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Two Faiths Talking About Different Things
| Article
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13151 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1987 |
5,426 Words |
| Author
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Jacob Neusner
Jacob Neusner is University Professor at Brown University and
author of Death and Birth of Judaism and other books. |
The earliest Christians were Jews and saw their religion, Judaism, as normative and authoritative. A natural question troubling believing Christians, therefore, is why Judaism as a whole remains a religion that believes other things, or, as Christians commonly ask, "Why did the Jews not 'accept Christ'?" or "Why, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is there Judaism at all?" Often asked negatively, the question turns on why the Jews do not believe, rather than on what they do believe. Yet it is a constructive question even in the context of description and analysis, not religious polemic. For the question leads us deeper into an understanding not only of the differences between one religion and the other but also of the traits of the religion under study. In other words, it is a question of comparison--even though the question is not properly framed.
The answer to the question is simple: Judaism and Christianity are completely different religions, not different versions of one religion (that of the "Old Testament," or, "the written Torah," as Jews call it). The two faiths stand for different people talking about different things to different people. Let me spell this out.
The asking of the question why not? rather than why so? reflects the long-term difficulty that the one group has had in making sense of the other. Each group talked to its adherents about its points of urgent concern, that is, different people talking about different things to different people. Incomprehension marks relations between Judaism and Christianity in the first century, yet both were sectors of the same people.
Each addressed it own agenda, spoke to its own issues, and employed distinctive language to its adherents. Neither exhibited understanding of what was important to the other. Recognizing that fundamental inner-directedness may enable us to interpret the issues, as well as the language used in framing them. For if each party perceived the other through a thick veil of incomprehension, the heat and abuse that characterized much of their writing about one another testifies to a truth different from that which conventional interpretations have yielded. If the enemy is within, if I see only the mote in the other's eye, it matters little whether there is a beam in my own.
The key is this: the incapacity of either group to make sense of the other. We have ample evidence for characterizing a family quarrel the relationship between the two great religious traditions of the West. Only brothers can hate so deeply, yet accept and tolerate so
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