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What do we think about
The Nazarene ?
One of America's foremost rabbis and authors, Dr. Milton Steinberg, rabbi of
the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, has written a provocative expression of
the Jewish viewpoint on Jesus in his new book, "Judaism." published during the
Rosh Hashonuh week by Harcourt. Brace and Company. One chapter is reprinted
here by special permission of the publishers Tut Editor.
By RABBI MILTON STEINBERC
What do Jews think of Jesus?
The query is unanswerable for the reason that there is no
one Jesus but many, according to the number of churches in
Christendom. But let us circumvent the impasse by recast
ing our question. Let us ask: ‘‘What do Jews think of the
Jesus of the Gospels?”
Let us take the Gospel story as it stands, strain out of it the
episodes that relate of wonderworking, and then ask what
Judaism has to say of the Jesus who emerges, who is inci-
dently the Jesus of many liberal Christians. To Jews, that
Jesus appears as an extraordinarily beautiful and noble spirit,
aglow with love and pity for men, especially for the unfor
tunate and lost, deep in piety, of keen insight into human
nature, endowed with a brilliant gift of parable, an ardent Jew
moreover, a firm believer on the faith of his people; all in all,
a dedicated teacher of the principles, religious and ethical, of
Judaism.
But is he not something more than a teacher? Should he
not be taken for a moral prophet also, one who promulgated
new, higher, hitherto unknown principles of conduct? Not if
the record is examined objectively. The signal fact about
Jesus is that except for some relatively unimportant details,
he propounded no ethical doctrine in which Jewish Tradition
had not anticipated him. Indeed what he taught was the Jew
ish Tradition as he received it from Scripture and the sages.
For every principle he preached, for every many of the epi
grams and parables he struck off. Biblical or rabbinic precedent
exists. The very phrases of the Sermon on the Mount can be
paralleled one by one from the Jewish devotional literature of
his time.
Nor is it at all true that Jesus introduced the concepts of
love and compassion into Judaism that knew stern justice only.
No one who considers the Old Testament can fail to perceive
that ages before the Nazarene was born, mercy and love had
been conceived in Israel and accepted as authentic and su
preme virtues. Anyone who studies rabbinic literature will
discover that the ideal of humaneness preached bv Jesus, far
from being peculiar to him. was the common aspiration of all
good souls in his people and time.
This is not to deny Jesus’ originality. His was an unex
celled gift for allegory, a genius for incisive utterance, a skill
for bringing into sharp focus that which is perceived, but as
through a glass, darkly. He had great talents as a synthesizer,
a collector into organic unity of the disjointed members of a
truth. And always there is his own personality, a superb
achievement in his own right. All this is originality, but,
except for the man himself, on a secondary or derivative plane.
It consists not in creatio ex nihilo but in rearranging and fur
nishing that which is already acknowledged. The moral
prophet, however, is an innovator, proclaiming a hitherto un
suspected verity. By this definition, Jesus, whatever else he
may have been, was no prophet. As was admitted, indeed, by
Julius Wellhausen, well-known Christian Bible authority,
when he said: “Jesus was not a Christian; he was a Jew. He
did not preach a new faith.”
He would seem to have claimed to be the Messiah foretold
by the prophets as the inaugurator (Please turn to page 13)
Both Christianity and Judaism
agree on the values the Bible can im
part in directing man on “the right
way, illustrated in this cartoon in
connection with “National Bible
Week.'' sponsored October 20-26 by
the Layman s National Committee.
Both faiths are agreed on the price
less comfort the Book of Books can
share to respective adherents u-ho
turn to it with a sincere desire for
guidance.
GO)
The Southern Israelite