When I first entered the world of religious higher education, I had no idea where to find reliable sources for the papers I was writing. The study tools most commonly used by laymen–study Bibles, concordances, etc.–were not enough; my professors required “academic sources,” primary and secondary sources that addressed the same topic I was writing about.

I had to figure out how to find not only scholarly sources, but relevant ones, on my own, and without a seminary library (I’m doing distance education). I want to share the process I use to find these sources with my readers, as I have found that Christianity in general and the Messianic movement in particular is woefully unread. Lots of people are making dogmatic statements, but their opinions have been formed in isolation. They have never honestly interacted with the whole body of scholarly literature that pertains to their idea.

The process generally works this way–at least, this is how I do it. Let’s say you are writing a paper on the Holy Spirit in John. So you go to Amazon.com and you search for “holy spirit John.” Look at all those books!–but how many of them are academic? For the new student, there is hardly anything about any of these books that hints as to whether or not they are reliable sources.

More seasoned students will recognize that guys like Billy Graham, John MacArthur, John Walvoord, and Charles Ryrie usually write at the popular level. Whatever level of education they may have, they are not generally academic writers.

Other students might recognize that the covers of most of these books are pretty; they are designed to have mass appeal. Scholarly books are usually ugly as sin.

So searching Amazon is not going to be a reliable way to find information on your topic. What now?

There are a few places you can start. For example, your paper has a narrow focus–the gospel of John. So find academic commentaries on John. The Christian Book Distributors catalog helpfully categorizes its commentaries into sections; devotional, pastoral, semi-academic, and academic commentaries are grouped together. The commentaries in the last two sections are the ones you want to start your journey in.

Another helpful set of books is the WATSA (What Are They Saying About) series. These books only list academic sources, and helpfully outline the specific contributions those sources have made to the specific field under discussion. In this case, there is a WATSA volume on John, so that is helpful.

So try to find some academic commentaries or the relevant WATSA book at your closest theological library. Plenty of undergraduate schools have decent enough theological libraries that they should have at least one or two academic commentaries on the book you are studying. Look for the New International Commentary on the Old/New Testament, the Word Biblical Commentary, Hermeneia, the International Critical Commentary (the newer ones), the New International Greek Testament Commentary, or the Anchor Bible Commentary. There are others, of course, but these sets are some of the most common and newest academic and semi-academic commentaries and you should be able to find one of them. If not, use inter-library loan.

Now in order to find information on the Holy Spirit, you want to find a thematic organization of material. So check the subject index and look for “holy spirit,” “spirit,” “paraclete” (a name John uses for the Spirit). Look for large page ranges that talk about your subject matter. There may even be a section in the introduction that lists prominent themes in John; check there. WATSA also often offers a section on specific themes in the book under discussion.

If you had followed this advice, you would find that right in the middle of What Are They Saying About John is a chapter on themes, with a subsection on the Holy Spirit. And lo and behold, there is a book listed as the primary resource on the subject–incidentally, Gary Burge’s The Anointed Community.

At this point, you have hit pay dirt. Burge cites every major participant in the conversation about the Holy Spirit in John up to his time. You now have a frame of reference and a bibliography from which you can keep track of the discussion up until Burge’s time–1987. Your local library can get many of the books Burge cites through inter-library loan.

However, you still have a problem. Burge’s monograph is dated. A lot can happen in 25 years, and there have been a lot of monographs on the subject released since then. Failure to reference anything after Burge will make your paper a “blast from the past”–totally irrelevant.

Now you have to get a little more creative. Knowing the names of reputable monograph series can help here–the Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, the Princeton Theological Monograph Series, the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, Library of New Testament Studies, and others.

Incidentally, there is a 2005 monograph on the Holy Spirit in John in the SNTSMS, and another in the LNTS from a social-scientific perspective, written in 2004. (I found them by searching “holy spirit John” at amazon.com. Yes, once you know what you are looking for, it can be a useful tool.)

By now you should know the big names in the field you are studying; if you have access to JSTOR or some other journal database, you can search for recent articles by them. In all probability, the discussion is still ongoing, and there will be something recent. You can also search article titles for words that you know are hot-buttons in that particular field, like “paraclete.”

Finding a relatively recent monograph or journal article on your subject and checking the citations or bibliography will get you another set of sources you can try to get your hands on through inter-library loan. Now you have pre-Burge and post-Burge books on your subject–probably enough to write a relevant, well-researched paper. One final step remains, though, for those who want to be thorough: check the citations and bibliographies of the thirty or so (at the masters’ level anyway) books and articles you should have your hands on at this point, and make sure there are no important works you have missed.

Familiarizing yourself with the major works on the subject will give you a foundation from which do conduct your own study. You will be able to place your ideas within the framework of what has already been learned about the subject. You may disagree with the great minds that have come before you (it’s inevitable, as none of them agree with each other), but at least you will be able to avoid obvious pitfalls and have the resources you need to come up with an informed thesis.

A lot of Christians have kind of a “so what” attitude toward the Hebrew Roots movement and Messianic Judaism. This movement is perceived at times as superficial, unnecessary, etc. Many times Messianic Jews are pressured into conforming to standard Christian faith confessions which postdate the original Messianic movement (in other terms, Petrine/Jacobine Christianity) by several hundred years, as many Christians don’t understand that New Testament theology can be accurately and authentically conveyed within a Hebrew/Jewish framework as least as well as within a Greek one.

Lev Gillet perhaps said it best (my quote will be substantive as most people probably don’t have access to his important book Communion in the Messiah): “A re-thinking of Christology in Jewish terms, i.e., not only in Hebrew words, but in Hebrew categories of thought, constitutes the first task of the Christian who wishes to interpret his own belief to the Jews. This does not mean the violent elimination of the Greek formulas. They have been extremely useful for conveying the Christian faith tot he Greek world and for keeping it unaltered; and, though many modern Christians claim that creeds have lost any intelligible meaning, many other Christians still find in the old words of Nicaea and Constantinople the most precise, most satisfactory and most adequate intellectual expression of their faith. Only these venerable words must not stand as an obstacle between Israel and the message of Jesus. There is no reason why a purely Jewish expression of the Christian faith could not be as adequate or become as venerable as the Greek one.”

Gillet got me thinking that there are many Christian theological problems that arise at least partially because of the problem of fitting Jewish concepts into Greek categories and methods of thought. These classical and contemporary Christian disputes have the potential to be solved by a return to the Jewish thought-world of the New Testament, a process that I believe has the potential to be mediated by Messianic Jews and Gentiles, working together. The possibility of resolving these disputes gives immediate relevance to the Hebrew Roots/Messianic Gentile movement as it seeks to establish reasons for its own existence.

These disputes include:

• Calvinism vs. Arminianism and all of it sub-debates (eternal security, free will/determinism, the scope of atonement, the nature and object of election, the extent and nature of original sin)
• Legalism/antinomianism
• Lordship salvation vs. easy believism
• Heaven/Hell (the debate Rob Bell recently revived)
• When to take communion and in what context
• Baptism (infant/adult, immersion/pouring/sprinkling)
• Worship wars (liturgical/traditional/contemporary)
• The role of the Old Testament Law (Reformed vs. Evangelical)

Generally, the protocol of modern interfaith relations is that one faith should maintain its distinctiveness as it interacts positively with another, affirming what is different as well as what is the same. By these rules, Christianity should not alter its beliefs to conform to Jewish categories.

Yet I see so much potential for these disputes – some of them quite silly – to be resolved once and for all by a return to the original Jewish context of the New Testament.

Consider the issue of worship. Many congregations eschew modern music in their services. Many of these same congregations use music that at one point used to be modern (i.e. 19th century revival choruses, etc.). Others use a liturgy based on the Catholic Mass or the similar Orthodox Divine Service. These two liturgies are based on Temple worship, as is the synagogue service. Yet the synagogue service predates them both by several hundred years and is the form of worship sanctified by our Master Himself.

This does not invalidate any of the modern forms of Christian worship. Rather, it confirms that none of them can hold a sense of superiority over another. If you want a real, genuine, “first century church” experience, go to synagogue (make sure to call ahead and ask if you can come). The next closest thing is a liturgical service as one would find in one of the more ancient denominations. Otherwise, go wherever you want. I imagine that God expects people from the nations to worship Him in a way that is accessible and meaningful to them rather than to learn Hebrew and begin chanting words that they barely understand, though I think there is great merit in being familiar with the synagogue liturgy.

Baptism is another issue that, in my mind, is easily settled. I may get into hot water with my Reformed and Presbyterian friends for this, but as I understand it, the whole idea of infant baptism is connected with the idea that the church is the new Israel or a replacement for Israel. Baptism replaces circumcision as the rite of entry, and so it is only natural that in the new Israel community, infants are baptized. In a theological framework that recognizes the continuing election of the Jewish people and the role of Gentile believers in that economy, the practice must find a different justification or cease altogether. Furthermore, the Jewish rite on which Christian baptism is based was (and still is) a full immersion.

Some of the other issues are easily settled; some less so. However, Messianic Judaism can speak to each of these issues with a grounded, authentic, believing Jewish voice, bringing Christians to the realization that many of their doctrines and practices are later developments that may reflect the church’s ancient rejection of Jews and Judaism and the consequent reshaping of Christian theology in Greek philosophical categories.

The fact that these same arguments have been around for centuries attests to the fact that a new voice is needed, one that can reframe the arguments in Jewish terms and appeal to a wide knowledge of the ancient context as reflected in later Jewish literature, familiarity with which is sorely underrated in Christian circles. At times, this reframing will involve holding concepts in tension, as in the free will/fate debate, in which according to Josephus, the Pharisees affirmed both concepts. At other times, it will involve the repudiation of unbiblical theologies such as supersessionism (or its many popular variants which all claim not to be supersessionist).

The question is, are Christians willing to listen? Will they see the merit in a return to the roots of their faith, or will they continue trying to solve these problems with proof-texting and rhetoric, arguing along the same centuries-old unfruitful lines?

With apologies to my readers, I offer some of what I have been working on that has been taking so much of my time from blogging. I recently submitted the following paper to my university for a 600-level class on Hebrews. I was able to pick my own topic and decided to write a response to an article I really enjoyed by Mark Nanos.

(Nanos is way out of my league, but we students are encouraged to write as if we are actually contributing something new to academic dialogue.)

The paper is entitled, “Response to Nanos: Renewed Covenantalism, Not Triumphalism or Supersessionism.” It is about Hebrews’ perceived misuse of Jeremiah 31 in replacing the traditional Jewish community with a believing community. It’s pretty concise and more academic than my blogging style, but you might find it enjoyable to check the endnotes and take a look at some of the sources.

INTRODUCTION

Richard B. Hays explored the problem of Hebrews’ supersessionism in his monograph, “‘Here We Have No Lasting City’: New Covenantalism in Hebrews,”[1] in which he documented the recent phenomenon of scholars beginning to question the assumption that the ancient homily depicted a supersessionist theology which left no place for the Torah or for the historical Jewish people.[2] Hays’ answer was that Hebrews’ “New Covenantalism” contains “both continuity and discontinuity”; while Jesus is portrayed as “the climactic figure of [Israel’s] story,… he becomes the mediator of a new covenant that not only sustains but also transforms Israel’s identity.”[3]

Hays’s monograph has had a lasting impact and several monographs have been written in response to it. While at first the discussion might seem to be immaterial from an Evangelical perspective, many commentators have questioned whether Hebrews’ use of the Old Testament is really warranted, which in turn casts serious doubt on the inerrancy of the Scripture. Jesper Svartvik observes that “those who use Hebrews 8:9 as a cornerstone for their theology at the same time silently confess that the Hebrew Vorlage (“prototype”) in Jeremiah 31:31f. is without importance.”[4] Brueggemann, looking more broadly at Christian interpretation of Jeremiah’s oracle, came to a similar conclusion.[5]

Understanding the implications of Hebrews’ use (or perceived abuse) of the New Covenant motif, Mark Nanos presented a response to Hays’ monograph entitled “New or Renewed Covenantalism? A Response to Richard Hays,”[6] in which he argued that Hebrews may present a “renewed covenantalism” which “is conceptualized and described as continued but augmented to be made effective in a new way or to a new degree, freshening up something worn-out.”[7]

Yet in the end even this use of Jeremiah’s New Covenant is, to Nanos, “finally incoherent”; quoting Wedderburn, he indicates his belief that Hebrews’ use of the New Covenant “inadvertently saw[s] off the branch on which the author sits.”[8] This is true, for Nanos, simply because by appropriating the promises of the New Covenant for his community, Hebrews’ author invalidates the original context of Jeremiah’s oracle, and unrealistically overestimates the “reality of [his community’s] own experiences of covenantal life.”[9] Furthermore, the author of Hebrews’ claim to a unique appropriation of the New Covenant is “triumphalistic and arguably arrogant and rude,” or else “supersessionistic,” depending on whether he really intended to negate all other priesthoods.[10]

Nanos’s criticism of Hebrews appears at first to be justified, especially in light of the fact that as much time as Hays spends on Heb. 8, he still understates the case for a coherent use of Jer. 31 by the author of Hebrews, writing only that “Heb. 8 is less discontinuous with the original sense of Jer. 31 than Christian interpreters have often supposed.”[11] For Nanos, this is not enough, and so it is from an Evangelical perspective – the huge discrepancy between Jeremiah’s intention and Hebrews’ appropriation of the oracle in the majority view provides a problem for Christian interpreters who adhere to a historical-grammatical method of exegesis and must prioritize the original context of Jeremiah 31.

The traditional solution of more conservative commentaries has been, unconvincingly, to read a particular view of Hebrews’ conclusions into Jeremiah 31. Everything from the abolition of the Sinai Covenant[12] to the inclusion of the Gentiles[13] is said to be wrapped up in Jeremiah’s oracle. This study takes a different approach, preferring rather to question the assumptions of the consensus view regarding Hebrews’ occasion and purpose.

A truly Evangelical, post-supersessionist solution is possible. The author of Hebrews does indeed indicate a “renewed covenant” in this sense: that the parties to the covenant remain the same, and only the terms are altered. Yet this is not “triumphalistically expressed” continuity; the author of Hebrews has in mind primarily the plain meaning of Jeremiah 31:31-34, which underlies his midrashic treatment of the passage in Heb. 8; like the prophet Jeremiah, the author of Hebrews envisions a final restoration and renewal of all Israel in a state of obedience to the Torah, not a rejection of Israel (or most of Israel) in favor of a new people (or a small remnant).

THE NEW COVENANT IN JEREMIAH

Scholarship on Hebrews 8:6-13 often focuses almost exclusively on the author of Hebrews’ use of Jeremiah’s New Covenant oracle (Jer. 31:31f.) for his own rhetorical purposes, with reference to the use of said oracle by the DSS. Yet sufficient focus is rarely given to the oracle itself in its historical and social context. This may be for several reasons. Perhaps the meaning the oracle would have had to its original audience seems self-explanatory. Or perhaps scholars are pessimistic about the possibility of any relationship between the original meaning of the oracle and Hebrews’ appropriation of it. Yet for one with a high view of Scripture it seems careless on one hand to discount any possible continuity between Jeremiah’s community and the audience of Hebrews, and on the other hand to assume that Jeremiah’s oracle needs no explanation.

Jeremiah prophesied during and after the Deuteronomic reform under Josiah.[14] Scholars debate whether Jeremiah opposed or supported the reforms; Thompson’s analysis, which holds that seemingly anti-reformist language (cf. 7:4f.) is a critique on the people’s failure to internalize the Deuteronomic ideal rather than a critique of the reform itself, is convincing, especially given Jeremiah’s consistence in exhorting the people to covenant faithfulness.[15]

Jer. 31:31-34 is in the midst of the prophetic “Book of Consolation.” Opinions as to the date and occasion of this section of Jeremiah vary widely, with some arguing that it is a late insertion and others that it forms the core around which the surrounding material was organized.[16] Yet whether it dates from early in Jeremiah’s career or from after the exile – or, as is probable, it contains developments from over the whole period[17] – the intended audience is clear. The “House of Israel” and the “House of Judah” are unmistakable references to the two separated kingdoms which together comprise the descendants of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the people group with whom God covenanted at Sinai. The whole reconstituted nation is evidently in view here.

Most commentators on Jeremiah are careful not to assume the perspective of Hebrews (or, rather, of the modern consensus as to Hebrews’ meaning).[18] So, for example, though Heb. 8 is surrounded by verses which appear to sustain a polemic against the Torah (7:12, 19; 10:1), many scholars recognize that Jeremiah sees the commandments of the Sinai Covenant being applied to the hearts of the one under the New Covenant.[19] Davies has argued cogently against the idea that the New Covenant abrogates or annuls the written Torah.[20] Indeed, this student has previously argued that the blessing passages of the Sinai covenant are fulfilled in the New Covenant, and the cursing passages are canceled only due to the unfailing observance of the people of Israel under the New Covenant, so that the New Covenant can be said to subsume the Sinai Covenant without canceling it.[21]

The identity of the beneficiaries of the New Covenant is also clear in Jeremiah – all of Israel; that is, the Jewish people as a whole.[22] Yet the majority view that Hebrews is designed to dissuade its audience from relapse into Judaism requires that Hebrews 8:6-13 be identified as a polemic designed to keep the audience from identifying themselves with the broader Jewish community by appropriating the New Covenant as a unique possession of the Christ-believing community.[23]

Brueggemann describes the difficulty this way: “Thus we arrive at a profound tension between the OT text and the NT quotation… because the supersessionist case is given scriptural warrant in the book of Hebrews. My own inclination is to say that in our time and place the reading of Hebrews is a distorted reading.” In other words, if the majority view of Hebrews is correct, the author of Hebrews misappropriates and misinterprets Jeremiah 31:31-34.[24]

THE NEW COVENANT IN HEBREWS

The intent of the author of Hebrews in invoking the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31 is intimately connected with the author’s purpose, the identity and social situation of his audience, and the perceived problem he was trying to correct. As stated above, Jeremiah’s oracle promises a nationwide restoration of Israel in a state of blessing and Torah-observance. It appears on the surface that the author of Hebrews is applying this oracle in a different way or to a different group of people, to the exclusion of the original significance of the oracle.

The majority view since Chrysostom has been that Hebrews’ audience consisted of Jewish Christians who were tempted to revert to Judaism, or else who never completely broke with it (as, it is intimated, they should have).[25] Since the nineteenth century, opinions on Hebrews’ audience have proliferated. Witherington modifies the traditional view by calling Hebrews “completionist” rather than a polemic against Judaism as such, yet in his schema the audience is still being urged to maintain its separation from the broader Jewish community.[26] DeSilva, another socio-rhetorical commentator, maintains that the audience of Hebrews is mixed and lacks any particularly Jewish background.[27] The occasion for the letter then becomes a “crisis… occasioned as a result of the difficulties of remaining long without honor in the world” due to the precarious social situation of the Christian community in the latter half of the first century.[28] The fact that even socio-rhetorical commentaries (which depend on building a coherent model of the social situation of the ancient readers) differ as to the ethnic identity of Hebrews’ audience does not bode well. Marohl, recognizing this difficulty, preferred to remain agnostic as to the ethnic identity of Hebrews’ audience in his social identity approach.[29]

Yet the “old covenant” at Sinai included no Gentiles. It seems odd that Heb. 8-10 would have included what appears to be a sustained polemic against the Sinai Covenant had the audience not been party to it. And though polemic against the Mosaic Law can be found in, for example, Galatians, it is connected with the problem of Gentiles converting to Judaism, a problem which does not appear to be in view in Hebrews. No mention is made of circumcision or indeed of Jews or Gentiles at all, nor of idolatry or pagan rites. Morrison’s sustained argument for the Jewish identity of Hebrews’ audience is most convincing.[30]

Even if the audience is Jewish, though, Heb. 8’s appropriation of Jer. 31 remains problematic. Certainly in hindsight it is clear that the new age in which the children of Israel instinctively cling to and obey God and do not need to be taught about Him had not dawned in the first century, nor was it about to. In hindsight, a first-century Jewish Christian community’s claim to be a literal fulfillment of Jer. 31:31-34 rings about as hollow as the same claim made by the (Essene?) community which authored the DSS. Both the Qumran community and Jewish Christianity died out without seeing their apocalyptic expectations fulfilled.[31]

Yet in reading Nanos, who accuses Hebrews of having an unrealistic assessment of his community, one desires to lend the author of Hebrews some credit. Could it be that the author of Hebrews, of all NT authors having the greatest competence in Greek and such a mastery of oratory and rhetoric,[32] would be so foolish as to mistake the existence of his community for the return of the exiles in a state of perfect eschatological blessing and obedience? It is one thing to deprive him of the foresight to perceive that the final redemption was a long time off; it is quite another to postulate that he imagined himself as living then in the World to Come.

It is true that the commentators almost universally acknowledge that Hebrews envisioned the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophetic oracle as only partial. But if only partial, then why postulate that Hebrews’ audience claimed sole inheritance of the New Covenant, to the (permanent?) exclusion of all other Jewish communities? While commentators are quick to point out the partial nature of the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s oracle, they seem reticent to acknowledge the ramifications of this partial-ness for Hebrews’ argument.

Bockmuehl writes,

The undoubtedly supersessionist flavour of Heb. 8 and 9 is seriously misread if one takes it as the author’s general theological principle for the heritage of Israel and of the Old Testament. As the context of those chapters shows, the claim of obsolescence is in fact highly specific in its application, and concerns primarily the Old Covenant’s cultic apparatus of atonement.[33]

Like Nanos and Hays, Bockmuehl recognizes that Hebrews criticizes only the Levitical cult among the institutions of the Old Testament. Yet Bockmuehl emphasizes also that Hebrews’ exegesis of Jer. 31 is subservient to this purpose – to show that a greater form of atonement exists.

In a similar vein, Lane has made the observation that the seeming anti-Jewish polemic in Hebrews is limited to the exegetical sections; the paraenetic sections give no hint of a differentiation from Judaism. In addition, since in Hebrews paraenesis takes priority over exegesis, the polemical statements in Hebrews must be seen in light of the author’s paraenetic goals.[34]

Jesper Svartvik made several lucid observations about Hebrews that, when combined, give the reader a significantly different perspective on Hebrews’ argument. First, he noted the correlation and at times convergence of the temporal and spatial metaphors in Hebrews.[35] Second, he noted Hebrew’s use of Middle Platonic thought in its comparison of Christ and the Christ-event, which represent the real or the ideal, and everything else in this world, which represents only a shadow of the ideal.[36]

With these observations in mind, Svartvik takes Heb. 9:9 as a point of departure for his argument that Hebrews is essentially contrasting the present age, which still stands, with the coming age, which has not yet arrived. The present age is symbolized by the earthly tent, i.e., the Tabernacle; Heb. 9:8 therefore asserts that “the way into the sanctuary is not yet opened as long as the outer tent [symbolic for the present age] is still standing.”[37]

Therefore, while Christ is the minister of a better covenant and currently ministers in a better Tabernacle, the eschaton remains unrealized. The “Old Covenant” is then equated with the present age, which, along with the Covenant itself, is ready to pass away (8:13).[38] However, it has not yet passed away – it is only getting ready to pass away. Nowhere does the author of Hebrews actually state outright that the Levitical worship, the Mosaic Law, the Sinai Covenant, etc., have actually passed into obsolescence.[39]

It is apparent, two thousand years later, that the present age is still dominant. If Svartvik is correct in finding Middle Platonic philosophy undergirding Hebrews’ argument in chs. 8-10, and if the spatial metaphor of the Tabernacle is really representative of a chronological reality (this age vs. the age to come), then it would still be appropriate today to say that the Sinai Covenant, the legitimacy of the Levitical priesthood, the Mosaic Law, etc., are getting ready to pass away, but have not yet.

Thus if Hebrews’ author is not trying to keep his community from Judaism but, as has been argued by proponents of the “Radical New Perspective on Paul”[40] regarding Pauline communities, regards his community as a part of Judaism, then Lane may be correct in asserting that the author of Hebrews used “homiletical midrash”[41] to interpret Jeremiah 31 in order to establish his central theme of the importance of heeding the word of God, specifically in Christian preaching.[42]

Yet Morrison’s critique of the position that Hebrews’ author is only trying to combat lethargy rings quite clearly: “When the expository section emphasizes that A is better than B, and the subsequent exhortation is, ‘Choose A,’ the implied exhortation is, ‘as opposed to B.’”[43] Here the date of Hebrews comes into play; is it possible that the recipients of Hebrews no longer had access to the Temple, not because of social stigmas, but because it was destroyed? The possibility that Hebrews is a response to the destruction of the Temple has been explored in different ways by Eisenbaum[44] and Gelardini.[45] It may be that this horrific event and the subsequent failure of the eschaton to arrive caused Jewish Christians to flag in their faith; the author of Hebrews may be trying to encourage them to reappraise their valuations of the Levitical cult and of Christ’s sacrifice in an attempt to rejuvenate his community.

In this light, Bockmuehl appears correct in writing, “The superiority of the New Covenant introduces not a new people of God so much as a newly energized worship of God – constituted around the definitive and permanently efficacious sacrifice. It is that difference in which the discontinuity of the covenants subsists, not in the identity of the people of God or even in their faith.”[46]

So Hebrews’ community, in the light of Jeremiah’s oracle, may have perceived itself not as a new people of God to the exclusion of (the rest of) Judaism. Rather, their existence is evidence of the coming age, and the imminent fulfillment of God’s promises through Christ. Like Christ Himself, they are the first-fruits, a down payment, as it were, on the promises of God, which remain yet to be fulfilled.

This reading of Hebrews substantially vindicates the broader Evangelical perspective that sees Hebrews as fairly interpreting and appropriating Old Testament scriptures, and building strong continuity with the Old Testament people of God. Yet it differs from the standard Evangelical reading of Hebrews in that it retains a high view of Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Mosaic Law. In time this perspective may be found to be more resilient, as critical scholars continue to emphasize the consensus view of Hebrews’ marginalization of the Old Testament people of God and the problems this theology encounters when faced with a fair reading of the Old Testament itself.

CONCLUSION

This paper has argued for a post-supersessionist reading of Hebrews which attempts to set it in its historical context within first-century Judaism and argues that it does not misappropriate or misinterpret Jeremiah’s oracle of the New Covenant, but rather sees its community as, perhaps, the “first-fruits” of a general revival among the Jewish people, connected with an imminent eschaton.

Hebrews’ appropriation of the New Covenant motif is not designed to marginalize or discredit Judaism as such, but rather to contrast the present age with the age to come, and to encourage its readers to invest in the latter, even as the community deals with the continuing reality of the Temple’s destruction and the tarrying of Messiah.

Despite the glut of monographs on Hebrews over the past few decades, it has yet to be systematically approached from a post-supersessionist perspective. Some work has been done by Nanos, Eisenbaum, Svartvik, Hays, Skarsaune, Bockmuehl, and others, but no major commentary, monograph, or dissertation of which this student is aware has attempted to synthesize these insights into a coherent, complete, post-supersessionist picture of Hebrews’ theology. Furthermore there remains much more work to be done in investigating the potential for Jewish interpretive methods such as midrash in Hebrews. There remains a veritable gold mine of insight to be gleaned from Hebrews once the author and his community are placed firmly within first-century Judaism.

One of the more interesting HR myths I have seen crop up again and again is the intimation that modern English bibles transliterate the Greek Iakobos (Jacob) as James because King James, who directed the completion of the 1611 King James Bible, wanted to insert his name into the Holy Scriptures.

His purported motives vary as the myth is retold; sometimes he is just an egomaniac, at other times he is devilishly erasing the Jewish “Ya’akov” in order to de-Judaize the New Testament.

Of course, this myth is easily disprovable. Just have a look at any English Bible that predates the King James. Wycliffe’s Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Tyndale’s Bible–it doesn’t matter. In each, the Patriarch is Iacob in both Testaments (or Jacob if the spelling has been modernized), and the Apostle is always Iames (or James), a convention that English bibles have followed ever since.

Interestingly, James’s Greek name is different than the Patriarch’s. Isaac’s son is always called Iakob; James is Iakobos. During the ascendancy of Latin as the language of church-dom, Iakobos morphed into Iakomus. As Latin disintegrated into the various Romance languages, the “k” was sometimes changed, as in the Italian Giacomo, or dropped, as in French, leaving Gemmes. In English, it became Iames, and then James.

So by a long string of curious linguistic freak accidents, Ya’akov became James. But it certainly had nothing to do with the King, who was named after the Apostle, rather than the other way around.

The Messianic world suffers, at times, from what I call a “failure complex,” “complex” meaning “a group of mental factors that are unconsciously associated by the individual with a particular subject and influence the individual’s attitude and behavior” (thanks, Wikipedia).

The failure complex is not new. It manifests itself most commonly, consciously or subconsciously, as the following thought process: “There aren’t very many people who believe what I do… therefore, I must be right. On the other hand, X ministry, teacher, or theology is popular, so it must be wrong.” Essentially what it boils down to is the idea that the correct theology, or praxis (way of doing things), will only be held by a select few.

Lots of churches and denominations suffer from some version of this complex. Independent Fundamental Baptists tend to view larger, more established Baptist denominations as the enemy. Many small town pastors eschew mega-pastors like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen. They view any strategy of church growth with suspicion.

But there’s more to it than resenting the success of others. It goes deeper than that, right down to the core of one’s way of looking at the world. It is, in fact, reminiscent of the attitude of the more elitist members of the indie music subculture; once they hear a band on the radio, it’s suddenly too mainstream.

The failure complex is a real killer, because it reinforces bad theology and bad behavior. Someone with this way of looking at the world actually relishes failure. The smaller their home group, the better. The fewer people who agree with them, the closer they are to the truth, until they end up all alone, the “sad little king of a sad little hill” (thanks, River Tam).

The failure complex is easy to justify Biblically if you are willing to be picky about your proof texts. The early church was persecuted, right? So if we’re not being persecuted, we must be doing something wrong. The Jews rejected the message of the early church, right? So whatever our message is today, we should expect the Jews to reject it.

But the simple fact that there are billions of Christians alive today gives the lie to these oversimplifications and distortions of early Christian history.

Jesus expected his message to change the world. He expected his disciples to carry it far and wide. And though he anticipated difficulty, it’s also clear that he anticipated success. The book of Acts is by and large a success story. The early church was incredibly successful, a fact that is even more amazing given the difficulties it encountered.

Yet many Hebrew Roots proponents feel that a message of Jesus’ Jewishness that can be accepted by the church must be watered down. They have conditioned themselves to expect rejection. In reality, the opposite is the case. Christians are dying to hear about Jesus. They love Jesus. If our theology is Biblical and our sources are solid, there is no reason to expect anyone to reject us or our message out of hand.

Aaron Eby’s new book Biblically Kosher hasn’t received much fanfare. A Google search for the book’s title currently brings up a few relevant pages, as well as a bunch of sites contrasting “Biblical Kosher” with “Rabbinic Kosher.” This, I am guessing, was the impetus for the book’s name.

Many Hebrew Roots-ites (not including the book’s author, of course) believe that the Bible expresses a completely different standard of kashrut – the laws defining what is and is not acceptable to eat – than Rabbinic Judaism. Many would have us believe that the Rabbis invented a much more difficult standard than that expressed in the Scriptures. Hence the appellation “Biblical Kosher,” slyly inferring that the Rabbis are unbiblical.

Anyway, the book hasn’t received much fanfare, probably because it doesn’t have an axe to grind with any particular group (the Rabbis included), nor does it attempt to open some vast, new, unprecedented paradigm for understanding the kosher laws. It is simply a great introduction and summation of kashrut from a Messianic Jewish perspective. And that is what makes the book brilliant, and a must-have. There just isn’t anything else on the market like it.

FFOZ has brilliantly filled this niche. Aaron has managed to make the study of kashrut – an admittedly technical and, according to many Christians, irrelevant subject – interesting and fun to read about. While the book is sufficiently technical, the style is not. Plenty of examples and illustrations are used to help the novice connect with the concepts of kosher eating, even as Aaron delves into the original Greek of passages like Mark 7.

More than that, though, the Messianic world has long needed a treatise on kashrut that wasn’t (1) anti-Jewish/anti-Rabbinic, (2) speculative, or (3) based on questionable science. My wife has several biology degrees and is normally put off by the kinds of pseudo-science that have made their way into other resources on kashrut, often in an attempt to justify the kosher laws as universal principles for good health. Nothing like that appears in Biblically Kosher.

Aaron’s book is neatly divided into three parts. Part One gives the reader a window into the basic justification for Messianic Jews to keep kosher. It handily deals with objections from the New Testament, such as Mark 7 (where Jesus “declared all foods clean” – or, as it turns out, didn’t) and Acts 10 (Peter’s infamous vision).

Part Two deals with the Torah’s own words on the subject, including what animals are clean and unclean, how vessels are to be kashered, and the infamous separation of meat and dairy that so many Messianics eschew, yet which appears to have significant roots in the Biblical text itself. The English translation of the relevant passages is more harmful than helpful here and has been reinforced by now-discredited scholarship; this part of the book alone was worth the cover price.

Part Three is a short guide to keeping kosher in community, including the sage advice that no matter how strict one’s community decides to be, someone will not be able to eat there; likewise, no matter how lenient the standard is, someone will bring something unclean to the potluck.

Eby also goes over the ramifications of the three dietary laws which the Apostles laid on Gentiles in Acts 15; you may be surprised to learn just how unbiblical the vaunted “Biblical Kosher” of many Messianics actually is.

We at the BSRC have already handed out complementary copies of Biblically Kosher to most of our regulars, as we feel that this balanced, well-researched guide to the laws of kashrut is absolutely necessary for Jew and believing Gentile alike. The Bible’s instructions on dietary laws are designed to be an important part of our life together, and understanding these laws is the first step in coming into compliance with them.

I think it’s time broader Messianic Judaism began taking kashrut a little more seriously. God willing, Biblically Kosher will inspire us all to do just that.

The great Mussar classic Orchos Tzaddikim (The Ways of the Righteous) contains the admonition, “One who holds himself a knower is considered a fool by others.”

That saying might just sum up why I haven’t been inspired to blog much lately.

I can still remember the days when I was a naive Hebrew Roots-ite, tying my own tzitzit from crocheting yarn and pontificating what I thought were deep truths of the Torah. Overwhelmed by the idea that the Old Testament was still relevant, I latched on to the first systematic implementation of that idea I encountered – the modern Karaism which characterizes much of Hebrew Roots theology and practice.

At that point in my life, I thought of myself as a gadol, someone who could teach others about what was wrong with their own religious practice. I wanted to insert myself into the lives of others and correct their thinking, their observance. I “held myself a knower.” In reality, though, I was a fool. I had rejected things in Christianity that were, in reality, fine. I was totally uninitiated as to what real Messianic Judaism looked like. I had no idea of the role the Jewish people had to play or the importance of traditional Judaism. To be frank, I had no idea what an idiot I looked like, and acted like.

My wake-up call came three or four years ago when I was confronted with the fact that I had turned religion into a hammer with which to beat others. I was deeply hurt by this and went silent for a while. It took a long time before I was willing to come out of the woodwork again and really push for change. I thought I was balanced; I thought I was mature. I had my first degree and was working on my master’s (almost done…), and had a better grasp of both Jewish and Christian theology. But again, I fooled myself. I “held myself a knower” who could enlighten others.

As I have been blogging over the past year, I have made mistakes. In many cases, I have been able to recognize and correct them, but that only causes me to ask the question – which ones have I not recognized?

In the meantime, I’ve met, or gotten to know better, some true gadolim, great men who are changing the face of Hebrew Roots, people who are shaping Messianic Jewish theology, people who really know their stuff. It hit me during this process that I was to them what others were to me – uninitiated, uninformed, barely coherent. Again, I was shocked into reality. And again, I questioned whether or not I should be blogging in the first place.

It’s not a theological shift, it’s a personal paradigm shift.

I’m not going to go silent this time. I think it’s important to keep the dialogue going. But I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. The people I look up to are the ones who are gracious, who accept others in spite of the things they don’t know or understand yet, in spite of disagreements, even when they’re tired, or offended, or attacked. I want to be that way. And I know I’m not, not really, not yet.

But the problem is, most of us aren’t. Most of us could really work on our mussar, our ethics, our moral conduct, the way we treat others and the way we present ourselves before God. Most of us, to some degree, “hold ourselves to be knowers” who can instruct and correct others. And as a movement, we need to grow out of that phase. We need to grow into something better, something greater. We need to learn that we can make a far greater difference through humbly living out our faith, giving tzedakah (charity), helping others.

I still think theological disputes have merit, and I’ll continue to write for and against certain positions, because I think it’s important to address the aspects of Hebrew Roots that are dangerous and unbiblical, and I know that God has given me the compulsion to blog for a reason. Of course, people who hold those positions think my position is dangerous and unbiblical, and round and round we go – it’s almost silly – but I hope that the spirit of the discussion can be civil, or else I won’t engage in it. Not only do I not have the mental energy; it’s simply fruitless.

Nevertheless, I hope to be able to inspire people to be more than they are – and certainly more than a theology, or a philosophy that they have subscribed to. That is, after all, our goal – it is what we do here - we strive to bear the image of God, to have it formed in us, so that we resemble our Messiah and accomplish His mission.

And the first step is to get rid of that stinking pride and realize what we are, and more – what we can be.

As I study what seems like an ever-more-chaotic blogosphere (interblag?) full of people who are arguing, usually very passionately, about everything, I find myself thankful that I am a somewhat regular person that goes to a somewhat regular church. (Being in charge of a few things helps, but not as much as you’d think.)

I’m distressed by the fact that so many Hebrew Roots proponents set their faces against either Judaism or Christianity (or even more frequently, both) as some kind of antipode to their own belief system. The Catholic church is especially vilified.

I am sure most non-Jewish Hebrew Roots proponents believe they have done the right thing in leaving behind (and in many cases, repudiating) the broader Christian faith tradition. And it is inevitable that one will emphasize the points of distinction between two groups that were formerly united.

But Hebrew Roots will not survive as “anti-Christianity.” It will not survive if its very definition depends on the repudiation of an “other.”

Levertoff wrote, “Christianity is too majestic to live upon the depreciation of rivals.” I would say the same thing of an authentic, Biblically grounded Messianic Judaism. I would also say it of an ethnically non-Jewish yet Hebrew-oriented form of Christian worship. But all of these, yes including Catholicism, fall under the umbrella of “in Christ.” This definition, “in Christ,” should unite us at least to the point where we can emphasize what makes us different without deprecating our brothers.

I sigh as I write this, knowing that all over the Internet people are going to continue squabbling. Many Christians perceive the Hebrew Roots movement as a threat. They reject it because they don’t understand it, and frankly I’m not surprised, nor am I sympathetic to the plight of Hebrew Roots proponents who have built their entire theology on a rejection of broader Christianity.

If we are going to work toward real reform, toward a Christianity that is truly Biblical, it will be through, as my friend and spiritual mentor put it several years ago, dialogue and communication.

This dialogue can happen over the Internet. God forbid that I should disparage the Internet as a means of communication; the irony would be a bit sickening. But realistically, all the activity out here is nothing – nothing! – compared to what is going on in real churches, with real people talking face to face. Real, honest dialogue with other people who bear God’s image and are trying just as hard as we are to understand and interpret the Bible.

I understand that a lot of Hebrew Roots people have had bad experiences in church. I have had a lot of bad experiences in church. Yet I had most of them before I became a Hebrew Roots person. When you get into a community with other living breathing people you will eventually encounter conflict and you will have to learn to deal with it.

I can say this, though: I’ve never seen anything like the kinds of arguments I regularly see on blogs, Facebook profiles, etc., in church. Generally in church people are civil and respectful. Granted, this isn’t always the case. But it’s certainly a different world than that of the Internet, our modern day Wild West, with words shooting everywhere instead of bullets, but with much the same effect.

The Internet is an amazing way to communicate information. However it is of extremely limited value in building relationships, real relationships with trust and accountability and blood and tears and the things that make us human. And it is in the context of these relationships that people change, minds change, spiritual growth happens.

Most Christians, if their best friend were into resting on Sabbath and keeping a few dietary laws, wouldn’t give it a second thought. If that friend demonstrated a high level of moral conduct and was a nice guy who was fun to be around, the deal might be cinched right there. They’d at least be interested. But most of us, and I am the greatest offender here, haven’t spent the time making friends or working on ourselves. Instead we argue amongst ourselves, and try to hammer out theological issues which are, compared to what we could be doing, immaterial.

I have seen so much good come out of the church I am in. Depending on how far you want to stretch the idiom, I have seen “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.”

Have people left? Yes. Have people gotten hurt? Yes. Welcome to communal life…

Several families come here now that used to be part of tiny Hebrew Roots congregations. No one has found that they had to compromise their level of observance to go to church here. We don’t even really stand out all that much. Anything we wanted to do – starting chavurot, starting Torah study groups, keeping Sabbath and dietary laws, whatever – we could do and still come here and live under the umbrella of Christianity. Sunday worship? Of course. Come on, Shacharis is every morning. It’s not like you can take a day off.

This approach doesn’t work for everyone. I know James Pyles, who goes out of his way to leave nice comments on blogs rather than start arguments, did not find church to be a welcoming place, and I have a hard time believing (from my limited experience with James) that it was his fault.

Yet for most of us, especially those who at one time left the mainstream church for one reason or another, this isn’t the case. And again I am the worst offender here, but unfortunately the knowledge of our Hebrew Roots appears to inspire elitism and pride as often as it does humility. And it shouldn’t, and it should be obvious that we have nothing to claim for ourselves, considering the level of argumentation I have seen on Facebook profiles lately approximates what you might find on a political blog – people repeating talking points over, and over, and over, until it gets personal.

There are exceptions, and there is real dialogue and healthy debate going on. I don’t want to minimize the work of great bloggers like James, and Derek, and others. But there’s a reason I haven’t been on an Internet forum in many moons, and there is a reason I don’t blog as much as I used to. There is just too much polemic out there and not enough of what makes community work.

So I go to church. It’s a great little church and I have friends here. As far as I can tell, the lives I have been able to touch and the relationships I have built here far outweigh anything I have ever done on the Internet. More than that, being in a traditional community of faith gives me accountability, not just in my actions but in my theology. Believe it or not, many Christians do study their Bibles and there are great, wonderful Christian commentaries out there.

And while Christian theology has traditionally marginalized (at best) the Jewish people, that is changing. Actually, at the very highest levels, it’s been changing for decades. Many large, traditional denominations have repudiated supersessionism.

But that change has only happened because the people who realized what needed to change stuck around and made sure change happened. So I go to church, knowing that even if I am a minority, I can be a voice – a respectful, yet strong voice – for change. If I can get a hundred people one step closer to Biblical literacy, to realizing their connection with the land, the people, and the scriptures of Israel, is that not greater than bringing myself ninety-nine steps closer? Isn’t it greater than the self-assurance my own educational ventures might bring me? Isn’t it greater than canned arguments, repeated over and over, on an Internet where everyone is talking and hardly anyone really listens?

I want to be part of a community, a real community of faith, that is grounded in tradition and that holds its members accountable. Communities have variegation and we need to learn to accept that. If we can get past the things we disagree with then there’s nothing wrong with a large percentage of the churches out there, and what’s wrong with the rest of them likely has nothing to do with their view of the Torah or the Jewish people.

I want to help people, to reach out and touch them where they are, not in front of a computer screen, but “in real life.” I want to be a better person and I want to help other people become better. I want to lift up Jesus with other believers. All of this can happen and is happening in churches all over the country. So I go to church.

Next time you are talking (or typing) about your beliefs, think twice before setting Christianity up as the bad guy, the “other” that you define yourself against. If you believe in Jesus, you’re a Christian. We’re all brothers. We can be distinctive without being destructive. We can worship together. We can live together. We have to.

And maybe, just maybe, you could drop in at church sometime. We’d love to have you.

Studying modern scholarship on Second Temple Judaism is kind of a brain drain. From what I can tell, there is a strong consensus around Ed Sanders’s portrayal of Judaism, based on Jewish sources ancient and modern, as a religion based on a gracious covenant given by God. And there is also the counter-element, including many (most?) Evangelical scholars, who believe that there must have at least been a significant works-righteousness element in Judaism for Paul to be arguing against; this is imperative to maintain a Lutheran (classical Protestant) reading of Paul, the messenger of grace, against Judaism, the religion of empty works.

Strangely enough, though, I detect an element in Christianity that is a bit too keen on the idea of perfection. We want to read perfection into everything. We want to perceive the Bible as a perfect book (and it is), because it’s from God, so it must have no errors and it must have all the answers, notwithstanding the fact that our thousands of manuscripts do indeed have small differences due to textual transmission, and there are many questions the Bible does not propose to answer, or that it answers in a way that is vague or open to interpretation.

We want to see Jesus as perfect, and He is, but too often our vision of a perfect Jesus is dehumanized, emasculated, or else too firm, and above all, not normal, because we are normal, and normal isn’t perfect. Remember that Jesus’ family didn’t believe in Him despite the virgin birth. Sounds like a normal kid. He was probably a fun person to be around and not the stick-in-the-mud we Christians tend to think of him as. After all, within the confines of Pharasaic halacha there was tremendous room to have fun and be yourself; it’s the same way in Judaism today.

Above all, we aspire to perfection. We want to be like the Jesus we imagine so we sacrifice everything to get closer to Him. Which is good. Except that when we fail it can be devastating. We set ourselves up for failure with this unbelievably high goal. Then when we fall we feel acutely the distance between us and God.

All of these concepts are good and correct; perfection is good, and Jesus is perfect, and we will eventually be perfect too. But I think that for most of us a healthy injection of realism is necessary to maintain some kind of sanity. We will not be perfect tomorrow or the next day. We want to be better but we’re not going to be that much better.

So set realistic goals and do what you can.

Mussar treatises like Cheshbon HaNefesh and Mesilas Yesharim are designed this way, to begin where you are and show you the next step. Now the great masters of Mussar know just as well as anyone who has read the Sermon on the Mount that our goal is to be morally perfect like God Himself. But the difference is that Mussar takes you one step at a time. First comes vigilance, then alacrity, then cleanliness, then abstinence, and so on. Whereas many Christians just teach, “Be holy as God is holy.”

When people fail to reach that goal, the panacaea offered them is “justification by faith” – don’t worry, Jesus’ death and resurrection have paid for your sins. And this is also true. But the inevitable response, because of the combination of an impossible goal and no incentive to reach it, is laziness. So the Jewish people have a covenant of grace with God and yet work hard to become righteous, while Christians accuse Jews of legalism but then fail to work toward righteousness.

I’m sure these are stereotypes, they are generalizations and not true of everyone. But theology matters, not just because of how true it is, but because of how it affects our actions. If we think our theology is true but it’s causing us to fail to make a difference, and we choose not to change it, it causes us to believe that we shouldn’t be making a difference. So our orientation moves from tikkun olam, doing good deeds and making the world a better place in the name of Jesus Christ in order to magnify Him, to making converts, changing people’s orientation so it matches our own. But if our compass is off, how can we guide someone else?

So my proposal is, do what you can. Obey God, obey Christ, obey the rulings of the Apostles, as well as you can, where you are now. And plan to do better, set reasonable goals, take measured steps, and become the person God has called you to be. Don’t give up, don’t get discouraged, run the race. But remember, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve had a few other things fall into my lap lately and I’m also reconsidering the value of blogging in the first place. I initially started the blog to irreverently post my initial thoughts on a variety of subjects, to get a little feedback and to have a record of what I had been thinking about. Unfortunately I have attracted a few unsympathetic readers and now I have to be more careful about what I say, which almost defeats the purpose.

That being said, it has been a maturing experience for me. I have learned that I tend to jump to conclusions about people, and though my theological position has only been reinforced, my opinion of myself is somewhat lessened. My goal is to write in an academic style and remain objective, but sometimes I can’t help but become frustrated, which doesn’t help me or anyone else to get a better handle on the Scriptures or on life in general.

That being said, I think it would be of some benefit to outline for my readers how academic dialogue works, because in many Hebrew Roots circles people get hurt feelings and feel like they are being singled out for criticism when in reality they have just been named as a source in an document that uses an academic writing style.

For example, I once took a class that used D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo’s An Introduction to the New Testament. It’s a great NTS book, and I’d recommend it to anyone with an Evangelical background. Carson and Moo are both scholars and they know their stuff though I of course disagree with them about more recent perspectives on Paul and the continuing application of the Mosaic law, among other things. But the scholarship is solid and I enjoyed reading it.

In the section on Romans, Carson and Moo briefly mention Mark Nanos’s The Mystery of Romans. I’m a big fan of Nanos, so naturally I was interested in what they had to say. However, they dismissed his work in one sentence. They found his arguments unconvincing.

Now, I’m sure Nanos knows that Evangelical scholars disagree with his conclusions. Krister Stendahl wrote a nice blurb for the back cover. So there’s good and there’s bad. Of course not everyone was going to agree with him. He knew that. He doesn’t read that someone found his argument unconvincing and then go home and cry into a pillow. It’s just life. He’ll keep doing the great research he’s been doing.

Lots of literature is being produced – almost too much, really – on the Jewishness of Paul and Jesus and New Testament studies and all that. In this field of study, the primary mode of communication is an academic style of writing, where significant statements have sources that are cited. If someone were going to write a book on Messianic Judaism, for example, they would cite sources like Dan Juster, Russ Resnik, Mark Kinzer, David Rudolph, etc., as these are people who have written from that viewpoint or played major parts in that movement.

If someone were writing a book on the Hebrew Roots movement in general, they might cite sources like Eddie Chumney, Bill Cloud, and Rico Cortes. Whether the author was sympathetic, antipathetic, or objective, they would probably cite the same primary sources.

Let’s say the article was unsympathetic, perhaps from a very conservative, fundamentalist viewpoint. They would cite these primary sources and then demonstrate why they thought these sources were wrong, how they misinterpret the Scripture, how their exegesis is flawed, etc.

If one were not familiar with the academic style of writing, one might think that the author of this book was attacking these people personally. But this isn’t the case. There’s nothing personal about academic dialogue. To assess a viewpoint in an academic way, sources have to be cited. Otherwise, people would accuse the author of the book of making things up.

So when Carson and Moo want to confront the theology of the “radical new perspective” (typified by Eisenbaum, Gager, Nanos, Zetterholm, and others), they cite these scholars as sources and then explain why they disagree with them. There’s nothing personal about it. In academic dialogue one is required to name names. That’s just the way it works.

Citing sources also connects a work to the matrix of thought that surrounds it. One can place the work on a theological map, so to speak, based on its proximity to some scholars and distance from others. It connects the thoughts of today with the thoughts of yesterday and allows people to speak across generations. It’s good, it works, and I wish more people did it.

That’s all I have for today. Peace out.