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

by Matthias Henze

While in the New Testament, Jesus studies and teaches in the synagogues, there are no synagogues in the Old Testament. While in the New Testament, Jesus’s disciples call him rabbi, there are no rabbis in the Old Testament. While in the New Testament, Jesus is often involved in conversations with the Pharisees, there are no Pharisees in the Old Testament. While in the New Testament, Jesus expels demons and unclean spirits, there are no demons in the Old Testament.

There is something unsettling about coming to realize that the person who stands at the center of the Christian faith, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary, was not a Christian but a Jew.

Most Christian readers of the New Testament today cannot understand that world, because what is described in the Old Testament is not the Judaism of Jesus.

The Jewish world of Jesus was no longer the religious world of the Old Testament, it was the Judaism of first-century Israel.

The Bible does not contain all the literature that has come down to us from ancient Israel. In fact, the books of the Old Testament only represent a portion of the vast library of ancient Jewish texts that were in circulation at the time of Jesus.