This essay is free for distribution in any manner, with the provision
that it remains completely intact, with this notice, the author's
name and the full text of the essay.  Any comments are gratefully
welcomed.  Copyright 1995.


INTRODUCTION

      McDowell and Stewart have made the claim, "Although Judaism as a
whole has rejected God's greatest revelation and gift in the Person of
Jesus Christ our Lord, Christians cannot deny Judaism's vital
contribution to our faith. "  The basis for this claim, and the
ramifications thereof, shall be explored in this essay.

THE LAW AS A TUTOR

      Gaer boldly states, "In this Sermon on the Mount, and in most of
his sermons and parables after that, Jesus emphasised the difference
between his teachings and the teachings of Judaism: Judaism taught LAW;
Jesus taught LOVE. "  This attitude reflects the thinking of many who
would seek to relegate Judaism to a purely legalistic and Pharisaical
religion where an angry God is unable to be appeased.  Loewe makes
reference to a stained glass window in the Chapel of Westminster
College, Cambridge, which symbolises "'Law' and 'Love' in the
dispensation of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament. . . .
In the hands of the one figure is the roll of the Commandments; in those
of the other, the chalice of sacrifice. "  Judaism is more than this,
however, and God's love is always to be found.  In fact, "He is good;
his love to Israel endures forever. "

      Christianity is really the natural progression of Judaism - the
"true logical and spiritual development " of it.  Although the Torah,
the law, was a central aspect of Jewish life, its very decrees and
statutes were summed up by Jesus in two commandments - "Love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind. . . . Love your neighbour as yourself. "  This teaching, and the
Sermon on the Mount referred to by Gaer, do not serve to condemn
Judaism, indeed, the law is holy, righteous and good .  They rather
serve to illustrate the very spirit behind the law, which was missed by
the Pharisees of Jesus' time who strained at gnats but swallowed
camels.   Jesus did not replace the law but called man to live to a much
higher standard - even described by some as an "intolerable and
impossible burden. "  Whereas it was said, "Do not commit adultery",
Jesus tells His followers, "I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman
lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. "
Whereas it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth", Jesus tells His
followers, "But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person.  If someone
strikes you on the right cheek, turn to Him the other also. "  The two
commandments Jesus gave may be explained by James, "If you really keep
the royal law found in Scripture, 'Love your neighbour as yourself,' you
are doing right. "  Hence the true way to fulfill the law is to love
God and love one's fellow man.  With such an understanding, sin is no
longer the mere transgressing of seemingly arbitrary rules and codes -
"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it,
sins. "

      The reason the law has failed is not to do with the law itself,
per se.  The very reason the law has failed is because mankind in
unspiritual and sold as a slave to sin  - all have sinned, in fact, and
fallen short of the glory of God.   The law was weakened by the
spiritual nature  and subsequently righteousness could not come by the
law.

      The purpose of the law, then, and its contribution to the
Christian faith, is that the law was a tutor to bring mankind to
Christ.   Without first the existence of the law, man could not have
recognised the need for Christ.  Mankind's dilemma was made evident by
the law, as painfully related by Paul in Romans 7:7-25.  Even when one
wants to do good, evil is right there.   Paul continues,

    But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman,
    born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the
    full rights of sons.

      At the time God decreed, Jesus Christ came into the earth - the
Lamb of God, who alone was able to take away the sins of the world.
The task which Jesus took in hand was not the reform of the Torah, but
the re-creation of men and women who could not obey the Torah  -
Christianity means "New Life rather than New Rules of Life".  That is,
from the beginning it is a message of salvation, the announcement that
the power of God is abroad in the world for the uplifting of the fallen
and the ingathering of the rejected and despised .  Paul sums up the
matter of the law thus:

    Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up
    until faith should be revealed.  So the law was put in charge to
    lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.  Now that
    faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

SACRIFICIAL CEREMONIES AND SPIRITUAL LIFE

      One cannot read the pages of the Old Testament without finding
references to the Old Testament sacrificial system, long collapsed due
to the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.  This sacrificial system was
a vital contribution to the Christian faith in two main ways.

      Firstly, the very meaning of sacrifice must be considered.  In the
Platonic dialogue, 'Euthyphro', Socrates is represented as asking

    But what is the object of sacrifice?  Does it really have any
    effect?  And in any case what sort of deities are those which to
    have to be haggled with, and whom we even try to cheat by
    substituting a cheap offering for a more expensive one, in the hope
    that they won't notice the difference?

      The sacrificial system was instituted by God Himself and outlined
in the book of Leviticus.  However, He Himself is as unsparing in His
denunciation of such sacrificial attempts.  Psalm 50 declares,

    I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens,
    for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand
    hills. . . . Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of
    goats?

      Micah asks,

    With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the
    exalted God?  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with
    calves a year old?  Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousand rivers of oil?  Shall I offer my firstborn for my
    transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

      Micah then answers,

    He has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord
    require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly
    with your God.

      Elsewhere, David writes, "You do not delight in sacrifice. . . .
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  The sacrifices of God are
a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not
despise. "  Surely the Old Testament is plain - "to obey is better than
sacrifice "!  It is the Lord who made the heavens, and He needs no
sacrifice except that of moral personality.  Bouquet continues,

    Yet the great mass of mankind is very difficult to shift from its
    precautionary attitude to the great Unknown.  It still prefers to
    err on the safe side, and to make sure that the fierce anger of an
    irascible spirit whose benevolence it doubts is mollified.  . . .

    In so far as these [ritual sacrifices] represent an emotional
    attitude towards Deity they are not wholly worthless, but as
    attempts at quantitative bargaining they are both worthless and
    pernicious.  A life of habitually right conduct, affectionately
    devoted to the observance of the divinely appointed moral law, and
    the practice of a neighbourly spirit of good-will towards one's
    fellow-men are the only sacrifice God needs.

      What Christians may learn from its Jewish heritage in this
instance is the true meaning and requirement of sacrifices.  Psalm 40
provides two assertions, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire. . .
. with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased" and "Here
I am. . . . I have come to do your will, O God. "  These assertions are
particularly interpreted by the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews
such that the first has been set aside to establish the second, with the
meaning that God is to properly worshipped only by the total surrender
of one's self to His ethical commands.  Christians are urged to offer
their bodies as living sacrifices to God.   In Bouquet's words,

    Taboos, sacrificial ceremonies and myths are the religious toys or
    models which are played with by the race in its childhood, but which
    are not idle things, since they prepare it for the more serious
    business of adult spiritual life, just as the bricks and dolls of
    boys and girls prepare them for handicraft and motherhood.

      Secondly, the Old Testament sacrificial system greatly relates a
Biblical truth, "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness
of sins. "  However, the sacrificial system was insufficient - "because
it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. "
The Old Testament priesthood was an unceasing task - "Day after day
every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again
he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. "  The
blood of Jesus was in sheer contrast - "But when this priest had offered
for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of
God. . . . because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those
who are being made holy. "  Speaking of His blood at His last Passover
meal with the Disciples, Jesus said, "This cup is the new covenant in my
blood, which is poured out for you. "  John refers to Jesus as "him who
loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. "  Surely of
Jesus' atoning blood did God refer when He said, "He who sacrifices
thank offerings honours me, and he prepares the way so that I may show
him the salvation of God " for the law was only a shadow of the good
things to come - not the actual realities themselves.

ONE GOD

      The Shema of Israel is a bold declaration, "Hear, O Israel: The
Lord our God, the Lord is one. "  Although sometimes recited as a "very
efficacious" means of counteracting the various ills occasioned by
demons , the devout Jew draws many convictions from these words.  Rabbi
Me'ir has said, "that he who lives permanently in Palestine, speaks
Hebrew, observes the laws of purity, reads the Shema morning and
evening, is certain of the life to come. "

      This "conception of Deity was the inheritance of Christianity,
and. . . . is the background of Christian theology and the foundation of
all Christian conduct and character. "  Judaism is strictly
monotheistic and holds with great affection to One God, beside whom
there is none else.  The meaning of the Shema is as valid for the
Christian as it is for the Jew, and is a vital contribution of Judaism
to the Christian faith.

      Bouquet elaborates,

    . . . . with his whole heart and soul, man is to serve the One God
    and Him only.  All that the prophets from Moses downward have
    taught, all the ways in which the religion has tried to express
    itself anew, are, however different the ways in which it has been
    expressed, just this: that there is only one reality - the One God,
    His commandment and the doing of it.

      Faith in the God of Jews and Christians is faith in the One God.
There is a significant meaning in the Shema, the One God being different
from polytheistic religions, not simply by a difference in number, but a
stark difference in the nature of God.  Yahweh is not the one god in
whom Plato and Plutarch believed  - a mere fusion of the attributes of
the many gods, but is an entirely different sort of Being, incapable of
being fairly likened to anything else.

DUST AND HIS IMAGE

      McDowell and Stewart cite the paradox that man is dust and yet
made in the image of God as part of Christianity's heritage in
Judaism.   The Old Testament states clearly about mankind that "God
created man in his own image. . . . male and female he created them "
but also "dust you are and to dust you will return " - "All come from
dust, and to dust all return. "  Although mankind fell through the
subsequent temptation by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the image of
God remained, this being the reason for justice demanded for murder.

      In a similar way, Jesus made reference to man being a bearer of
God's image.  When asked by the Pharisees if it was right to pay taxes
to Caesar or not, Jesus requested a coin, pointing out Caesar's
inscription on it.  His final reply was, "Give to Caesar what is
Caesar's, and to God what is God's. "  Just as the coin belonged to
Caesar by virtue of bearing his image, so too, man belongs to God by
virtue of bearing His image, a sentiment echoed by Paul who states that
it is the Christian's reasonable worship to offer themselves as a living
sacrifice to God.

      These two truths leave the Christian in the position that one
ought not to think too highly of themselves  - for man is but dust -
but also, one must recognise the love of the Saviour, who gave Himself
for all the world, that none would perish.   Thought dust, Christ was
slain and with His blood He purchased men for God from every tribe and
language and people and nation.   It is only with such a "God-kind" of
perspective can one truly perceive and esteem their true worth and
value, neither over-inflating or undermining it.

IGNORANCE OF HIS WAYS

      McDowell and Stewart list as another facet of Judaism's
contribution to Christianity the sheer ignorance by man of God's ways.
God declared in the Old Testament,

    For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
    ways, declares the Lord.  As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
    thoughts.

      This is fully reaffirmed in the New Testament, where Paul teaches
"the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of
God is stronger than man's strength " - "Oh, the depth of the riches of
the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments, and
his paths beyond tracing out!  Who has known the mind of the Lord? ",
again, "For who has known the mind of the Lord? "

      Indeed, man is fully ignorant of the ways of God.  Commenting on
the difficulty of man to even come to know and understand fully another
human being, Bouquet states, "How much more difficult must it be for any
finite being to know and interpret Deity unless the Latter is pleased to
take the initiative "  In Christianity, this is precisely what has
happened, when Jesus Christ

    Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God
    something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very
    nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

      All man can do in response is strive to recognise the ways of God
as revealed by the Holy Spirit, and then act upon them.  The Psalmist
declares, "The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in
them. "  There is nothing more which one can do.

CONCLUSION

      Christianity has greatly contributed to the Christian faith.
Christianity has such a rich heritage in Judaism that one "cannot hold
to the Bible, Old and New Testaments, as God's one divine revelation
without also recognising and honouring the place God has given historic
Judaism. "  In the words of the Jewish writer, Pinchas Lapide,

    We Jews and Christians are joined in brotherhood in the deepest
    level, so deep in fact that we have overlooked it and missed the
    forest of brotherhood for the trees of theology.  We have an
    intellectual and spiritual kinship which goes deeper than dogmatics,
    hermeneutics and exegesis.  We are brothers in a manifold "elective
    affinity".


SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Joachim. Messianic Expectation in the Old Testament. Translated
     by David Green. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.

Bentzen, Aage. King and Messiah. 2d ed. Edited by G.W. Anderson. London:
     Lutterworth Press, 1970.

Bouquet, Alan Coates. Comparative Religion. 5th ed. Middlesex: Penguin
     Books, Ltd., 1956.

________. The Christian Faith and Non-Christian Religions. Connecticut:
     Greenwood Press, 1976.

Bruce, F. F., ed. The Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Vol. 2, Judaism, by
     H. L. Ellison. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1980.

Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through The Centuries. Rev ed. Michigan:
     Academie Books, 1982.

Dunne, John. The Way of all the Earth. London: Sheldon Press, 1972.

Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah.
     Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993.

Epstein, Rabbi Isaac. Judaism. 2d rev ed. London: The Epworth Press,
     1945.

Gaer, Joseph. How the Great Religions Began. Rev. ed. New York: Signet
     Key Books, 1961.

Loewe, H., ed. Judaism and Christianity. Vol. 2, The Contact of
     Pharisaism with Other Cultures. New York: Ktav Publishing House,
     Inc., 1969.

Matarasso, Antoine. Israel. Townsville: Rhema Bible College, 1984.

McDowell, Josh, and Don Stewart. Handbook of Today's Religions.
     California: Here's Life Publishers, Inc., 1983.

Neusner, Jacob. The Mishnah: A New Translation. New Haven: Yale
     University Press, 1988.

Norwood, Frederick A. Strangers and Exiles. Nashville: Abingdon Press,
     1969.

Oesterley, W. O. E., and Theodore H. Robinson. Hebrew Religion. 2d rev
     ed. London: S.P.C.K., 1966.

Oesterley, W. O. E., ed. Judaism and Christianity. Vol. 1, The Age of
     Transition. New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1969.

Ringgren, Helmer. The Messiah in the Old Testament. London: SCM Press
     Ltd., 1956.

________. Israelite Religion. Translated by David Green. 2d ed. London:
     S.P.C.K., 1969.

Rosenthal, Erwin I. J., ed. Judaism and Christianity. Vol. 3, Law and
     Religion. New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1969.

Scholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism. London: George Allen
     and Unwin, Ltd., 1971.

Smith, James. The Promised Messiah. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
     1993.

Wiesel, Elie. Souls on Fire. Translated by Marion Wiesel. London:
     Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1972.

Wurmbrand, Max and Cecil Roth. The Jewish People: 4000 Years of
     Survival. London: Cassell and Company Ltd., 1974.


REFERENCES

         Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Handbook of Today's Religions
(California: Here's Life Publishers, Inc., 1983), 364.
         Joseph Gaer, How the Great Religions Began Rev. ed. (New York:
Signet Key Books, 1961), 174.
         H. Loewe, ed., Judaism and Christianity Vol. 2, The Contact of
Pharisaism with Other Cultures (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc.,
1969), xxi.
         Ezra 3:11.
         Alan Bouquet, Comparative Religion 5th ed. (Middlesex: Penguin
Books, Ltd., 1956), 217.
         Matthew 22:37-39.
         Romans 7:12.
         Matthew 23:24.
         Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, ed., Judaism and Christianity Vol. 3,
Law and Religion (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1969), 126.
         Matthew 5:27-28.
         Matthew 5:38-39.
         James 2:8.
         James 4:17.
         Romans 7:14.
         Romans 3:23.
         Romans 8:3.
         Galatians 3:21.
         Galatians 3:24.
         Romans 7:21.
         Galatians 4:4-5.
         John 1:29.
         Rosenthal, op. cit., 127.
         Ibid.
         Galatians 4:23-25.
         Bouquet, 1956, op. cit., 46.
         Psalm 50:9-13.
         Micah 6:6-7.
         Micah 6:8.
         Psalm 51:16-17.
         I Samuel 15:22.
         Bouquet, 1956, op. cit., 46.
         Idem, 215.
         Psalm 40:6-8.
         Romans 12:1.
         Bouquet, 1956, op. cit., 48.
         Hebrews 9:22.
         Hebrews 10:3.
         Hebrews 10:11.
         Hebrews 10:12-14.
         Luke 22:20.
         Revelation 1:5.
         Psalm 50:23.
         Hebrews 10:1.
         Deuteronomy 6:4.
         W. O. E. Oesterley, ed., Judaism and Christianity Vol. 1, The
Age of Transition (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1969), 207.
         Idem, 151.
         Bouquet, 1956, op. cit., 211.
         Idem, 210.
         Idem, 219.
         McDowell and Stewart, op. cit., 375.
         Genesis 1:27.
         Genesis 3:19.
         Ecclesiastes 3:20.
         Genesis 9:6.
         Matthew 22:15-22.
         Romans 12:1-2.
         Romans 12:3.
         John 3:16.
         Revelation 5:9; Acts 20:28.
         McDowell and Stewart, op. cit., 375.
         Isaiah 55:8-9.
         I Corinthians 1:25.
         Romans 11:33-34.
         Isaiah 40:13; I Corinthians 2:16.
         Alan Bouquet, The Christian Faith and Non-Christian Religions
(Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976), 13.
         Philippians 2:6-7.
         Psalm 14:9.
         McDowell and Stewart, op. cit., 364.
         Idem, 375.

davidmwilliams@oocities.com