Sunday, 27 September 2015

We the People: Israel and the Catholicity of Jesus,
Tommy Givens, Fortress, 2014, page 23

The figure of Yeshua has been used in many ways by the church, the synagogue and other non-religious groups across the years. In particular, Givens focuses on the personalist understanding.

Personalist understandings of Jesus are possible, Yoder suggests, only if we forget that Jesus was a Jew. However unwittingly, such understandings are anti- or at least a-Jewish. The Jewish way of life from which Jesus hailed - the Jewish way of life of the Hebrew prophets - knows nothing of a personalist flight from the political.

I think we can go further. As a Jew of His time, brought up in the time and context of Judaism as a people, as a community, we need to read everything He says from the perspective of community, from the culture and background of G-d's ancient people Israel, and from the reality of a life lived in the centre of G-d's chsen people living - albeit, perhaps under occupation - in G-d's chosen Land.