How did it feel for a Jewish boy from Brooklyn who lives half the year in Jerusalem to meet the Pope?
By BARBARA SOFERDr. Marc Brettler(photo credit: SERVIZIO FOTOGRAFICO “L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO”)You were born in 1958 in Brooklyn, the borough with the largest Jewish population. Then you went on to Brandeis University, a nondenominational but at least half-Jewish university, where you earned your BA, MA and PhD. Today you are best-known as a scholar of the New Testament. Please explain your unanticipated journey.I grew up in a traditional Jewish family and attended the Orthodox Flatbush Yeshiva, where I acquired a classic Jewish education, in which the emphasis was on what the famed rabbinical interpreters understood in the text. There I acquired excellent tools to read the text and commentaries in the original Hebrew. I had the good fortune at Brandeis University to take a course with Prof. Nahum Sarna, who gave a historical perspective not only to puzzle out what the original text meant but to see how meaning changed over time. At first that sounded heretical to my ears, but it was also liberating. I acquired additional ancient languages like Akkadian, Ugaritic and Aramaic, and became engaged in the historical perspective.What was one of your first striking discoveries as Prof. Sarna’s student?I was stunned that King David hadn’t written the Book of Psalms. We’re not even sure what the earliest psalm is. I understand that Judaism developed historically. I opt to follow an observant Jewish lifestyle but don’t insist that everyone follow my trajectory. I keep milk and meat dishes separate, but this wasn’t the way it always was for Jews. I know that some of my historian colleagues disagree with me and think that my practice is unnecessary.How did you move into your study of the New Testament?Thirty years ago I was approached by Oxford University Press to serve as an editor of the Oxford Annotated Bible. Until then, only Christians were on the editorial board, and there was concern about the attitude that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament is a book of law, and the New Testament is a book of love. I agreed to be involved so I could present a different point of view. Afterwards, a Catholic Study Bible was published, and I suggested the publisher should put out a Jewish Study Bible. I authored it with Adele Berlin, and the book became a popular college textbook. That was all Old Testament.I suggested, only half-seriously, to do a Jewish New Testament. The publisher agreed. It came out in 2018.Have you had pushback?Reactions range between curious and horrified. As a modern Bible scholar, people are quick to pick arguments with me anyway. I’m used to that. But even a close friend asked me why I would want to spend so much time “with that book.” Jews have been wary of reading the New Testament, which has had painful repercussions for the Jewish people. In Israel, there’s even more discomfort than America in reading the New Testament. When Hebrew University Prof. Avigdor Shinan wrote That Man – Jews Talk about Jesus nearly a decade ago, the story is that Israeli bookstores were afraid of showing it in the window.Jewish aversion to the New Testament comes from both religious law like Talmudic prohibitions against reading it, and historical experience of the New Testament being used as a proof text for antisemitism, particularly that Jews bear responsibility for Jesus’s death. The New Testament was also used to convert Jews. Do you see any danger in reading or studying it for Jews?I believe that for Americans and others who live in a country where Christianity is the major religion, it’s important to understand Christianity. And it’s a two-way street. We want Christians to understand Judaism; then we have to understand Christianity.Why was your meeting with the pope so significant?There are voices in Christianity who want to deny the Jewishness of the New Testament – that the authors are Jews and that it took place among Jews. We’re thrilled that in spite of that resistance to our approach, the pope is willing to receive the book and its authors. He is saying that the New Testament interpretation of Jewish scholars is valid. Only in recent decades have Jewish scholars become interested again, as they were before the Holocaust, in learning about the times and ideas of the New Testament. He’s a great man who is using his position to make positive changes. I’m not an ivory tower scholar. I’m glad to see changes in perspective.Can your book be heretical for Jews?The Jewish Annotated New Testament offers a window into the first-century world of Judaism from which the New Testament springs. There are explanations of Jewish concepts such as food laws and rabbinic argumentation. It also provides a much-needed corrective to many centuries of Christian misunderstandings of the Jewish religion. For Jewish readers, this volume provides the chance to encounter the New Testament – a text of vast importance in Western European and American culture – with no religious agenda and with guidance from Jewish experts in theology, history and Jewish and Christian thought. It also explains Christian practices, such as the Eucharist. The book places the New Testament writings in a context that will enlighten readers of any faith, or none.Please describe the ceremony with the pope.The meeting itself was brief, part of the general audience that the pope holds each week in St. Peter’s Square with thousands of people watching. It begins with welcoming the groups attending, and with a catechism from the pope, a sort of dvar Torah. That morning’s talk was on the importance of the word “us” in the Lord’s Prayer: Give “us” today our daily bread. The pope emphasized the plural that indicates that each of us is responsible to solve world hunger. Everything he said was translated into several languages, including English and Arabic, so it was a long ceremony, but very impressive. I had a sense of what an ancient royal court would have looked like.After that, the pope went around to greet and chat with a small number of specially invited guests. My co-editor Amy-Jill Levine and I, along with Prof. Jean-Pierre Sonnet, our host from the Pontifical Gregorian Institute, were in this small group. The meeting was set up by Father Norbert J. Hofmann, S.D.B., and secretary of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews. We presented the pope with the volume, and expressed our appreciation for receiving us, and for his constructive work in Jewish-Catholic relations. He received the book happily, and handed it to his assistant saying that this is a very important work, and that the assistant should keep track of it and keep it near him. He also said to us: “Please continue with your work, continue.”What did you write in the dedication?To Pope Frances, with much appreciation for your concern for Jewish-Catholic relations.How did it feel for a Jewish boy from Brooklyn who lives half the year in Jerusalem to meet the pope?I felt good as a Jew. I was clearly there as a Jew, wearing a kippah, and presenting him with The Jewish Annotated New Testament, written entirely by Jewish scholars. His seeing us meant to me that he respected Jews and Jewish scholarship. Not so long ago, Jews weren’t accepted in significant numbers into the academy when they wanted to teach New Testament or Early Christianity, but this has changed – allowing us to find contributors for the volume. For me, having the opportunity to present him with the book was a mark of Jewish acceptance in this area, and very gratifying.On another level of feeling: to have his warm and kind hands envelop mine, to look him in the eyes as we spoke, to feel his charisma and beneficence – this was, to use a Hebrew word, meragesh, a combination of exciting and moving. The encounter has stayed in my heart.
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