Christianity

Muslim scholars like Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, Ibn Hazm (11th c.), and Salih b. al-Husayn al-Gafari (13th c.), and Jewish scholars like Ibn Ezra, Joseph Kimchi (12th c.), Hasdai Crescas, and Profiat Duran (14th c.) viewed the Trinity as a troubling departure from pure monotheism. Spurred by religious competition that was often intertwined with political competition or coercion, they sought to refute it, drawing on philosophy, the Hebrew Bible, and even the New Testament.

​​In late 2nd century Carthage, Tertullian, the first church father to write in Latin, composed Adversus Iudaeos to argue that Christianity’s interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was better than that of the Jews. While his depictions of Jews deal only with biblical verses, from his comments elsewhere about veiled women, Nazarenes, fasting, etc., he was clearly familiar with Jewish practice of his day.

Justin Martyr, an early Church Father (c. 100–165 C.E.), interprets the strange appearance of the LORD to Abraham at Mamre as an early instantiation of God the Son, i.e., Jesus. While Rashbam obviously rejected this belief, he learned from this Christian interpretation and suggests that here, the name YHWH refers to an angel, which explains why YHWH speaks about YHWH in this story in the third person.

In medieval Latin Christendom, the Psalms were highly beloved, with commentators interpreting them as prophecies about Christ and the Church. Aware of this prevailing interpretation, Rashi often deviates from the plain meaning of the text to read the Psalms as a reflection of the Jewish people’s experience and suffering in his own time.

Origen (3rd century C.E.) read the Song of Songs as an allegory expressing the love between Christ and his “bride,” and many Christian interpreters followed suit. Rashi (11th century C.E.), utilizing his two-pronged method of midrash aligned with peshat, developed a consistent Jewish allegory for the Song: Israel is an exiled wife, who pines for the time of her youthful love with God. Could Rashi have been contending with the Christian interpretation?

The gospels present Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, condemning Jesus to death, and his soldiers crucifying Jesus at the behest of the priests and the Jewish crowd. How, then, did the claim—found even in the Talmud—that the Jews physically crucified Jesus develop?

The Haggadah’s insistence that God, without an intermediary, saved the Israelites from Egypt is a veiled retort to the Christian belief that God relied on Jesus as an agent of redemption. Moreover, the midrash replaces the Arma Christi tradition of recounting the weapons Jesus used to save humanity during the Crucifixion with its own distinctively Jewish arsenal of redemption: pestilence, a sword, the Shechinah, the staff, and blood.

Hellenistic religion didn’t require charity. In contrast, the biblical command for charity is founded not only on YHWH’s commitment to reward the generous, but on YHWH adopting the voice of the poor, a critical factor in the vibrancy of early Judaism and Christianity.

Eastern Christianity includes prayer and a festival honoring the martyrdom of a woman and her seven sons who, in the time of Antiochus IV, refused to eat pork. The Talmud reimagines their story, depicting the woman and her sons as refusing to worship an idol in Roman times. This change reflects the rabbis’ tendency to downplay martyrdom in favor of a piety model centered on “dying” through exhaustive Torah study.

Esau/Edom is viewed negatively already in later biblical texts and throughout rabbinic literature, becoming a symbol of Israel’s oppressors. Marat Kila, an otherwise unknown woman, is quoted in a 15^th century supercommentary on Rashi offering a positive reading of Esau’s actions.

What really motivated the editors of Select Parts of the Holy Bible: For the Use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands (1807), better known as “The Slave Bible”?

Blood has a significant role in many biblical stories and rituals, most prominently in the atonement sacrifices of Leviticus. With the destruction of the Temple and the loss of sacrifices, Judaism and Christianity took very different paths to achieving atonement.

The historical John, יוחנן, was a thoroughly Jewish religious preacher, who had little if any relation to Jesus and his movement. Here is the story of how John and his central rite, baptism, became part of Christianity.

Paul, in the 1^st century C.E., allegorizes the expulsion of Hagar to argue that his rivals should be expelled from the church. Nahmanides, in the 13^th century, uses the same biblical story to explain why Jews of his day are persecuted. The assumption shared in both Judaism and Christianity: The Bible speaks to present-day circumstances.