Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus

by Matthias Henze

When I ask my audiences to compare Judaism and Christianity today, typically they will highlight the divisions that exist between the two religions. And the first difference that is commonly brought up is the belief in Jesus: whereas Christians confess that Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary and Joseph, is the Messiah, Jews do not believe that the messianic promises expressed in the Old Testament have been fulfilled. It is undoubtedly true that Jews and Christians are divided by what unites them, the belief in a messiah. But it is equally true that Christians inherited the idea of a messiah from Second Temple Judaism. And it is also true that even the ways in which Jesus is described in the New Testament, as we have seen in the case of the Gospel of Luke, are deeply Jewish, much more so than we would recognize if all we read was the Old and New Testament. Perhaps the divisions between Jews and Christians are not as deep as they appear.