The Response of Christianity and its Counter‐Claim

Extract

In asserting his four facts, Professor Neusner also puts pointed questions to Christianity, every one of them both serious and telling. Answering them involves spelling out the facts of revelation as they are perceived and taught by the Church.

First, “Why should they even want to claim to own Scripture at all, if they do not keep important commandments that Scripture sets forth?” This question strikes accurately at a sensitive spot. During the second century a teacher in Rome, Marcion, insisted that the New Testament should stand alone as Scripture, and that anything connected with Judaism should be expurgated from the one Gospel he liked (Luke) and Paul’s letters. He has had pale imitators ever since, but the Church then and now has authoritatively rejected the idea that the Old Testament can be dispensed with.

The letters of Paul, which Marcion made the basis of his views, undermined his position. The teacher whom the Church regarded as “the Apostle”, once its primary constituency was non-Jewish, himself emphasized that Israel has a permanent place in the history of salvation. Why should that be the case? Because, he said, from the Israelites came “the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Romans 9:5). If you want to know what these things are, you need the Scriptures of Israel. Paul understands that all these gifts are only fully realized in the final gift of Israel: the coming of “Christ according to the flesh” (Romans 9:6).