People of the Book

Historically, both Jews and Christians have been known as "People of the Book." The reason for this is that both religions are based, not in a direct experience of God (which was the claim of Paganism and much of today's so-called "New Ages" religions), but in an experience that is mediated through a story preserved for them in a book. Much of the opposing groups' stories are exactly the same. The one God created the heavens and the earth, was rebelled against by sinful humanity, and now pursues a salvific relationship with them (a salvation which finds its paradigmatic episode in the Exodus of the Hebrews from the slavery of Egypt). Of course, the story diverges at just the crucial point (the "climax" in narrative terms). For the Jews are still waiting for their final restoration in a Messiah who has not yet come. The Christians believe that their restoration (and the restoration of creation) has already begun - it began with the coming of Jesus the Messiah (Christ is the Greek term meaning "Messiah").

Because much of their story, and therefore their Scriptures, are the same, it is not surprising that the debates between Jews and Christians in the first few centuries were exegetical in nature. That is, the debate hinged on the correct way to understand and interpret the revelatory story God gave them. (We must remember that, though all of the documents of the New Testament were written in the first century, it took much longer for the church to recognize that God had spoken authoritatively in them. When the early Christians - and the New Testament writers for that matter - speak of their Scriptures, they are speaking only of what we now call the Old Testament.)

You might be wondering or have thought before that the Old Testament does not say much, if anything, about Jesus. But for the early Christians, everything that they needed to know about the nature of Jesus had already been revealed. We can see this in the pages of the New Testament. Consider the parable of Lazarus and the rich man and Abraham's solemn warning to the rich man concerning the fate of his unbelieving brothers: "[The rich man] said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to them, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'" -Luke 16:27-31

Or Consider Jesus' words to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: "'O, how foolish you are, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?' Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures." -Luke 24:25-27

But to the Jews, it was anything but obvious that the Messiah should suffer; and herein lies the single greatest point of differentiation between the Jews and the Christians of the first centuries. The Jews were waiting for a triumphant, warrior Messiah who would come in and forcibly set up the kingdom of the Jews on earth. Conversely, the Christians proclaimed that a crucified man was the Messiah. Thus, the text that created the most controversy in those early debates was Isaiah 53: "He was despised and rejected by others; a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity . . . surely he has born our infirmities and carried our diseases . . . but he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed."

In this amazing passage, written hundreds of years before Christ, the Christians discerned the identity of their savior - not a warrior Messiah, not a triumphant king, but a suffering servant. They clearly saw the cross - the punishment that made us whole. The New Testament writers refer to it frequently (cf. 1 Pet 2:21-24). In a mid second century debate between the early church father Justin Martyr and the Jew Trypho, Justin quotes or refers to it in excess of twenty times including a full quotation of Isaiah 52:10-54:6. This was obviously the foundation of the Christians' claim that the cross was prophesied by the prophets.

Incredibly, the Jews also discerned the Messiah in this passage; however, they saw not a suffering Messiah, but the triumphant Messiah that they so longed for. They concentrated on other parts of the passage: "Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong." It is not until the fourth century that Rabbinic exegesis begins to concede that the Messiah figure might be a suffering one.

I imagine that most of us would find it unimaginable that the Jews cannot see the cross in this passage; it is so clearly there. But the reality is that one's interpretations of Scripture are always guided by his or her presuppositions. The Jews saw a triumphant, warrior Messiah in Isaiah 53 because that is what they already expected. Only those who had undergone the radical conversion to Christianity could look upon the Scriptures through a new lens, and see so clearly what was previously thought impossible.

The same remains true for us today - for our interpretations of Scripture are just as surely guided by our presuppositions. Many of these presuppositions are ungrounded and can be harmful; they can lead us to find things in Scripture that are truly not there. Thus, we in America can interpret our riches as the blessings of God, while the poor in South America can interpret them as signs that we have forsaken God. Suspending judgment on either claim for the moment, the lesson is that we need to read Scripture with the knowledge that we have presuppositions, and we need to pray that Christ will continue to open our eyes as he opened the eyes of those first Christians, that we too may see things we have never seen. And that we might be converted. And that we might still be known as people of the book.