The Christ of Judaism

Jesus was a Jew. This rudimentary fact about the Son of Man is often overlooked by Christians, who are habitually prone to emphasize the differences rather than the similarities between their religion and Judaism. In Jesus of Nazareth: The Hidden Years (Morrow; $4), French Historian Robert Aron, who is a Jew, tries to show how deep was the influence of Israel and its religion on Jesus during his formative years. Aron's discursive, imaginative biographical essay has been praised by such Christians as France's President Charles de Gaulle (a Roman Catholic) and Albert Schweitzer (a Protestant).

Between the time the Holy Family settled in Nazareth and Christ's baptism at the age of 30, the New Testament records only one incident in the life of Jesus: his visit, at the age of twelve, to the Temple in Jerusalem, where he spent three days in conversation with the rabbis, astounding them with his learning. But Aron argues that Jesus was presumably brought up like any other boy of Biblical times; by understanding the nature of that childhood training, Christians can better understand the human personality of the man they worship as the Son of God.

Misled by Metaphor. Jesus' roughhewn peasant tongue was Aramaic, a language akin to classical Hebrew. The peculiar quality of Aramaic forced Jesus to think in certain ways. Unlike Greek or Latin, it has few specific words to express philosophic concepts; most abstract ideas can only be suggested by concrete metaphors, which have often been misinterpreted in translation. When Jesus, for example, used the phrase from Mosaic law, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," it did not mean--as untutored readers of the King James version might assume--that justice demands violent revenge for violent crime. "This would be contrary to the Jewish law of loving one's neighbor as one's self and having mercy on one's enemy," Aron points out. "It is a typically Semitic metaphor meaning that there is an appropriate punishment for every crime."

Jesus' parents were devout Jews, who probably had a mezuzah (a roll of parchment containing an ancient Hebrew prayer known as the Shema) on the doorpost of their modest home in Nazareth and kept a kosher kitchen. "We may deduce," Aron says, "that Jesus observed the dietary laws." Aron believes that Mary probably put tzitzit, or fringes on the child's coat, in obedience to an injunction in Deuteronomy, and that Joseph taught him the carpenter's trade. "Just as it is necessary to feed one's son," says the Talmud, "so it is necessary to teach him a manual trade."

Empty Chair. If they were devout, Jesus' parents brought him up to recite the benedictions and prayers prescribed for certain hours of the Hebrew day, and sent him to the synagogue for the study of Hebrew and the Law. Perhaps, Aron suggests, it was at the family's Passover seder, when an empty chair is placed at the table in case Elijah should come, that Christ first learned about the Messiah, and wondered about his own mission. Aron claims that much of the Lord's Prayer paraphrases the old Aramaic prayer, the Kaddish, which Jesus undoubtedly learned and absorbed as a youth. Even the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are a direct reflection of common Jewish beliefs that Jesus could have heard from the rabbis at the Nazareth synagogue. "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy" might well have reminded Christ's listeners of another rabbinical text: "If any man pities another, God will pity him."

Aron believes that Jesus got this thorough Scriptural training from the Pharisees, whom he was later to criticize for their hardness of heart. Among the various schools of rabbinical interpretation, the Pharisees were the most meticulous in their performance of ritual, the most liberal in their interpretation of the law. Like Christ, they preached a doctrine of love for all men, gentile as well as Jew. Like Christ also, they attempted to stand aside from Israel's political ferment; "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's" is a teaching in accord with tradition of the Pharisees. Aron believes that the doctors with whom Christ spent three days in discussion at Jerusalem were Pharisees, who were traditionally of lower-class origin themselves and more likely than other rabbis to receive the son of a carpenter. A literary form often employed by Christ, the parable, was a method of teaching also used by the Pharisees.

The Mission. Christ appeared at a time in human history when Israel was an occupied land, and Jewish spirituality was being subtly corrupted by Greek rationalism; it was thus perfectly natural that Jesus should reject as much as he borrowed from the Judaism he grew up in. As a Jew, Aron does not accept Christ's divinity, but does believe that he had a divinely inspired mission--a mission to the pagan world, rather than to Israel. Judaism, which thought of the world as a sacred place dedicated to God, could never have conquered the pragmatic gentile mind, which saw the world as profane and spoiled. Christianity could offer the Greek and Latin people a miracle that brought the sacred back into the profane, the miracle of a God who became man. It was Israel, says Aron, that discovered the One God; it was a carpenter's son from Nazareth, trained in the lore and law of Judaism, who gave that God to the world.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.