How a nineteenth century rabbi boldly demonstrated that he could harmonize Christianity with Judaism

(This takes four minutes to read.)

It remains my contention that someone with a good grasp of Judaism, and especially first-century Judaism in particular, can spot details in the Gospels that ordinary gentile readers would be likely to overlook. At least half of the canonic Gospels show signs of Jewish authorship, even if many popular Christian traditions today are alien to Judaism.

The Jewish Annotated New Testament (which I heartily recommend to any serious Christian, by the way) is presently the most up-to-date example of Jewish scholars analysing the New Testament in a manner that is neither polemical nor proselytic. Historically speaking, though, this type of effort goes back to at least the nineteenth century. Rabbi Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik was a very well educated scholar who proposed some interesting and bold interpretations of the New Testament:

His most popular work, Qol Qore, a commentary on the Synoptic Gospels of Mark and Matthew (his commentary on Luke has not survived), was written over the course of about a decade and, it has been claimed, was the first modern Jewish commentary on the New Testament written by neither a convert to Christianity nor a polemicist against it.¹³

Qol Qore is distinctive also as a commentary, written in Hebrew, by a rabbinic insider who believed that he could prove, by means of classical rabbinic sources, that Judaism and Christianity do not stand in a relationship of mutual contradiction.

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Commenting on the history of idolatry that Maimonides gives in chapter one of his “Laws of Idolatry,” Soloveitchik writes: “Our teacher [Maimonides] brings proof from Jeremiah that[,] even when Jeremiah was rebuking Israel for abandoning G-d and going after other gods of wood and stone, he said that all nations know that G-d alone is one; they only err by elevating those whom G-d himself has elevated.” This is a fairly close and conventional reading of Maimonides’s text.

Less conventionally, however, Soloveitchik repeats it many times, in his commentary on the Gospels, in order to correct Jews who think that Christianity maintains that Jesus is G-d. He designates the Trinity—the concept of one G-d in three Persons—a “great mystery,” thus accepting the doctrine as monotheistic. If even ancient idolaters, as Jeremiah said, knew that G-d was one, then certainly those in antiquity who had been exposed to Israelite monotheism must have known so. Therefore, Soloveitchik concludes, Christianity is not rightly classified as a form of idolatry.

[…]

Among the more vexing dimensions of the Synoptic Gospels is Jesus’s claim to be the Jewish messiah. A dominant theme in Jewish criticism of the Gospels has been that Jesus does not meet the criteria. Maimonides’s “Laws of Kings and their Wars,” where he delineates the criteria for recognizing the messiah, is often cited, and the result has been a widespread belief among Jews that Jesus belongs to the line of false messiahs that commenced before his day and has continued into modern times.²⁴

Rather than classify Jesus as a false or failed messiah—or as the mashiach ben Yosef rather than the mashiach ben David—Soloveitchik maintains that the essential vocation of the messiah is to teach the fundamental lesson of Judaism, which Maimonides held to be the oneness of G-d.²⁵

Thus, in regard to almost every reference to the messiah in Mark and Matthew, Soloveitchik comments on Jesus’s success in expounding the oneness of G-d to his Jewish compatriots and then, through the ministry of St. Paul, spreading that good news to the gentiles.

In at least one place, Soloveitchik clearly denies that Jesus (Yeshuah) is the messiah and argues that most readers have misconstrued Matthew 24:5 (“For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will mislead many”). Commenting on this verse, Soloveitchik writes:

Many will come in my name—there are those who say that Yeshua cautioned them not to be mistaken if a man comes in his name and says that he is the Messiah, that he may not mislead them. However, the meaning of this verse is difficult, for how is it possible that a man would come in the name of Yeshua and make himself out to be the Messiah? Who would believe that Yeshua sent him? And what does he mean by saying, “many will come in my name”? This is the meaning: Yeshua told them that many would come in his name claiming that he [Yeshua] was the Messiah, and by this they will mislead many. Therefore, what he is really saying is, “I am giving you distinct signs [concerning] when the Messiah comes.”

Rather than himself being the messiah, Jesus spreads the belief in divine unity that is the prerequisite to the messiah’s coming. The extent of Jesus’s success in doing so makes him a messianic figure (a spiritual mashiach ben Joseph, perhaps) but not the final messiah who will come to redeem Israel.

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The topic of Jewish conversion to Christianity is notable in Soloveitchik’s project by its absence. His project is to show that Christianity and Judaism have a common cause. As I read it, Soloveitchik’s New Testament commentary is a text for Jews seriously considering Christian claims, however they have been exposed to them, but also for Christians who have been taught to believe that Judaism is an inferior religion and thus that emancipated Jews should become Christians.

This second aim may explain in part why Soloveitchik published his commentary in French, German, and Polish before publishing the Hebrew original. His work essentially argues that the attempt to convert Jews to the “true religion” is ill conceived, not because Christianity is false but because both Christianity and Judaism are true religions.

The rabbinic materials that he brings to bear in his commentary serve each community differently. For the Jew, they enable conception of the New Testament as a part of Torah. For the Christian, they enable a fuller understanding of Christianity. I think that Soloveitchik hoped to convince the Christian reader that, without viewing them through the rabbinic lens, the Gospels cannot be properly understood. For its truth to be discernible, then, Christianity requires of its believers and interpreters a knowledge not only of biblical but also of rabbinic Judaism.

(Emphasis added. I can share more if anybody be interested.)