What was first-century Judaism like? How did first-century Judaism help people approach God and draw holiness into their lives? When Jesus, a Jew, thought of God and Scripture and prayer, what kinds of things was he thinking about? By looking at the life of Jesus as a Jewish life, this book seeks to uncover the Jewish roots of Christianity. I want to hear Jesus the way his contemporaries—Jews in first-century Israel and Galilee—would have heard him. I want to understand him the way his Jewish contemporaries understood him. And I want to bring that understanding to twenty-first-century Christians and Jews. – Rabbi Evan Moffic
For far too long, far too few Christians gave much serious thought to the Jewishness of Jesus. As a result, the last 2,000 years have been difficult at best, disastrous at worst for my fellow Jews. And the Church has often functioned as though Jesus was the first President of Christianity, severing him from his Jewishness and starving themselves of a full appreciation of his words and works.
Two different but related trends have begun to change the way in which these two communities relate. [Read more]
