to be perceived as an ‘historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God’s design.”217 However, this emphasis on the providential character unconditionally attached to Jewish ongoing existence renders the initial absence of explanation even more problematic: If Catholic faithful are so insistently asked to acknowledge God’s providence at work in the ongoing existence of the Jewish nation—and this even when they look at the current situation from a purely social and political point of view as they are invited to do—for what

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reason are they prevented from also envisaging the “existence of the State of Israel,” that is, the return of this Jewish nation to the Land of the Promise, from a “religious perspective”? Obviously when it comes to the theme of the Land, that is, to aspects related to the existence and the political confguration of the State of Israel, the offcial teaching of the Catholic Church seems to dismiss any articulation between issues of social justice and a theology centered on the mystery of Israel. Through the voices of those who are in charge of representing her, the Church confesses that she is unable to supplement in any way with her own wisdom, derived from Revelation, the secular wisdom of nations as it is expressed by international laws—this in order to contribute toward solving a confict that international laws are so blatantly unable to solve. Certainly, a solution based on true justice, if it ever sees the light of day, will need to be formulated in the terms of international law. But the whole problem is that, as we saw earlier, one cannot solely rely on existing international law to fnd this solution. Claiming that international law is the only possible source of justice in situations where it cannot apply entails that one is left with nothing else than the violence and injustice of a rogue state. In order to ascribe some degree of legitimacy to this state, a state that owes its existence to the fact that it is geographically sustainable, one needs to draw on principles that are more fundamental than the available set of international laws, and this is the reason why the theological disengagement of the Church carries such heavy responsibility. It irresistibly calls to mind the behavior depicted in Matthew 27:24: “Videns autem Pilatus quia nihil profceret sed magis tumultus feret, accepta aqua, lavit manus coram populo.” The question that I want to raise is the following: Is the dismissal of any consideration regarding the mystery of Israel when discussing the issue of the Land—a dismissal that emanates from the current authorities of the Church— logically and theologically consistent? Can it be considered to be Catholic in the most fundamental sense of the word? Regarding the reasons behind this position of the Catholic Magisterium, I have several hypotheses to suggest. When a statement is given without explanation, what is implied most of the time is that it is self-evident, especially so in contexts that have explanation as a goal such as in philosophy and theology. The statement that we are discussing gives this impression at frst reading. My frst hypothesis has to do with its apparent self-explanatory content: How could a belief referring to events that might have occurred 4,000 or 3,000 years ago come to be considered as a serious source of juridical legitimacy when dealing with situations that are occurring and developing in our time? How could an ancient faith tradition justify the existence and commonweal of a modern state? But nothing is closer to self-evidence than fake evidence. With a slightly higher degree

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of self-awareness, the authors of this statement could have avoided this type of ambiguity. Indeed, what is the Holy See that they represent if not a legal entity, encompassing an internationally recognized state called the Vatican, that draws its most fundamental and enduring justifcation from some ancient faith tradition? That the permanence of the Vatican as a state is no longer the source of a military confict—theologians have usually a short-term historical memory—changes little to the fact that this state sees in a religious belief going back to 2,000-year-old events the reason for its existence and, eventually, of its resistance to annihilation. There are other ways of explaining this statement, but I remain unconvinced by every single one of them. Besides issues of juridical method, one might point to religious interpretations that are incompatible with the respect due to international laws (second hypothesis after the alleged “obsolescence” of Israel’s right to exist). On this matter, I can only agree—who would not?— with the principles voiced at the Middle East Synod:

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Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable. On the contrary recourse to religion must lead every person to see the face of God in others and to treat them according to the attributes of God and his commandments, namely, according to God’s bountiful goodness, mercy, justice and love for us.

Commenting this passage of the conclusive message of the Synod at a press-conference, Archbishop Cyril S. Bustros, the president of the commission that drafted it, mentioned the most controversial issue of settlements: “I was thinking in particular of Jewish settlers who claim their right to build on Palestinian territory by saying it forms part of biblical Israel, the land promised by God to the Jews according to the Old Testament.”218 The ultra-controversial issue of settlements is a good example of the problematic implications derived from emphatic statements regarding justice in the region. There is no denying that a majority of West-Bank settlers are driven by religious beliefs. But when it is said that these religious beliefs “wrongly justify injustices”—as if one could rightly do so—one must ask again: How do we measure injustice in the absence of mutually recognized agreements regarding borders? In the case of settlements, should we measure it in reference to an interpretation of the fourth article from the Geneva Convention prohibiting transfer of populations, the 1922 mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations that authorizes Jewish settlements on these territories or the decisions of Israel’s High Court of Justice regarding which settlement is legal and which is not? I am convinced that, ultimately, believers from the different religious traditions in the region want peace. The problem is that, drawing from their respective religious traditions, they usually support mutually exclusive ideas about what

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this peace should be like in order to be just. Even Daesh warriors would contend that they see the face of God in others and treat them according to His commandments. The question is, therefore, not whether religious ideologies can lead to justifying injustices—everyone would agree with that. It is rather whether appealing to religious beliefs inevitably does so, a principle that could account for Catholic faithful being offcially discouraged from using religious criteria in order to determine where justice lies in the region. Clearly, if one holds that religious beliefs intrinsically distort political judgment—actually a fairly paradoxical argument coming from Catholic theologians—then the State of Israel, fruit of the work of generations of settlers, has no right to exist. All the documents emanating from the Holy See mentioned earlier acknowledge that the longing of Jews for the Land stems from their religious identity. True, a Jew does not need to believe and practice his own religious tradition in order to be a Zionist. Zionism itself was born out of the secular dream of providing a state for all the Jews of the world, scattered as they were, often living in dire conditions and regardless of their degree of religious observance. But this changes little to the fact that this secular movement found its way and legitimacy by identifying itself with a longing that was consubstantial to the Jewish religious tradition. In order to have a state of their own, Jews did not, at least deliberately, head for Uganda or Birobidjan. They went back to the Land that God had promised them in the person of Abraham, the Land to which Moses had led them from the slavery of Egypt, the Land that, since the time of David, had had Jerusalem-Zion for capital and center of worship—hence the very concept of Zionism.219 In the eyes of the international community, it is precisely this religious narrative that gave a legitimate content to the idea of establishing an independent Jewish state in the Palestine of the British mandate. Catholic offcial documents recommend that Catholic faithful, discarding religious interpretations of the Bible, rely on international agreements such as the 1948 decision to form their judgment regarding the confict. But the 1948 international agreement, just as other similar decisions, is incomprehensible without the specifc religious interpretation of the Bible associated with Zionism. Religion lurks behind about every aspect of the confict. How could considerations regarding justice not take the religious perspective into account? Third hypothesis: the reason behind the position that we are discussing might be too problematic to be explicitly formulated. It is tempting to give orders when one realizes that sincere explanations will not work. I am referring to the concern about the effect that an offcial endorsement of basic Zionism would produce on the Catholic faithful established in the region, faithful who in their majority are Arab-speaking and tend to identify with the Palestinian people. If this statement proceeds from such a rationale, it is easy to understand why the latter remains implicit: theological affrmations are not

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exactly supposed to derive from the desire to make a part of the faithful feel morally or politically comfortable. The divine revelation that fully unfolded in Christ and in which theology claims to be anchored, did disturb a number of people at the time, especially important ones, starting with King Herod. If the authorities of the Church believe that the truth of God’s commandments regarding life and its preservation should prevail over the common sexual practices of modern couples—I am thinking of contraception and abortion of course—why should the truth of God’s promise to Israel not be reckoned with if abiding by God’s understanding of justice is at stake, even if this might hurt the spontaneous political sensitivity of the faithful? Besides, if being careful not to upset Arab-speaking Catholics is the reason behind the offcial Catholic position, this would actually turn the formulation of the Catholic criteria of justice in the region into a typical illustration of deceitful bias: the political understanding that is peculiar to one of the two parties in the confict would henceforth dictate the principles according to which “objective” justice should be served. Finally, I can think of a fourth bad reason that might justify the position formulated by the Vatican commission. It is the fear that opening the door to religious interpretations of Israel’s political existence and development would give way to wild eschatological expectations and speculations among Catholic faithful. Due to a number of factors that have to do as much with the traditional Catholic approach to theological wisdom as they do with political considerations, Catholic theologians are wary of Protestant dispensationalism in all its different forms. But none of these factors justifes throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In the bitter confict that pits one notion of justice against another, the last things that Israeli political leaders want to hear from Catholic theologians and faithful are theocratic speculations and eschatological visions about what the state they serve is, should be or is called by God to become. What is at stake is the determination of justice here and now, a judgment of Solomon deciding between the conficting claims of the Palestinian people as they are and the Israeli state as it is—a democracy that, very much like any other democratic regime, is far from being morally fawless. It is not a justifcation for a political state in a moral state of perfect Levitical purity with a king-Messiah at its head that Israelis are hoping to hear from the mouth of the representatives of the Catholic Church. They are asking this determination for themselves: human beings, sinners, that nonetheless feel that they have a right to be where they are, a nation that, in spite of all its mistakes, is deeply, deeply proud of what has been accomplished during the past seventy years. In short, I cannot see why Catholic theologians should discard Biblical revelation whenever they refect on the type of issues of social and political justice raised by the confict in the region. Manifestly, there is a logical gap

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between the Church’s theology of Israel and the way it is currently applied to the analysis of the confict. I would argue that it betrays a theoretical diffculty that is intrinsic to Catholic theology. It is this core-theological problem that I would like to tackle in my last point. 6.4.1. Toward a Messianic Theology of the Land

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6.4.1.1. Eschatological and Christological Dimensions of Jewish Destiny In his celebrated book on the Messianic idea in the Jewish tradition, G. Scholem evokes “the endless powerlessness in Jewish history during all the centuries of exile, when it was unprepared to come forward on the plane of world history.”220 It is fair to say that the Jewish nation has been living on the margins of world history for almost 2,000 years, As we saw earlier, Christian thinkers have traditionally identifed the Jewish dispersion since the destruction of the Temple with the visible manifestation of the loss of divine favor that Israel as a nation had enjoyed until the time of Christ. These thinkers understood the facts of history through the grid of replacement theology, just as they deciphered the tension between Jesus and the representatives of his people in the light of the Jewish nation’s later predicament. What is then to be said of the unexpected return of the Jewish nation “on the plane of history” that came with the foundation of the State of Israel? Will it not compel Christian theologians to reconsider their traditional reading of the New Testament as well as their understanding of the place of Israel qua Israel within God’s providential design? Suddenly, the historical trajectory of the Jewish nation ceases to look like an indefnitely descending line from a point identifed with the destruction of the Temple and the dashing of the last hopes to reestablish Jewish national sovereignty. Jewish history assumes the form of a parabolic trajectory that, after reaching its lowest point during the Holocaust, reascends as it eventually gives rise to an independent and in so many respects prosperous Jewish state. What does such an evolution tell about the divine design over Israel as it was revealed in Yeshua? One thing at least is clear: exile can no longer be understood as the visible manifestation of Israel’s casting out of God’s design due to her rejection of Yeshua. Israel as to the greatest majority of her members is still as “unbelieving” as she was during the time of Yeshua and yet the “punishment” of her dispersion has ended. Moreover, it is fair to say that the creation of the State of Israel is in itself a proclamation of victorious resilience on the part of those who never forsook their Jewish identity—and consequently their collective dismissal of Christian faith—in exchange for social integration. If this is a new reality, either Israel is still spiritually cast out of the divine eschatological

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design or she is not. In both cases, spiritual casting out can no longer be equated with physical exile. Israel is alive and politically free; therefore, her destiny is not attached to her dismissal of Christian faith. If the life and teaching of Yeshua are true revelation, this truth cannot be understood as implying the unilateral and irreversible banishment of Israel from God’s providence; it must be compatible with the notion of a temporary, albeit substantial, period of physical exile that does not fundamentally separate Israel from God’s providential design. In addition, since, as Christian theology professes, the manifestation of Christ’s salvation lies at the very center of this providential design and provided that the creation of the State of Israel is part of this design, then the creation of the State of Israel must in some way be connected to the manifestation of Christ’s salvation. But in what manner? It is diffcult to conceive such a crossing of paths otherwise than from an eschatological perspective—a point of view related to the eschaton, the endgoal of time as we know it. Past speaks of division, mutual ignorance, innumerable persecutions. Present is by and large the result of this tragic history. But what about the future? In the world associated with the Reformation, speculations about the ingathering of Jews on the Land and the Second Coming of Christ predate by more than half-a-century the creation of the State of Israel. Under the infuence of John Nelson Darby’s (+1882) theory of history as a succession of “dispensations” or providential ages established by God, the 14-point proclamation of the Niagara Bible Conference (1878) classically stated that “the Lord Jesus will come in person to introduce the millennial age, when Israel shall be restored to their own land, and the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord; and that this personal and premillennial advent is the blessed hope set before us in the Gospel for which we should be constantly looking.” According to the founding vision of Christian Zionism, the ingathering of Jews on the Land is a condition for their collective coming to faith in Yeshua, which, in turn, is a condition for the Second Coming of Christ that will usher in his millennial ruling over the earth. One can hardly deny that the ingathering of Jews on the Land (Isa 11:12; 27:13; 56:8; 66:20, Jer 16:15; 23:3, 8; 29:14; 31:8; 33:7, Ezek 20:34, 41; 37:21) and the fnal welcoming of the Messiah’ s salvation by the Jewish nation (Rom 11:15), just as the millennium of Christ’s kingship (Rev 20:6), are all part of God’s revelation manifested through Scriptures. One is therefore entitled to speculate about the various ways in which these elements might be called to play a role in the future of humankind. However, as soon as one introduces elements that are neither part of Revelation nor can be logically derived from it, one steps out of the realm of theology and enters into that of visionary theories for which there is no way in which their accuracy

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could eventually be confrmed. Christ himself warns his disciples not to indulge in arbitrary speculations regarding the end of time: “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). Claiming that the ingathering of Jews on the Land and the restoration of their corporate existence as a political body could lead to their collective conversion does not transgress logic as long as one qualifes this event as a mere possibility, not even a likelihood. But what about claiming that this collective conversion is a condition for the Second Coming? Such a claim, in this exact form, has neither scriptural nor logical basis. Those who uphold it seem to imply that their knowledge about these events is more extended than that of the incarnated Son of God. The truth is that one is not compelled to prophesy a sudden and collective conversion of Jews before the Second Coming to endow the State of Israel with eschatological signifcance. Walking in the footsteps of Rav Judah Alkalai (+1878) and Rav Zvi H. Kalischer (+1873) who spoke about atkhalta di-geula, the beginning of redemption, Rav Abraham I. Kook (+1935) fervently linked the increasing movement of Jewish immigration to Palestine to the “the beginning of the fowering of our redemption,” reishit smichat geulateinu. These rabbis’ interpretation of redemption as being at least partly “in human hands” will probably remain a thoroughly controversial topic in the Jewish religious world until the end of time. Still, it resonates with the claim, presented earlier in the present work, that Israel in exile underwent a process of purifcation that was secretly connected with the sacrifce of Yeshua for her sake. What Rav Kook foresaw was that exile as a time of purifcation was ending and that the return of Jews to the Land prefgured the beginning of the time of spiritual regeneration that would ultimately lead Israel to the fullness of redemption. If Yeshua stands, as I contend, both at the origin of Israel’s path of purifcation during her exile and at the very end of her historical journey when his Messianic light will shine over all Israel, is it incongruous to think that the creation of the State of Israel is a decisive step toward the fullness of such Messianic revelation? Classical dispensationalism envisages a radical discontinuity between the secular reality of a Jewish State, mostly composed of “unbelieving” Jews, and the miraculous encounter of Jesus with his people as a result of a sudden conversion of these Jews to the true faith. In contrast, I would suggest envisaging the very State of Israel, with all its purely secular components, as the providential instrument of Yeshua’s gradual revelation or rather “selfunveiling” to his unbelieving people. Not being in itself the end of time but leading to it, this process deserves to be called eschatological in the fullest sense of the word.

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Seen in this light, the parabola-shaped trajectory of the Jewish nation throughout history would offer more than a striking analogy with the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. Somehow the latter would provide the ultimate explanation to the former. But in what terms should we conceive such an “explanation”? In point of fact, the intimate relation between the destiny of Israel and the mystery of Easter provides Kinzer’s Jerusalem Crucifed with its theological core:

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In a mysterious fashion, the Jewish people were participants in the suffering of Jesus. I have already argued that this perspective on the suffering and death of Jesus has a frm basis in the New Testament itself. The cross of Jesus involves his proleptic participation in the Jewish torments of 70 CE, so that Jewish faithfulness unto death in coming centuries might participate retroactively in his martyrdom. However, I have also argued that this dynamic correspondence between Jesus and the Jewish people likewise requires a connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the national redemption of Israel. If the Shoah reveals the bond between the Jewish people and the death of Jesus, then the establishment of the Jewish State three years later likewise reveals the bond between Jewish national life and the resurrection of Israel’s Messiah on the third day.221

I have earlier pointed out what I perceive as the problematic character of Kinzer’s understanding of the relation between the sacrifce of Yeshua on the Cross and the destiny of the Jewish nation. Since grasping the true nature of this relation is, I believe, key to understanding the eschatological signifcance of the State of Israel either from a Messianic or a Catholic point of view, I feel I need to elaborate further on this specifc aspect. I argued that invoking the assumption of the suffering associated with Jewish exile as a reason for the sacrifce of Yeshua on the Cross is theologically unintelligible. For what purpose should Christ offer himself as a ransom for the suffering of exile if his sacrifce changed nothing to the dire reality of exile? And if Yeshua’s death is entirely destined to somehow transform the inner reality of exile, endowing it with a hidden purifying grace, why was there an exile in the frst place? What made this exile necessary? I cannot think of any other sin that would justify exile occurring in this place and at this time than the involvement of Israel qua Israel in the death of Yeshua. But if the death of Yeshua is the cause of Israel’s exile (as a punishment for her misdeed), how could one simultaneously claim that Israel’s exile is the cause of Yeshua’s death (Yeshua suffers for the sake of Israel in exile)? How could one and the same action (Yeshua’s death) be said to cause suffering and alleviate it? If its purpose was to alleviate suffering, why would it cause suffering in the frst place? What I suggested earlier is to envisage the same action (Yeshua’s death) as the cause of two distinct

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and non-mutually exclusive consequences: the death of Yeshua causes exile, as a punishment for the crime of Israel qua Israel associated with this death, and simultaneously triggers a process of inner purifcation at the heart of exile as a result of the salvation of Israel qua Israel that this death achieves. Such understanding makes it impossible to claim that the suffering of Yeshua purifes Israel in exile by dint of “proleptically” assuming her suffering. Far from the suffering of Israel granting a redemptive dimension to the suffering of Yeshua, it is the suffering of Yeshua that grants a redemptive dimension to the suffering of Israel in exile, as a bygone event that “analeptically” resurfaces in the midst of much later developments. Israel is not purifed or saved by Christ because her martyrdom communicates with the martyrdom of Christ. Israel’s martyrdom communicates with that of Christ because Israel is saved in Christ. By virtue of Yeshua’s sacrifce, Israel is invisibly present on the Cross just as Christ crucifed is invisibly present at the core of Israel’s exile. Now what meaning can possibly be attributed to Kinzer’s claim that, just as Israel in exile partakes of the suffering of Yeshua on the Cross, Israel returning on the Land partakes of Yeshua’s Resurrection? As Israel is present in Christ crucifed, Israel is present in Christ risen since it is the same Christ who is dead and risen. But the question has to do with Israel, not with Christ, namely, what is it that makes the historical destiny of Israel shift from participation in the suffering of Christ to participation in the risen Christ? How is one supposed to account for this shift? From the point of view of belief, Israel did not undergo any major change. The creation of the State of Israel is, as we said, the victory of Israel’s faithfulness to herself and therefore to the enduring dismissal of Yeshua’s Messiahship. True, the situation of Israel radically changed after the Shoah—but why? Why should such an absolute disaster end the identifcation of Israel with the suffering of Yeshua, changing it into an identifcation with the risen Yeshua? I do not fnd any explanation in Kinzer’s interpretation of this analogy. I believe the explanation for this absence of explanation regarding the resurrection of Israel is not different from that regarding Israel’s exile. Kinzer is reluctant to envisage Israel’s exile in terms of punishment notwithstanding the testimony of the Rabbinic tradition in this regard. But there can be no expiation where there is no punishment. Can we not claim that, whatever debt Israel had to pay, the suffering of the Shoah compensated it entirely? As the banishment of Israel ends, what is left is the “other reality” associated with the death of Yeshua; namely, the salvation of Israel, gained once and for all on the Cross. In my opinion, the whole issue of the eschatological relation between the State of Israel and the Jewish ekklesia should be understood in this light.

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6.4.1.2. The State of Israel and the Eschatological Role of a Jewish Ekklesia From a Catholic perspective the acknowledgment of the eschatological signifcance of the State of Israel must extend far beyond the belief that, on the last day, Israel qua Israel will discover that the true Messiah she had expected from the beginning is in fact the One that the Church had always placed at the center of her worship. Indeed, this ultimate revelation to the Jewish nation is perfectly conceivable without the establishment of a Jewish state. Did Jesus not himself prophesy of his second coming that it would be “as the lightning comes from the east and fashes as far as the west” (Matt 24:27)? Eschatology is about the manner in which God guides the course of the universe toward its historical end so that His eternal design of salvation might be completed. From a Catholic point of view, eschatology concerns the Church of Christ in the frst place as she is the ordinary vessel that God has created and established to convey His message of salvation to the world. Claiming that the State of Israel has eschatological signifcance means that it is destined to partake of the divine design the accomplishment of which is consubstantial to the Church. The State of Israel would have no eschatological role, no active part in God’s universal design as an instrument of its accomplishment, if, kept apart from the Church, it was simply destined to be the object of a special revelation of God at the end of time. Therefore, what we need to understand is in what manner the State of Israel is called to actively contribute to the unfolding of the design of cosmic salvation entrusted to the Church. One can easily accept the idea, brought forth by Kinzer, that the very fact of the State of Israel was and still is instrumental in the growth of the Church’s awareness of her “bilateral identity.” The State of Israel is the living proof that the religious legacy of the Jewish nation is the object of God’s ongoing favor. If on the one hand this legacy is not obsolete, as Christian thinkers have claimed for so long, and if on the other this living legacy pertains to the heart of the Church’s faith, the State of Israel is a living sign that the Church needs to acknowledge that Jewish believers, as representative of Israel qua Israel, constitute an essential part of herself. Kinzer recalls that the Messianic movement owes its origin to the national awareness associated with the affrmation of the State of Israel in the aftermath of the Six-Day War: Perhaps the Jewish disciples of Jesus needed their own ecclesial polity to ensure their survival and fourishing, in solidarity with all Jews and especially with those in the restored Jewish commonwealth of Israel. After almost two millennia of exile, Jerusalem was once again the capital of the Jewish people. Was it not an appropriate time for the ekklēsia to renounce her self-imposed exile and recover her own communal embodiment of the holy city?222

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Due to the existence of the State of Israel, the original Church of Jerusalem, mostly composed of Jewish believers, is called to rise from her ashes that had been scattered long ago. But in what sense should it be said that this “Church of Jerusalem” is endowed with an eschatological role in the way defned earlier? Faithful to the ecclesiological views that we mentioned and discussed earlier, Kinzer sees the Church of Jerusalem as steeped in the Jewish nation that from now on would enjoy political sovereignty. With Stuart Dauermann, he is ready to envisage the “inreach” of Jewish disciples in the direction of “unbelieving” Jews, but this implies that they should preach Jesus from within the Jewish religious community, at a distance from “Christians” understood as members of the Gentile Church: Messianic Jews are to be a prophetic sign, demonstration, and catalyst of this eschatological vision in their corporate life. This means living in unity with the Jewish people as a whole, observing the Torah in accordance with Jewish tradition, experiencing and expressing the presence of God’s Spirit, supporting Jewish life in the land of Israel, and, at the center of all, following and proclaiming Jesus as Israel’s Messiah.223

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The de facto separation introduced by Kinzer between, on the one hand, “Christians” and, on the other, Jews in general—Messianic and non-Messianic Jews together—within the State of Israel itself is particularly evident—but also particularly problematic—when Kinzer envisages the status of Jerusalem in relation to “Christians.” He writes: Disciples of Jesus must resist all attempts to equate theologically the Jewish relationship to the city with the religious attachment to the place held by Christians (i.e. Gentile disciples of Jesus) and Muslims. Christians are joined to the city through their relationship with Jesus, the Messiah, who suffered, died, and rose from the dead there, and to whom the city ultimately belongs. However, the titulus under which he died identifed him as “the king of the Jews,” and the city belongs to him because he fulflls that role as the risen Son of David. Consequently, Gentile disciples of Jesus are linked to the city through the Jewish people of which Jesus is the sovereign.224

I fully subscribe to the conviction that the traditional connection between Christian Churches and the holy places associated with the life and teaching of Jesus should not call into question the Jewish state’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Not only should Church properties be legally acknowledged by a state that defnes itself in reference to Jewish identity, but, from a religious point of view, most places and monuments in Jerusalem that are revered as holy by Churches are direct witnesses to Jewish sacred history. While the holy tradition of Israel stands deliberately at a distance from Church

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traditions, there is nothing in Church traditions that is not a direct or indirect fruit of Israel’s sacred history. At the same time, the relationship of the Jewish religious world to these places and monuments, which for them are deprived of holiness, is undoubtedly very different from that of “Christians.” But what about Jewish disciples of Yeshua? As Torah-observant as they might be, they cannot espouse the common attitude of the Jewish religious world toward these places, which for them are flled with meaning and holiness. This example displays what I consider to be a major approximation in Kinzer’s eschatological perception of the State of Israel. Kinzer presents the state as an opportunity for the Church to rediscover her Jewish dimension. He never sees it as an opportunity for the Jewish world to rediscover its connection with the Gentile world through the mediation of a Jewish ekklesia. As a result, the respective trajectories of the two worlds, the “Christian” one and the (non-Messianic and Messianic) Jewish one, never seem to cross, even in the State of Israel. This may change at the end of this universe as we know it, when the two parallel lines will eventually meet:

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The corporate life of the Jewish people in the land of Israel constitutes a sign pointing beyond the exile to a world governed by the resurrected and glorifed Messiah of Israel—yet the exile continues, even for Jews in the land. We will only see the true end of exile when God intervenes in an extraordinary and unilateral fashion to rend the heavens and transfgure the form of this world.225

If the Jewish ekklesia that develops in Israel as a consequence of the extraordinary religious and anthropological confguration of the country never mingles with her “Christian” (Gentile) counterpart, I cannot see how one could characterize the State of Israel as an eschatological point of encounter between the historical destinies of the Church and Israel qua Israel. This estranged coexistence within the boundaries of the same state is highly paradoxical. Israel is not only the land of the Patriarchs and the Kings of Israel. It is also the land of Yeshua. This cannot but be of paramount signifcance for his Jewish disciples. Established in the State of Israel, being present in Jerusalem, they have returned to the very place that witnessed the drama of the separation between Israel and her Messiah: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matt 23:37–39). After 2,000 years, as the long and forced exile of Israel on foreign lands came to an end, the house is no longer desolate. Israel is in Israel, and she is free, for the frst time after more than two millennia. For the frst time Israel qua Israel is in a position to freely acknowledge the Messiah that she rejected 2,000 years

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ago. She is unconstrained by social orders that, consciously or not, longed to see her disintegrate as a nation. Whether they want it or not, Jewish disciples of Yeshua are those who, drawing on this newly found freedom and national pride, are the voice of Jerusalem saying, shouting, singing: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” They are the remnant announcing the coming home, in the fullest sense of the term, of the whole nation. Seen in this light, the State of Israel does not only offer the opportunity to the Church to develop her Jewish dimension. It provides the Jews with a chance to discover that the universal Church is theirs. In a penetrating meditation on the so-called Messianic secret (Jesus does not want his identity to be known, see for instance Mark 1:43–45; 8:29–30), Julia Blum applies the story of Joseph to the destiny of the Church and Israel. Just like Joseph at the Egyptian court, Jesus has made himself unrecognizable to his brothers who once tried to kill him (‫ ַויִּתְ נַ ֨ ֵ ּכר ֲאלֵי ֶ֜הם‬, Gen 42:7). Jesus the Jew is unrecognizable in a Church that in many respects is the outcome of a prodigious bi-millennial process of Gentilization of her Jewish roots. Nonetheless, he is there and he is alive, truly the one they once knew, fesh of their fesh and blood of their blood: “Yes, Joseph made himself a stranger, and yes, he was unrecognizable, and yet, out of his disguise, this amazing root of knowing and recognition touches the hearts of the brothers with something painfully familiar.”226 Joseph at frst does not want to be recognized by his brothers because he wants the hearts of his brothers to be ready for such a recognition, something that requires a long inner as well as outer journey. Likewise, the recognition of Yeshua the Jew by his own as one of their own, alive in the Church, is the eschatological endpoint of Israel’s long journey of exile. It can only take place in a Land where Jews are entirely free to make such a move. Jewish political sovereignty is the guarantee that this recognition is sincere as it can no longer have been caused by external social pressure. I surmise Kinzer’s reluctance to contemplate a Jewish acknowledgment of the gentilized tradition of the Ekklesia is due to the awareness of the inevitable fracture within the Jewish religious world that it implies. As Torah observant as they might be, Jewish disciples of Yeshua will be banned from the Jewish religious world as soon as they claim some affliation to the Church of “Christians.” But, as I argued earlier, what is the meaning and purpose of a bilateral Ekklesia if the notion does not imply communion between the two dimensions of the Church’s unique nature? Communion has a price. I do not see how Jewish disciples of Yeshua living in Israel could avoid paying it. At the same time, the “Church of Christians” in Israel is herself almost completely unprepared for the eschatological revolution that the growing acknowledgment of Yeshua’s Messiahship by Jews brings with it. True, the “Church of Christians” directly or indirectly derives all her spiritual riches from the sacred history of Israel. However, she does not have room to welcome an Israel qua

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Israel that, for her part, would have welcomed Yeshua-ha- Messhiah. The “Jews” are still widely considered as “the others,” the quintessential enemies of Christ, by an overwhelming majority of Christians in the Land. Here again Joseph is expecting the time of his recognition. Yeshua is alive in his people; he has never ceased to walk with them along the lengthy path of their exile even though they were unaware of his presence. At some point “good Christians” must come to the understanding that the one they profess to worship is alive and unrecognizable amid the people who claim to dismiss him, acknowledging that each time they have hated this people, each time their authorities have exercised persecution against them, it is their own God that they have reviled and persecuted. Such an acknowledgment is primarily the responsibility of a Church that lives in permanent contact with this people—on a land that is their land according to God’s promise. The eschatological revolution that the eventual reconciliation between the Church and Israel qua Israel would represent is likely to stir dissent and also controversies akin to those that their separation caused 2,000 years ago. This does not, however, make this eschatological revolution less necessary. Those who have eyes to see can already see it happening, the momentous consequence of the existence of a state whose most fundamental meaning is to herald the end of Galut, the beginning of the fowering of Israel’s redemption. 7. THE ECUMENICAL DIMENSION OF A JEWISH EKKLESIA 7.1. “Subsistit in” and the Path toward the Full Realization of the Church of Christ

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In c.1, §8 of Lumen Gentium, Vatican Council II’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, one reads: This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as ‘the pillar and mainstay of the truth.’ This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctifcation and truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.227

Unitatis Redintegratio, Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism envisages the “subsistence” of the Church of Christ in the Catholic Church from the perspective of Christ’s prayer for the unity of his disciples (John 17:21): “We

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believe that this unity subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time.”228 The “fows of ink” that the expression subsistit in released, according to the prediction of Mgr Gérard Philips,229 have not been spilt in vain. Owing to the multiple discussions generated by this expression, the intention of the Magisterium became clearer. To reach a correct understanding of “susbsistit in” one needs to fnd the path that lies between two pitfalls. On the one hand, any discontinuity between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church is excluded. In Dominus Jesus, the 2000 Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith “on the Universality and Salvifc Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church,” one reads: “The Catholic faithful are required to profess that there is a historical continuity—rooted in the apostolic succession—between the Church founded by Christ and the Catholic Church . . . the Church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church.”230 It is the “entire” Church of Christ that “subsists” in the Catholic Church and it is only in her that she does so. In its “Responses regarding certain aspects of the Doctrine on the Church” (2007), the Congregation reasserts the same position in even stronger terms. The Third Response speaks of a “full identity” between the two Churches, something that the Commentary on the Response clarifes in the following manner:

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In fact, precisely because the Church willed by Christ actually continues to exist (subsistit in) in the Catholic Church, this continuity of subsistence implies an essential identity between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. . . . In choosing the word ‘subsistit’ the Council intended to express the singularity and non ‘multipliability” of the Church of Christ: the Church exists as a unique historical reality.231

On the other hand, “full” or “essential identity” between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church should not—or no longer—be conceived as an exclusive identity, as if other ecclesial entities could not have a relation with the Church of Christ that would not already be included among the spiritual riches of the Catholic Church.232 Subsistit in was precisely brought forward to replace “est” in order to explain the presence of “elements” witnessing such a relation in Christian communities that exist beyond the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church.233 In his Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, John Paul II teaches that the existence of these elements imply the presence of the Church of Christ in communities that are no longer in full communion with the Catholic Church and yet are called to become so due to this very same presence:

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The elements of sanctifcation and truth present in the other Christian Communities, in a degree which varies from one to the other, constitute the objective basis of the communion, albeit imperfect, which exists between them and the Catholic Church. To the extent that these elements are found in other Christian communities, the one church of Christ is effectively present in them.234

Since the Church of Christ is “only” subsisting in the Catholic Church, as opposed to the former being exclusively identifed with the latter, she can simultaneously be in ecclesial communities that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church according to some other, much less perfect, mode of existence, here designated as “presence.” One must, therefore, conceive how a “greater” or “more embracing” Ecclesial Reality than the Catholic Church in her current form can subsist in the Catholic Church while remaining essentially identical to this Church. As soon as one assumes that the “superiority” of the Church of Christ over the Catholic Church has to do with properties that are missing in the Catholic Church, one can no longer support the essential identity between the two.235 The Church of Christ no longer fully subsists in the Catholic Church if this subsistence is found to be somehow defcient. But one should be wary of confusing the “elements” that are present in other ecclesial bodies with the properties of the Church of Christ. If the Church of Christ is present in these bodies through these elements, it is so to the extent in which the cause is present in its effects and not as a substance inseparable from its qualities (otherwise these Christian communities would be the Church of Christ). However, there is another way to understand the “superiority” of the Church of Christ. The action of actually seeing is more perfect than simply having the faculty of sight, although it does not imply any element or property that would not be already included in the faculty of sight. The actualization of a potential is more perfect than the potential since this actualization is the goal of the potential while the converse is not true. Claiming that the Church of Christ fully subsists in the Catholic Church is, I would venture to suggest, claiming that the Catholic Church in her current form is potentially the Church of Christ and that she lacks nothing to become the Church of Christ in effect or actually. The natural tendency of a potentiality is to become actuality—somebody who has the faculty to see is inclined to exercise the act of vision. This movement is positive; we call it a natural development. But the opposite movement is also possible: an actual reality can be reduced to pure potentiality due to natural limitations or external impediments, as when people cease to see in a room suddenly plunged into darkness. Nothing is changed to the faculty of vision; it subsists in the organ; simply it cannot be actualized for some defnite, more or less transient, reason. It may also happen that vision becomes only partially impaired, as when

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fog or a dim light prevents us from observing our environment clearly. In this case whatever is seen depends solely on the faculty of vision although this faculty has a potential that goes far beyond its current achievements. I believe this is a fair illustration of the situation of the Catholic Church in relation to the Church of Christ. Whatever the Catholic Church positively is and does depend on the riches of the Church of Christ that fully subsists in her. Still, the Church of Christ is a reality that goes beyond that of the Catholic Church in her present form since she is the Catholic Church in her condition of full actualization. For historical reasons, the Catholic Church fnds herself at a distance from this full realization, but as she is potentially this full realization, she is destined to overcome this distance, thus becoming actually the same reality with the Church of Christ that she is essentially. While the mode according to which the Church of Christ is present in the Catholic Church is unique and unrepeatable (the Church of Christ is the full realization of this Church and of no other ecclesial community), the impact of the Church of Christ is not limited to the Catholic Church. The activity that subsists in a defnite entity can be participated by other entities, so as to bear fruit in these entities. This point is most important in the perspective of a “contraction” from a state of perfect actuality to a state of imperfect actuality, as when the faculty of vision is impaired due to the poor quality of the surrounding light. Claiming that the Catholic Church was impoverished as a result of the succession of schisms out of which separate ecclesial entities were born is equivalent to claiming that what these separate ecclesial entities inherited is a participation in the treasures of a Church that was closer to the Church of Christ according to her fully actual realisation.236 In this confguration, the movement of the Catholic Church to recover full actual identity with the Church of Christ will coincide with the reestablishment of a lost connection with all the Christian communities whose ecclesial legacy is rooted in ancient and enduring participation in the Church of Christ. In other words, it is not because the Catholic Church is essentially—though not actually—identical with the Church of Christ that other Christian communities should “go back” to the Catholic Church to foster Christian unity in the one and unique Church of Christ. While these Christian communities retain merely elements from their former communion with the Church of Christ, the Catholic Church in its present form is not—both no longer and not yet—the Church of Christ in its fully actual realization. Rather, in order to achieve visible unity, the Catholic Church and the other Christian communities are supposed to simultaneously, each in its own manner, make a step “backward” in the direction of the point where they once separated—the point from where the Church of Christ began to further shrink into a regime of “subsistence in” the Catholic Church while the ecclesiality of Christian bodies that withdrew

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from communion with the Catholic Church started being reduced to a series of spiritual properties or “elements.” Accordingly, asking about the ecumenical relevance of a Jewish ekklesia is asking to what extent her establishment or reestablishment would enable the Catholic Church and other Christian communities to make a decisive step together toward the recovery of the visible unity of the Body of Christ, a visible unity that coincides with the Church of Christ in her state of full actualization. To answer this question, one needs to take a closer look at the problem, which such a step is meant to remedy, the fssure in the Body of Yeshua that this needs to be repaired.

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7.2. The “primal schism” Although schism and heresy often overlap from the point of view of history, there is a clear distinction between the two realities as to their respective relationship to the established authorities: “Haeresis est diversa sequentium secta, schisma vero eadem sequentium separatio” (heresy is a sect formed by people whose views differ from the rest, but schism is a split between people who hold the same views).237 The rejection of some specifc Church authority does not always stem from incompatible dogmatic conceptions. Believing that a particular Church authority is not legitimate, as during the “Great Schism” (1378–1417) when three prelates were each pretending to be the one true Pope, is not per se a matter of dogmas. The unity of the Body can be torn apart by individuals who have identical beliefs but incompatible ambitions and allegiances. It is true that matters of practical organization or of individuals are not as insurmountable as divergences regarding religious beliefs, there will always be a temptation to add this type of divergence to a quarrel about authority in order to strengthen and perpetuate a division. St. Jerome already observed that what at the beginning seems to be a heresy is often a schism in disguise “so that it might appear to legitimately secede from the Church (ut recte ab Ecclesia recessisse videatur).”238 Meanwhile most of the time heresies end up causing schisms in the Body of Christ as their supporters can no longer agree with the principles on which the Body of Christ rests. It is therefore diffcult to distinguish between a schism that takes the guise of a heresy and a heresy that becomes the cause of a schism. Still, the distinction matters as a schism can be healed while a heresy indicates some irreconcilable division. From this point of view, the decision of a number of modern Catholic theologians to speak about the estrangement between the Church and the Jewish nation in terms of a “primal rift” or schism in contrast to a heresy is remarkable. It was previously assumed in the Catholic tradition that the secession of the Jewish nation from the Church derived from the most fundamental heresy

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that could be conceived of, namely, the refusal to believe in Jesus as God incarnated and Messiah of Israel. Speaking of a schism in this case leaves the possibility open that the “parting of ways” between the Church and the Synagogue stemmed more from a concern about the survival of the Jewish nation in the framework of the newly born Church rather than from a dogmatic rejection of Yeshua’s Messiahship. In this confguration, the healing of the schism would not depend on the miraculous “conversion” of unbelieving Jews but the restoration of a Jewish ekklesia guaranteeing the survival of the Jewish nation within the Church of Christ. The question therefore reads: To what extent can one speak of a schism stricto sensu when contemplating the separation between the Church and the Synagogue? According to Kinzer, the disintegration of the Judeo-Christian presence in the Church occurring during the frst centuries of her existence, embodies this fundamental schism. Thinking along the lines sketched out by John H. Yoder, Kinzer claims that the development of a Gentile Church, presenting herself as the “New Israel,” gradually severed the ties that continued to connect her to the wider Jewish world, effectively making it impossible for Jewish believers to survive as Jews in her midst: “Whereas Jewish practice was previously seen as normative, now it was considered mortal sin. Thus, a schism ruptured the Messianic ekklesia and helped to produce the wider rupture between the ekklesia and the Jewish people as a whole.”239 Jewish disciples of Yeshua served as an “ecclesiological bridge” between the Church and the Jewish nation. This is the reason why the early rejection or belittling of Jewish customs in the name of Christ’s new law brought about the Church’s estrangement from original Israel: The triumph of supersessionism and the crumbling of the ecclesiological bridge produced a schism in the heart of the people of God. Ultimately the schism was between the multinational ekklesia and the Jewish people. However, this basic schism was precipitated by an internal schism within the Messianic ekklesia— between the Gentile ekklesia and its Jewish counterpart, whose role was to bridge the gap between Israel and the Yeshua believing Gentile community.240

One could say that, from the perspective of Kinzer, the Judeo-Christian schisms that affected the early Church are the consequence of a major schism that occurred beyond the Church herself. Kinzer views the supersessionist turn of the Church as a schism happening within the people of Israel, a schism induced by the leadership of the Church that resulted in her being effectively segregated from the whole of Israel. There is no doubt that the development of a supersessionist attitude in the Church, as witnessed in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr, goes hand in hand with the—spontaneous or imposed—marginalization of

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Judeo-Christian groups such as the Ebionites or the “Nazoreans.” Breaking up from the main Church to preserve a Jewish lifestyle, whether open or not to “God-fearing Gentiles,” these groups were schismatics in the strictest and most objective sense of the word. But are those multiple “mini schisms” to be equated with some “primal schism” between the Church and Israel? Unlike the “primal schism” Kinzer has in mind, these “mini schisms” happened within the Body formed of the disciples of Yeshua and not between the disciples of Yeshua and those who rejected his Messiahship. Actually, the very idea that these groups functioned as “ecclesiological bridges” between the Church and the wider Jewish world implies that some line of division between the two entities either preexisted the “supersessionist turn” of the Church or coexisted with it independently. One can well accept the claim that religious identities were fuid during the frst century (J. H. Yoder) and that the formation of a rabbinic orthodoxy was a longer process, partly caused by the dogmatic hardening of the Church (D. Boyarin), but this does not mean that the Church had no formal or visible boundaries. One needs to account for the fact that, at a very early stage, a number of Jews were viewed as being inside the Church while others—probably the vast majority—were considered as outsiders. Where is the supersessionist argumentation in Paul’s speech to the local Jewish leaders from his Roman prison? Instead, it is reported that Paul was “trying to convince them about Jesus both from the law of Moses and from the prophets” (Acts 28:23). In the same passage one reads that “some were convinced by what he had said, while others refused to believe” (Acts 28:24). As trivial as it might sound, the non-acceptance of the Gospel by a great many Jews is the frst cause of the rift between the Church and Israel. It is this non-acceptance that triggered the process of Gentilization of the Church: “Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen” exclaims Paul, drawing his conclusion from the widely negative reaction of his audience (Acts 28:28). From this point of view, presenting supersessionism as the source of the rift turns historical realities upside down. In actual fact, supersessionism is the almost inevitable consequence of the rift, being nothing but the theological justifcation of this ethnic shift in the composition of the People of God. Having become the dominant element in the Church due to the refusal of a signifcant part of the Jewish nation to adhere to the Gospel, Gentiles started interpreting this refusal as an effect of divine providence. Church theologians and writers would henceforth characterize the Church as the “new people of God” destined to replace the “Old Israel.” The early disintegration of the Judeo-Christian segment of the Church should be seen as the natural consequence of this “Gentilization process.” Far from being the result of the “mini-schisms” mentioned earlier, this disintegration is the outcome of a uniformizing process where Jewish believers were culturally

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and biologically—through intermarriages—absorbed into the Gentile element. Accordingly, mini-schisms are not the cause of the disintegration of the Judeo-Christian element in the Church. Rather it is this disintegration that induced a series of “mini-schisms” as so many desperate attempts to counterbalance the process of Gentilization that had started taking place with the First Council of Jerusalem. In short, if the “supersessionist turn” of the Church caused a schism within the living body of Israel, it is only as a belated consequence of a “Jewish refusal” that tore apart the early Church. Let us reformulate our initial question in the light of these elements: if the source of the division between the Church and the Synagogue is a matter of belief—the acceptance versus the dismissal of the content of the Gospel— how could the growing estrangement between them in the frst centuries be considered a schism stricto sensu; that is, as a disagreement fundamentally related to the concrete organization of the Church and not to issues of belief? A theologian like David W. Torrance does not deny that a divergence of belief played a crucial role in the estrangement between the Church and the Synagogue. This does not prevent him from speaking about a schism in reference to Paul’s epistle to the Romans, c.11: “Now this is something which is more imperative than ever for us to take seriously, namely, that the Christian Church is Church only in that it is grafted like branches onto the trunk of Israel, and that it is the trunk that bears the branches and not the branches the trunk (Rom 11:18). Since this is the case, the deepest schism in the one People of God, is the schism between the Christian and the Jewish Church, not that between East and West or Roman and Protestant Christianity.”241 In other words, the division between the Church and Israel was not only about ideas regarding the manner in which God had decided to reveal Himself to his People “in the fnal days” (Heb 1:2). It also had to do with the principle of the communion between Jews and Gentiles within one single Body. Throughout the centuries, countless people have rejected the Good News proclaimed by the Church without damaging the integrity of the Church. By contrast, the “turning away” of a vast majority of Jews touched the vital connection between the “Old Israel” and the new People that was rapidly forming due to the infow of Gentiles (see Rom 11). Under these circumstances, it is fair to assume that the “No” of Jews to Yeshua was at the same time a “No” to the manner in which the mutual integration of Jews and Gentiles was taking place within the Church. The “No” of Jews to Yeshua was largely inspired by a “Yes” to the survival of a nation whose future was threatened by the absence of real limits to its absorption by Gentile masses. It is only now, almost 2,000 years later, that Catholic theologians come to realize how deeply this never fully explained and yet fundamental tension regarding the organization of the early Church damaged her pristine integrity. As Card. Lustiger claimed, an actually Catholic

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or Universal Church implies the communion between Jews and Gentiles. The failure of the early Church’s leadership to conceive a sustainable model of communion-safeguarding-the-distinction between Jewish and Gentile disciples is greatly responsible for the frst rift that tore apart the Body of Yeshua. True, a leadership more aware of the value of the Jewish presence in the Church could hardly have prevented a high number of Jews from turning their backs to the Good News. However by keeping the Church in close contact with the wider Jewish world, such an awareness would undoubtedly have slowed the Ekklesia’s estrangement from her most authentic self. I want to show now how this understanding of the primal schism helps us to grasp the relevance of a Jewish Messianic ekklesia from an ecumenical perspective.

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7.3. The DNA of the Church of Christ As John Henry Newman famously demonstrated in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1920), it is through the struggle against heresies that the Church has gradually unfolded the dogmatic and spiritual riches of the Revelation. What would the Church be without the superb Trinitarian theology that the Cappadocian Fathers forged in order to refute the heresy of Arius? It is not so with schisms considered as such. The rupture of the communion between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople did not give rise to any substantial dogmatic development. One could say the same about the split between Churches that came out of the Reformation. Dogmatic development only takes place to the extent that schisms bring forth divergences regarding belief in order to justify themselves. Since pseudo-justifcations do not have the depth of “consistent” heresies, the development that ensues remains marginal. In actual fact, a schism is a pure loss. Failure to agree on a model of governance common to the Churches of the West and of the East resulted in the shrinking of their respective horizons without spiritual benefts. The constitution of a Church, the ingathering of the disciples in one living Body, is the manner in which Christ’s salvation is made manifest to the world. Schisms are the reversal of this process of ingathering as they subordinate the truth of the Gospel to the religious, cultural, and anthropological fault-lines that set human beings against one another. As Paul repeatedly taught, the overcoming of the faultline that separates Jews from Gentiles lies at the very foundation of the ingathering of all the disciples in one Body: For he is our peace; in his fesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both

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groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. (Eph 2:14–16)

With a number of other Catholic theologians, I believe that the other major schisms that tore apart the one Body of Christ in the course of centuries are delayed or “carried-over” effects induced by the frst crack in this foundational communion, the frst “pulling away” of the original “patch” that tied together the old and the new (Mark 2:21; Matt 9:16). The manner in which D. W. Torrance views the frst schism having repercussion on the successive schisms occurring later in the Church is interesting:

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If the Gentile branches were themselves broken off from the trunk of Israel into which they were ingrafted, they had to fnd some basic centre to give them coherence and structure if they were not to disappear. It was out of this kind of need that Rome emerged as a centre for the expanding Catholic Church. It was evidently in justifcation of its own claims that the Roman Church gave currency to the false idea that Israel was the People of God only according to the fesh and had to be replaced by the Church of Jesus Christ as the People of God according to the Spirit. Schism always gives rise to substitute-centres which require special pleading, but the proliferation of schism, whatever may be its alleged justifcation, must surely be traced back ultimately to the radical split between Gentile Christians and Jews.242

Being according to its defnition a divergence regarding the organization of the Church, a schism has immediate consequences on this concrete organization. The manner in which the Church is governed from an administrative standpoint is closely connected to the anthropological-cultural entity that is the object of such governance. Damaging the unity and coherence of this anthropological-cultural entity results in an imbalance in terms of global governance. According to Torrance, the centralistic tendency of the Church of Rome when it comes to global governance is the symptom of such an imbalance arising from the Gentilization of the original Church. The fact is that these centralistic tendencies of the Church of Rome were precisely at the source of the schism with the Church of Byzantium. A few centuries later, these are the same tendencies that brought about, by way of reaction, the militant anti-Papism inherent to the Reformation. As a result, the horizon of the Church of Rome found itself more or less confned to the Western world, and moreover to the “Latin” part of the Western world by contrast to the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon parts (missionary work in South-America, Africa and Asia is anchored to this mental horizon, which is the source of constant questioning and reassessment in these areas).

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As I pointed out earlier, the Catholic Magisterium professes that the Church of Rome in her current condition is essentially the Church of Christ. But as I also stated, it teaches that she is so merely to the extent in which the Church of Christ subsists in her—or, in other words, that she is not actually the Church of Christ that she is essentially. One could compare her to an animal specimen that would have preserved the DNA of a great ancestor intact. Due to the diffcult conditions pertaining to its environment over time, this type of animal would have lost many characteristics that used to place its ancestors among the dominating species of its time. Meanwhile other zoological lines evolving out of the same ancestors would not have preserved their DNA intact. In this case, scientists would be able to reconstitute, at least schematically, the form of these great ancestors out of the DNA of the frst animal specimen, something that would remain impossible with other types of animals sharing the same origin. If the Church of Rome is what she professed to be, she has the “biological potential” out of which the Church of Christ can be reconstituted. Reviving a Jewish ekklesia would mean renewing the communion that gave its most pristine—but also most fragile and short-lived—confguration to the Church of Christ. While the recovery of the Church of Christ’s visible unity stumbles over the differences of culture, anthropological factors, and dogmatic constructs that continue to separate the main Christian denominations, the decision to restore a Jewish ekklesia in this sense would manifest the desire of the Catholic Church to come back to a point where she was still made of one “unshrunk cloth” (Mark 2:21), to the Church that Christ founded and that preceded the successive divisions of his living Body. The Church that truly corresponds to the First Council of Jerusalem could not endure due to the absence of a structure that would have guaranteed the survival of the Jewish nation, of Israel qua Israel within her visible boundaries. In our days, almost 2,000 years after the Council of Jerusalem, the Church is offered the opportunity to manifest her faithfulness to her most authentic nature through the establishment of a Jewish ekklesia. It is a fact that Jewish disciples are present in other ecclesial denominations as well as in the Catholic Church. Though generally given little attention, the presence of Jewish disciples in these denominations is reminiscent of the communion between Gentiles and Jews that is used to characterize the Church of Christ in her state of full realization. From the moment when other denominations identify the restoration of a Jewish ekklesia by the Catholic Church as a step toward the one Church of Christ, these denominations claim to represent—and of which they legitimately partake according to the Catholic Magisterium—there is no reason why this Jewish ekklesia would not become a home to Jewish disciples from all denominations. By the same token, such a move would pave the way toward visible unity among the divided segments

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of the one People of God. It is clear that the restoration of a Jewish ekklesia would involve a reconsideration of the mode of governance in the global Church, as it should correspond to the nature and composition of those that are being governed. By challenging the Catholic Church to recover some of the inclusive balance of power she lost as a result of the major schisms that tore her apart across the centuries, the ingathering of Jewish disciples from all denominations in a unique Jewish ekklesia would give to other ecclesial movements a legitimate possibility to restore the bonds of visible communion with the Catholic Church, so as to overcome the last obstacles on a long path toward Church unity.

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NOTES 1. See Gal.2:8. 2. PMJ, 188. 3. See the prologue to Ignatius’s Epistle to the Romans: “Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which has obtained mercy, through the majesty of the Most High Father, and Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son; the Church which is beloved and enlightened by the will of Him that willeth all things which are according to the love of Jesus Christ our God, which also presides in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honour, worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of obtaining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy, and which presides over love, is named from Christ, and from the Father, which I also salute in the name of Jesus Christ.” The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 73. 4. PMJ, 188–190, 194–195. 5. In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius gives the following description of the Ebionites: “They thought that the letters of the Apostle ought to be wholly rejected and called him an apostate from the Law. They used only the Gospel according to the Hebrews and made little account of the rest,” III, 27, 2, translation quoted in Ray A. Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 24. 6. 1-7,4 quoted and translated in Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 33. 7. Letter 75, quoted in PMJ, 203. 8. Commentary on Isaiah, 9, 1, see Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 44. 9. Letter 75, quoted in PMJ, 203. 10. C.47, quoted in PMJ, 194. 11. Panarion, 8, 6, quoted and translated in Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, 34. 12. PMJ, 279–284. 13. L. Gillet, Communion in the Messiah (Lutterworth, 1942), 206, quoted in PMJ, 284. 14. Gillet, Communion, 206, quoted in PMJ, 284. 15. PMJ, 303–304. 16. Kesher 28, Summer/Fall 2014, 79–101 http://www​.kesherjournal​.com/.

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17. Israel's Messiah, 189. 18. Israel's Messiah, 189. 19. This is the case of the Lutheran Churches and the Anglican communion as a result of the so-called Porvoo agreement (1992), for instance. It has also been the case of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church for a short period of time during the Brezhnev era. 20. 261. 21. The Messianic Jewish rabbinic Council avoids the terminology of conversion when it speaks of the recognition as Jews of children born of a Jewish father. It merely states that the candidate should undertake “public and formal acts of identifcation with the Jewish faith and people” (MJRC Standards, 2.1). Such “recognition” can do little to counter the trend we are speaking about. Besides, it begs the question that we will need to address: To what extent are Messianic Jews entitled to speak in the name of Judaism? 22. In its “Conversion Process,” frst published in 2008, the Messianic Jewish rabbinic Council states that the “fundamental motive for conversion should be Ahavat Yisrael, the love of the people of Israel” as well as “a corresponding love for the Torah as God’s particular gift to the Jewish people,” Introduction, 2. The candidate should “so identify with actual Jews, and with Israel’s journey through history, that it results in a person experiencing a change in their sense of self,” ibid (2016 document intended for internal use and kindly transmitted by M. Kinzer). 23. A sample of these diverging views can be found in Kesher: A Journal of Messianic Judaism, 19, Summer 2005 http//www​.kesherjournal​.com​/Issue​-19. 24. Paul himself shows that his statement knows of exceptions by circumcising Timothy (Acts 16:3). If on this precise occasion Paul makes a concession to Jewish zealots, this might be in view of the future mission of Timothy among Jews, since Jews would never listen to the preaching of someone known to be a Gentile. In Acts 18:5, we see that the arrival of Timothy, together with Silas, prompts Paul to dedicate himself entirely to the task of preaching the Good News to Jews. This preaching’s lack of success is the reason why Paul chooses to turn to the Gentiles (Acts 18:6). 25. “Conversion Process,” MJRC, 2. 26. “The Notion of Conversion in Antiquity and Beyond,” in Kesher 19 (2005). http:​/​/www​​.kesh​​erjou​​rnal.​​com​/i​​ndex.​​php​?o​​ption​​=com_​​conte​​nt​&vi​​ew​=ar​​ticle​​&i​d​=3​​ 1​&Ite​​mid​=4​​40. 27. Kinzer uses the spelling “paligenessia.” I will use “palingenesia” as I fnd it closer to the original term in Greek. 28. Although it is—as far as I have been able to ascertain—practically no longer in use, Orthodox bishops may still decide otherwise in individual cases. 29. SHOM, 98. 30. Kinzer quotes Ezek 36:24-28 ; Mal 3:1-4. 4:5-6, Isa 42:1 among other references, SHOM, 93–96. 31. SHOM, 100–101. 32. SHOM, 101. 33. SHOM, 103. 34. See LSJ, art. πάλιν.

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35. Aphraates, Demonstration, 11, De circumcisione, 11–12 in Patrologia Syriaca Vol. 1 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1907), 498–503. 36. SHOM, 128. 37. SHOM, 142. 38. SHOM, 142. 39. SHOM, 136. 40. SHOM, 138. 41. SHOM, 140. 42. SHOM, 144. 43. SHOM, 146. 44. SHOM, 148. 45. SHOM, 148. 46. Eucharist, Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1968), 85. 47. Eucharist, 47–49. 48. Eucharist, 104. 49. Eucharist, 26. 50. Eucharist, 26. 51. All those who have approached the Talmud know the famous account of the dispute between R. Eliezer on one side and several other major rabbis of his generation, including R. Joshua. After witnessing several miracles tending to prove that the opinion of R. Eliezer is the correct one, his opponents hear a Bat Kol, a voice from Heaven declaring that R. Eliezer is right, even if the majority disagree. The Talmud reports that R. Joshua tersely replied to the Bat Kol: “It is not in heaven!” (Bava Metzia 59b, see supra note 138). This is a reference to a passage from the Written Torah (Deut 30.12). Not even HaShem, the Holy One blessed be He, can go against His Torah, and his Torah affrms that it is no longer in Heaven, so that its interpretation has been entrusted to the children of Israel. The story has a postface that is as wonderful as the story itself: Rabbi Natan meets Elijah the prophet and asks him what God was doing while this debate was going on. Elijah answers that God “was smiling and said ‘nizchuni banai, nizchuni banai,’ my children have defeated me, my children have defeated me!” 52. I do not mean to say that, in the Church, the interpretation of divine revelation is not entrusted to the limited and fallible discernment of human beings. Yet for that very reason, the Church’s conviction that she does not err on matters of offcial doctrinal teaching (Magisterium) rests on the assurance of a continuous supernatural inspiration, and this assurance itself stems from the belief in the divine nature of her institution by Christ. 53. See SHOM, 148. 54. Israel’s Messiah, 189. 55. ST III, q.22, a.4, co. 56. SHOM, 154. 57. SHOM, 154. 58. SHOM, 87. The emphasis is the author’s. 59. SHOM, 84.

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60. In Anchor’s Commentary to the Epistle, J.A. Fitzmyer notes: “For Barrett (Romans, 216), Kühl (Römer, 385), and B. Weiss, they refer to the converted remnant, the ‘elect’ of v 7, an interpretation that suits the preceding context. For Comely, Käsemann (Commentary, 308), Lagrange (Romains, 279), Michel, Pesch, Sanday and Headlam, and Wilckens, the ‘root’ means the patriarchs, because in v 17, it will be used again to designate ancient Israel, onto which the Gentiles have been grafted. Either of the last two interpretations is possible”, Romans: A New Translation, 613–614. 61. §1539, 384 (see Heb 5: 1; Exod 29:1-30; Lev 8). 62. §1546, 386 (see Rev 1:6; Lumen Gentium10 §1). 63. §1547, 386 (see Lumen Gentium 10 §2). 64. At the beginning of SHOM, Kinzer minimizes the relevance of this analogy, claiming that there is some essential difference between the two types of ministerial priesthood. Taking his cue from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Kinzer contrasts the “subordination of the Aaronic priesthood to Israel’s national priesthood” with the structural role of Catholic ministerial priesthood, anchored in the priesthood of Christ, when it comes to the constitution of the Church, see SHOM, 62. This contrast is artifcial in my opinion. In ancient Israel as well as in the Catholic Church, the community of the faithful, bearer of the common priesthood, always pre-exists to ministerial priesthood since priests are taken from the members of the community. In ancient Israel as well as in the Catholic Church, the rite of ordination implies that the authority of priests does not merely derive from the human beings that appoint them to their offce but equally refects the choice of God. And fnally, in ancient Israel as well as in the Catholic Church, the purpose of ministerial priesthood is not to reign over the faithful but to serve them: “While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of Baptismal grace . . . the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the Baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church,” CCC §1141, 295. The fact that ministerial priesthood serves the common priesthood does not imply that the dignity of priest is inferior to that of the simple faithful though (“whoever wishes to be frst among you must be slave of all,” Mark 10:43), and this is as true in the case of Catholic ministerial priesthood as in the case of Aaronic priesthood. 65. In contrast to other verbs that imply a change in the being or the qualities of an object (ἀλλάττω, μεταβάλλω, etc.), the verb μετατίθημι refers to a spatial change—a change of position or a transposition. The Hebrew verb that stands behind it is ‫סוג‬, with the sense of displacing a landmark, a boundary (Deut 27:17, Hos 5:10, etc.). 66. SHOM, 154. 67. Kohanim and Leviim have still a few liturgical functions in the framework of the (orthodox) Synagogue. But these functions no longer pertain to a ministerial or ordained priesthood as they are unable, since the destruction of the Second Temple, to perform sacrifces. 68. A number of fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifce, witness a longing for a purifed form of worship, mirroring

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celestial liturgy, in contrast to the corrupted worship of the Temple. The inability to carry out sacrifces has certainly handicapped the liturgical attempts of the Essenes, see Robert A. Kugler, “Rewriting Rubrics: Sacrifce and the Religion of Qumran” in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Great Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 92. 69. SHOM, 83. 70. SHOM, 84. 71. SHOM, 84 (Kinzer’s annotations). 72. SHOM, 84. 73. SHOM, 84. 74. Titus is “appointed” in this manner “by the Churches” to be the collaborator of Paul, see 2 Cor 8:19. Apostolic dignity and the offce of elder are distinct (Acts 15:2, 4, 6; 16:4; 2) but they both involve χειροτονία when transmitted on behalf of ministry. One fnds χειροτονία in Isa 58:9 (LXX), standing for ‫ ֶא ְצּבַע‬, “fnger,” a gesture of contempt but also the priestly gesture of applying blood with one’s forefnger (Exod 29:12, Lev 4:6, 17, 25). 75. See Deut 19: 12, 21:2, 22: 15, 25: 7: Josh 20: 4; Ruth 4:2. 76. In the early days of the community of disciples in Jerusalem, the Jewish establishment of the city counted priests, scribes, and elders (Acts 4:5, 8; 23:14; 25:15). Thus, Jewish communities hostile to the Jesus movement and communities of Jewish disciples of Jesus were equally committed to the offce of elders. 77. Israel’s Messiah, 189. 78. §835, 221. 79. Bellarmine, the famous cardinal of the Counter-Reformation era, suggested to ascribe eleven additional marks to the Church, all derived from the four listed in the Creed, see recently translated treatise De Notis Ecclesiae, On the Marks of the Church (Amazon Com: Mediatrix Press, 2015). I would derive Jewishness as a mark of the Church from its catholicity, if one understands catholicity in the sense pointed by Card. Lustiger: the whole of humanity constituted by the communion between Jews and Gentiles. 80. Flavius Josephus describes the inner strife that tore apart the high clergy of Jerusalem between the frst century BC and the frst century AC, see Jewish Antiquities, 20.180–181, 20.206, 20.213, 20.214, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 536–539. Talmudic literature witnesses ill-treatment of their subordinates, see Pesachim 57a, Neusner, The Babylonian Talmud, Vol. 4, IV:6, 256. The apocryphal Psalms of Solomon denounce the priests’ immoral conduct (2;3; 2:11; 2:13), just as a number of writings originating from the Essene community. 81. Avot de-Rabbi Natan (4:5). The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, J. Goldin ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 34. 82. Rabbi Joseph Karo, Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 94:1, https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​ aria.​​org​/S​​hulch​​an​_Ar​​ukh​%2​​C​_Ora​​ch​_Ch​​ayim.​​94​?ve​​n​=Tra​​nslat​​ed​_by​​_J​ay_​​Dinov​​ itser​​&lang​​=bi (Hebrew); translation at https​:/​/ww​​w​.etz​​ion​.o​​rg​.il​​/en​/s​​hiur-​​02​-ab​​sence​​ -mikd​​ash​-p​​art​-i​​i​-tor​​ah​-se​​rvice​​-and-​​​acts-​​lovin​​g​-kin​​dness​. These prescriptions are derived from the tractate Berakhot in the Babylonian Talmud (30a). Berakhot 26b as well as Bamidbar Rabbah (18:1), the great haggadic commentary on Numbers, teach that prayers were instituted in correspondence to the daily offerings. In Mishna

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Berurah (Hafez Hayyim), Rabbi Yisrael M. Kagan’s commentary on Orach Chayim, one reads: “He must think in his heart and in his mind as if he were standing in the Temple in Jerusalem in the place of the Holy of Holies . . . and he should view himself as if he were standing before the kaporet,” https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​aria.​​org​/M​​ishna​​h​_Ber​​ urah.​​9​4​?la​​ng​=bi​,  translation at https​:/​/ww​​w​.etz​​ion​.o​​rg​.il​​/en​/d​​ownlo​​ad​/f​​l​e​/f​​d​/14735 “(emphasis mine)” 83. In the Pseudo.Clementines, with their intricate textual tradition, the glowing portrayal of Peter as a Jew committed to his people (e.g., see Peter’s “letter” that used to preface the novel in the Kerygmata Petrou tradition) contrasts with the dismissal of Paul (e.g., see Recognitiones 1.69.8, 1.70.6-7, 71, 3–5). Regarding Jewish literature proper, see, for instance, Julius H. Greenstone, “Jewish Legends about Simon-Peter,” Historia Judaica 12 (1950), 89–104 and Wout van Bekkum, "The Poetical Qualities of The Apostle Peter in Jewish Folktale.” Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture. Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture 3 (2005), 16–25. 84. I regard developing the principles of a Messianic reading of Talmudic tradition as a major task of Messianic theology. Becoming familiar with this extraordinary, polyphonic work of refection, extending throughout the millennia, that has preserved the unity of a scattered and persecuted nation, Jewish disciples of Yeshua will be able to establish the connection between, on the one hand, their spiritual and practical existence and, on the other, the perennial wisdom of Israel. But they need to develop their own approach to this literature as it cannot coincide with that which is practiced in standard Orthodox yeshivot. Jewish disciples cannot share one of Talmudic discussions’s main tenets, that is, the rejection of Yeshua’s messiahship; neither can they be satisfed with the formulation of a specifc halacha as the end-point of these discussions since they need to understand any mitzvah in the light of Yeshua’s teachings. Their reading must therefore be guided by Messianic principles, and it would behove Messianic theologians to clearly formulate the principles that would orient their reading. Unfortunately, I will not be able to even start envisaging the most general lines of such a guidance in the setting of the current book. 85. The Standard Prayer Book (New York: Bloch publishing company, 1915), 9–10. The Akedah Is also mentioned in the additional parts during the Ten days of penitence (once) and the service for the New Year (twice), 73 and 168–169. 86. See David Landes, “The Halacha of Waking-up” in Birkhot HaShachar, My People’s Prayer Book (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001), 10–16. 87. The Temple was erected on Mount Moriah (2 Chr 3:1), where the Akedah took place (Gen 22:2). G. Vermes quotes a passage from Lev. Rabbah to show that ancient rabbinic tradition has seen in the Akedah not only the origin of the Temple’s daily sacrifces, but the ultimate reason of their justifying character: “Concerning the ram, it is said: And he shall slaughter it on the side of the altar northward (‫)צפתה‬ before the Lord. It is thought: When Abraham our father bound Isaac his son, the Holy One, blessed be He, instituted (the sacrifce of) two lambs, one in the morning and the other in the evening. What is the purpose of this? It is in order that when Israel offers the perpetual sacrifce on the altar, and reads his scriptural text Northward (‫ )צפתה‬before the Lord, the Holy One blessed be He, may remember the Binding of Isaac” (emphasis mine), LR ii.11, quoted in G. Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 209. It is fascinating to envisage the sacrifce of

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Christ in terms as the “evening sacrifce” that carries Isaac’s “morning sacrifce” to its consummation. 88. Ibid. According to Vermes, this phrase was inserted later into this passage of Lev. Rabbah. 89. Frag.10 Hall, quoted by Edward Kessler in Bound by the Bible, Jews, Christians and the Sacrifce of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 141. 90. “The subjective reaction of a person colors the conviction about it. Hence one’s estimate of such a thing can take on an importance that it does not have in se,” J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans, 696; “because he truly thinks of it in his heart as unclean according to God’s own law, his conscience tells him that it would be wrong to eat it. And if he does in fact eat it, contrary to what his conscience tells him, he is guilty of sin. In such a case the sin is not in the eating per se, but in the violation of the conscience,” Cottrell, Romans, 505–506. 91. 2nd revised edition (Amazon Com., 2013), 8–9. 92. Independent publisher (Amazon Media, 2018), 1101–1105 (Kindle Location). 93. Ep. ad Decentium XXV, 4, 7 in PL 20, coll. 555. 94. 20, https​:/​/w2​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/con​​tent/​​john-​​paul-​​ii​/en​​/apos​​t​_let​​ters/​​1998/​​docum​​ ents/​​hf​_jp​​-ii​_a​​pl​_05​​07​199​​8​_die​​s​-dom​​ini​.h​​tml. 95. For the disciples seeking, as Pliny the Younger reports in one of his letters, to “gather together on a set day before sunrise” and “sing among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a god” (see Dies Domini, §21-23), the Jewish Shabbat was an obvious point of reference in the week, whereas the Roman calendar could be of little use. 96. c.9, The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Peabody, MA: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 62–63. 97. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 14 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 148. 98. On Idolatry, c.14 in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, 70. 99.  In the so-called Epistle of Barnabas, composed at the beginning of the second century, God is said to address Jews in the following manner: “It is not your present sabbaths that are acceptable unto Me, but the sabbath which I have made, in the which when I have set all things at rest, I will make the beginning with the eighth day, which is the beginning of another world” in The Apostolic Fathers: What Do They Teach? (US: Christian Publishing House, 2016), 120. 100. The words of the kiddush or blessing over the wine on Shabbat eve express this unique relation between Israel and Shabbat: “You have lovingly and willingly given us Your holy Shabbat as an inheritance, in memory of creation, because it is the frst day of our holy assemblies, in memory of the exodus from Egypt because You have chosen us and made us holy from all peoples and have willingly and lovingly given us Your holy Shabbat for an inheritance.” 101. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: The Noonday Press, 1994), 51. 102. The Sabbath, 73. 103. The Sabbath, 55. 104. The Sabbath, 68.

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105. Confessions (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 454–455. 106. Maximus the Confessor has described this passage from the Sixth day (Shabbat Eve) to the Eighth day (the morning of the Resurrection), in terms of a mystical ascent: “He who after the example of God has completed the sixth day with ftting actions and thoughts, and has himself with God's help brought his own actions to a successful conclusion, has in his understanding traversed the condition of all things subject to nature and time and has entered into the mystical contemplation of the eons and the things inherent in them; his Sabbath is his intellect's utter and incomprehensible abandonment and transcendence of created beings. But if he is also found worthy of the eighth day he has risen from the dead—that is, from all that is sequent to God, whether sensible or intelligible, expressible or conceivable. He experiences the blessed life of God, who is the only true life, and himself becomes god by deifcation,” Two Hundred Texts on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation of the Son of God, First Century, c.54, in The Writings of Maximus the Confessor (Philadelphia: The Great Library Collection, 2015). Kindle Locations 1446–1457. 107. §59 (emphasis mine). 108. Although Dies Domini states that Sunday does not replace Sabbath, so that the commandment relating to Sabbath holds even for Christians, it does not identify a Christian manner of Sabbath observance with Jewish practice. On this point, the encyclical seems very much consonant with the so-called replacement theology: “It is the duty of Christians therefore to remember that, although the practices of the Jewish Sabbath are gone, surpassed as they are by the ‘fulflment’ which Sunday brings, the underlying reasons for keeping ‘the Lord’s Day’ holy—inscribed solemnly in the Ten Commandments—remain valid, though they need to be reinterpreted in the light of the theology and spirituality of Sunday” (§62, emphasis is mine). Certainly, what is “gone” in the Church, at the level of the faithful’s religious practices, are Shabbat observances that are disconnected from the celebration of the Resurrection. This is precisely not the case of rites and customs anchored in the Jewish tradition that bring forth this connection. 109. Something of the liturgical experience of the frst Jewish disciples who used to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist in the continuity of Shabbat seems to have been preserved in the tradition of Oriental Churches. In the Maronite tradition, for instance, the whole liturgical dynamic of the Eucharist refers to Israel’s expectation of a Savior, now interpreted as expressing the current hopes of the community of faithful as well as the eschatological expectation of the whole Church. When he tries to formulate what lies at the spiritual heart of his Church tradition, Michel Hayek writes “the notion of expectation is central. From an historical point of view, it expresses in the Maronite Church, the hope of a redeemer that would set the community free from those who persecute its members and hold them hostages. On a deeper lever, this expectation corresponds to the theologal hope of the Redeemer’s Second Coming, a Coming of which each historical liberation is the prophetic sign,” “Maronite (Église)” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, Vol. 10 (Beauchesne, 1932– 1995), 631 (translation mine).

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110. Maronite tradition displays a liturgical dynamism that echoes that of the “Lecha Dodi”: “The moving invocation Marana ta, ‘Come O Lord,’ probably the most ancient of the whole Christian liturgy, pervades the entire ‘existence-in-expectation’ of this Church continuously on the alert. In spite of the surprising variety of rituals, there is almost no prayer service that would not end with the evocation of the ‘Second Coming’ . . . . Here the soul [of the Church] resembles the virgins of the parable (Matt.25:1–13), a passage that comes up often in the liturgy and that is especially emphasised as a theme given to the meditation of the faithful. Somebody ‘is to come,’ ‘is on the point of coming,’ ‘is going to reveal himself,’ ‘will appear in the midst of the congregation.’ ‘To be ready’ . . . ‘remain vigilant,’ ‘not let one be distracted,’ ‘keep one’s lamps lit’: the whole terminology of hope is marshalled in order to arouse spiritual alertness, which is summarized by two hymns from the breviary: ‘Light is sown on the righteous of heart’ (each Morning service) and ‘The bridegroom is about to come’ (Sunday Vespers),” ibid. (translation mine). 111. Often interpreted rather than translated as “at twilight.” Conceiving Shabbat and Sunday as a liturgical unit does not mean that there should not be a ritual separation between the corresponding prayer services. From a Messianic perspective, this separation—the Havdalah, a term that precisely means “separation”—that marks the end of Shabbat can also be a welcome moment to meditate on the tragic episodes that have pervaded Jewish destiny before entering into the celebration of Christ’s wondrous work of salvation. In this manner, the ritual separation will itself become part of the liturgical unit formed out of the connection between Shabbat and Sunday. 112. “In celebrating the Eucharist, the community opens itself to communion with the universal Church, imploring the Father to ‘remember the Church throughout the world’ and make her grow in the unity of all the faithful with the Pope and with the Pastors of the particular Churches, until love is brought to perfection,” Dies Domini §34. 113. “In this perspective, the biblical theology of the ‘Sabbath’ can be recovered in full, without compromising the Christian character of Sunday. It is a theology which leads us ever anew and in unfailing awe to the mystery of the beginning, when the eternal Word of God, by a free decision of love, created the world from nothing . . . . The constant return of the ‘shabbat’ ensures that there is no risk of time being closed in upon itself, since, in welcoming God and his kairoi—the moments of his grace and his saving acts—time remains open to eternity.” Dies Domini §60. 114. Baruch M. Bokser has retraced the main stages of this early identifcation in The Origins of the Seder (London: California Press, 1984), 25–28. Bokser summarizes the discussion that arose in connection with Joachim Jeremias’s The Eucharistic Words of Jesus. This systematic attempt at demonstrating that the Last Supper was a Seder (see 3rd ed. SCM Press, 1966, esp. 42–61) was met with a considerable degree of skepticism by such exegetes as Hans Conzelmann, Roger Le Déhaut and G. Vermes. Recently, Joseph Klawans has relied on contemporary Jewish scholarship dealing with Pesah Aggadah’s Redaktionsgeschichte to argue against the traditional identifcation, “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?,” Bible Review 17 (2001), 24–33, published online https​:/​/ww​​w​.bib​​lical​​archa​​eolog​​y​.org​​/dail​​y​/peo​​ple​-c​ ultur​​es​-in​​-the-​​bible​​/jesu​​s​-his​​toric​​al​-je​​sus​/w​​as​-je​​​sus​-l​​ast​-s​​upper​​-a​-se​​der. See equally

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Klawans’s discussion with Joel Markus (“Passover and Last Supper Revisited” New Testament Studies 59, no. 3 (2013), 303–324) in the sequel to his previous article, “Jesus’ Last Supper Still Wasn’t a Passover Seder Meal,” Bible History Daily https​ :/​/ww​​w​.bib​​lical​​archa​​eolog​​y​.org​​/dail​​y​/peo​​ple​-c​​ultur​​es​-in​​-the-​​bible​​/jesu​​s​-his​​toric​​al​-je​​ sus​/j​​esus-​​last-​​sup​pe​​r​-pas​​sover​​-sede​​r​-mea​​l/. 115. In “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?,” Klawans discards Jeremias’s thesis arguing that it is generally true of any Jewish meal and that the typical elements of a Seder cannot be found in the account of the synoptics: “while the narrative in the synoptics situates the Last Supper during Passover, the fact remains that the only foods we are told the disciples ate are bread and wine—the basic elements of any formal Jewish meal. If this was a Passover meal, where is the Passover lamb? Where are the bitter herbs? Where are the four cups of wine?” This does not prevent him from claiming, a few lines further on, that “practically everything preserved in the early rabbinic traditions concerning the Passover Seder brings us back to the time immediately following the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70.” 116. See Justin Martyr for instance: “God does not permit the lamb of the Passover to be sacrifced in any other place than where His name was named; knowing that the days will come, after the suffering of Christ, when even the place in Jerusalem shall be given over to your enemies, and all the offerings, in short, shall cease,” Dialogue with Trypho, c.40, 208. 117. This symbolism is familiar to ancient Jewish tradition: “The Rabbis regarded hametz as the symbol of the evil inclination. The ‘yeast in the dough’ (the evil impulse that causes a ferment in the heart) prevents human beings from carrying out the will of God (Ber. 17a). Hametz also represents human haughtiness and conceit. Just as leaven puffs up dough, so human arrogance causes us to believe that we, not God, control our destiny,” Jewish Traditions: a JPS Guide (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2010), 269. Manifestly, Paul was referring to this symbolism when invoking Christ’s sacrifce as a remedy against the haughtiness of certain members of the Corinthian community: “Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrifced. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:6–8). 118. Jewish Traditions, 286. The thirteenth-century mystical treatise called Zohar is the main source for Medieval and modern kabbalistic approaches to Jewish tradition. 119. See article “ἀφικνέομαι” in Geoffrey W.H. Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). 120. He That Cometh (London: Council for Jewish-Christian Understanding, 1966). Among other elements, Daube quotes a controversial statement ascribed to Hillel in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b–99a): “There will be no Messiah for Israel since they have already enjoyed him during the reign of Hezekiah,” He that Cometh, 2. The Hebrew verb that is translated here as “enjoy” means to “eat”: ‫הילל אומר אין להם משיח‬ ‫( לישראל שכבר אכלוהו בימי חזקיה‬Rodkinson and Neusner translate “consumed”). It is

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indeed striking that the Messiah is here described as an aliment to be eaten, just as a piece of matzah. 121. Jewish Traditions, 289. 122. In actual, the notion of a supernatural transparency of the Law, adjusting to the abilities of those who receive it, is not foreign to the Jewish tradition. If one follows a passage from Midrash Tanhuma, it is an element that further strengthens the parallel between the gift of the Law at Mount Sinai and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2: “The voice reached each Israelite according to his or her ability to hear. The elderly heard according to their strengths, and the young according to their strengths, the children according to their strengths, the women according to their strengths. Moses too heard according to his strengths, for it says: Moses spoke, and the Divine answered him with a voice,” Shemot 21 https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​aria.​​org​.i​​l​/Mid​​ rash_​​Tanch​​uma​_B​​uber%​​2C​_Sh​​emot​.​​21​.2?​​lang=​​he, translation in The Book of Days, A Companion for All Seasons (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2006), 294. 123. Talmud Bavli Rosh Hashana 10b-11a. 124. Ibid. 125. The Epistula Apostolorum, a document going back to the Mishnaic period (second century), already witnesses an attempt to assign the “pro-active memory” of the eschaton, identifed with the Second Coming of Christ, to the period between the Pentecost-Shavuot and Easter-Pesach. Claiming that Christ and the Father will be manifested as one during the Second Coming, the author of the Epistula explains that the Father will be present “after the Passover and Pentecost are past,” see the passage of the Stuttgart manuscript quoted by Thomas J. Talley in The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 60. Talley evokes a possible connection between the Mishnaic refection on the Day of the New Year and the passage from the Epistula: “in light of the ambiguity regarding the beginning of the year that we have seen in the Judaism of the period, we probably should not preclude the possibility that the writer of Epistula Apostolorum is refecting in the second half of the second century an emerging custom of situating the turning of the year at a pole other than Pascha . . . . That consummate coming (adven-tus in the ffth/ sixth-century Latin fragments of the text) would fall between the day of Pentecost and the feast of Unleavened Bread,” ibid, 84. 126. See Ronald Dean Ware’s “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice” in Medieval Studies, An Introduction (New York: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1992), 260. 127. “In the closing weeks of the time after Pentecost in the western Church today,” Talley writes, “there is a growing emphasis on the consummation of history, which comes to something of a climax on the fnal Sunday, the feast of Christ the King. This leads into the season of Advent, itself focused upon the coming of the Redeemer,” The Origins of the Liturgical Year, 79. Francis X. Weiser provides an enthusiastic description of the same liturgical period: “There actually is a season of the year in which the Church draws our minds and hearts to the second coming of Christ. This season extends over the end of the ecclesiastical year through Advent and up to Epiphany. After having celebrated the events of the Lord's life on earth . . . the Church fnally puts before our eyes a magnifcent vision of eternal glory and reward:

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in the Lord Himself (Feast of Christ, the King), in His members who have already passed from this world (All Saints and All Souls), and in the events at the end of time when the remaining elect will be gathered into their glory (Gospel of the twentyfourth Sunday after Pentecost; Matthew 24:15-35). Thus the ecclesiastical year, like a majestic symphony, ends on the powerful and triumphant strains of a fnal victory, not yet obtained by all, but assured and certain for those who remain ‘faithful unto Death’ (Apocalypse 2, 10). Then follows, in Advent, the thought of our own spiritual preparation for this glorious coming of the Lord at the end of time.” Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (New York: Harcourt, 1958), 54. However, the moment when the just will be rewarded is also the time when the impious will be punished. 128. Tosefta Rosh ha-Shanah 1.13, The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew with a New Introduction, Vol. 1, J. Neusner ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 608. 129. Sefer Avodah, Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Pennsylvania: Elkins Park, 2004), 33. 130. §8 http:​/​/w2.​​vatic​​an​.va​​/cont​​ent​/p​​ius​-x​​i​/en/​​encyc​​lical​​s​/doc​​ument​​s​/hf_​​p​-xi_​​ enc​_1​​11219​​​25​_qu​​as​-pr​​imas.​​html.​ 131. A number of them are mentioned in Quas Primas: “10. This same doctrine of the Kingship of Christ which we have found in the Old Testament is even more clearly taught and confrmed in the New. The Archangel, announcing to the Virgin that she should bear a Son, says that ‘the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32–33) 11. Moreover, Christ himself speaks of his own kingly authority: in his last discourse, speaking of the rewards and punishments that will be the eternal lot of the just and the damned; in his reply to the Roman magistrate, who asked him publicly whether he were a king or not; after his Resurrection, when giving to his Apostles the mission of teaching and baptising all nations, he took the opportunity to call himself king (Matt 25:31–40), confrming the title publicly (John 17:37), and solemnly proclaimed that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18). These words can only be taken to indicate the greatness of his power, the infnite extent of his kingdom. What wonder, then, that he whom St. John calls the “prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev 1:5) appears in the Apostle’s vision of the future as he who “hath on his garment and on his thigh written ‘King of kings and Lord of lords!’ ” (Rev 19:16). It is Christ whom the Father “hath appointed heir of all things”; (Heb 1:2) “for he must reign until at the end of the world he hath put all his enemies under the feet of God and the Father” (1 Cor 15:25). 132. Reuven Hammer, Entering the High Holy Days: A Complete Guide to the History, Prayers and Themes (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005), 86–88. 133. Un'taneh Tokef probably goes back to the ffth and sixth centuries and originates in a Byzantine setting. Scholarly consensus indicates that the Dies Irae was composed in the eleventh century (harmonized in the twelfth century by an unknown Benedictine monk). It is sadly remarkable that Jewish tradition ascribes the authorship of Un'taneh Tokef to the legendary fgure of Rabbi Amnon, an eleventh-century rabbi who allegedly underwent the cruelest tortures at the hands of the Church rather

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than apostatize Jewish faith and convert. This legend/story is at least a witness to the fact that, while separated by so much hatred and pain, the Jewish and the Christian communities of the High Middle ages were sometimes very close liturgically and would sing hymns with a similar content during the same period of the year. 134. According to the author of Dies Irae, the biblical witness of David (“teste David”) is corroborated by the pagan oracle of the Sybilla (“cum Sybilla”). The Institutiones of the Latin poet Lactantius (fourth century) also mention the sound of trumpet when they tell about Sybilla’s prediction of universal doom: “And lest anything be lacking to the evils of men and of the earth, the trumpet from heaven will be heard, which the Sibyl announces in this manner: ‘The heavenly trumpet will blow its sound of many notes.’ And so all will tremble and will shudder for fear at that dreadful sound,’ ” The Divine Institutes, Books I–VII, VII, 16 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), 517. 135. See Entering the High Holy Days, 69. 136. Ibid, 70. 137. The Fathers of the Church have perceived the Messianic dimension of the ram in Gen 22:13. In his Sermon on Abraham and Isaac, Efrem the Syrian writes: “The ram hanging/ on the Sabek plant/mystically redeemed/Isaac alone/While the Lamb of God /hanged on the cross/delivered the world/from Death and Hell” http:​/​ /www​​.true​​ortho​​doxy.​​info/​​pat​_s​​tephr​​em​_ab​​raham​​_i​saa​​c​.sht​​ml. Augustine perceives the same symbolic dimension, but he dissociates the Messianic meaning of the ram from Jewish destiny as he emphasizes the role of the Jews in the crucifxion: “Note that when Abraham frst saw the ram it was caught by its horns in a thicket of briers. This, surely, is a symbol of Jesus, crowned with thorns by the Jews before he was immolated,” The City of God, Books VIII–XVI, 16.32 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 546. 138. Tosefta Rosh ha-Shanah 1.13, Neusner, The Tosefta, Vol.1, 608. See Un’taneh Tokef, quoted earlier. 139. Tract. Yoma, 8:9, Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Vol.5a, 335. 140. Sefer Avodah,79. 141. Tr. Sukkah,11b, Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Vol.5b, 1:4; 42. 142. The episode of the Transfguration evokes the “bright cloud” that covers the disciples with its “shadow.” Commenting the ascent of Moses into “the dark cloud where God was” (Exod 20:21), Gregory of Nyssa quotes Ps 18:11 “He who made darkness his dwelling place,” The Life of Moses, §164 (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 95. Further, he describes the “cleft of the rock” as a “the tabernacle not made with hands.” “For truly,” he writes, “this is the limit that someone reaches who is elevated through such ascents. . . . This is called darkness by the Scripture, which signifes, as I said, the unknown and unseen. When he arrives there, [Moses] sees that tabernacle not made with hands, which he shows to those below by means of a material likeness,” ibid, §167–169, 96. The sukkah provided by the cleft of the rock is the place where Moses contemplates the divine sukkah that became the model for the Holy of Holies, conceived as an earthly sukkah. 143. Sukkah, 53d, Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Vol.5b, 5:3 211. 144. Sukkah, 51d, ibid.

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145. Regarding the rival hypotheses, see Georges L. Klein, The New American Commentary: Zechariah (B&H Publishing Group, 2008), 421–424. 146. In his book on the Prophet Zechariah, Merill F. Unger writes: “Many answers have been given why only the Feast of Tabernacles of Festival of Booths will be observed in the millennium. The answer is: it is the only one of the seven feasts of the Lord which at that time will be unfulflled typically and the only one which will be in the process of fulflment by the kingdom itself,” Zechariah: Prophet of God’s glory (Grand Rapids: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 265. 147. Commentary on Numbers, 28:35.’ 148. JPS, 228. 149. §26. 150. The Jerusalem Talmud reports the story of an Arab announcing to a Jewish peasant that the King of the Jews was born on the day the Temple was destroyed: “Said R. Bun, Why must we learn this [that the Messiah was born on the day that the Temple was destroyed] from [a story about] an Arab? Do we not have explicit Scriptural evidence for it? ‘Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall’ [Isa. 10:34]. And what follows this? ‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse’ [Isa. 11:1]. Right after an allusion to the destruction of the Temple the prophet speaks of the Messiah,” Berahkhot 2:4, The Talmud of the Land of Israel: Yerushalmi tractate Berakhot, J. Neusner ed. (UK: Scholars Press, 1998), 80. 151. Sfes Emes, quoted in Barney Kasdan, God’s Appointed Times: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Celebrating the Biblical Holidays (Clarksville, MD: Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2007), 126. 152. On the website of “Following Yeshua Ministries” https://followyeshuanow​ .com/, I fnd a very simple suggestion when it comes to the traditional blessing before lighting the candles: “Traditional: ‘Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctifed us with Your commandments, and commanded us to light Hanukah lights/ Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who performed miracles for our fathers in those days at this season.’ Messianic version: ‘Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctifed us in Yeshua, in whose name we light the Chanukah lights/ Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who performed miracles for our fathers in those days at this season.’ ” 153. One may certainly not speak about a favorable attitude of the Jewish rabbinic tradition toward the Virgin Mary. The rejection of the Messianic claims of Jesus goes together with the rejection of his conception from the Holy Spirit and hence with the idea that his mother invented this story to cover up a banal case of fornication (see Toledot Yeshu, the anonymous Jewish pamphlet circulating in the Middle Ages). But by disconnecting the cult of the Virgin Mary from normative faith, the Reformation gave to this issue a primary theological importance. 154. See the highly technical discussion in Magnar Kartveit, Rejoice, Dear Zion, Hebrew Construct Phrases with “Daughter” and “Virgin” as Nomen Regens (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2013). 155. The Aramaic Bible: The Targum of the Minor Prophets, Kevin J. Cathcart & Robert P. Gordon eds., Vol. 14 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 121.

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156. The Aramaic Bible: The Targum of Psalms, Cathcart, Michel Maher & Martin McNamara eds., Vol. 16 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 205. 157. See Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 305. André Villeneuve carefully reviewed the numerous variations more or less directly inspired by the Songs of Songs, of God’s wedding with Israel in midrashic literature, Nuptial Symbolism in Second Temple Writings, the New Testament, and Rabbinic Literature: Divine Marriage at Key Moments of Salvation History (Leyden: Brill, 2016), 292–340. Here again the metaphor of Knesset Israel as a virgin occurs explicitly in a passage glossing the liberation from Egypt: where “the God whom the handmaiden [Israel] sees at the Sea is none other than that black-curled young man whom the children saw in Egypt, the lover of the Song of Songs!” (Mekh Shirata 3–4, quoted in Nuptial symbolism 329). 158. “R. Hanina robed himself and stood at sunset of Sabbath eve [and] exclaimed, ‘Come and let us go forth to welcome the queen Sabbath.’ R. Jannai donned his robes, on Sabbath eve and exclaimed, ‘Come, O bride, Come, O bride!’ ” (Talmud, tr. Shabbat, 119a). The mystics of Shabbat queenship were revived by the Safed school of kabbalah in the sixteenth century. The Shabbat hymn “Lekhah Dodi” (Come my Groom!), composed by Solomon b. Moses ha-Levi Alkabez, is the direct fruit of this revival. 159. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), see 140–196, especially 160ff. 160. Already in tractate Megillah, 29d, one reads: “Come and see how dear [the nation of] Israel is before The Holy One, Blessed Be He, for wherever they were exiled, the Divine Presence was with them,” Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Vol. 7b, 4:4, 151. 161. Scholem quotes a text of Moses Nachman of Gerona (Nachmanides): “The tenth Sefrah, called Shekhina, is the Crown . . . . It is called House-of-God (Beit-El) because it is the House of Prayer; and it is the Bride of the Song of Songs who is called ‘daughter’ and ‘sister’; and it is Knesset Yisrael in which everything is ingathered,” The Mystical Shape of the Godhead, 172. The further distinction between an “upper shekhinah” in God and a “lower shekhinah” is the kabbalistic way of explaining the communication between time and eternity. It does not set into question the separation between the divine sphere and creation since the “lower Shekhina” is supposed to belong to the latter (Orthodox theologians such as V. Soloviev and S. Bulgakov drew on this distinction to invoke the existence of an “uncreated Wisdom/ Sofa” and that of a “created Wisdom/Sofa”). 162. Peter Schäfer, ”Tochter, Schwester, Braut und Mutter: Bilder der Weiblichkeit Gottes in der frühen Kabbalah,” Saeculum: Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte 49:2 (1998), 259–279 (translation in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68, 2000, 221–242); Arthur Green, “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs, Refection on a kabbalistic symbol in its historical context,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 26–1 (2002), 1–52. 163. “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary…,” 29. The Zohar, the kabbalistic corpus that was originally written in the thirteenth century, ascribes to R. Shimeon the following exegesis of Ps.118:2, “Here is the gateway onto the Lord; the righteous walk through

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it”: “Every message the King requires goes forth from his Lady’s house. Any message that is sent from below arrives frst at the house of His Lady, and from there proceeds to the King. The Lady is therefore the universal go-between, from above to below and from below to above,” Zohar 2:51b quoted in “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary,” 32. 164. See Moshe Idel, “The Secret Interpretation of the Secret of Ar’yot in Early Kabbalah,” Kabbalah 12 (2004), 89–199 (in Hebrew); Daniel Abrahams “The Condensation of the Symbol ‘Shekhinah’ in the Manuscripts of the Book Bahir,” Kabbalah 16 (2007), 7–82; “The Virgin Mary as the Moon that Lacks the Sun: A Zoharic Polemic Against the Veneration of Mary,” Kabbalah 17 (2008), 7–56. 165. Martyrs were immediately identifed with those who are described as having “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb” according to the vision of the elders and the tribes of Israel in the Book of Revelation: “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ ” (Rev 7:13–14). 166. Early inscriptions at Christian graves in Rome witness this belief: “Vincentia, intercede in Christ for Phoebe and her virgin!,” “Januaria, be refreshed and intercede for us!,” Giovanni B. De Rossi, Roma Sotteranea, Vol. 2, pl. XLVII, n. 56 and Vol. 3, pl. XXVIII, 22 (Rome: Cromo-litografa pontifcia, 1867 and 1877). 167. Halachic tradition gives two reasons for visiting the graves of tsaddikim, one is that these holy places are more conducive for prayers to be answered by God (Mishnah Berurah 581:27, see https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​aria.​​org​/M​​ishna​​h​_Ber​​urah.​​581​.2​​8​?lan​​ g​=bi&​​wit​h=​​all​&l​​ang2=​​en, the other is that the deceased righteous will intercede for the persons who pray at their graves (Mishnah Berurah 559:41, see https​:/​/ww​​w​.sef​​ aria.​​org​/M​​ishna​​h​_Ber​​urah.​​55​9​?l​​ang​=b​​i. According to Hassidism, HaShem Himself commanded that the souls of tsadikim should dwell in places where they are buried so that prayers of visitors might be accepted. 168. Orach Chaim, Responsum Maharam Shik, 293; see https​:/​/ww​​w​.cha​​bad​.o​​rg​ /li​​brary​​/arti​​cle​_c​​do​/ai​​d​/562​​222​/j​​ewish​​/Is​-i​​t​-oka​​y​-to-​​ask​-a​​-dece​​ased-​​tzadd​​ik​​-to​​-pray​​ -on​-m​​y​-beh​​alf​.h​​tm. 169. Sermo in S. Romanum 26,61 in PG 50, coll. 180 (translation mine). 170. “Our religion is not a worship of the dead. If they led a pious life, it is not for the purpose of being granted similar honors. But they want to be venerated because they rejoice whenever they can make us partake of their luminous merit. They are therefore to be honored on behalf of imitation and not worshiped on behalf of religion,” St. Augustine, Of True Religion, c.LV, PL, Vol.34, col.169 (translation mine). 171. The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affrmations and Denials of the Visual (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000). 172. See Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 173. See the recent contributions by Sacha Stern, “Images in Late antique Palestine: Jewish and Graeco-Roman views” and Zeev Weiss, “Images and Figural Representations in the Urban Galilee: Defning Limits in Times of Shifting Borders” in The Image and Its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity in “Jewish Antiquity

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Supplement Series,” Vol. 2 (Oxford: Journal of Jewish Studies, 2013), 110–129 and 130–144 respectively. 174. This is hardly surprising when one keeps in mind the very probable, although not undisputed, infuence of Jewish and Islamic aniconism on the genesis of Byzantine iconoclasm. 175. Apologia of St John of Damascus Against Those who Decry Holy Images, I, 16 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library London, 1898), http:​/​/www​​.ccel​​.org/​​ccel/​​ damas​​cus​/i​​co​ns.​​html.​ 176. Sacrosancta concilia ad Regiam editionem exacta, Vol. VII (Venice, 1728– 1733), 552, translation http:​/​/www​​.newa​​dvent​​.org/​​fathe​​rs​/38​​​19​.ht​​m. 177. The thought of Plato on the subject is of course much subtler. Among other aspects, it is trichotomic (nous/intellect-thymos/”irascible”-epitumia/desire), and not dichotomic. To provide a typical instance of the commonplace I have in mind, let me quote a few lines from an article by Doron Kornbluth, a Jewish educator: “Did you ever hear of a Jewish monastery? Or a Jewish convent? The reason you haven’t heard of any is because there aren’t any—there cannot be any. Why? Some religions view celibacy as the ideal—in fact, sometimes the only—path to spirituality. The physical body and its associated pleasures are essentially a huge test to be overcome, a trap to be avoided. If one wants to be married to G-d, the theory goes, one can’t be married to anyone else. If one wants to live a life of the spirit, one must deny the body. If one wants to become a spiritual person, one must leave other people and live on a mountaintop. Judaism disagrees and has always disagreed. Our religious leaders get married and have children, as do the rest of us. In fact, to be a judge in a Jewish court, one must be married. True, we must train ourselves to master our inclinations, to improve ourselves and not let love of the physical override our minds and hearts. However, the physical world is not evil. It is not to be denied. It is to be channeled. Jewish holidays are full of wonderful food and celebration. Husband and wife are supposed to have a beautiful—and holy—intimate life” in Jewish Monasteries?, http:​ /​/www​​.doro​​nkorn​​bluth​​.com/​​artic​​les​.a​​s​p​?AI​​D​=19.​ 178. Peter Brown describes how unsettling the views of Church writers were in the traditional framework of Roman norms about marriage and family life. He traces the emergence of a fundamentally monastic insight back to the time of Marcion (+160) and Tertullian (+220): “It was believed that the coming of Christ to earth had brought ‘the present age’ to an end. The duty of every Christian was to make His victory plain and to hasten the collapse of the ‘Rulers of the present age’ . . . Christ’s victory over death had brought a stunning reversal of the irreversible fow of negative processes that made the tyranny of demons seemingly irresistible on earth . . . . Given the manner in which ‘freedom from the present age’ was posed—in terms of halting the one-way processes—to halt sexual activity could be regarded as a symbolically stunning gesture,” The Body and Society, Men, women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London; Boston: Faber & Faber,1988), 84. 179. Dead Sea Scrolls, A New Translation, Michael Wise, Martin Abegg and Edward Cook eds. (London: HarperCollins, 1996), 139. 180. Philo observes that “there are no children among the Essenes” (Hypothetica 11, 4). It seems that married Essenes were forbidden to have intercourse on Shabbat, Hannah K. Harrington, The Purity Texts (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 17. Digging

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at Qumran’s ancient burial place, archaeologists have uncovered over 1,000 graves of male members of the sect against eleven graves for women and fve for children, see Harrington, The Purity Texts, 14. Passages from the Qumran documents (Temple Scroll, IIQ19, col.45, DSS, 477; Damascus Document, col.12, DSS, 69) recommend sexual abstinence in the whole city of Jerusalem in order to not defle the Temple. 181. De Vita Contemplativa, I,1, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 698: in Greek: The Philo Concordance Database, (Institute of Education and Culture-Bodø University College, 2005). 182. VC I, 24, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, 700. Very remarkably, it is in this text that the term “monastery,” μοναστήριον, appears for the frst time. It designates the corner dedicated to prayer in the house of each Therapeutes: “And in every house there is a sacred shrine which is called the holy place, and the monastery, ἐν ἑκάστῃ δέ ἐστιν οἴκημα ἱερόν, ὃ καλεῖται σεμνεῖον καὶ μοναστήριον in which they retire by themselves and perform all the mysteries of a holy life,” VC I, 25, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, ibid. 183. Haggadic tradition suggests that Moses separated from his wife Zipporah after his experience on Mount Sinai (Avot of Rabbi Nathan 9:2). According to Eliot R. Wolfson, this is “the basis for the zoharic idea that the union of Moses with the Shekhina is consequent upon his adopting a life of celibacy,” “Eunuchs Who Keep the Sabbath: Becoming Male and the Ascetic Ideal in Thirteen-century Jewish Mysticism” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 162. 184. “Ascetic Strains in Early Judaism,” Journal of Biblical Literature 51 no 3 (1932), 183–213, 212–213. 185. https​:/​/ww​​w​.mat​​sati.​​com​/i​​ndex.​​php​/m​​idras​​h​​-teh​​illim​/. 186. See Harvey McArthur,” Celibacy in Judaism at the Time of Christian Beginnings,” St. Andrews University Seminary Studies, 25 no 2 (1987), 163–181. 187. b. Yebam 63b and Gen. Rab. 34:14, quoted by McArthur, “Celibacy in Judaism,” 168. 188. Quite remarkably when one has in mind the importance of Yeshua’s saying on the “eunuchs for the Kingdom” as to the Christian justifcation of monasticism (Matthew 19:12), it appears that the reference to Isaiah’s “eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths” (56:4–5) was foundational for Safed kabbalists’s self-imposed discipline of partial abstinence: “Who are the eunuchs? These are the comrades engaged in Torah. They castrate themselves the six days of the week and study Torah, and on the night of Sabbath they prepare themselves for intercourse for they know the supernatural secret concerning the time when the Matrona unites with the King.,” Zohar 2:89a, quoted in Wolfson, “Eunuchs who keep the Sabbath,” 158. According to Wolfson, the Shabbat intercourse was the goal and culmination of the weekly abstinence as Torah alertness would raise physical union to the spiritual sphere of God’s “erotic” embrace of the Shekhina (“Matrona”). 189. See Benjamin Brown, “Kedushah: The Sexual Abstinence of Married Men in Gur, Slonim, and Toledot Aharon” Jewish History, 27, 2/4 (2013), 475–522. 190. See Bar Kribus, “Medieval Beta Isra’el III: Oral Sources,” in Africana, 21/02/2018, https://africana​.hypotheses​.org​/625. 191. PMJ, 178.

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192. “An Essay on Jewish Christianity” (1969), reprinted in Divine Commitment and Human Obligation: Selected Writings of David Noel Freedman, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 246–247, quoted PMJ, 178. 193. Israel's Messiah, 191. 194. PMJ, 264. 195. I Wanted to Ask You Prof. Leibowitz: Letters to and from Yeshayahu Leibowitz, originally published in Hebrew (Keter Publishing House, 1999), 219 https​ :/​/th​​inkju​​daism​​.word​​press​​.com/​​tag​/o​​r​thop​​raxy/​ (emphasis mine). 196. Ibid emphasis is mine. 197. “When Jews Are Christians,” First Things, 17, 44 (1991), 42–46, 44. 198. It is most of the time in dogmatic terms that the claim of Messianic Jews to belong to the Jewish world is rejected by representatives of the latter. This difference between the two faith-contents is usually emphasized in the coarsest manner. Here are the fundamental “facts” that cast Messianic Jews beyond the orbit of Judaism according to Daniel Blass: “First fact: Messianic Jews believe that Yeshu / Yeshua was the Creator Himself, and not just a prophet with a Divine mission . . . . Messianic Jews do not believe that Yeshu / Yeshua was only a prophet like other prophets, but believe that he is the Creator who created the entire universe and took the Israelites out of Egypt. Later he impregnated a virgin named Mary, entered her womb and was born as a baby, and then grew up into a fesh and blood man as if he was a dybbuk that entered a body. He was also crucifed and died at the end of his life at the hands of people . . . . Fact two: Messianic Jews believe that G-d is not one, but three. The most fundamental article of faith in Judaism is that G-d is one and the only one: ‘Hear O Israel, the L-rd our G-d the L-rd is One’ (Deuteronomy 6:4) This is pure monotheism which brought Jews to reject all the Gentile beliefs based on a proliferation of idols. The belief in one G-d has defned our very Jewishness since we became a people, and united us in all periods and times. In every generation there were many Jewish martyrs who sacrifced their lives for their belief in Judaism, many of whom died on the altar of Christianity, the Inquisition and the Crusades. Unlike us, Christians never believed in a G-d that is absolutely one. According to their belief, the Creator of the entire universe is three gods, which they call the ‘Holy Trinity.’ Trinity is the name given to a group of gods that includes ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’—three gods that together are one. According to their faith, ‘Father’ is the Creator of the universe, his ‘son’ is Jesus, while the ‘Holy Spirit’ is the idol that impregnated the Virgin Mary and put the god Jesus in her womb (the Holy Spirit is a kind of god-mother in the whole story),” “10 Facts Messianic Jews for Jesus Don’t Want Jews to Know,” "http​​s:/​/w​​ ww​.hi​​dabro​​ot​.co​​m​/art​​icle/​​11767​​9​/10-​​Facts​​-Mess​​ianic​​-Jews​​-for-​​Jesus​​-Dont​​​-Want​​ -Jews​​-to​-K​​now" https​:/​/ww​​w​.hid​​abroo​​t​.com​​/arti​​cle​/1​​17679​​/10​-F​​acts-​​Messi​​anic-​​ Jews-​​for​-J​​esus-​​Dont-​​​Want-​​Jews-​​to​-Kn​​ow. 199. Statement. 21 Apr. 2001 http://www​.yadlachim​.org​/messianic, https​:/​/an​​ swers​​.yaho​​o​.com​​/ques​​tion/​​index​​?qid=​​20081​​21120​​1328A​​AruUV​​u​&g​uc​​count​​er​=18​. 200. “Jesus for Jews: the unique problem of Messianic Judaism,” Journal of Religion and Society 14 (2012), 1–17, 10, footnote 14. 201. Tract. Sanhedrin, 44a, Neusner, Babylonian Talmud, Vol. 16, 6:2, 223.

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202. In the course of the debate over the case of Rufeisen at the High Court, justice Landau argued that the Law of Return could not “be severed from the sources of the past from which its content is derived” and that “in these sources, nationalism and religion [were] inseparably interwoven,” in Arthur F. Landau, Selected Judgements of the Supreme Court of Israel (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1971), 22. 203. The whole debate over the petition of the Berensfords concentrated on the issue whether the Messianic faith was to be identifed with “a different religion” as in the case of the Catholic Rufeisen. The judgment ruled that it was, see “High Court decision 265/87,” translation in Daniel B. Sinclair, Jewish Law Association Studies XI (Binghamton: Global Scholarly Publications, 2000), 27–63. 204. According to Landau, a Jew who like Rufeisen converts to Christianity “cuts himself off from the national past of his people and ceases thereby to be a Jew in the national sense to which the Law of Return gives expression.” He has “erected a barrier between himself and his brothers Jews,” Selected Judgements, 22. Debating over the Berensford’s case, justice Elon argued that “after two thousand years of opposition and total separation between the members of this sect and the members of the Jewish people, Messianic Jews are asking to turn back the wheels of history,” on a quote from Prof. Zvi Verblowski: “History has already made its judgement,” he concluded that “belief in Jesus . . . involves a departure from the historical entity of the Jewish people,” HC decision, translation Sinclair, 36–37. 205. “Who better than [simple Jews] could know the meaning of the term [Jew]?” asked justice Silberg during the debate over the Rufeisen case, Selected judgements, 10. 206. “That the past should not have been does not come under the scope of divine power,” Aquinas, ST Ia, q.25. a.5, co. 207. https​:/​/ww​​w​.bib​​lebel​​iever​​s​.org​​.au​/r​​ed​emp​​ti​.ht​m. The considerations developed in section 6.3 are based on an early version of a lecture given at a conference in Jerusalem (2019). A full version of this lecture will be published in a volume edited by Gavin D’Costa and Faydra Shapiro, Catholic Approaches to the People, Land and State of Israel (Cath. Univ. of America Press, forthcoming 2021). 208. https​:/​/mf​​a​.gov​​.il​/m​​fa​/mf​​a​-arc​​hive/​​1993/​​pages​​/fund​​ament​​al​%20​​agree​​ment%​​ 20-​%2​​0isra​​​el​-ho​​ly​%20​​see​.a​​spx. 209. Ibid. 210. http:​/​/www​​.asia​​news.​​it​/ne​​ws​-en​​/Syno​​d​-for​​-the-​​Middl​​e​-Eas​​t:​-a-​​Messa​​ge​-to​​ -the-​​Peopl​​​e​-of-​​God​-1​​9805.​​html.​ 211. Quoted in Cynthia D. Wallace, “Secure and Recognized Borders: UN Resolution 242 and the ’67 Lines.” http:​/​/www​​.thin​​c​.inf​​o​/sec​​ure​-a​​nd​-re​​cogni​​zed​-b​​ order​​s​-un-​​resol​​ution​​-242-​​​and​-t​​he​-67​​-line​​s/. 212. Interview in the magazine Parade, 1993, quoted in Richard C. Lux, The Jewish People, the Holy Land, and the State of Israel: A Catholic View (New York: Paulist Press, 2010), 70. 213. “La Fondazione dello Stato di Israele e il problema dei profughi palestinesi,” La Civiltà Cattolica 3854 (January 2011), 107–120, 111. 214. Edward Said has famously theorized this approach to Zionism: “For although it coincided with an era of the most virulent Western anti-Semitism, Zionism also coincided with the period of unparalleled European territorial acquisition in Africa

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and Asia, and it was as part of this general movement of acquisition that Zionism was launched initially by Theodor Herzl,” The Question of Palestine (New York: Random Books, 1980), 69. 215. Document presented on the site of Holy Heart University, https​:/​/ww​​w​.sac​​ redhe​​art​.e​​du​/fa​​ithse​​rvice​​/cent​​erfor​​chris​​tiana​​ndjew​​ishun​​derst​​andin​​g​/doc​​ument​​sands​​ tatem​​ents/​​uscat​​holic​​bisho​​pssta​​temen​​tonca​​tholi​​cj​ewi​​shrel​​ation​​snove​​mber1​​975/.​ 216.   VI, ​1  htt​​p:/​/w​​ww​.va​​tican​​.va​/r​​oman_​​curia​​/pont​​ifca​​l​_cou​​ncils​​/chrs​​tuni/​​relat​​ ions-​​jewdo​​cs​/rc​​_pc​_c​​hrstu​​ni​_do​​c​_198​​20​306​​_jews​​-juda​​ism​_e​​n​.htm​​l. The document is quoting the 1975 Statement of the Conference of the United States bishops on Catholic-Jewish relations. 217. 1,  5. http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/rom​​an​_cu​​ria​/p​​ontif​​i cal_​​counc​​ils​/c​​hrstu​​ni​/re​​latio​​ ns​-je​​ws​-do​​cs​/rc​​_pc​_c​​hrstu​​ni​_do​​c​_201​​51210​​_eb​ra​​ismo-​​nostr​​a​-aet​​ate​_e​​n​.htm​​l. 218. https​:/​/ww​​w​.ccj​​r​.us/​​dialo​​gika-​​resou​​rces/​​theme​​s​-in-​​today​​-s​-di​​alogu​​e​/isr​​pal​/​b​​ ustro​​s2010​​nov11​. 219. Refecting on the origins of the Zionist movement, Emanuele Ottolenghi points out that the reference to Biblical Israel was a fundamental component of its success: “While elites selectively tapped into Jewish tradition, attempts to re-elaborate a collective identity in national terms would fail in the absence of a pre-existing strong, collective ethnic allegiance. Jews eventually embraced Zionism because it refected elements of identity pre-dating the reformulation of Jewishness in modern nationalist terms.” “A National Home” in Modern Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 55–56. 220. The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 36. 221. Jerusalem Crucifed, 252. 222. Jerusalem Crucifed, 269. 223. Jerusalem Crucifed, 250. 224. Jerusalem Crucifed, 258. 225. Jerusalem Crucifed, 258. 226. As Though Hiding His Face (US: Julia Blum, 2017), 177. The Biblical words that Pope John XXIII said to a Jewish delegation in 1960 come to mind: “I am Joseph, your brother” (Gen 45:5), see https​:/​/ww​​w​.ccj​​r​.us/​​dialo​​gika-​​resou​​rces/​​docum​​ents-​​ and​-s​​tatem​​ents/​​roman​​-cath​​olic/​​secon​​d​-vat​​ican-​​counc​​il​/na​​p​recu​​rsors​​/j231​​960oc​​t19. 227. http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/arc​​hive/​​hist_​​counc​​ils​/i​​i​_vat​​ican_​​counc​​il​/do​​cumen​​ts​/ va​​t​-ii_​​const​​_1964​​1121_​​​lumen​​-gent​​ium​_e​​n​.htm​​l. 228. §4, http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/arc​​hive/​​hist_​​counc​​ils​/i​​i​_vat​​ican_​​counc​​il​/do​​cumen​​ ts​/va​​t​-ii_​​decre​​e​_196​​41121​​_unit​​ati​s-​​redin​​tegra​​tio​_e​​n​.htm​​l. 229. La Chiesa e il suo mistero nel Concilio Vaticano II, Vol. 1 (Milano: Jaca Books, 1975), 111. 230. §16 http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/rom​​an​_cu​​ria​/c​​ongre​​gatio​​ns​/cf​​aith/​​docum​​ents/​​rc​ _co​​n​_cfa​​ith​_d​​oc​_20​​00080​​​6​_dom​​inus-​​iesus​​_en​.h​​tml. This passage from Dominus Jesus is accompanied with a footnote that refers to the dismissal of Leornardo Boff’s thesis regarding the expression subsistit in: “The interpretation of those who would derive from the formula subsistit in the thesis that the one Church of Christ could subsist also in non-Catholic Churches and ecclesial communities is therefore contrary to the authentic meaning of Lumen gentium. The Council instead chose the word subsistit precisely to clarify that there exists only one ‘subsistence’ of the

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true Church, while outside her visible structure there only exist elementa Ecclesiae, which —being elements of that same Church—tend and lead toward the Catholic Church” (quoting “Notifcation on the Book ‘Church: Charism and Power’ by Father Leonardo Boff,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 77, 1985, 756–762). 231. http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/rom​​an​_cu​​ria​/c​​ongre​​gatio​​ns​/cf​​aith/​​docum​​ents/​​rc​_co​​n​ _cfa​​ith​_d​​oc​_20​​07062​​9​_res​​ponsa​​-quae​​stion​​es​_en​​.html​​http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/rom​​an​ _cu​​ria​/c​​ongre​​gatio​​ns​/cf​​aith/​​docum​​ents/​​rc​_co​​n​​_cfa​​ith​_d​​oc​_20​​07062​​9​_res​​ponsa​​-quae​​ stion​​es​_en​​.htm and http:​/​/www​​.vati​​can​.v​​a​/rom​​an​_cu​​ria​/c​​ongre​​gatio​​ns​/cf​​aith/​​docum​​ ents/​​rc​_co​​n​_cfa​​ith​_d​​oc​_20​​07062​​9​_co​m​​mento​​-resp​​onsa_​​en​.ht​​ml. 232. Such an exclusive identity was professed in the Catholic Church until Vatican II. In the encyclical “Mystici Corporis” (1943), the “true Church of Christ” is said to be the “One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church,” in The Papal Encyclicals: 1938–1959 (Ypsilanti, MI: The Pierian Press, 1990), 39. In “Humani Generis” (1950) one reads that the “Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” and the “Roman Catholic Church” are “one and the same thing,” The Papal Encyclicals, 179. 233. Karim Schelkens’s insightful analysis of the process that led to Lumen Gentium’s “subsistit in” corroborates this claim: “I should stress the continuity in the motivation for the change from est to adest and then from adest to subsistit. Combined with the importance of van Dodewaard’s invenire, signifes that all three verbs: invenire, adesse, and subsistere were used to elaborate the distinction between the Church of Christ and its concrete realization in the Catholic Church. The crucial move in this redaction history would be precisely the council’s distantiation from a full identifcation of the Church with the Roman Catholic Church instigated by van Dodewaard’s from esse to invenire. The intermediate changes from invenire to adesse and from adesse to subsistere are less important since they all bear the same mark: an ecumenically motivated awareness of the importance to avoid a description of the relationship between the universal Church of Christ and the Catholic Church in terms of exclusivity,” “Lumen Gentium’s subsistit in revisited: The Catholic Church and Christian Unity after Vatican II,” Theological Studies, 69 (2008), 890–891. 234. I, §11, http:​/​/w2.​​vatic​​an​.va​​/cont​​ent​/j​​ohn​-p​​aul​-i​​i​/en/​​encyc​​lical​​s​/doc​​ument​​s​/ hf_​​jp​-ii​​_enc_​​25051​​​995​_u​​t​-unu​​m​-sin​​t​.htm​​l. 235. In an endeavor to show that some Christian communities that are not fully in communion with the Catholic Church, such as the Orthodox, still deserve to be called Churches by virtue of their participation in the Church of Christ, Francis A. Sullivan has argued that this participation implies a real distinction between the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ, conceived as a larger entity that would include both the Catholic Church and these particular churches: “It would seem that they must be particular churches of the church of Christ, which must then continue to exist beyond the limits of the Catholic Church and not be simply identical with it,” “The meaning of Subsistit in as explained by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith,” Theological Studies 69 (2008), 123. The real distinction follows as a conclusion only if one reasons in terms of properties: if X is endowed with the property Y because of Z, whereas W is not endowed with the property Y, X and Z must be partly identical while W and Z must be partly different. To use a concrete example, if John got his

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political opinions under the infuence of Bob and I do not share the views of John, my political opinions must at least partly differ from those of Bob. A contrario, the only way to account for the preservation of a full identity between the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ is not to explain the “superiority” or higher comprehensiveness of the Church of Christ in terms of properties. 236. According to the relator of the schema associated with Unitatis Redintegratio, the Church of Christ did not cease to exert a fruitful infuence on these Christian communities after their formal separation from the Catholic Church: “In his coetibus uniqua Christi Ecclesia, quasi tamquam in Ecclesiis particularibus, quamvis imperfect, praesens et mediantibus elementis ecclesiasticis aliquo modo actuosa est” (“To almost the same degree in which she is present in particular Churches, the unique Church of Christ is present in these communities, even imperfectly, being in a certain manner active in them through a number of ecclesial elements,” translation is mine), Acta Synodalia Sacro-sancti Concilii Oecumenici (ASCOV), Vol. III/II (Vatican, 1975), 335 ad b. 237. Quoted by Augustine in his Contra Cresconium, l.2. c.4 in PL 43, coll.470. 238. Commentary to the Epistle to Titus, c.3, l. 10-11 in PL 25, col. 598. The quarrel between the Latin West and the Byzantine East regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son or from the Father alone provides a good example of such a process. The dogmatic dissension was invoked to justify the dismissal of the Pope’s authority over the Church of Constantinople, in the wake of the election of Photius as Patriarch (ninth century). 239. PMJ, 24. See John H. Yoder, The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 240. PMJ, 212. 241. The Witness of the Jews to God (Grand Rapids: Wipf & Stock, 2011) 92. 242. Ibid.

Conclusion

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The Wider Fence

One cannot speak of a Jewish ekklesia without contrasting her with the other dimension of the global Ekklesia, namely the Gentile one. But although any consideration regarding a Jewish ekklesia implies a bilateral ecclesiology in the sense advocated by Mark Kinzer, there are multiple ways of conceiving the nature of such a Jewish ekklesia, some of which are very far from the model brought forth by Kinzer. There are multiple models of a Jewish ekklesia, but the Church of Christ is one. It is therefore decisive to determine which of these models—if any—is the most faithful to the Church founded by Christ. The only possible way to do this is that of critical discussion based on shared faith, common sense and the texts that all partners in this discussion hold for expressing the sacred word of God. The goal of this book was to rely on such a discussion to bring forth a picture of the Jewish ekklesia that is as different from the model proposed by Kinzer as it is far from all other existing models. The singularity of the model presented in the book stems from the foundational principle of a Jewish ekklesia. There is something fundamentally lacking in the notion that such an ekklesia can be born out of the “conversion” of the global Church to the ongoing value of the frst Covenant and of the religious tradition that is based on it. A Jewish ekklesia cannot arise out of a change that merely concerns Gentiles and their attitude toward the Jewish tradition. The word ekklesia speaks about the calling (klesia) out (ek) of a specifc condition. To follow Yeshua, one leaves the condition in which one was when one did not yet know him. A Jewish ekklesia results from a divine calling that is specifcally directed at Am Israel. It is not to remain who they were without knowing Yeshua that Jews are called by Yeshua to become part of his Church as a people. The foundational principle of a Jewish ekklesia lies in this specifc calling of Israel qua Israel in Yeshua, a calling that both 377

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Conclusion

implies a change of condition, a conversion, and the acquisition of a distinct corporate identity within the living Body of Yeshua that is the Church. Of course, the Church cannot make room for a Jewish ekklesia without Gentiles seeing the value of the Jewish existence and tradition, but what constitutes a Jewish ekklesia in the frst place is the affrmative answer of Jews to a calling that, as I argued in the frst part of this book, is rooted in the salvation of Israel qua Israel in Yeshua. Such a perspective challenges us to go back to the core of the New Testament revelation and decipher the essential message of the Gospels in a new light. The extreme tension between Yeshua and the representatives of his people can no longer be understood according to the reading of the Fathers of the Church as leading to the exclusion of Jews from God’s economy of salvation. On the contrary, it opens the path to a corporate partaking of Yeshua’s salvation that is invisibly oriented toward a full and explicit welcoming of this salvation (see I. “Salvation,” especially I.2). The foundation of a Jewish ekklesia within the Ekklesia should be conceived as the frst portent of this full reception of Yeshua’s salvation by Israel qua Israel. Accordingly, the condition of Israel within the Ekklesia cannot be identical to her condition before or beyond the Ekklesia. Why become ekklesia otherwise? Nothing in the teaching of Yeshua as transmitted by the Gospels and the writings included in the New Testament indicates that Israel should cease to be specifcally rooted as a people in the Torah transmitted by Moses. The New Covenant sealed on Golgotha does not abolish, but rather both confrms and renews the frst Covenant proclaimed on the Sinai. This is the very raison d’être of a Jewish ekklesia that is distinct from the Gentile ekklesia and its constitutive parts. But at the same time, everything in the teaching conveyed by the writings of the New Testament points toward a new, Messianic interpretation of Torah-faithfulness when it comes to Jewish disciples. While human traditions of Torah interpretation still have a place, they are no longer the defning authority of Torah-faithfulness since this supreme role is henceforth devolved to Yeshua’s divine authority. For contemporary Jewish disciples, the reference to the rabbinic economy of mitzvot is still indispensable as it refects the singularity of Israel’s Torah-faithfulness. Still, the dismissal of their character of obligation under penalty of sin is intrinsically connected with obedience to Yeshua’s demanding, albeit freedom-giving, imperative of love and forgiveness (see chapter 2). It is on this basis that the members of a Jewish ekklesia can be said to constitute, together with their Gentile brothers, one body united in the love of Yeshua. To become ekklesia, Jewish Torah-faithfulness undergoes a transformation at its very core. At the same time, in order to be Jewish, this ekklesia cannot but introduce a radically new mode of being part of the Church. The emergence of a Jewish ekklesia rests on what I called a process of hermeneutical

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cross-breeding (see section 1.1.3 in chapter 3). While the traditional elements of Jewish life are now understood and experienced in a Messianic manner, the original Jewish dimensions of the core doctrinal, liturgical, and hierarchic constituents of Church tradition are brought back to light and life. The point where the Messianic dimension of Jewish tradition and the Jewish dimension of Church tradition come to coincide is the locus, the natural element of a Jewish ekklesia. From this point of view, the emergence of this ekklesia would not entail a return to a pristine golden age of the Church, the existence of which is highly doubtful (see 3.2 in chapter 2). It should be rather understood as a concrete institutional prefguration of the end of times—the fnal reconciliation between Israel and Gentiles brought about by the fnal coming of the Messiah. What was conceived from the very beginning, the Messianic coming-into-unity of Israel and the Nations, would become a reality at the very end of a historical process that saw the religious traditions of Israel and the Church evolve independently of each other, with an attitude of hostile diffdence toward each other. Be that as it may, I tried to outline the concrete features of a Jewish ekklesia that emerges out of this hermeneutical cross-breeding between the two traditions. While sacraments according to their content witness the radical transformation of Torah-faithfulness brought about by Yeshua (they are not inherited from Moses but established by Yeshua or in him), their current form is the product of a tradition that has been drifting away from an originally Jewish setting for a little less than two millennia. And yet as soon as they are interpreted in the light of the religious tradition of Israel, they recover their naturally Jewish dimension (see sections 2.1–3 in chapter 3). The symmetrically opposite happens with the rich liturgical cycle of Judaism: as soon as it is contemplated against the background of the liturgical tradition of the Church, the Messianic element it contains comes to light so as to open the door to a genuine Messianic Jewish liturgy within the global Ekklesia (see section 4 in chapter 3). Speaking in general, the widening of the global Ekklesia to the riches of Jewish tradition cannot go without a symmetrical Jewish reappropriation of core features of a Church tradition that developed in the Gentile world. There is no real communion in the Church when what constitutes a part of her rejects as ill-founded practices and beliefs that other parts consider as pertaining to the core of her teaching. This is why I argued that a Jewish approach to the cult of Mary and the saints, to sacred images and monastic life, is not only possible but would also bring back to life ancient aspects of Jewish worship as well as materialize recurrent insights of the later Jewish tradition (see section 5 in chapter 3). The same hermeneutical cross-breeding applies to the institutional structure of a Jewish ekklesia. On the one hand, the hierarchic structure that is typical

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of the Gentile ekklesia must be reinterpreted in the categories of Jewish religious life (see sections 3.3–3.5 in chapter 3). On the other hand, this new corporate entity must fnd its place in the living organization of the global Ekklesia, so that it will function in harmony with the whole and vice-versa. Because the Jewish ekklesia is the church of the nation out of whom salvation came, she cannot be put into the same category as churches representing the diversity of nations that received salvation from the apostolic kerygma. Her emergence pertains to the universal/catholic structure of a Church, a structure defned as resting on the communion between Jewish and Gentile disciples of Yeshua. Therefore, instead of qualifying her as an independent ecclesia particularis on the model of the Maronite Church or the Ukrainian GreekCatholic Church, I propose to grant her the status of ordinariate since this category merely refers to an institutional structure associated with a specifc historical, spiritual, and liturgical legacy (see section 3.1 in chapter 3). Characterized in this manner, the Jewish ekklesia is certainly not susceptible to being acknowledged as a part from any of the various streams of which the Jewish religious world is formed. But, as I repeatedly emphasized in the course of this book, the belief that rabbinic Torah-observance would be suffcient for Jewish disciples of Yeshua to be included in this world does not, according to me, amount to much more than wishful thinking (see especially section 6.1 in chapter 3). However, Judaism or the Jewish religious world is not the Jewish world, and this is of paramount importance. The emergence of a Jewish ekklesia would change everything in this regard. With members that would identify themselves as ethnically and culturally Jewish, a relatively autonomous Jewish ekklesia would no longer practice a deceitful form of proselytism among Jews. Even if accusations of trying to destroy the Jewish people are unlikely to stop, the fact is that witnessing the Gospel among Jews will no longer end up with turning Jews into Gentiles: Jews that come to faith in Yeshua, Messiah of Israel, will be welcomed by other Jews within a Jewish entity (see equally section 6.1 in chapter 3). These considerations are especially relevant when taking the existence of an independent and democratic Jewish state into account. Israeli Jews have no problem identifying as Jews fellow-countrymen that are Buddhists or practice no religion at all. Why should “Catholic Jews” be considered to be lesser Jews than Buddhist or atheist Jews, especially when they are part of a religious entity that proclaims the truth of the Torah and draws on the riches of the Jewish tradition? One needs to refect on the existential and theological signifcance of the State of Israel from the perspective of a global Ekklesia that would include a Jewish ekklesia. Jewish disciples of Yeshua are Jewish and a Jew can hardly be a Jew without understanding that the connection with the Land is part of his or her identity as Jew. No truly Jewish ekklesia can see the light of day in a global Ekklesia that would ignore the extraordinary signifcance of the

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creation of an independent Jewish state on the very Land that God, according to the Scriptures that this Ekklesia holds for sacred, promised to his people as part of His Covenant with them. I argue in this book that there is nothing in the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church that would prevent her from acknowledging and affrming the theological signifcance of the State of Israel (see section 6.3.1 in chapter 3). Moreover, the emergence of a Jewish ekklesia in the State of Israel can be understood as a substantial step toward the eschatological fulfllment of history: the fnal reconciliation between Yeshua and his people in the very place that witnessed their bitter confict and the parting of the ways between the Church and Israel (see III, 6.3.2). Meanwhile the impact of a Jewish ekklesia conceived in these terms would not be limited to the Jewish world. The establishment of a Jewish ekklesia would affect the whole Church as this movement back to her Jewish roots is equally a movement back to what fundamentally unites disciples of Yeshua beyond the divergences related to beliefs and modes of worship that throughout history have precipitated divisions within the universal Body of Christ. I argue that this leap back to a condition that is qualitatively different and ecclesially broader than her current one, as it precedes the successive schisms that have torn apart the seamless tunic of Christ, would allow the Catholic Church to actually and fully become the Church of Christ that has never ceased to subsist in her (see section 7 in chapter 3). The whole argument contained in this book can be considered as my contribution to the discussion that gave rise to an over ten-year long friendship with Mark Kinzer. The frst time I met him, in 2009, it was after a speech he had made at a Baptist Church in Jerusalem where he talked about the discussions and controversies that his recently published Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism had stirred up. I was very eager to establish a contact with him, but it was diffcult to approach him as a crowd of enthusiastic listeners surrounded him. Battling my way as I could and having only a few seconds to draw his attention, I asked him the question that lingered on my mind throughout his excellent presentation. For myself I called it the question about Abraham and Juliet or Romeo and Sarah. It is actually one very simple question; namely, (a) supposing the existence of a Jewish ekklesia in actual communion with a Gentile ekklesia and therefore forming one “Catholic” or universal Church with it; (b) given the quantitative disproportion existing between Gentiles and Jews in the world, a fortiori in any ecclesial entity; (c) how could one prevent the Jewish ekklesia from dissolving in this larger ecclesial entity within the span of several generations due to the foreseeable rate of intermarriages between Jewish and Gentile disciples of Yeshua?

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As I pointed out a number of times in this book, I believe that more than any anti-Judaizing legislation, the authentic communion between Jewish and Gentile disciples, naturally translating into intermarriages, is to be held responsible for the disintegration of the original Jewish fabric of the Church in the early centuries of her existence. By the time the frst anti-Judaizing measures saw the light of day at the beginning of the fourth century (Council of Elvira, 305), the Church was already a massively Gentile entity. I was pleased to see that the question had the desired impact on the one to whom it was addressed. Mark Kinzer turned to me, gave me an answer to which I replied, and in the few seconds that followed our exchange, we decided that we would meet face to face a few days later. Our friendship—a dialectical friendship as one may easily gather after reading this book—as well as enduring collaboration began in this manner. Although I cannot remember the exact substance of Mark’s answer on that evening, it comes out clearly from his written works. His solution is in continuity with the rabbinic tradition. Mitzvot-observance is suffcient to create a stable and homogeneous Jewish environment within the Church as it will preserve the “practical” boundary between Jews and Gentiles that exists elsewhere. The notion that mitzvot-observance is the condition to the preservation of the Jewish nation goes back to the early times of rabbinic tradition. It can be identifed with the notion of “fence” that Jews need to build around the Torah. One already fnds it formulated in the frst lines of Pirke Avot (1:1B), a treatise written at the beginning of the third century. It is listed among the three precepts that the “Men of the Great Assembly,” the legendary Council of Prophets and Doctors of the Law that administered justice in Israel at the onset of the fourth century BC, gave to the children of Israel when they transmitted the Torah that they had received from the elders, the elders from Joshua, Joshua from Moses, and Moses from God at Mount Sinai: Be deliberate in judging; Educate many students; Make a fence around the Torah ‫ ַועֲשו ְסי ָג לַתורָה‬.

In the same treatise, Pirke Avot, R. Akiva is said to identify the fence with the notion of tradition (3:13b), by which he intends all the precepts issued by rabbis (mitzvot d’rabbanan), by contrast to Torah precepts that were revealed by God (mitzvot d’oraita). A Jew that complies with rabbinic mitzvot contributes to building the fence around the Torah revealed by God. His or her own decisions regarding the practical ways to avoid Torah deflement are part of a task that involves all Israel. J. Neusner characterizes this fence as the “frequent implementation of restrictive measures that assure compliance

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with the actual word of the Torah.”1 To the extent that mitzvot-observance is the manner in which the Torah is put into practice, it is the manner in which the Torah is kept from deflement as Jews draw the line between themselves and a surrounding non-Jewish world that is by nature idolatrous2. I argued in this book that defning the Jewish ekklesia in terms of mitzvotobservance was incompatible with the founding principle of the apostolic Church; namely, the acceptance of Gentiles as Gentiles in the Body of Messiah (see section 1.1.1 in chapter 3). Non-mitzvot-observant Gentiles are not Pagans; they are no lesser members of the Church than mitzvot-observant Jewish disciples. The Church cannot be established on genuine communion between Jews and Gentiles when a line continues to separate those who, by virtue of God’s election, strive to preserve Torah-purity from those who, according to their nature, put it at constant risk of being defled (see section 1.3 in chapter 2, and sections 1.1.1–2 in chapter 3). In my opinion, an opinion that on this point does not differ from classical Christian tradition, the incident of Antioch bears witness to this clear awareness in the primitive Church (see section 3.2.3.2 in chapter 2). However, this position implies that the “Romeo and Sarah” issue keeps its full aporetic strength: once the fence of the Torah is abolished, what can prevent the Jewish presence in the Church from disintegrating after a few generations? Is this not the sign that a Jewish ekklesia is not meant to be? What we have been advocating throughout this book could be summarized in terms of wider fence. This wider fence is not a simple extension of the rabbinic fence because it differs from the latter according to its nature: instead of separating, it merely distinguishes. It enables Jewish and Gentile disciples to experience their fundamental communion in Yeshua, a communion that rests on a sacramental and doctrinal unity within the same visible and hierarchically organized institutional body. And yet at the same time, it preserves a distinct Jewish identity within this institutional body through forging a specifcally Jewish way of being a disciple of Yeshua—a spiritual and practical way of life based both on the Messianic dimension of the rabbinic tradition and the Jewish kernel of the Christian tradition. This corporate entity would provide a stable biosphere for the Jewish disciples of Yeshua, preventing the rapid disintegration of a living Jewish identity within the global Ekklesia. As I argued, the loss of members as a consequence of intermarriages could eventually be compensated with the establishment of rituals of passage enabling non-Jewish disciples of Yeshua to become Jewish ones (see section 1.1.4 in chapter 3). Looking now at the big picture, that is, from a perspective that encompasses not only the global Church but the whole Jewish world, it is clear that the establishment of a Jewish ekklesia would not constitute a factor of extinction in the destiny of the Jewish people but on the contrary would become

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a new, a wider manner of affrming and fostering its existence. A Church that shows real concern about preserving Jewish identity can no longer be accused of willing to destroy it, consciously or not. Of course, there is no way to prevent accusations claiming that a Jewish ekklesia is in reality some sort of Trojan horse, conceived to lure Jews out of Judaism and turn them into standard Christians rigged out in some folkloric Jewish vestments. But while Jewish disciples should not be barred from witnessing to the truth that lies at the heart of their existence (see section 6.3 in chapter 3), the fact that they see it as intrinsically bound with the destiny of the whole nation of Israel and that they cherish rabbinic tradition as invisibly linked to the sacrifce of Yeshua on behalf of Israel (see section 2.5.1 in chapter 1) should be enough to demonstrate that these accusations are groundless. The destiny of a Jewish ekklesia is integrally attached to the existence of a vibrant Jewish nation. It is reasonable to assume that a Jewish ekklesia will never be the object of any sort of acknowledgment on the part of the non-Messianic Jewish world, being persistently viewed as the umpteenth strategy of the Church to precipitate the downfall of an independent Jewish nation. But this should not hinder a Jewish ekklesia from carrying the concern for the life and living legacy of the Jewish nation to the very heart of the Church, assuming the role of a wider fence planted on its behalf in the midst of the Gentile world. In this fght for and in the name of the Jewish nation, the members of the Jewish ekklesia should not expect the support of human praise. They will draw their sole strength from their faith in a God that has never ceased to fght alongside them.

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NOTES 1. The Encyclopedia of Judaism, J. Neusner, Allan J. Avery-Peck & William S. Green eds. Vol. 3 (Leyden: Brill, 2000), 1462. 2. Actually, four centuries before Pirke Abot, it was the Torah itself, the revealed Law of God, that was seen as a fence erected against the Gentiles. In the Letter to Aristeas, we read (§139): “Now our Lawgiver being a wise man and specially endowed by God to understand all things, took a comprehensive view of each particular detail, and fenced us round with impregnable ramparts (περιέφραξεν ἡμᾶς ἀδιακόποις χάραξι) and walls of iron, that we might not mingle at all with any of the other nations, but remain pure in body and soul, free from all vain imaginations, worshiping the one Almighty God above the whole creation,” The Letter of Aristeas, Anon E. Mouse ed. (UK: Abela Publishing, 2017), 17.

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TLG

Volume in the series Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina. Edited by Jacques Paul Migne, 217 vols. Firmin-Didot: Paris, 1844–1864. Volume in the series Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca. Edited by Jacques Paul Migne, 162 vols. Firmin-Didot: Paris, 1857–1866. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Digital Library. Edited by Maria C. Pantelia. Irvine: University of California, http://www​.tlg​.uci​.edu.

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Name Index

Aaron (brother of Moses), 48, 218, 222, 224, 226–27, 278 Abba bar Zabeda, 316 Abegg, Martin, 370n179 Abel, 50–52 Abraham, 1, 15, 33, 37, 39, 63, 78, 80– 82, 84, 97, 125, 150, 153, 181, 206, 207, 211, 228, 234, 240, 251–53, 277, 328, 332, 359, 366n137, 381 Abrahams, Daniel, 369 Adam, 31, 94, 97, 177n68 Ahashverus, 287 Ahimelech, 309 Akiva, 258, 281, 382 Alkabez, Solomon b.Moses ha-Levi, 368n158 Alkalai, Judah, 336 Allison, Dale C., 91n45 Amnon, 365n133 Amos, 97n98, 297 Andrew, 240 Annas, 79 Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 270 Aphraates, 356n35 Apollos, 235 Aquinas, Thomas, 72, 88n13, 89nn21, 24, 93n68, 95n86, 96nn89–90, 97n97, 119, 120, 166, 222, 373n20

Bland, Kalman P., 304 Buddha, 1 Bulgakov, Sergei, 368n161 Bun, Rabbi, 367n150 Buridan, Jean, 121 Bustros, Cyril S., 331 Caiaphas, 56–65, 78, 79, 93nn68, 73–74, 94n76 Cain, 52 Campbell, William S., 175n38 Cargal, Timothy B., 92n47 Cartwright, Michael G., 171n3 Cathcart, Kevin J., 367n155, 368n156 Christiani, Pablo, 289 Chrysologus, Peter, 90n28 Chrysostom, John, 38–40, 42, 54, 59, 90n29, 92n57, 93nn67, 70–71, 303 Cohen, Richard I., 369n172 Collins, John J., 179n83 Conzelmann, Hans, 362 Cook, Edward, 370n179 Cornelius, 208 Cosgrove, Charles H., 44 Cottrell, Jack, 178n69 Cunningham, Philip A., 173n25 Cyril of Alexandria, 35, 36 Cyril of Jerusalem, 293

399

400

Name Index

Damascene, John, 305 Dan, 45 Darby, John Nelson, 335 Daube, David, 267, 363n120 Dauermann, Stuart, 340 David, 28, 35, 77, 80–82, 84, 85, 97n98, 160, 164, 179n77, 179n82, 269, 273, 284, 309, 332, 340, 365nn131, 134 Davies, William D., 91n45, 155, 178n72 Deming, Will, 175n44 Dodewaard (van), Jan, 375n233 Dunderberg, Ismo, 175n44 Dunn, James D.G., 135

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Efrem the Syrian, 366n137 Eisler, Robert, 267 Eliezer, Rabbi, 172n24, 272, 281–82, 356n51 Elijah, 72–75, 172n24 Elisabeth, 33 Elon (justice), 373n204 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 175n44 Epictetus, 146 Epiphanius of Salamina, 185, 188 Esdras, 218 Esther, 288, 289 Eusebius, 174, 354n5 Ezekias, 297 Ezekiel, 51, 218, 269 Fackenheim, Eliezer, 288 Festugière, André-Jean, 165, 166 Fitzmyer, Joseph A., 91n44, 178n69, 357n60, 360n90 Flavius Josephus, 267, 358n80 Flusser, David, 156 Francis of Assisi, 205 Freedman, David N., 312, 372n192 Friedman, Elias, xiii Gad, 45, 118 Gagnon, Robert A., 176n49 Gangel, Kenneth, 93n73 Garlington, Don B., 176n49 Gillet, Lev, xiii, 190–91, 238, 354n13

Gilman, Sander L., 92n59 Green, Arthur, 300–01, 368n162 Greenberg, Yrving, 288 Gregory of Nyssa, 89n24, 366n142 Grotius, Hugo, 323 Hagner, Donald A., 178n73 Haman, 288 Hammer, Reuven, 365n132 Hanina, 368n158 Hannah, 272 Harrington, Hannah K., 370n180 Hartin, Patrick H., 174 Harvey, Richard, 13n13, 100 Hayek, Michel, 361n109 Headlam, Arthur C., 357n60 Hegesippus, 173n32 Herzl, Theodor, 374n214 Heschel, Abraham J., 257–59 Hezekiah, 37, 365n120 Hillel, 158, 363n120 Himmler, Heinrich, 287 Hyperides, 61 Idel, Moshe, 369n164 Ignatius of Antioch, 185, 255, 348, 354n3 Innocent I, 254 Isaac, 78, 84, 181n96, 251–54, 272, 277, 359n87, 360n87, 366n137 Isaiah, 37, 42, 66–69, 83, 167, 229, 280, 297, 371n188 Ishmael, 142 Issachar, 45, 118 Jacob, 37, 78, 84, 181n96, 251, 253–54, 274, 289, 365 James, xiii, 82, 97n98, 126–32, 135–36, 141–42, 150, 154, 173–75nn32, 34, 36, 184, 208, 230, 232, 237, 312 Jannai, 368n158 Jeremiah (Rabbi), 172 Jeremias, Joachim, 362n114 Jerome, 42, 88n13, 185–86, 347 Jesse, 81, 259, 367

Name Index

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Jesus (son of Nun), 211 John, 32, 33, 36, 46, 48, 53–56, 60–62, 69, 78, 79, 81, 83, 93nn68, 73–74, 108, 131, 156, 161, 208, 263, 270– 71, 287, 365 John XXIII, 374n226 John Paul II, 16, 88n4, 241, 254, 319, 324, 326, 344 John the Baptist, 34, 55, 67, 69, 161, 208 Joseph (husband of Mary), 34, 38–40, 51, 297 Joseph (son of Jacob), 45, 118, 272, 342–43, 374n226 Joshua (son of Nun), 384 Joshua (Rabbi), 73–74, 172n24, 243, 272, 356n51 Judah, 45, 75, 77, 118, 288 Judas Iscariot, 174 Judas Maccabeus, 270, 292 Justin Martyr, 88n10, 166, 172n19, 186, 348, 363n116 Kagan, Yisrael M., 359n82 Kalischer Zvi H., 336 Kartveit, Magnar, 367n154 Kasdan, Barney, 367n151 Käsemann, Ernst, 357n60 Katz, Steven T., 92n59 Kereszty, Roch, 108, 110–11 Kessler, Edward, 360n89 Klausner, Joseph, 155 Klawans, Joseph, 362–63nn114–15 Klein, Georges L., 368n145 Kook, Abraham I., 336 Kornbluth, Doron, 370 Kribus, Bar, 371n190 Kugler, Robert A., 358n68 Kühl, Ernst, 357n60 Lagrange, Marie-Joseph, 357n60 Lampe, Geoffrey W.H., 363n119 Landau, Arthur F., 373nn202, 204 Landes, David, 359n86 Lapide, Pinchas, 155

401

Le Déhaut, Roger, 362n114 Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 314 Lenski, Richard C.H., 43, 60, 91n36, 93n73 Le Saux, Henri, 115–16, 171n17 Levi, 45, 74, 118 Levi, Joshua (Rabbi), 73 Lincoln, Andrew T., 93n74, 94n79 Long, Anthony A., 175n43 Longenecker, Richard N., 175n44 Looker, Ray, 253 Louis Martyn, James, 92n60 Luke, 35, 55, 90n30, 127, 132, 133, 176, 270 Luria, Isaac, 311 Lustiger, J-M (Aron), xiii, 4, 5, 12n11, 18, 19, 207, 350, 358n79 Luther, 177n68, 297 Lux Richard C., 375 Lydia, 236 Maimonides, 204, 304 Marcion, 370 Marguerat, Daniel, 43 Mark, 55, 161–62, 165, 180 Markus, Joel, 363n114 Mary, 33, 34, 38–40, 57, 139, 185, 296– 303, 306, 367n153, 368–69nn162– 64, 372n198, 379 Mary (wife of Clopas), 301 Mary Magdalene, 301 Mattathia, 174n33 Matthew, 19, 41–46, 48–51, 55, 61, 88n9, 89–90n26, 91n44, 119, 198, 209, 242, 285 Maximus the Confessor, 361n106 McArthur, Harvey, 371nn186, 187 Meir, 277 Melchizedek, 160, 222, 228–30, 243 Melito of Sardes, 54, 252 Men, Alexander, xiii, 5, 12n11 Mendel of Kotzk, Mendel, 311 Micah, 298 Michelini, Giulio, 92n47 Montgomery, James A., 310

402

Name Index

Mordechai, 288 Morgan, Jeff, 253 Moses, 45–49, 63, 72, 82, 94, 99–103, 106, 109, 111, 114, 116–33, 136, 147, 149–51, 154–59, 161–62, 164–66, 168–70, 181, 187–88, 194, 196, 198–99, 204, 206, 211, 218–22, 240, 258, 266, 268, 270, 278, 281–82, 285–86, 290, 293, 297, 309, 315, 332, 349, 364n122, 366n142, 371n183, 378–79, 382 Motyer, Stephen, 92n63 Mouse, Anon E., 384n2

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Nabuzaradan, 51 Nachmanides (Moses Ben Nachmani), 96n91, 289, 368n161 Nachman of Breslov, 123, 311 Nanos, Mark, 138–39, 141–42, 144, 175n38, 175n49, 177nn54, 66, 68 Naphtali, 45, 118 Nathan (Rabbi), 172 Nathanael, 55 Neusner, Jacob, 177n66, 363n120, 382 Newman John H., 351 Nicodemus, 207, 209 Niedner, Frederick A., 92n47 Noah, 164–65 Noemi, 37, 269 Novak, David, 315 Ochs, Peter, 102 Origen, 35, 58, 89, 90n31, 93nn68, 73, 94n76 Ottolenghi, Emanuele, 374n219 Pate, C. Marvin, 177n54 Paul, 3, 11, 16, 21–23, 25, 37–40, 70–72, 75, 80–87, 90n30, 95n86, 96n90, 101, 103, 111, 121, 124, 127, 129–54, 169–70, 175nn36, 38, 44, 176nn46, 49, 177n54, 178n68, 184–87, 189, 201–2, 212, 216, 224, 230–33, 235–37, 239, 249, 286, 303,

349–51, 355n24, 358n74, 359n83, 363n117 Paul VI, 87n2, 239 Pesch, Rudolf, 357n60 Peter, 76–86, 98n100, 127, 131, 141–44, 170, 171, 174, 177n57, 184, 185, 189, 191, 208, 233, 240, 248–49, 255, 281–82, 343, 359n83 Philips, Gérard, 344 Philo of Alexandria, 267, 308–9; pseudo-, 50 Phinehas, 174n33 Pius XI, 20, 274 Plato, 6, 147, 267, 370n177 Pliny the Elder, 308 Pliny the Younger, 360n95 Plutarchus, 267 Pohlenz, Max, 175n43 Pontius Pilate, 35, 41–43, 53–55, 78, 81, 186, 252, 294, 330 Powell, Mark A., 89n26 Pritz, Ray A., 354nn5, 6, 8 Protagoras, 153 Pufendorf, Samuel von, 323 Rachel, 272 Rasimus, Tuomas, 175n44 Remigius, 90n28 Rensberger, David, 44 Reuben, 45, 118 Rodkinson, Michael L., 363n120 Rosenzweig, 162, 179, 208 Rublev, Andrej, 228 Rudolph, David, 145–47, 149, 175n38, 176n46, 177nn57, 63, 66 Rufeisen, Daniel, 317, 318, 373nn202–4 Ruth, 269–70, 293 Saadia Gaon, 94n85 Said, Edward, 373n214 Samuel, 309 Sanday, William, 357n60 Sanders, Ed P., 131, 155, 157, 159, 162, 173n30, 175n38, 177n65, 178n73, 179nn79, 81, 85

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Name Index

403

Sarah, 272, 381, 383 Schäfer, Peter, 171n18, 300–01 Schechter, Solomon, 171n19 Schelkens, Karim, 375n233 Schiffman, Lawrence H., 177n57 Schneerson, Moses Mendel (Rabbi), 315 Scholem, Gershom, 300, 334, 368n161 Schwartz, Howard, 368n157 Schweizer, Eduard, 155, 178n72 Sechrest, Love L., 175n38 Sedley, David N., 175n43 Shammai, 158, 179n80 Shapiro, Faydra, 316 Shik, Moshe (Maharam), 303 Shimeon (Rabbi), 370n163 Shimeon ben Yohai, 257–58 Shimon Ben Azzai, 311 Shoikhet, A., 13 Sibyl (of Rome), 366n134 Sider Hamilton C., 50–51, 91n44, 92nn50–56 Silas, 132, 355n24 Silberg (justice), 373n205 Silberling, Kay, 203 Simeon (Gospel of Luke), 34, 37, 40, 82–83 Simeon (tribe of Israel), 45, 118 Sinclair, Daniel B., 373n203 Smith, Morton, 173n30 Socrates, 165–66, 242 Solomon, 218, 229, 333 Soloviev, Vladimir, 368n161 Spinoza, Baruch, 62 Stein, Edith, xiii Stern, Sacha, 369n173 Sullivan, Francis A., 377n235 Susanne, 92n44

Tertullian, 91n32, 252, 256, 370n178 Theodoret, 93n74 Theon, 61 Theophylact, 89n21 Thomas (apostle), 254 Thucydides, 267 Tiberius Caesar, 35 Timothy, 131, 176n46, 353n24 Titus, 207, 358n74 Tomson, Peter J., 134, 158 Torrance, David W., 350, 352 Tucker, J.Brian, 175n38

Talley, Thomas J., 366nn125, 127 Tannehill, Robert, 90n30 Tapie, Matthew A., 95n86, 96n90 Tarfon, 172n19 Taylor, Miriam S., 174n32 Telchin, Stan, 11n6, 12n7

Zebulun, 45, 118 Zechariah (father of John the Baptist), 34, 37, 40, 208, 270 Zechariah (prophet), 50–51, 283–84, 287, 289, 367n146 Zephaniah, 276, 299

Unger, Merill F., 367n146 Vattioni, Francesco, 46 Vermes, Geza, 156, 359n87, 360n88, 362n114 Wallace, Cynthia D., 373n211 Ware, Ronald D., 366n126 Weiser, Francis X., 364n126 Weiss, Zeev, 369n173 Wilckens, Ulrich, 357n60 Willebrands, Johannes, 88n3 Wise, Michael, 370n179 Wolfson, Eliot R., 371nn183, 188 Wright, Nicholas T., 68, 89–90n26, 131, 175n38 Wyschogrod, Michael, 173n29, 184, 223 Xerxes, 287 Yochanan ben Zakkai, 152, 162, 178n68, 243 Yoder John H., 348–49, 376n239 Young, Brad, 131

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Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

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Hebrew Bible Gen 1:1–2:3����������������������������������������� 285 1:27������������������������������������������������ 15 1:28 ��������������������������������������������� 308 2:1–3�������������������������������������������� 254 2:2 .���������������������������������������������� 161 3:19���������������������������������������������� 177 6:1������������������������������������������������� 50 9:6–7�������������������������������������������� 311 11:9���������������������������������������������� 269 13:15���������������������������������������������� 39 14:18�������������������������������������������� 228 14:20�������������������������������������������� 228 15:6���������������������������������������������� 153 17:9–10���������������������������������������� 211 22:2 ��������������������������������������������� 359 22:7–8������������������������������������������ 253 22:8���������������������������������������������� 265 22:13�������������������������������������������� 277 22:16 ��������������������������������������������� 96 42:7���������������������������������������������� 342 Exod 4:6������������������������������������������������ 161 12:1���������������������������������������������� 272 13:5���������������������������������������������� 328 19:6���������������������������������������������� 223 19:14–15 309

19:16.������������������������������������������� 268 20:4���������������������������������������������� 304 20:21�������������������������������������������� 366 23:2.��������������������������������������������� 172 23:16�������������������������������������������� 280 24��������������������������������������������������� 47 24:3 ����������������������������������������������� 47 24:4–5������������������������������������������ 297 24:5–8�������������������������������������������� 47 24:7 ��������������������������������������������� 111 24:8���������������������������������������������� 266 24:16.������������������������������������������� 269 29:1–30���������������������������������������� 357 29:12�������������������������������������������� 360 31:16������������������������������������ 177,257 31:17�������������������������������������������� 258 32:14���������������������������������������������� 37 33:1���������������������������������������������� 328 33:13��������������������������������������������� 94 33:19–23�������������������������������������� 282 34:15�������������������������������������������� 142 34:22�������������������������������������������� 280 34:29.������������������������������������������� 282 35–36������������������������������������������ .304 Lev 4:13–14������������������������������������������ 85 5:1–15�������������������������������������������� 85

405

406

Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

8��������������������������������������������������� 357 11:44–45�������������������������������������� 302 14:19�������������������������������������������� 164 15:24–26���������������������������������������� 84 16��������������������������������������������������� 48 16:2–3������������������������������������������ 278 16:5–11���������������������������������������� 278 16:7������������������������������������������������ 48 16:7–10���������������������������������������� . 60 16: 20–22��������������������������������������� 60 16:21:22 ���������������������������������������� 49 17 �������������������������������������������������� 47 17:11���������������������������������������������� 47 21:13���������������������������������������������� 35 23:24�������������������������������������������� 276 23:27�������������������������������������������� 278 23:42–43������������������������������ 280, 281 23:43.������������������������������������������� 281 26������������������������������������������������� 304 26:1���������������������������������������������� 304

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Num 3:38���������������������������������������������� 218 15:20�������������������������������������������� 225 18:27�������������������������������������������� 153 19:1���������������������������������������������� 152 19:6 ����������������������������������������������� 48 24:19�������������������������������������������� 274 25:11–14�������������������������������������� 174 33:52�������������������������������������������� 304 Deut 1:16–17���������������������������������������� 102 4:16���������������������������������������������� 304 5:12–14���������������������������������������� 256 5:12–15���������������������������������������� 260 10:14–16�������������������������������������� 211 13:1������������������������������������������������ 93 16:3���������������������������������������������� 265 16:5–6������������������������������������������ 265 16:9–10���������������������������������������� 268 16:12�������������������������������������������� 264 16:16.������������������������������������������� 280 21:6–8�������������������������������������������� 48 23:22–23�������������������������������������� 152 24:1������������������������������������������������ 90

24:1–4������������������������������������������ 158 27������������������������������������������������� 111 27:1 ��������������������������������������������� 304 27:9–26������������������������������������������ 45 27:12–15�������������������������������������� 118 27:17�������������������������������������������� 357 29:3 ����������������������������������������������� 71 29:13–14�������������������������������������� 117 30:12�������������������������������������������� 172 31:18�������������������������������������������� 288 33:27–34�������������������������������������� 285 Josh 7:11���������������������������������������������� 316 Judg 7:18���������������������������������������������� 276 13:7���������������������������������������������� 310 1 Sam 21:3–6������������������������������������������ 309 2 Sam 7:16������������������������������������������������ 82 8:18���������������������������������������������� 179 20:22�������������������������������������������� 276 1 Kgs 8:41–43���������������������������������������� 229 12:33�������������������������������������������� 281 2 Kgs 19:30–31��������������������������������������������� 75 Ruth 1:6�������������������������������������������������� 37 1:16���������������������������������������������� 269 4:2������������������������������������������������ 358 2 Chr 3:1������������������������������������������������ 359 31:8������������������������������������������������ 37 Ps 2������������������������������������������������� . 274 45:6���������������������������������������������� 274

Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

72������������������������������������������������� 274 80:4���������������������������������������������� 276 110:4�������������������������������������������� 179 113:9�������������������������������������������� 298 118����������������������������������������� 98, 284 118:21–119:1������������������������������� 283 118:22�������������������������������������������� 86 118:26������������������������������������������ 267 146������������������������������������� . 310, 312 146:7�������������������������������������������� 310 Prov 6:1–7�������������������������������������������� 147 Wis 7:25���������������������������������������������� 312 9:6������������������������������������������������ 178

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Isa 8:14������������������������������������������������ 98 11:12�������������������������������������������� 335 12:3���������������������������������������������� 282 25:6–8������������������������������������������ 213 27:13�������������������������������������������� 335 29:10���������������������������������������������� 71 29:18–19�������������������������������������� 161 31:3���������������������������������������������� 310 31:22�������������������������������������������� 297 35:5–6������������������������������������������ 161 37:31–32���������������������������������������� 75 42:1���������������������������������������������� 355 49:3������������������������������������������������ 69 49:5–6�������������������������������������������� 37 52:1–2�������������������������������������������� 69 52:7������������������������������������������������ 69 52:13���������������������������������������������� 69 53:4–5������������������������������������������ 280 53:5������������������������������������������������ 67 53:8������������������������������������������������ 67 53:11���������������������������������������������� 67 54:4–8������������������������������������������ 259 56:7���������������������������������������������� 229 56:8���������������������������������������������� 335 58:9���������������������������������������������� 358 60:18���������������������������������������������� 51 60:21���������������������������������������������� 51

407

61:1���������������������������������������������� 161 66:20�������������������������������������������� 335 Jer 2:2������������������������������������������������ 259 4:4������������������������������������������������ 212 16:15�������������������������������������������� 335 23:3���������������������������������������������� 335 23:8���������������������������������������������� 335 29:14�������������������������������������������� 335 31:33�������������������������������������������� 165 31:4���������������������������������������������� 298 31:8:��������������������������������������������� 335 33:7���������������������������������������������� 335 Ezek 20:34�������������������������������������������� 335 20:41�������������������������������������������� 335 36:24–28�������������������������������������� 355 36:25–28�������������������������������������� 268 36:28�������������������������������������������� 269 36:29–30�������������������������������������� 269 36:33–35���������������������������������������� 51 37:12���������������������������������������������� 51 37:21�������������������������������������������� 335 47:1���������������������������������������������� 218 Hos 2:16–24���������������������������������������� 259 5:10���������������������������������������������� 357 Joel 4:21������������������������������������������������ 53 Amos 9:11������������������������������������������������ 97 9:14–15������������������������������������������ 97 Zeph (Soph) 1:15–16���������������������������������������� 276 2:11������������������������������������������������ 59 3:14–15���������������������������������������� 299 Zech 2:14–15���������������������������������������� 299 6:9–13������������������������������������������ 179

408

Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

8:19�������������������������������������� 287, 288 9:9–10������������������������������������������ 299 14������������������������������������������������� 283 14:1���������������������������������������������� 283 14:1–2������������������������������������������ 283 14:8–9������������������������������������������ 283 14:16–18�������������������������������������� 283

1 Macc 2:27���������������������������������������������� 174 6:44������������������������������������������������ 61 9:10������������������������������������������������ 61 13:4������������������������������������������������ 61

Mal 3:1–4�������������������������������������������� 355

2 Macc 8:21������������������������������������������������ 61

4:5–6�������������������������������������������� 355

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New Testament Matt 1:1–18�������������������������������������������� 11 1:21������������������34, 38–39, 40, 51, 90 2:2�������������������������������������������������� 18 3:11���������������������������������������������� 208 3:13–17���������������������������������������� 207 5:17����������������������109, 155, 157, 165 5:17–19���������������������������������������� 285 5:20�������������������������������������� 119, 320 5:21–22���������������������������������������� 119 5:29���������������������������������������������� 119 5:31–32���������������������������������������� 157 5:32–33���������������������������������������� 119 5:33–35���������������������������������������� 119 9:5–6�������������������������������������������� 167 9:14–15���������������������������������������� 259 9:15���������������������������������������������� 285 9:16���������������������������������������������� 352 10:6������������������������������������������������ 11 10:28���������������������������������������������� 52 11:3���������������������������������������������� 267 11:5���������������������������������������������� 161 12:8���������������������������������������������� 160 13:44�������������������������������������������� 198 13:44–52�������������������������������������� 198 15:24���������������������������������������� 11, 84 15:24–27�������������������������������������� 242 16:6���������������������������������������������� 265 16:18�������������������������������������������� 249 17:1–8������������������������������������������ 281 17:4–5������������������������������������������ 281

18:23�������������������������������������������� 278 18:32–34�������������������������������������� 279 19:3–5������������������������������������������ 158 19:3–9������������������������������������������ 158 19:7–9���������������������������������� 120, 285 19:10�������������������������������������������� 158 19:11–12�������������������������������������� 159 19:12������������������������������������ 308, 371 19:28�������������������������������������������� 207 21:9�������������������������������������� 267, 284 21:12–13�������������������������������������� 229 22:2���������������������������������������������� 285 22:34–40�������������������������������������� 166 23:2–4������������������������������������������ 168 23:16–22�������������������������������������� 159 23:25–26�������������������������������������� 167 23:27–28�������������������������������������� 169 23:35–38���������������������������������������� 51 23:37–39�������������������������������������� 341 23:39�������������������������������������������� 267 24:15–35�������������������������������������� 365 24:27������������������������������������ 219, 339 25:1–13�������������������������������� 285, 362 25:6���������������������������������������������� 259 25:31–40�������������������������������������� 367 25:31–46�������������������������������������� 276 27:11���������������������������������������� 18, 69 27:21–26���������������������������������������� 42 27:24�������������������������������������������� 330 27:25�������������������� 41, 44, 48, 50–52, 57, 61–62, 90

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27:52–53���������������������������������������� 51 28:18�������������������������������������������� 365 28:18–20�������������������������������������� 319 Mark 1:9–11������������������������������������������ 207 1:43–45���������������������������������������� 342 2:10���������������������������������������������� 164 2:18–20���������������������������������������� 259 2:19–20���������������������������������������� 285 2:21���������������������������������������� 352–53 2:23–28�������������������������������� 160, 164 2:27���������������������������������������������� 160 2:28���������������������������������������������� 160 3:1–5�������������������������������������������� 160 3:4������������������������������������������������ 160 7������������������������������������������� 164, 167 7:3–8 ������������������������������������������ 168 7:5������������������������������������������������ 180 7:15���������������������������������������������� 162 7:15–19���������������������������������������� 161 7:19�������������������������������������� 162, 180 7:21–22�������������������������������� 162, 165 8:29–30���������������������������������������� 342 10:2–9������������������������������������������ 158 10:43�������������������������������������������� 357 13:32�������������������������������������������� 336 14������������������������������������������������� 112 14:12�������������������������������������������� 263 14:22�������������������������������������������� 265 14:22–25�������������������������������������� 216 14:23�������������������������������������������� 266 15:2������������������������������������������������ 69 16:2���������������������������������������������� 254 Luke 1:32–33���������������������������������������� 365 1:35���������������������������������������������� 300 1:46–49���������������������������������������� 299 1:53������������������������������������������������ 35 1:54������������������������������������������������ 36 1:54–55������������������������������������������ 33 1:68������������������������������������������������ 34 1:78–79�������������������������������� 270, 292 3:21–23���������������������������������������� 207

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3:23–38������������������������������������������ 11 5:33–35���������������������������������������� 259 5:34–35���������������������������������������� 285 7:19���������������������������������������������� 267 9:28–33���������������������������������������� 281 13��������������������������������������������������� 65 13:15�������������������������������������������� 160 13:17�������������������������������������������� 160 13:34�������������������������������������� 65, 287 13:35�������������������������������������������� 267 14:15�������������������������������������������� 161 22������������������������������������������������� 112 22:15–20�������������������������������������� 216 22:19�������������������������������������������� 265 22:20�������������������������������������������� 266 22:30�������������������������������������������� 213 23:3������������������������������������������������ 69 24:1���������������������������������������������� 254 24:13–35�������������������������������������� 254 24:25–26���������������������������������������� 26 24:27�������������������������������������������� 219 24:30–31�������������������������������������� 114 24:36�������������������������������������������� 254 24:49�������������������������������������������� 255 John 1:1–4�������������������������������������������� 126 1:9���������������������������������������� 270, 292 1:11������������������������������������������� 32,46 1:12���������������������������������������������� 210 1:14���������������������������������������������� 271 1:18�������������������������������������� 126, 306 1:19������������������������������������������������ 83 1:24������������������������������������������������ 55 1:29���������������������������������� 67, 96, 264 1:31������������������������������������������������ 55 1:49������������������������������������������������ 55 2:13������������������������������������������������ 62 2:18–20������������������������������������������ 55 2:19���������������������������������������������� 287 2:19–21���������������������������������������� 271 2:21���������������������������������������������� 287 3:14������������������������������������������������ 69 3:17���������������������������������������������� 276 3:29�������������������������������������� 261, 285

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3:6–7�������������������������������������������� 209 4:21���������������������������������������������� 229 4:22��������������������������55, 85, 222, 229 4:24���������������������������������������������� 229 5:1–17������������������������������������������ 160 5:10������������������������������������������������ 55 5:15–16������������������������������������������ 55 5:17������������������������������ 156, 160, 161 6:51������������������������������������������������ 61 7:1�������������������������������������������������� 55 7:13������������������������������������������������ 55 7:37–38���������������������������������������� 284 8:12���������������������������������������������� 292 8:28������������������������������������������������ 69 8:57–58���������������������������������������� 125 8:58������������������������������������������������ 11 10:11���������������������������������������������� 60 10:22�������������������������������������������� 270 10:36�������������������������������������������� 271 11:8������������������������������������������������ 55 11:45–53���������������������������������������� 57 11:48–52���������������������������������������� 69 11:50���������������������������������������������� 60 12:32���������������������������������������������� 69 13:1–23������������������������������������������ 61 13:31–32���������������������������������������� 69 14:13���������������������������������������������� 69 17:1������������������������������������������������ 69 17:21�������������������������������������������� 343 17:37�������������������������������������������� 365 18:14���������������������������������������� 55, 94 18:31���������������������������������������������� 55 18:33���������������������������������������������� 69 18:33–35���������������������������������������� 55 18:36��������������������������������������������� 55, 18:38–19:1������������������������������� 41, 53 19:3������������������������������������������������ 19 19:4������������������������������������������������ 54 19:5–7�������������������������������������������� 53 19:6������������������������������������������������ 90 19:14–15���������������������������������������� 54 19:19–20���������������������������������������� 11 19:25–27�������������������������������������� 302 19:29���������������������������������������������� 48 19:31���������������������������������������������� 55

19:36�������������������������������������������� 264 19:38���������������������������������������������� 55 20:19������������������������������������ . 55, 254 21:19���������������������������������������������� 69 Acts 1:4������������������������������������������������ 114 1:4–5�������������������������������������������� 255 2����������������������������� 268–69, 293, 364 2:2������������������������������������������������ 268 2:2–8���������������������������������������������� 76 2:3������������������������������������������������ 268 2:5–6�������������������������������������������� 269 2:9–11�������������������������������������������� 76 2:10���������������������������������������������� 269 2:14������������������������������������������������ 83 2:29–36������������������������������������ 77, 84 2:36������������������������������������������ 78, 84 2:37–39������������������������������������ 78, 84 2:41���������������������������������������������� 255 2:46���������������������������������������������� 127 2:47���������������������������������������������� 127 3:1������������������������������������������������ 127 3:12������������������������������������������������ 85 3:12–16������������������������������������������ 78 3:13������������������������������������������������ 84 3:13–15������������������������������������������ 84 3:17����������������������������������������� .79, 84 3:18������������������������������������������������ 26 3:18–21������������������������������������ 79, 84 3:19–21������������������������������������������ 65 4:13–21������������������������������������������ 85 4:5������������������������������������������������ 358 4:5–6���������������������������������������������� 79 4:8–12�������������������������� 79, 84–85, 87 5:12���������������������������������������������� 127 5:13���������������������������������������������� 127 5:42���������������������������������������������� 127 6:7������������������������������������������������ 127 7:51–60������������������������������������������ 85 9:22–23������������������������������������������ 85 10������������������������������������������������� 143 10:11–13������������������������������������� 144 10:44������������������������������������������� 210 10:44–47�������������������������������������� 208

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13:2–3������������������������������������������ 233 13:5���������������������������������������������� 235 13:16–41���������������������������������������� 80 13:17��������������������������������������������� 84, 13:18–22���������������������������������������� 84 13:27–30���������������������������������������� 84 13:30–37���������������������������������������� 84 13:32–33���������������������������������������� 84 13:34–37 �������������������������������� 84, 85 13:37���������������������������������������������� 85 13:39���������������������������������������� 82, 84 13:41���������������������������������������������� 83 13:42–43���������������������������������������� 83 13:46–47���������������������������������������� 83 13:47���������������������������������������������� 84 14:14�������������������������������������������� 233 14:15–18���������������������������������������� 84 14:23�������������������������������������������� 236 15���������������11, 85, 94, 132, 184, 205 15:1���������������������������������������������� 132 15:1–5������������������������������������������ 129 15:1–21���������������������������������������� 127 15:2���������������������������������������������� 358 15:4���������������������������������������������� 358 15:5������������������������������ 127, 129, 132 15:14–18���������������������������������� 82, 85 15:20�������������������������������������������� 142 15:29�������������������������������������������� 142 16������������������������������������������������ .236 16:3�������������������������������������� 176, 355 16:4���������������������������������������������� 358 16:7–9������������������������������������������ 236 16:14�������������������������������������������� 236 17:1���������������������������������������������� 235 17:2–3�������������������������������������������� 26 17:10�������������������������������������������� 235 17:17�������������������������������������������� 235 17:18–31���������������������������������������� 84 17:29–30���������������������������������������� 85 18:4���������������������������������������������� 235 18:5������������������������������������������������ 86 18:5–6�������������������������������������������� 85 18:6���������������������������������������������� 355 18:18�������������������������������������������� 131 18:19�������������������������������������������� 235

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18:26�������������������������������������������� 235 19:2–6������������������������������������������ 235 19:8���������������������������������������������� 235 20:7���������������������������������������������� 214 21:17–26�������������������������������������� 131 21:20������������������������������������ 127, 129 21:20–26�������������������������������� 132–33 21:21�������������������������������������������� 129 21:22���������������������������������������������� 81 21:39�������������������������������������������� 131 22:3���������������������������������������������� 131 23:6�������������������������������������� 131, 235 22:12–22���������������������������������������� 85 23:14�������������������������������������������� 358 24:9������������������������������������������������ 85 25:1–9�������������������������������������������� 85 25:15�������������������������������������������� 358 26:5���������������������������������������������� 131 28:8������������������������������������������������ 90 28:17�������������������������������������������� 133 28:23�������������������������������������������� 349 28:23–28���������������������������������������� 85 28:24�������������������������������������������� 349 28:28�������������������������������������������� 349 28:28–29���������������������������������������� 65 Rom 1:7–8�������������������������������������������� 232 1:18–32������������������������������������ 84–85 2:1–26������������������������������������������ 154 2:21���������������������������������������������� 154 2:26���������������������������������������������� 153 2:28–29���������������������������������������� 212 3:3–4���������������������������������������������� 96 3:27–31��������������������������������������� .154 4 ������������������������������������������������� 153 4:22–25���������������������������������������� 153 6:11–15���������������������������������������� 151 6:13���������������������������������������������� 151 6:14–15���������������������������������������� 151 7:13–14������������������������������������������ 22 8:19���������������������������������������������� 310 9–11��������������������������������������� 93, 232 9:3�������������������������������������������������� 70 9:3–5�������������������������������������������� 111

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412

Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

9:4�������������������������������������������� 16, 72 9:30–33������������������������������������������ 71 10:4���������������������������������������������� 110 10:14–15�������������������������������������� 235 11����������������������������� 16–17, 239, 350 11:1���������������������������������������� 37, 131 11:2���������������������������������������������� . 95 11:2–5�������������������������������������������� 75 11:8������������������������������������������������ 71 11:11���������������������������������������������� 21 11:15������������������������������������ 224, 335 11:16������������������������������ 224, 230–31 11:17�������������������������������������������� 224 11:17–18�������������������������������������� 240 11:18�������������������������������������������� 350 11:25–26���������������������������������� 75, 86 11:32���������������������������������������������� 86 12:12–13�������������������������������������� 232 14������������������������������������������������� 137 14:1–4������������������������������������������ 137 14:2���������������������������������������������� 140 14:2–4������������������������������������������ 139 14:5–6������������������������������������������ 139 14:13�������������������������������������������� 139 14:14������������������������������������� 152–54, 162–63, 177 14:14–23�������������������������������������� 138 14:21–22�������������������������������������� 141 15:15–16�������������������������������� 231–33 15:17–18���������������������������������������� 11 15:25�������������������������������������������� 232 15:25–26�������������������������������������� 231 15:25–27�������������������������������������� 231 15:27�������������������������������������������� 232 16:25–26�������������������������������������� 176 1 Cor 1:2������������������������������������������������ 232 1:10���������������������������������������������� 112 1:23���������������������������������������� 86, 136 1:24���������������������������������������������� 136 3:6–7�������������������������������������������� 235 5:6–8�������������������������������������������� 365 5:7–8�������������������������������������������� 264 7:17���������������������������������������������� 134

7:17–18���������������������������������������� 201 7:17–20���������������������������������������� 134 7:18–19���������������������������������������� 132 7:19�������������������������������������� 121, 134 8��������������������������������������������������� 142 9��������������������������������������������������� 149 9:19–23���������������������������������������� 145 9:20��������������������������������������� .148–49 9:21���������������������������������������������� 149 11:17–32�������������������������������������� 221 11:23–26�������������������������������������� 216 11:26�������������������������������������������� 282 12:21�������������������������������������������� 303 15:25�������������������������������������������� 365 16:1���������������������������������������������� 231 2 Cor 1:1������������������������������������������������ 232 8:4������������������������������������������ 231–32 8:19���������������������������������������������� 358 9:1������������������������������������������������ 231 Gal 1:19���������������������������������������������� 131 2��������������������������������������������������� 137 2:3������������������������������������������������ 129 2:7–8�������������������������������������������� 249 2:8���������������������������������������� 233, 354 2:11–14�������������������������������� 141, 221 2:14�������������������������������������� 129, 143 3:23���������������������������������������������� 147 3:28������������������������������������������������ 25 4:1–7�������������������������������������� 148–49 4:4–5�������������������������������������� 148–49 4:10–11���������������������������������������� 150 4:21���������������������������������������������� 150 4:23–26���������������������������������������� 150 5:2���������������������������������������� 134, 201 5:3������������������������������������������������ 135 5:3–11������������������������������������������ 134 5:4������������������������������������������������ 135 5:6����������������������������������������� 121,169 5:9������������������������������������������������ 225 5:11���������������������������������������� 135–36 5:18���������������������������������������������� 147

Index of Scripture, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

6:12–15���������������������������������������� 129 6:15���������������������������������������������� 121

4:15–16��������������������������������������� .225 4:14–10:25����������������������������������� 173 5:1������������������������������������������������ 357 7:11–12���������������������������������������� 222 7:12���������������������������������������������� 226 7:26–27���������������������������������������� 222 9:12–14���������������������������������������� 227 9:13������������������������������������������������ 49 9:17–22������������������������������������������ 49 9:24–26.��������������������������������������� 279 10:1���������������������������������������������� 219 10:8–10���������������������������������������� 219 10:11–14��������������������������������������� .50 14:15–16�������������������������������������� 225

Eph 1:4�������������������������������������������������� 59 1:10�������������������������������������� 260, 285 1:15���������������������������������������������� 232 1:22������������������������������������������������ 59 2:14���������������������������������������������� 136 2:14–16���������������������������������������� 352 3:8�������������������������������������������������� 38 3:10������������������������������������������������ 38 4:7������������������������������������������������ 236 4:11–12�������������������������������� 232, 236 5:25–27���������������������������������������� 286 Col 1:2������������������������������������������������ 232 1:18������������������������������������������������ 59 1:19–20������������������������������������������ 28 1:20���������������������������������������������� 285 1:21���������������������������������������������� 232 1:27���������������������������������������������� 234 2:11–12���������������������������������������� 211 3:11���������������������������������������������� 121 4:12���������������������������������������������� 232 1 Thess 1:9�������������������������������������������������� 84

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Titus 3:5������������������������������������������������ 207 Heb 1:2���������������������������������������� 350, 365 2:17������������������������������������������ 39–40

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1 Pet 1:14–15���������������������������������������� 302 2:7–8���������������������������������������������� 98 Jas 1:18���������������������������������������������� 231 Rev 1:5������������������������������������������������ 365 1:6������������������������������������������������ 357 5:1–7�������������������������������������������� 264 7:13–14��������������������������������������� .369 19:16�������������������������������������������� 365 19:7���������������������������������������������� 260 19:7–9������������������������������������������ 285 20:6���������������������������������������������� 335 21:14�������������������������������������������� 264 21:2�������������������������������������� 262, 285 22:17�������������������������������������� 285–86 25:1–13���������������������������������������� 285

Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha Enoch (First book of) 9:1–12 ������������������������������������������������ 50 Jubilees (Book of) 33:20������������������� 179

4 Macc 17:10��������������������������������������������������� 61 20:2����������������������������������������������������� 61

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About the Author

Fr. Antoine Lévy was born in Paris in 1962 and raised in a Jewish, nonreligious but fervently Zionist home. He discovered Christian faith while studying Philosophy and Ancient Greek at the Sorbonne, at the École Normale Supérieure (St. Cloud) and at Moscow State University. After receiving Baptism into the Catholic Church, he entered the Dominican Order in 1990. He wrote a PhD in Dogmatics and Patristics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He was appointed as the director of the Studium Catholicum, a Dominican cultural center located in Helsinki, Finland, in 2004. He taught theology and history of ideas at the Faculty of Theology of Helsinki University (adjunct-professor) and at the School of Theology of the Eastern University of Finland (strategic professor and adjunct-professor). In 2009, he and Rabbi Mark Kinzer launched the “Helsinki Consultation,” an annual international gathering of theologians of Jewish descent. He became a member of the Dialogue Group between the Catholic Church and Messianic Judaism in 2012. He is currently involved in a new global organization, Yachad be Yeshua, that aims to connect believers in Christ of Jewish descent regardless of their ecclesial affliations. He is the author of a large number of articles, among others, regarding Jewish issues in Russia and the State of Israel. He is currently established in Jerusalem and researching on the Jewish dimension of Edith Stein’s philosophical thought.

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About the Author

BOOKS Le créé et l´incréé, Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d´Aquin, « Bibliothèque Thomiste, » (2006), Paris Editions Vrin. The Architecture of the Cosmos: St. Maximus the Confessor, New Perspectives, Levy Antoine, Annala Pauli, Hallamaa Olli (eds.), Schriften der Luther-AgricolaGesellschaft 69 (2015), Luther-Agricola-Gesellschaft.

RELEVANT ARTICLES

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“Mais quand même . . ., A.I. Soljenitsine et la question juive,” Revue des Etudes Slaves 75 (2004), Paris. “Messianic Judaism; A Catholic Assessment Journal of Mission Theology 14 (2014), Helsinki. “Supersessionism and Messianic Judaism, A response to Matthew Levering,” Mishkan 74 (2015), Jerusalem. « Lien de chair, Edith Stein et le nazisme, » Revue théologique des Bernardins 14 (2015), Paris. “Kann christliche Philosophie jüdisch sein?” Edith Stein Jahrbuch 24 (2018), Würzburg, “Halakha and Salvation: A Catholic approach to post-postmissionary Messianic Judaism” (2018), Mishkan 79, Jerusalem. “La mission dominicaine ad Judeos reconsidérée,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 103 (2019), Sankt Ottilien. “Tractatio theologico-politica: Palestinian suffering and the offcial Catholic teaching on the State of Israel,” in Roman Catholics and the Land: Israel and Palestine, Gavin d’Costa ed., Catholic University Press of America.