On “In the Shadow of the Temple” by Oskar Skarsaune *****

Oskar Skarsaune has made a career of studying the intersection of Judaism with early Christianity. Having read his very good edited collection on the subject, I came to this work with some mixed expectations. I didn't figure Skarsaune could match that book's specificity and caution, but on the other hand, this was after all the guy who put together that other work. I wasn't really disappointed. Granted, this work is definitely more of an introduction to the subject and more basic, but there was still plenty I learned.

The first part of the book serves as a familiar rehearsal of the Jewish culture of the time—the geography of Jerusalem, Hellinistic influences, the major sects. The second part introduces the Christian element and how it interacted, as a Jewish sect, with other Jewish people.

In the third part, Skarsaune provides both some of the most interesting and least interesting material. It focused largely on Christian dogma and its relation to the Jewish elements from which it derived. There is a discussion of the process of Jewish canonization, with strong arguments for why it happened long before the academy of Jamnia. But the section also discusses how some of the Christian church ended up accepting the Apocrypha, while some did not. He then explores Christology, the holy spirit (lowercase, as per pre-Trinity understanding), and baptism, which are generally less interesting sections. That said, perhaps I'd have found the baptism section more interesting if I hadn't read earlier so much on the subject of how Christian baptism came to be and how it was different from the Jewish concept. The sections on liturgical practice come next, with special care taken with regard to the Christian calendar. One chapter in this regard was maddening, the next enlightening. Skarsaune notes that the Jewish fall festivals had no meaning for Christians and thus dropped out of use, while the spring festivals were reinterpreted for the Messianic life. In the next chapter, he admits that some Christians continued to observe the fall festivals and posits a reason—namely, that most Christian believers had been Godfearers (that is, Jewish sympathizers) if not Jewish themselves. Strangely, the clergy, however, ended up on the other side of this debate and really pushed to make people stop “Judaizing.” Also of interest: The need for Christ-centered holidays to round out the year (since all the holidays were in the spring) eventually led to the adoption of Christmas, in Skarsaun's view, finishing also the observance of the life of Christ (i.e., his birth, in addition to his resurrection).

Much of the book is given over to the typology of the temple in Christian practice. It feels as if Skarsaune set out to write a book on that subject and then was asked to do something more introductory, so most of the temple discussion falls in boxes at the end of each chapter. I could have seen a book on just that subject, but it likely would have had a smaller audience. Extensive suggested further reading also comes at the end of each chapter, which could prove useful for folks wanting to know more about a particular subject Skarsaune covers.

On "Jewish Believers in Jesus" edited by Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik ****

This exhaustively long volume aims to provide a history of "Jewish believers in Jesus" through the first six centuries or so of the Christian church. Unfortunately for me and my interests, but for good reason--though the reasoning was not entirely clear to me until the final chapter--the editors focus on the ethnic term "Jewish" rather than on beliefs that are "Jewish." That is, when defining "Jewish believers," they are interested primarily on people who are Jewish who became Christians, rather than on Christians who may have continued various Jewish traditions, be they Jewish or not. But Skarsaune's reasoning is sound, one realizes, by the end of the book. The first Christians after all, like the Jewish people at the time, weren't really using these terms in the same way--the borders between the two faiths were still being drawn. Thus, it would be unfair to these Christians followed Jewish practices, or these Jews followed Christian practices, when what constituted the unique practices of each hadn't been fully defined. What we can trace, however, to some extent, are ethnic Jews who professed a belief in Jesus, whether that belief entailed continuing adherence to many of the practices of what would later become rabbinical Judaism, adherence to a more circumspect set of practices derived from the religion of Israel, near complete abandonment of Israelite practices in preference for ones later defined as Christian for non-Jewish believers, or acceptance of Jesus as a human prophet without divine origins. As Skarsaune makes plain at the end, we can think of early Jewish Christianity as essentially like the reformed Judaism of its day.

Discrete essays cover various subjects as available in the primary sources--James and the Jerusalem church, Paul as Jewish in Acts and in his own writings, Jewish influences in the Roman church, Jewish influences in Asia Minor, various apocraphyl works (such as Jewish versions of the Gospels), the writings of the church fathers (such as Papias, Justin Martyr, Polycrates, Irenaeus, Hegissips, Origen, and Jerome) on Jewish believers, various Jewish Christian sects (such as Ebionites and Nazarenes), gnostic Jewish Christian sects, Syrian Jewish Christian sects, early church orders, early rabbical writings, and archaelogy.

One reason it is so difficult to trace such believers, it becomes clear, is that most of what we know about them are written by later writers who had a particular agenda--to proclaim the superiority of either Judaism or Christianity. Both had an interest in emphasizing differences, and neither had an interest in discussing a version of the faith that mixed ideas from both. Thus, we're left with Christians attacking Jewish Christians for maintaining solidarity with Jewish practices or believers; likewise, we're left with Jewish writers attacking Christians for pagan practices. But more often, especially among the Jewish writers, such believers are simply ignored. Our knowledge of them comes in the few veiled attacks that exist, showing us that such believers existed, even if after the New Testament writings, we have very little written from among them.