An Edition of the Christian Bible Edited Entirely by Jews

I confess that I am among those Jews about whom Professors Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler write in the introduction to their recently published The Jewish Annotated New Testament who tend to “believe that any annotated New Testament is aimed at persuasion, if not conversion.” My experience with Christian missionaries and proselytizers of all sorts has made it very difficult for me to see the Christian Bible as anything other than a tool for persuading me to give up my own religious tradition as obsolete at best. I realize this is not rational. The book is a book, nothing more; it’s the Christians who have tried to put the book in my hand or who have brought quotes from it to prove to me the error of my ways who deserve the suspicion and distrust that I feel. Nonetheless, like any irrational belief, this one has been hard to shake, and I have tried, even assigning portions of the New Testament in one of my literature classes as a way of forcing myself to read it. I read it; I taught it; but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I have not picked the text up again.

I am thinking about this because The Jewish Annotated New Testament got a write-up in The New York Times this weekend, and it seems that even Jewish Biblical scholars have developed the habit of not dealing with the Christian holy book in their work. As Mark Oppenheimer, the article’s author writes:

As any visitor to the book expo at the [American Academy of Religion] conference discovered, there is a glut of Bibles and Bible commentaries. One of the exhibitors, Zondervan, publishes hundreds of different Bibles, customized for your subculture, niche or need. Examples include a Bible for those recovering from addiction; the Pink Bible, for women “who have been impacted by breast cancer”; and the Faithgirlz! Bible, about which the publisher writes: “Every girl wants to know she’s totally unique and special. This Bible says that with Faithgirlz! sparkle!”

Nearly all these Bibles are edited by and for Christians. The Christian Bible comprises the Old and New Testaments, so editors offer a Christian perspective on both books. For example, editors might add a footnote to the story of King David, in the Old Testament books I and II Samuel, reminding readers that in the New Testament, David is an ancestor of Jesus.

Jewish scholars have typically been involved only with editions of the Old Testament, which Jews call the Hebrew Bible or, using a Hebrew acronym, the Tanakh. Of course, many curious Jews and Christians consult all sorts of editions, without regard to editor. But among scholars, Christians produce editions of both sacred books, while Jewish editors generally consult only the book that is sacred to them. What’s been left out is a Jewish perspective on the New Testament — a book Jews do not consider holy but which, given its influence and literary excellence, no Jew should ignore.

He is, of course, correct. No Jew should ignore the New Testament, especially for the irrational reasons that have led me to do so for most of my life, and so it is nice to know that an edition of that text now exists which uses as an editorial and critical framework a perspective that counts me as an insider.

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.

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12 Responses to An Edition of the Christian Bible Edited Entirely by Jews

  1. gin-and-whiskey says:

    “Jewish scholars have typically been involved only with editions of the Old Testament, which Jews call the Hebrew Bible”

    Huh? Has someone renamed the Torah?

    Actually, the use of the term Old/New testament is frowned upon insofar as it implies that the Torah was properly replaced. The christian bible is (from a Jewish perspective) not a replacement for the torah, which (from a Jewish perspective) remains the only book of God.

    And of course there’s this:

    What’s been left out is a Jewish perspective on the New Testament — a book Jews do not consider holy but which, given its influence and literary excellence, no Jew should ignore.

    Yes. But strange though this may seem, something tells me that the “Jesus was a false prophet” and “Jesus was not the son of God” perspective may not be a popular one. So Jews have probably been wise to avoid commentary.

    Methinks this article (not yours, but the cited one) wasn’t written from a jewish perspective ;)

  2. G&W:

    Huh? Has someone renamed the Torah?

    No, but Hebrew Bible has become a term that people use to avoid confusion with the fact that the term Torah technically only refers to the Five Books of Moses and leaves out the Prophets (N’viim) and Writings (K’tuvim). Hebrew Bible, in other words, is a way of saying Tanakh–the acronym that stands for all three of those parts–in English, without having to rely on the old/new testament distinction that problems with which you so rightly point out above.

  3. Emily says:

    I grew up reform and did not know that there was anything other than the Torah until I was in law school and took a class on the Book of Job co-taught by a law professor and the campus rabbi (it was 3rd year and I was sick of law school). My friend who grew up conservative was rather confounded that I didn’t even know of the existence of the Tanakh.

    In my defense, or in partial defense of my reform religious education, I knew that there were parts of Jewish history/tradition that were not in the Torah. I knew that the story of Hannukah and Purim and other holidays were not in the Torah. I assumed they were in the Haftorah which I knew about because every Bar/Bat Mitzvah had a Torah portion and a Haftorah portion. But I didn’t really know what the Haftorah was (and still actually don’t know if it’s co-extensive with the other “books” of the Tanakh).

    It was a kind of weird situation (the Book of Job class) because I learned that a lot of kind of “famous” bible passages (mostly from the Psalms) that I associated with Christianity are actually in the Hebrew bible. I had never heard them in temple or studied them as part of my (admittedly pretty terrible) Jewish education. I thought of them as Christian/New Testiment, but they’re actually not. It was an interesting discovery.

  4. JutGory says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman:

    Hebrew Bible, in other words, is a way of saying Tanakh–the acronym that stands for all three of those parts–in English, without having to rely on the old/new testament distinction that problems with which you so rightly point out above.

    Yes, except that Tanakh =/= Old Testament. The Old Testament contains a different set of books (or, if I am correct, has a subset of books that make up the Tanakh). Put another way, there are books in the Old Testament that do not appear in the Tanakh. And, different Christian sects disagree about what those books are.

    -Jut

  5. JutGory,

    I know and that is precisely the point. When I was growing up, old testament was the only term I ever heard and so it was the term used to refer to the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew Bible did not come into usage until later. I wasn’t suggesting the two are equivalent, just that one more accurate term replaced another less accurate one.

  6. chingona says:

    @ Emily … a lot of songs and prayers, even in Reform services, are built off of lines from psalms. They hide in plain sight.

  7. chingona says:

    But strange though this may seem, something tells me that the “Jesus was a false prophet” and “Jesus was not the son of God” perspective may not be a popular one. So Jews have probably been wise to avoid commentary.

    I’ve never cared for the smell of burning flesh, particularly my own.

  8. Shoshie says:

    Emily- Haftarot are selections from Prophets.

  9. nm says:

    I highly recommend Amy-Jill Levine’s book The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus which came out in 2007. It’s a scholarly but popularly-written look at why most of the Jews at the time of Jesus didn’t believe he was Messiah and didn’t consider themselves “lost” and in need of “saving,” and at how a lot of the supposedly new teachings attributed to Jesus predated him and were popular among Jews (especially rabbinic Jews = Pharisees) at the time. (It was praised by reviewers, but ignored by most of the Christians who could have used the lessons.) I haven’t seen the annotated NT discussed in the article, but since Levine was one of the annotators I assume it’s pretty good.

  10. I’ve been going with “the Jewish Bible” and “the Christian Bible”. Is that problematic?

  11. Sebastian says:

    Pfff… believers are so self-centered. The ‘Christian’ and ‘Jewish’ bible, right. Let me guess, by ‘Christian’ you mean ‘Protestant’.

    The Jews from Eleda, who were the first to use words that sounded like ‘bible’, meant a particular translation, the Septuagint. For about three hundred years, that was the only ‘Bible’. Since, everyone has used the word to mean their favorite version of their particular set of fairy tales.

    Every sect has its own bible. For example, the Greek Orthodox Bible includes a lot of books that Protestants poo-poo on, and the Slavs have their own, despite being Eastern Orthodox themselves. And no, it is not just different translations, although it started like that. I have personally perused three very different versions of christian bibles – neither was mine, all were in English, despite the owners being French, Slovak and American, respectively.

    There are christian bibleS. If you think that only the annotations are substantially different, you need to get out more.

  12. Stentor says:

    The book is a book, nothing more; it’s the Christians who have tried to put the book in my hand or who have brought quotes from it to prove to me the error of my ways who deserve the suspicion and distrust that I feel.

    I think your suspicion of the book itself is actually justified. Significant portions of the New Testament are explicitly written to make an argument that Jesus fulfills the narrative begun by the Torah and the predictions of the Prophets, and therefore if you believe in those you should accept Jesus as the messiah. (And there’s further subtext on that point as well.)

    If I ever get time to do any pleasure reading, the book @nm suggests sounds interesting. Years ago I finally sat down to read my Bible all the way through instead of relying on the readings organized into the liturgical calendar at church. What was striking to me, and contributed to giving up on Christianity, was how *little* the Old Testament foreshadowed the New, despite having been told the opposite all my church-going life.

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