Jesus Christ – ever a Jew … (12/25/18)
First and foremost, it is critical to remember that Jesus was a Jew – born of Jewish parents, brought up in a Jewish home, raised in a Jewish community, and immersed in Jewish traditions. He lived among Jews, he developed relationships primarily with Jews, and his followers were mostly Jews. Per Jewish custom he was circumcised on the 8th day after his birth (Luke 2:21), his mother observed Jewish post-childbirth purification rituals (proscribed in Leviticus 12 – see Luke 2:22-24), and his family traveled to Jerusalem with him every year to celebrate the Passover (Luke 2:41). Jesus openly participated in the Jewish cleansing ritual (the Mikvah) at the commencement of his ministry (see Matthew 3:13-16, Mark 1:9-11, & Luke 3:21-23), his encouraged form of prayer resembled standard Jewish cadences (a la Matthew 6:8-13 & Luke 11:2-4), and he wore fringes on his mantle as required by Jewish law (proscribed by Numbers 15:37 & Deuteronomy 22:12 – see Matthew 9:20, Matthew 14:36, Mark 5:25, & Luke 8:44 et al). Jesus taught in synagogues (see Matthew 4:23, Mark 1:21, Luke 4:14-20, & John 18:20), engaged rabbis in religious discourse (see Matthew 12:1-14 & Luke 2:41-52 et al), and openly respected the Jewish holy days and religious festivals (including Sukkot in John 7, Hanukkah in John 10, and Passover in Matthew 26 et al). Indeed, Jesus boldly believed that the Torah was divinely inspired and to be wholeheartedly revered – using its words to refute Satan’s temptations in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11), claiming that its contents “cannot be annulled” (John 10:35), referring to its Scriptures as containing both “the commandment(s) of God” (Matthew 15:3) and “the word of God” (Mark 7:13), and – as has been mentioned earlier – brazenly stating that “not even a single stroke of a single letter will pass from the Law until all has been fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18) … Finally, contrary to popular misconception, even at the very end of his ministry Jesus was not killed for denying his Jewishness or for repudiating Jewish regulations or for committing blasphemy1. No, Jesus was crucified – a form of execution reserved for disobedient slaves or political rebels – between two fellow seditionists (between two fellow rebels, or lestas in Mark 15:27 – Strong’s #3027; a Greek term often poorly translated as “bandits” or “thieves”) as an enemy of the Roman state. Yes, the Jewish Sanhedrin were a primary emotional force behind his public downfall, and yet not because Jesus was denouncing their religion, but rather because he was loudly calling for its cleansing. He believed that his mission was first & foremost designed to awaken and save “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24), he commissioned seventy of his disciples to go forth first & foremost and attempt to awaken and save the same (Matthew 10:5-6), and he even entered the Temple itself on at least two occasions to cleanse it of the religious greed & dogmatic immorality that were festering therein (see the first of those symbolic purifications in John 2:13-16, and the second thereof in Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-19, & Luke 19:45-48). Indeed, Jesus was so well-versed in the Scriptures and so sound in his understanding of Love that he stunned priests and layman alike by teaching “as one who had authority, not as the scribes” (see Matthew 7:29, Mark 1:22, & Luke 4:32 – as well as John 7:46). In short, Jesus was reviled by the Jewish priesthood not because he denounced Judaism, but rather because he was a true & pure champion of the Jewish Law – and thus a very real threat to those Jewish religious elite who were profiting from the corruption of the same.
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1It is important to realize that Jesus was in no way the first Jew to ever even indirectly claim to be the Messiah (even though he never intended to claim the same). Just as important to understand is the fact that openly making such a claim was not an offense for which Jesus could have been executed. The Gospels seem to intimate that Jesus was condemned to die for blasphemy (see Matthew 9:3 & Matthew 26:65 et al), and yet the sin of blasphemy only occurred when a person either openly cursed God’s sacred name or claimed to have authorities or powers that were God’s alone. And at no point did Jesus ever come close to doing either – repeatedly giving all honor to God and repeatedly deflecting all praise away from himself throughout his ministry. Indeed, when Jesus was asked to summarize the Torah (see Matthew 22:37-40), he did so in the most Jewish of ways – first citing the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:5-6) as the first & most important Commandment and then quoting from Leviticus 19:18 to provide the 2nd, the latter elegantly reflecting the similarly inclined summation of the Law long since provided by the great & well-respected Rabbi Hillel himself.
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